Hi Chaps,
Great fun earlier today! I have to say, it is a lot of work to get close enought to a 109 to score good hits when flying the Yak now that they have tweaked the fm. OPnce my speed was gone it was very hard to regain sufficient energy to turn hard or climb. Since I'm a bit of a masochist, I might try the Lagg-3 next time ;D. My biggest challenge however is navigation; the maps, while good are still not as detailed as the charts I used years ago flying in the bush (1:500,000, or 1 inch to the mile).
Pip, pip,
Conky
Certainly going to take a while to get used to this sim.
For me the elevator trimming is pretty diabolical in that I have to switch between my trim wheel for the 109 and the hat switch for others and none of them trim to the extent that is normally available. Sticking to flying one type is clearly going to be an attraction......and I understand why so many chose the 190/109.
Like Woof I'm finding it difficult to get the control settings to a point where the nose moves with input. It is almost as if there is a built in delay leading to PIO.....must have another go at changing the settings.
I noticed reading the forum that many chaps use SweetFX to help make seeing the opposition easier. I gather that this prog. Refines the graphics to enable changes in contrast and brightness. No time to try it now but will have a look at it at some point.
Very steep learning curve.
Hope that Woof can get his CH profiles sorted. If you visit him during your course it will no doubt help alot.
Bounder.
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on March 02, 2016, 09:28:09 AM
Very steep learning curve.
I think that BoS, like any game which aims to simulate a real-world environment with any fidelity, actually has two learning curves. The first is in getting to grips with the way in which the game tries to enable you to interact with the virtual world, and the second is how you react to the game as if it were the real thing. I think that what you're struggling with is the first one, and, since you are an actual aviator, the second curve should be less steep once you conquer that first one. So what I'm saying is stick at it chap!
Hi Bounder,
By default, BoS has different key assignments for elevator trim using trim tabs and adjustable horizontal stabilizer. I mapped both functions to one key so I don't have to switch.
Pip, pip,
Conky
Quote from: CfC_Conky on March 02, 2016, 07:47:38 PM
Hi Bounder,
By default, BoS has different key assignments for elevator trim using trim tabs and adjustable horizontal stabilizer. I mapped both functions to one key so I don't have to switch.
Pip, pip,
Conky
Problem with the X52 Conky is that the trim wheels are assigned an "axis" so will not bind to the keystrokes for trim in the Yak and others. I have managed to get the variable stab in the 109 to bind but the 190 requires two separate entries and so I only get one direction (either up trim or down trim but not both). At the moment I'm using hat switch for the Yak and others including the 190 and revert to trim axis on my elevator trim for the 109.....all very confusing!
Bounder
Hi Bounder,
An instructive, albeit short prang today. The La-5 is faster than the Yak but does not turn as well. It accelerates better too so when I used flaps to try and stay with your turn I was able to recover energy quickly once I got too slow. The La-5 has boost which is quite effective, not to mention handy, at low altitude and I did not have any overheating issues. In the end, my only real advantage over you was when you would lose sight of me, then I could get into a better position although you were very hard to catch. I would suggest you start climbing when you lose sight because, if starting co-energy, the F4 will out climb everything in BoS.
Next time we fly, if you go VVS, I'll take up a 109E or MC202, since they are not at uber as the F4 and to a lesser extent, the G2
Pip, pip,
Conky
Good to have a go with my changed flight control settings which I think are as good as I can get them.
Clearly the F4 is a difficult adversary against the Russian machinery and I'm sure that was the case in real life.
My eyesight is probably my biggest hinderence to giving anyone a good fight as I lose sight during a tail chase usually after the automatic glance down to read instruments which is cast in my genes!
Great fun though and look forward to trying the Yak. Have only done a circuit in the LA5 so will read up how to operate it.
Bounder
Hi folks,
Let me have some thread necromancy here 8)
Now that BoX has improved a lot during the past months and years, how about getting into the air together?
Just for fun, just to see how everything works together and to check the feasibility of further efforts in this direction?
Vincent (SAS~Skylla) and me have had a 1-hour-session last week and it's been fun to fly on a public but empty frogs server (empty so no one sees when we... guess it :P).
I'd be glad if we could repeat such session once in a while.
At the same time let me say that - most of you will know about it - we have a dedicated windows server running where there should be some free capacity to operate a BoX server on.
The Hardware we use has a quad core CPU with 12GB RAM, only one core is busy with the UP3 "Flying Ass Clowns" server since IL-2 1946 is strictly single threaded, and as much as I understand from a technical point of view, the BoX dedicated server currently is single core only as well (unfortunately one must say), so they should live side by side just fine.
I've applied for a Dedi Server license @1CGS and received it today, so if we decide to go full steam BoX, we have that option now as well.
So... if you're interested to have an online BoX session together, please reply and state your preferred (and maybe earliest and latest) timeframe so we can arrange something for all of us.
Cheers!
Mike
Quoteempty so no one sees when we... guess it
trash their ships & AI planes?
yeah, we're definitely
not gonna pay for those :P
It is definitely cool to fly BoX together .. if for nothing else, then at least for the eye candy. One can say what he wants, but this sim for sure does look good!
Flying in formation never was that appealing!
Best Regards
skylla
Hi Mike and Skylla.......
We are quite low on regular numbers now but we do have a handful of CfC chaps with BOS although none of us have flown it for quite some time.
We normally login to the SAS server around 1800 CUT (GMT) on Tuesdays and Thursdays so tomorrow night I will speak with the chaps and see if we can get things together for a session with you.
At the moment I only have BOS basic without BOM or any other add-ons but with current developments I think we may all start to look at getting a few more bits and pieces.
Many thanks for inviting us to join you and after talking tomorrow night on TS I will post as to when and how many might be able to join in.
Bounder
Depending on my work schedule, pretty much any time could work for me. Just it it up and I'll try to join you 8).
Conky
P.S. Don't worry about only having the basic sim Bounder, except for additional kites, it should run just fine.
I'd love to join in the fun, but I still don't have my controls sorted properly...
Can't run Bos...........:(
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 27, 2017, 10:09:57 PM
We normally login to the SAS server around 1800 CUT (GMT) on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Sounds viable.
We're GMT+1 here in germany at winter times, so this would be 1900 for Skylla and me, basically the time we meet anyway - if we do. It's a random thing :P
Quote from: BalDaddy on November 28, 2017, 09:44:18 AM
Can't run Bos
HDD space all occupied by ÏοÑη? 8)
Cheers!
Mike
Oops.....brain dying as well as eyes😖....,we are on winter time here also so I should have said 2000 CUT (GMT)..... don't know where I got 1800 from.
I usually login about 1945 to TS and Woof also with others joining by 2000.
Bounder
Well that'll be much harder to achieve, but it matches my experience that you're usually joining after all Clowns have left.
At 2100 our time, missus expects me to give my full attention to her.
As I'm not prepared to be divorced, I'm afraid I'll have to wait for a day when missus is "out of office" in that case.
Cheers!
Mike
Quote from: Storebror on November 28, 2017, 12:34:24 PM
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 27, 2017, 10:09:57 PM
We normally login to the SAS server around 1800 CUT (GMT) on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Sounds viable.
We're GMT+1 here in germany at winter times, so this would be 1900 for Skylla and me, basically the time we meet anyway - if we do. It's a random thing :P
Quote from: BalDaddy on November 28, 2017, 09:44:18 AM
Can't run Bos
HDD space all occupied by ÏοÑη? 8)
Cheers!
Mike
No, no porn, don't like watching any kind of sport I can't join in !
Rather old rig is all.......and had to be 32bit for the software I ran afore retiring. Unable to upgrade due to Daughter 2 (@ Uni in Central London) messaging me on a regular basis, (like 2 hours ago) 'Dadeee I've run out of moneeeeey!'
Quote from: BalDaddy on November 28, 2017, 05:17:52 PM
Rather old rig is all.......
As I understand it, if you can run RoF, you can run BoX. Maybe not maxed-out on the GFX, but it should work.
Anyway, i know I'm not often about these days, but am keen to to try BoS in friendly MP skies.
Mike and Skylla,
Many thanks for getting the BOS server up and running so quickly.
Those of us that have the prog managed a few sorties last night and it highlighted the amount of work we all have especially with key bindings.
Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago: only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI making it so much harder to get key assignments working without duplication.......never mind......we will just have to work around it.
Bounder
Quote from: =CfC=Father Ted on November 28, 2017, 07:53:24 PM
As I understand it, if you can run RoF, you can run BoX.
Not quite. There's no BoX for 32Bit OS.
See the full matrix here, but remember: For Rise of Flight these are the
recommended values while for BoX it's the
minimum:
Rise of Flight Battle of <...>
OS (32 Bit) Windows® XP/Vista/7/8/10 -
OS (64 Bit) Windows® XP/Vista/7/8/10 Windows® 7/8/10
CPU Intel® Coreâ,,¢ 2 Quad / i5/i7 2.6 GHz+ Intel® Coreâ,,¢ i5/i7 2.8 GHz+
GPU GeForce GTX 260+/Radeon HD5850+ GeForce GTX 660+/Radeon HD 7770+
VRAM 1GB+ 2GB+
RAM 4GB+ 4GB+
DirectX 9/11 11Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 29, 2017, 10:24:28 AM
Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago
Very true.
I've got a further Saitek Throttle Quadrant together with my X52, but in BoX I don't have enough axis to assign even just to keep the X52 busy.
Toggle keys all over the place with lack of switches and axis.
I think it's a too small niche from the devs point of view.
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 29, 2017, 10:24:28 AM
only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI
IIRC Shift + Ctrl work fine, but Alt and Windows keys don't.
Best regards - Mike
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 29, 2017, 10:24:28 AM
Those of us that have the prog managed a few sorties last night and it highlighted the amount of work we all have especially with key bindings.
Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago: only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI making it so much harder to get key assignments working without duplication.......never mind......we will just have to work around it.
you speak from my heart there Bounder. That's exactly what I'm struggling with too and the one thing that truly annoys me in BoX atm.
Quote from: Storebror on November 29, 2017, 12:29:01 PM
Quote from: =CfC=Bounder on November 29, 2017, 10:24:28 AM
only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI
IIRC Shift + Ctrl work fine, but Alt and Windows keys don't.
Sorry, I cannot confirm Mike .. any control assigned to Shift / Ctrl / Alt will work only flawed for me if at all.
Interesting.
I'll check that when I get the chance to.
If I get it to work, what do you owe me? ;D
Cheers!
Mike
To confirm what Ted says, after the large update I now get an pop-up saying I can't launch as o/s not compatible.
Many thanks Chaps for all the valuable info......
BD.....we will still fly 1946 for a while to come.....hope you can get an upgraded box of tricks sometime soon.
Bounder
Yeah, just buy a new computer BD, you don’t have to eat every day, do you?
Make sure the dogs are fed though :).
Pip, pip,
Conky
Quote from: skylla on November 29, 2017, 02:40:08 PM
Sorry, I cannot confirm Mike .. any control assigned to Shift / Ctrl / Alt will work only flawed for me if at all.
Please define "flawed".
I regularly have issues with all kind of "flag" keys (shift, alt, ctrl) set when I have Alt+Tabbed out of the game inbetween.
In that case, quite like in the good old IL-2 days, I hit left Alt twice, then Tab twice, and if this brings up any ingame dialog, hit escape to close it again.
This usually brings back my game to normal.
Two days ago I've had some issue where the Throttle Hat would no trigger my left/right wheel brake and instead would act like the POV 1 switch. But that switch doesn't even have any key assigned, so there must have been something strange going on elsewhere.
Either case, I've just checked my key assignments and the X-52 Pro mappings I use for BoX, lo and behold even the most basic thing uses Alt and Shift successfully for me:
Trigger 1 = Guns is mapped to Right Alt ("ALT GR") + Space
Trigger 2 = Guns+Cannons is mapped to Shift + Space
Both are working perfectly fine for me.
Best regards - Mike
"flawed" means:
I have set "lower flaps" on LShift+L, "toggle Cockpit light" on L.
WHen I now hit the button for "lower flaps" on my stick (mapped to Shift+L), the flaps will go down
and the pit lights go on/off ..
Sometimes it's just the pit light switching and the flaps stay where they are.
QuoteI regularly have issues with all kind of "flag" keys (shift, alt, ctrl) set when I have Alt+Tabbed out of the game inbetween.
I do Alt+Tab out of the game a lot, so maybe that's the problem for me then.
Weird thing this, in '46 I never had these kind of issues ..
In any case, I went through all the control settings yesterday again and I'm now quite confident that I can set all important keys I want to map on the stick without having to access an Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Windows combinations .. we will see how that works out ...
Key binding is trickier than in IL2:1946, one of the nice features however, is the ability to map multiple functions onto one key.
For example, the La-5 has both inlet and outlet cowl flaps, in real life, if you adjust one you usually have to adjust the other so I've bound the functions to one key. You miss out on a bit of fine tuning for that last one or two km/h but for me it's a 'bush pilot' solution that works well enough.
I try not to let perfect get in the way of good enough ;D
Pip, pip,
Conky
Quote from: skylla on November 30, 2017, 04:39:38 PM
I have set "lower flaps" on LShift+L, "toggle Cockpit light" on L.
Yesterday an hour after having posted my last post, I thought "oh wait, he might have..." - just that.
Yes, I confirm that "shift + something" and "just something" key settings don't work if you map it to X-52 buttons.
It works with the hardware keyboard, but doesn't work with the software emulation layer from the X-52 software.
Not sure if you can really blame BoX for it, could as well be a design flaw in the X-52 software.
From a programmers point of view, I'm a bit curious how Saitek could have beefed up their part, as you would usually simulate keypresses with the windows api keybd_event() method (https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/windows/desktop/ms646304(v=vs.85).aspx), with a sequence like "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP".
On the receiving end, if I were BoX programmers, I'd just process the stream of incoming keyboard messages and toggle shift,ctrl,alt flags accordingly to match the key presses.
However it could also be that instead when a keypress e.g. for "L" is being received, BoX checks if that key exists in the mapping with different flags (Shift or not) and if it does, check the Shift state using GetAsyncKeyState (https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/windows/desktop/ms646293(v=vs.85).aspx).
That would fuck things up because GetAsyncKeyState checks the
physical Shift key state, not something it's been mapped to.
However the BoX mechanism must be a little more tricky, as apparently Shift
is recognized, but they recognize a false "unshifted" L keypress as well.
This rather looks like the "Shift KEYUP" event timing is messed up... maybe Saitek sends a "SHIFT -> L -> SHIFT KEYUP -> L KEYUP" sequence instead of "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP".
God knows... only Saitek and 777 could shed a light on this.
For the moment what works for me is to avoid such combinations of keys with and without flag keys, that's why my gun triggers both use some kind of flag key, that way BoX successfully can distinguish both.
Quote from: CfC_Conky on November 30, 2017, 07:45:22 PM
one of the nice features however, is the ability to map multiple functions onto one key
This also comes handy for the lots of functionalities that are similar in their meaning, but differ in the settings from plane to plane.
Elevator trim comes to my mind here...
Best regards - Mike
Hey Bounder,
Regarding the pricing of the other installments in the BoX series, since one can fly online on all the maps in the series, an alternative could be to just purchase some of the collector aircraft. I took the Yak-1b up for the first time today and it is an even nicer ride than the Spitfire. An absolute dream to fly, a stable gun platform, and the visibility can't be beat with it's bubble canopy.
Pip, pip,
Conky
Mike,
Many thanks for explaining the shift + logic. When I bought BOS I used my 1946 profile for the X52 to enter similar button functions into the BOS key assignments: there were a few shift + and alt + entries and these are the ones that have caused the issues. I will have to do what Skylla has done and start again using single key entries for all button functions on the X52.
The other frustrating issue is the inability to assign the rotary trim elevator axis to all the a/c. Only the bf109 will accept this axis. The 190 will accept down only trim access and the Yak none at all resulting in having to use key assignments via one of the POV's......... altogether very unsatisfactory and the developers did say more than a year ago that this would be looked at.
Conky,
I will definitely get the Yak 1b......shame the Spit is not available as a single add-on.
Bounder
Quote from: Storebror on December 01, 2017, 05:41:13 AM
Not sure if you can really blame BoX for it, could as well be a design flaw in the X-52 software.
Maybe, but then again: No problems with that in '46. After all what do I need those Shift+XXX combinations for if I cannot lay something onto XXX? The whole idea of this is to use a lot more "keys" than there are on the keyboard ;)
Quote from: Storebror on December 01, 2017, 05:41:13 AM
This rather looks like the "Shift KEYUP" event timing is messed up... maybe Saitek sends a "SHIFT -> L -> SHIFT KEYUP -> L KEYUP" sequence instead of "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP".
God knows... only Saitek and 777 could shed a light on this.
That's a good point (and btw, thanks for the detailed explanation!).
As you can also define exactly when keys should be pressed & released within the Saitek software I will try to ensure that the sequence is "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP" and post the results back here.
Quoteone of the nice features however, is the ability to map multiple functions onto one key
definitely!
Quote from: skylla on December 01, 2017, 09:11:14 AM
what do I need those Shift+XXX combinations for if I cannot lay something onto XXX? The whole idea of this is to use a lot more "keys" than there are on the keyboard
The simplest way out for the moment is to avoid the "XXX only" key settings.
You can use "Shift+XXX", "Ctrl+XXX", "Alt+XXX" and "Alt Gr + XXX" in parallel right now, only if you bring "XXX only" in, things get messed up.
Best regards - Mike
Sorry for double post and... sure you guys know it 8)
Nevertheless for you key mappers:
https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/29700-basic-guide-cem-key-mapping-new-starters/
Cheers!
Mike