I've probably asked this before, but: Il-2 and encoders - anyone got them to work?

[1Sascha]

More specifically: After not touching my throttle's config for months and months (and thus having forgotten how to do most things in the SW) I was trying to set up my Virpil CM3's encoder dials as controls for oil- and water- and/or cowl-shutters. I'm talking about the two "E"-knobs on the base of the throttle. Since they also have a push-function, they seem ideal for this (in theory)... push = switch from auto to manual control (where applicable) - spin the knob = open/close shutters.

 

I *guess* this might not even be a problem on planes with limited preset "stages" for the radiators (like the 110), but I haven't tried those yet. Instead I tried the 109's water-radiator controls first, since the later 109s all come with an auto/manual switch. Problem is that it's a 0-100%, 1% increments kind of control and while IL-2 recognizes the input (sort of), no matter what I tried with the encoder setup in VPC Config, it takes *a lot* of twisting on those knobs to go from fully open to fully close. Looking at the in-cockpit control, it will do some sort of weird back and forth spasm (between neutral position and open or close position) when I turn the knob - that's just how encoders work, I suppose and I guess IL-2 isn't set up to process this sort of input.

 

My question for folks like @dburne is: As I'm pretty sure there's no way to change IL-2's behavior here, are there any settings in VPC to turn those dials into something that will result in:

 

Turn knob -> in-game shutter control moves to "open" or "close" and stays there for as long as knob is turned and only switches back to neutral once I stop turning the knob.

 

From what I understand, all I'd need (at least in the 109) is a "push and hold" command getting sent from the throttle to the game, or am I over-simplifying things here?

 

Second question: Has anyone found a way to make encoders wheels work for in-cockpit zoom? I'd really love to be able to use the thumb-rotary on the right throttle grip for that, but I ran into similar problems there. I know, I know there's that ring-finger slider on the Virpil throttle, but that thing is so light to the touch and finicky that I just can't get it to work for me. Neither in IL-2 nor in DCS nor in any other games, I might add. It's just too easy to inadvertently move that slider around while pushing buttons on the grips or changing your power-settings.

 

S.

 

[firdimigdi]

3 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

Second question: Has anyone found a way to make encoders wheels work for in-cockpit zoom? I'd really love to be able to use the thumb-rotary on the right throttle grip for that, but I ran into similar problems there. I know, I know there's that ring-finger slider on the Virpil throttle, but that thing is so light to the touch and finicky that I just can't get it to work for me. Neither in IL-2 nor in DCS nor in any other games, I might add. It's just too easy to inadvertently move that slider around while pushing buttons on the grips or changing your power-settings.

 

One way I could think of would be to setup a virtual button-to-axis with the encoder and then in the virtual axis set axis-to-button mapping (say 0%-50%-100%) or for even better control with the axis-to-button-ranges: set each range to be a specific button and map those to the zoom steps. Sadly the axis-to-button ranges are rather limited to 8 buttons for all such mappings so if you got them setup for something else it's a no go.

 

For a while I toyed with the ring slider for zooming by setting up such an axis-to-button configuration and adding a self-adhesive strip of felt under it to increase friction but didn't find it ergonomically practical and instead use the badly-placed-under-the-index-finger ministick (full lateral deflection = quick zoom minimum, full vertical = quick full maximum, so since IL-2 smartly combines these if I move the stick to a corner it zooms to an in-between stage).

 

 

Edited August 15, 2024 by firdimigdi
clarification

[MaxStarck]

On 8/15/2024 at 9:28 AM, 1Sascha said:

More specifically: After not touching my throttle's config for months and months (and thus having forgotten how to do most things in the SW) I was trying to set up my Virpil CM3's encoder dials as controls for oil- and water- and/or cowl-shutters. I'm talking about the two "E"-knobs on the base of the throttle. Since they also have a push-function, they seem ideal for this (in theory)... push = switch from auto to manual control (where applicable) - spin the knob = open/close shutters.

 

I *guess* this might not even be a problem on planes with limited preset "stages" for the radiators (like the 110), but I haven't tried those yet. Instead I tried the 109's water-radiator controls first, since the later 109s all come with an auto/manual switch. Problem is that it's a 0-100%, 1% increments kind of control and while IL-2 recognizes the input (sort of), no matter what I tried with the encoder setup in VPC Config, it takes *a lot* of twisting on those knobs to go from fully open to fully close. Looking at the in-cockpit control, it will do some sort of weird back and forth spasm (between neutral position and open or close position) when I turn the knob - that's just how encoders work, I suppose and I guess IL-2 isn't set up to process this sort of input.

 

My question for folks like @dburne is: As I'm pretty sure there's no way to change IL-2's behavior here, are there any settings in VPC to turn those dials into something that will result in:

 

Turn knob -> in-game shutter control moves to "open" or "close" and stays there for as long as knob is turned and only switches back to neutral once I stop turning the knob.

 

From what I understand, all I'd need (at least in the 109) is a "push and hold" command getting sent from the throttle to the game, or am I over-simplifying things here?

 

Second question: Has anyone found a way to make encoders wheels work for in-cockpit zoom? I'd really love to be able to use the thumb-rotary on the right throttle grip for that, but I ran into similar problems there. I know, I know there's that ring-finger slider on the Virpil throttle, but that thing is so light to the touch and finicky that I just can't get it to work for me. Neither in IL-2 nor in DCS nor in any other games, I might add. It's just too easy to inadvertently move that slider around while pushing buttons on the grips or changing your power-settings.

 

S.

 

 

Did it work for you? I just got a new throttle (VKB) and have the same issue.