On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 17:45 -0700, John Denker wrote: > On 12/21/2009 02:36 PM, Anders Gidenstam wrote: > > > It seems to work ok here. > > Interesting....
Another thread hijacked. > > Are you sure you don't have some noisy input > > device like a joystick or pedals connected that might affect the > > rudder axis? > > If two input axes are bound to the same control the last write wins. > > Thanks for the hint. That helps. It makes sense from > a developers' point of view. > > However ... we still have a bug from the users' point of > view. The documentation explicitly mentions the case > where the user has a rudder input device but lacks the > skill to "handle the proper ratio" ... and recommends > --enable-auto-coordination in this case. > > If users are required to have zero-noise ailerons and > zero-noise rudders, this is quite a serious restriction. > This should be prominently mentioned in the documentation. > Users will not be pleased. O.K. I guess the documentation should say to remove your rudder pedals when auto-coordinating, or perhaps joysticks configs could pick up on it and not try to drive the rudder. > ============= > > I just now spent some time looking into this, and found > a few surprises. When auto-coordination is turned on: > > 1) The feature is implemented as an aileron-rudder > interconnect with a fixed ratio (half a unit of rudder > per unit of aileron) in the aileron->rudder direction > and not vice versa. This is not very sophisticated > or very useful. In almost every aircraft I can think > of, it is literally worse than useless in cruising > flight. It makes the coordination worse. > > If this is the desired behavior, I would hate to see > what undesired behavior looks like. This is the behavior in the rudder pedal-less Ercoupe. And that aircraft flies with FAA approval. > The documentation indicates that auto-coordination is > supposed to make the coordination better. It doesn't. > > 2) It has the remarkable side-effect that while taxiing, > you can steer by deflecting the ailerons! This is > unrealistic and unhelpful; better ways of doing the > steering are readily available. > > 3) While taxiing, you can steer using the rudder in the > usual way, overriding auto-coordination ... provided > you don't touch the ailerons! That is counterintuitive, > undocumented, and unhelpful. The FAA says you should > be deflecting the ailerons when taxiing, if there is > any crosswind. Again, the behavior in the rudder pedal-less Ercoupe. And that aircraft flies with FAA approval. Seriously, if you're trying for an FAA level of realism when taxiing why are you flying with auto-coordination at all? > You must not touch the ailerons, and must hope there > is no noise on your joystick aileron axis. This is > in addition to the previous requirement for no noise > on your rudder axis. In my view --enable-auto-coordination is a game feature, and usable for people without a rudder axis control. A group you seem to have completely overlooked. > ================================= > > How hard would it be to replace all this with something > useful? I notice that several of the aircraft models > have yaw dampers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
