The F-14 Tomcat is finally close to the release date (13/03, 9 days!) and I really can’t wait to fly one of the few FW modules that has really managed to capture my interest despite being myself primarily a RW pilot.
The F-14 is quite different from the F/A-18 and especially the Ka-50 (you don’t say??) and there’s a little detail that really buggers me: the Master Arm. You might have noticed in fact that the F-14 has a protective cover over the Master Arm that needs to be lifted before turning it on. Other aircraft, such as the aforementioned F/A-18 or the Ka-50 have no such thing. Having to interact with two entities (protective cover and Master Arm switch) means that four buttons are now required. Can you imagine how impractical would be having to push a button to lift the in-game cover then open the Control Box cover and finally toggle the physical switch? The solution, however, is very, very simple.
..1 ..2 ..3!
Three lines of code are enough to solve the issue. This solution is rough but works decently and proves how issues can be easily solved when we write our own code.
The following is the original code. It reads the value from a pin and toggles two Joystick outputs accordingly.
As you probably have already figured out, the easiest solution is to add two more toggles so each Joystick output can control a step of the toggling process.. and that’s exactly what I did. A not-so-minor detail though: the animation. Raising the cover takes a few milliseconds so we have to insert a delay. I am using 500ms at the moment and it works for the F-5E Tiger II.
How does it work? The original code was very simple: if the pin is HIGH then Button#2 is turned on and Button #3 is turned off. Therefore by assigning Button#2=Master Arm ON and Button#3=Master Arm OFF, toggling the physical switch has the effect of toggling the in-game Master Arm. Now we have two additional entities on top of Master Arm ON and Master Arm OFF: Cover UP and Cover DOWN.
This is how the Joystick outputs must be assigned in order to make it work:
Button#2: Cover UP
Button#3: Master Arm OFF
Button#23: Master Arm ON
Button#24: Cover DOWN
Why this order, you may ask? Quite simple actually: when the pin is set HIGH then Cover UP is activated while Master Arm OFF is deactivated (we’re about to turn the in-game Master Arm ON!). Therefore the cover is now lifted and after a few milliseconds the in-game Master Arm is activated. Cover DOWN is not needed and therefore turned off.
When we toggle the physical switch again the pin is set to LOW: Cover UP is deactivated and the Master Arm OFF is turned ON; ergo the in-game Master Arm is now off and after a few milliseconds the cover is lowered.
(NOTE: If you feel more confused after this explanation than before it’s normal. Feel free to rewind your mind and pretend that the previous paragraph doesn’t exist).
If you are wondering why I have used #23 and #24 the answer is easy: those buttons didn’t exist in the previous version of the Radio Box and I haven’t changed anything else, therefore I can load the previous configuration in DCS without being forced to remap the whole Box.
Improving the idea
There are a few issues with this implementation, namely the physical switch shouldn’t be toggled back before 500ms and the animation of a particular aircraft might take more (or less) than 500ms.
If I will have issues with the F-14 I will implement an asynchronous timer to control a predefined number repetition of Button#23 ON/OFF and Button#24 ON/OFF after a certain amount of time. The process will also be controlled by a flag that interrupts it in case I toggle the physical switch back.
I’m sure that are many other ways to improve this solution, use the one you prefer!
FlyAndWire 