WideFS and Joysticks

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi, before I go and purchase WideFS, I was just wondering, I've got 2 old but very much functional/robust and overall excellent joysticks and I see absolutely no reason to replace them with fancy new ones. Only problem is, they run on the old game ports which Windows 7 and Vista no longer supports so I'm unable to connect them to my main computer. I chucked in my Creative SB Live card into it and tried to get Windows to recognise them but it was no go... so... the current plan is to connect 2 more computers (one will run captain instruments and a few other tidbits as its more powerful than my 3rd and the 3rd one will run FO displays but I basically plan to connect one joystick to each computer so I'll have a captains joystick and a FO joystick). So, I was wondering, will the main computer be able to recognise these joysticks through the wideclient obviously? If so, will the main computer simply see the input form them or will I have to do some fiddling through FSUIPC to get them to work?

[Philb737]

Yes and no! you'll have full function of the buttons (on/off ) on any client computer with WideFS. But, the pots will not function on the client computers unless they are connected on the main FS computer! I recommend: BU0836A with window 7/ Vista www.leobodnar.com/products/BU0836A

[Atomic_Sheep]

I purchased one of his other cards yesterday before knowing this but I want to keep my joysticks intact for now so I'm going to try to figure out this solution. Thanks for the response though.

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/show...rked-Computers

[pdpo]

Hi there,

maybe you need to look at the site of opencockpits. I havent tried it yet but there is some program which runs on the FS PC call IOCPServer. This acts
like fsuipc but gives access to the data by the iocp protocol used in sioc and other opencockpits cards. Then there is also something called remoteJoy which runs then on a different PC and should be possible to assign the axes on the remote joystick to control data in the FS. Maybe this one allows to
run your joysticks on the remote PC to control in FS

Try it out....

PS : widefs only scans the joystick buttons to send to the FS PC ( I use that)

Greetz Peter

[Atomic_Sheep]

Thanks, I will look into it. Have to fix my computer first, not sure what's going on but it's not booting!!! Might take a while to fix lol.

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi, I tried installing IOCP4FSX to try to get the remote joysticks to work, but I got an error during installation:

"There is a problem with this windows installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor"

I was hoping someone could shed light on this problem? I actually downloaded the packaged 2ce... ince recently and once quite a while ago, I tried using the second, earlier installer and I got the same result during installation.

EDIT: Looks like I managed to install it.

EDIT2: I was wondering whether anyone else has managed to get this all to work? I installed the programs but the problem I'm experiencing is that it doesn't seem to pick up the joystick on my computer and only sees the mouse. Does it only support USB devices or is there some way to make the program search for other hardware devices?

EDIT 3: Somehow got it to recognise ... getting very exciting now .

EDIT4: Bumped into another issue... Everything is working but I'm unsure how to set up the axis. If I select "move Y-Axis" which should correspond to the elevator control surface, I've got a number of options:

AXIS_ELEV_TRIM_SET
AXIS_ELEVATOR_SET
ELEV_DOWN
ELEV_TRIM_DN
ELEV_TRIM_UP
ELEV_UP
ELEVATOR_DOWN
ELEVATOR_SET
ELEVATOR_SYSTEM_A
ELEVATOR_SYSTEM_B
ELEVATOR_TRIM_SET
ELEVATOR_UP

It also has a field whereby I can select the values of the inputs. The idea is simple... you detect the inputs from the joystick, you find out the values which are shown and then assign the various ranges to the corresponding event.

So for example, if I move the throttle, the values go from 1000 to 0. If I select Slider_0 (which is the throttle), set the range of 1000 to 0 and select "INCREASE_THROTTLE", then when I connect the program, the throttles increase. However! I don't quite understand how you can assign 1000 to 0 as "INCREASE_THROTTLE" and 0 to 1000 as "DECREASE_THROTTLE". There only appears to be a choice of going either or but not both as there are only 2 boxes for inputting the ranges and 1 box for assigning the corresponding event. There also doesn't appear to be a way of saving the inputs... and creating a list of them.

For ailerons or elevators, the middle/centre position is at 500... so if you want to lower the elevators, you push the stick and it generates 500 to 0 values and 500 to 1000 if you want to raise the elevators. However, as I just explained, I don't know whether it's possible to have 2 of these events assigned to 1 axis! So I tried setting ELEVATOR_SET and all it did was centre my elevators... I tried AILERON_SET and that raised both ailerons like speed breaks. Both of these scenarios result in a one way control surface which once initialised, you can't reverse.

I hope I've made my description clear enough for people to understand and I was hoping that someone could help me figure out how to get around my problem.

Thanks.