How does FSForce know what to do?

MajorUrsa · Post by **MajorUrsa** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 10:07 pm

Hi,

I'm still in the process of evaluating the product. In the first 2 flights (of several hours touch -and go's

in the default C172 with a Logitech Wingman) I found the in-flight performance to be excellent and very much more natural than the sloppy stuff M$ put in.

However, when doing a touch down I do not feel a landing bump and also the ground-profile does not kick in. When at that point I trim to TO-position again (while rolling) it seems FSForce suddenly becomes aware of my being on the ground and the effects do happen.

All this leads me to wonder what magic is behind all this. Am I right to conclude that FSForce uses only IAS to calculate the forces? And that it switches over to ground-effects when the FS tells it the plane is on the ground? I ask because I had the impression that the built-in FF did more than just this, but maybe that is an illusion.

So I would be curious to know what the parameters are that you use to make this work. I'm aware that you can only use parameters that are made 'visible' by FS, and maybe there are more 'invisible' ones that are available to FS itself but not to FSForce.

What interests me most is some feedback from air-turbulence and maybe wingdip-stalls and stuff like that, so more based on the actual wing-lift-model that the airspeed of the plane as a whole. Does this make sense?

Anyway, the product is a good concept and very well programmed and I think I'll probably purchase it anyway, maybe just to support the effort. Thanks for answering,

Ursa..

Post by **RussDirks** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 4:34 am

when doing a touch down I do not feel a landing bump and also the ground-profile does not kick in. When at that point I trim to TO-position again (while rolling) it seems FSForce suddenly becomes aware of my being on the ground and the effects do happen.

That sounds like a glitch. On some systems FS Force momentarily looses control of the joystick due to conflicts with other aspects of DirectX. It sounds like when you make the trim change, FS Force is suddenly regaining control of the joystick.

To eliminate some of these problems, make sure you have the most up-to-date drivers for your video card, sound card, and joystick. Sometimes that solves the problem. Or it could just be an incompatibility of your system with FS Force.

All this leads me to wonder what magic is behind all this. Am I right to conclude that FSForce uses only IAS to calculate the forces? And that it switches over to ground-effects when the FS tells it the plane is on the ground? I ask because I had the impression that the built-in FF did more than just this, but maybe that is an illusion.

FS Force uses quite a number of parameters, some purposely exposed by the SDK, and others that I had to dig for myself. It uses things like IAS, ground speed, "Airplane On Ground", height AGL, and many others.

MajorUrsa · Post by **MajorUrsa** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 6:53 pm

To eliminate some of these problems, make sure you have the most up-to-date drivers for your video card, sound card, and joystick. Sometimes that solves the problem. Or it could just be an incompatibility of your system with FS Force.

Although that is always possible of course it seems rather unlikely since the system was bought pre-installed only a monthe ago and the drivers are only 1 release-point behind the current (about a month or 2). Of course I will update but I doubt it will help.
Also when I re-init FsForce it does not behave as it should. In the Virtual Airplane everything is ok, btw.

FS Force uses quite a number of parameters, some purposely exposed by the SDK, and others that I had to dig for myself. It uses things like IAS, ground speed, "Airplane On Ground", height AGL, and many others.

Are any of these events visible in your DebugLog? Especcially the "Airplane On Ground" one, since I think that one is the culprit.