SCN6 'grindy' motion. Anyway to smooth?

Yobuddy.. will do. I've made a little progress insofar as reducing the acceleration to 140 on axis 1 (roll) with about 75% smoothing and on axis 2 (pitch) accel to 225 with 90% smoothing. It almost seems the higher I set the accel the worse the grinding or growling gets. The above settings are still not 'smooth' but alot less and don't send as much vibration. Of course the downside is that the accel is low and the motion is lagging behind what the in game aircraft is doing.

I'll certainly follow your suggestions above and report back.

P.S. as a side discovery, I figured out how to slow the sim down when initializing the game engine. Before it would go pretty fast and rock the sim a fair bit. In the Dydiac software I changed the homing speed and acceleration to a lower value and now the sim initializes nice and slow. It still 'snaps' back quickly after measuring all the travel on all the axis but this is manageable. Note that this only effected the initialization and nothing in-engine as far as performance or making a difference regarding the growling.

Thanks again.. I'll continue to work on this..

Regards,

DaV

UPDATE: I've verified in two other games that the motion is gravelly.

I'm uninstall/reinstall simtools safter resetting to defaults. Will do as above with new install and report back.

Cheers,

DaV

Hi Dav, maybe I can help you on this. The growling effect is probably caused by an acceleration too high. First of all I advice you to set all the actuators with the same settings on speed, acceleration and axis limit, and adjust those at will with the profile editor slides. I use SCNs 5 and 6 for driving simulation, and for this reason I need a fast and responsive movement, but the fact is that those actuators are really too responsive! If you keep the acceleration setting above 200 the actuator reaches the target position moving from one position to the next one with a lot of speed, causing a lot of starts and stops at high speed, and for that reason you get a lot of vibration, annoying sounds, etc. If you force the scn to move through multiple position with less "force" or acceleration, as dyatic calls it, the transition between that it will be smoother and quiter. I set my SCN5 with full speed and 200 for the acceleration, less will be this value and less responsive will be the movement, you need to find your own, but I reccomend between 50 and 200 to avoid growling. In one word, the SCN are too fast and you need to slow them down.

PS: your axis limit should be 90% or below. The smoothing option of simtools can help a lot to achieve a more natural movement. Can you link something about that factory software you talked about? Thx

Well I've done all that and reinstalled the plugins etc from scratch. The FSX motion is still rough but I currently have it set as advised and the motion is subdued. Will continue to adjust it but I feel once I crank it up, the gravelyness will be exacerbated.

But here's a buttkickker.. I loaded up Project Cars and the motion is smooth!? Same settings as FSX 80% speed and 50% accel (16k and 500) across all three axis.

That's a head scratcher. My initial thoughts that the servo gain might have been set too high in hardware, but this alleviates that concern, thank fully! The only way to change or even check what the servo gain setting is, you need special equipment. it can't be checked or changed via software. They do have software that lets you change other parameters in the actuators firmware but nope, not the Servo Gain setting.

So kinda good news pCars is smooth.. that means there must be a software reason why FSX motion is rough. The re-install did help though.. I didn't have a clue when i first instilled it. Settings got changed and changed back again. This is a nice clean install and I only changed what I needed to.

I will continue to build out other games on this install and hopefully be able to figure this out.

DaV

Hey nclabs, thanks for the info!! I typed the update below over the weekend but it didn't post for some some reason. That makes sense now why Project Cars was smooth. I did discover if I turned the acceleration way down in simtools on the interface settings for FSX it didn't growl as bad but it was then almost too slow. It's too bad the 'Servo Gain' setting requires the handheld diagnostic tool and 'training' pendant, and interface etc.. the utility software they do have has some powerful stuff you can do with it. It's a real drag the Servo gain can't be checked or changed via software! That setting from what I read will effect all the outputs exponentially. I'll find that link to the software and get it to you. I can advise you on how to use it as I've been in there quite a bit LOL.

Using the software I was able to slow down the speed when simtools initializes. Before my rig would rock and roll pretty violently when initializing but now it's nice and slow. I'm going to get some screenshots to yobuddy to make sure it isn't slowing down my actuators overall. It doesn't appear to me that it does.. but he is the expert in simtools of course so I appreciate him looking at it!

How many Axis do you use in your rig? Do you have 2 or 3 SCN's? I'd be curious to know how you have your base settings set.. I'm still experimenting with mine.

Thanks!

DaV

I have two 2dof rigs, one with SCN5 and the other one with SCN6, my main settings are basically full speed, 200 in acceleration, 90% axis limit, a bit of smoothing (10%-15%) and nothing else. I play a lot with the tuning center value, to precisely adjust the max movement of the rig. I change the profile editor value only when I'm driving formula 1 cars (I change the slides from 50 to 25, otherwise the seat moves too much and I can't drive properly). So, if I got it right, the movement is ok on project cars, but you still have that issue with fsx? In that case you know that's not a interface configuration issue, maybe it's something on the plugin?

PS: how do you set up the interfaces currently?

Hey nclabs,

Here is the link:

https://www.miraiintertech.com/home/downloads.php

https://www.miraiintertech.com/home/downloads/TBVST-Manual2009.pdf



All kinds of goodies and documentation there. I can assist with the software as there are several utilities and it can get confusing. Use with caution though.. one wrong setting can render your actuator unusable! * <= EDIT: After gaining some experience with the programming software, I don't think it would be possible to 'brick' your actuator. You can save your defaults to file to restore and the software generally won't accept a value that's too out of wack. It might stop with an 'alarm' condition but that's easily reset.

Cheers,

DaV

Yup still 'grindy' with FSX. The motion in pCars is waay too fast.. but at least the actuators operate smoothly.. no grindy grindy

Regarding the interfaces, here's where I'm going off the rails I think..

Ignore the circles.. I don't have access to my sim PC ATM so here is basically what I've been doing. ROLL, PITCH and YAW corresponds to my physical R,P and Y physical axis.



I've seen lots of 2DOF examples on the webpage but no 3dof. Setting this up seems very complicated to me. I've seen where people have had ROLL on two different AXIS with opposite direction of motion, etc.. Some of the 6DOF configs look absolutely nuts! Lol

I've been considering offering up a 'donation' to have someone who knows what the heck they are doing to help with a more detailed config. In my mind the way I have it done this is logical and I figured I'd work on a good base before getting into adding and blending other forces. My current grinding issue has preoccupied me and therefore I haven't pursued getting more 'under the hood' with this..

Any suggestions regarding this screen and how you have your axis setup would be appreciated

Thanks,.

DaV

yobuddy.. you rock! Thank you!! I'll do this first thing when I get home from work today. Excited to try because I haven't done anything close to this type of config..

Cheers!

DaV

Well I have some good news.. thanks to yobuddy and nclabs I now have a workable starting point and little to no 'grinding'. I reduced the acceleration quite a bit as per nclabs and it seemed to help alot. I don't think I would have gone that low on my own and probably would be changing so many things I wouldn't draw a correlation between acceleration and my grinding issue for sure. Saved me alot of time! Thanks Gents!!

Also as per yobuddy, setting up just the basic roll and pitch axis for a start also helped. I've enclosed some screenshots of my new setting. I'm pretty happy with the profile now and I don't have any filters turned on either. I'm sure it could use a little smoothing but I want to get all the axis and DOFs setup properly and configured before I fine, fine tune. I'm also using the default min/max file. Afraid to do a custom capture in case it screws it up!

I know, I can also always reload the profile again by the updater. I will give it a go depending on if yobuddy thinks I'm better off adding some new DOFs before hand?














Thanks,

DaV

Axis 3 is 96% now, that's dangerous, turn it down to 90%. Adjust all the interfaces with 10 ms packet rate (now I saw it's 1 and 5 ms). I also advice you to keep the same acceleration value for all the interfaces, and adjust the speed with the slides on the profile editor, just to have a common ground to allow you to understand the adjustments you need to do on the profile. As yobuddy just told you, do some work on the min/max setting of the tuning center, it's a crucial part, you get that wrong and nothing will work nicely. Usually I don't even make the capture, I just enter the value and try the game, if the seat moves too much I enter a higher value and viceversa. In this way I fine tune the rig in no time and very accuratly (keep in mind I use the same min/max value to all the axis, just to keep some uniformity on the movement).

For the profile part, that's the tricky one. Try to imagine what effect you want to mimic and how your rig should move, if for one specific force effect two actuator should move, on the axis assignment windows those to axis should have the setting for that force effect, and so on. With your previous setting you had one force effect for one actuator. It's not very clear how your rig is designed, but if you builded it to one force-one actuator kind that is correct, otherwise it's not. I ask to the community to correct me if I said something wrong.

PS: thank you very much for the infos!

Will do.. thanks!

Thanks yobuddy and nclabs.. I was just trying different packet rates as I've always used the default given in various examples.. it didn't seem to make a difference. Thanks for the tips.. I'll follow your advise. As it is, it's the best I've had this running since installing in Jan. The 96% and extra Pitch setting was an experiment as I want to have more pitch than roll, travel wise. Focusing on one thing at a time with some good advice is a much better approach than just trying everything at once. That hasn't been working so well for me

The uninstall/re-install really seemed to help as well. I don't know if I had some bad min/max captures in there or what but it's much better now.

Thanks again guys.. I'll try tweaking this again this evening.. at least it's a short week and a long weekend so I'll have lots of time to get this dialed in.

Cheers,

p.s. nclabs.. you're very welcome!

PPS - I did notice one weird thing... when I got smooth motion with ROLL I then tried to restrict the axis travel by reducing it from 90% to 70%. This resulted in jerky motion? The actuators were smooth but seemed to have a very slight pause in increments as it travelled making the sim kind of rock or bounce as it rolled left or right. Extending the axis travel back to 90% seemed to smooth it out again.

DaV

That's weird, it shouldn't do that. I will try to discuss it with Dustin.

Focus to one thing at the time is the best strategy, but only if you start with a neutral ground, otherwise it's a nightmare.

Now I have some question for you. To obtain the software do I have to ask Mirai for it? Can I use the serial-usb converter I use for the rig? I have read the whole PDF guide you linked, but, apart of the homing section, I have some trouble to understand what's the meaning of that software. You can change this and that for which purpose? Maybe it's stuff that here we will never use, and it's usefull only for industrial programming. Can you help on this?

Now I have some question for you. To obtain the software do I have to ask Mirai for it? Can I use the serial-usb converter I use for the rig? I have read the whole PDF guide you linked, but, apart of the homing section, I have some trouble to understand what's the meaning of that software. You can change this and that for which purpose? Maybe it's stuff that here we will never use, and it's usefull only for industrial programming. Can you help on this?[/QUOTE]

Hi nclabs, I just input a dummy e-mail address, etc.. you then get instant access to the files. Something obvious like @fakemail.com.. I didn't want some poor salesman wasting time trying to reach out to a fake lead. If you are having trouble PM me and I'll send you the files directly. Yes the manual covers all aspects of programming the actuators. They are used in a number of industrial applications so most not applicable for our use, as far as I can tell. I found the homing setting to be particularly useful to slow down the speed of the simtools initialization. I saw an earlier post where the actuator was hitting a physical limit for their sim. I believe there is a setting that you can set for the actuator travel.. say for 90%. So even if simtools asks for 100% travel you will only get 90% of the physical stroke. At least that's my thinking.

I haven't considered trying to devise an interface for it unless you are talking about the ability to 'talk' to the actuator? If so, yes this is done via the Rs-485 you are using for your rig. You don't have to change anything just to 'talk' to the actuator. I have pushed changes to the actuator including the ID # to get it to work with simtools for example. Insofar as our usage goes, simtools is very powerful for configuring but perhaps the utility software would give us super-fine granular tweaking..?

There is a collection of several utilities designed for the SCN6 but I have no idea what most of them do. I can advise on the ones that I have used but to be clear I have only changed the actuator ID and the homing speed.

Hope that helps?

Cheers,

DaV

Well I made all the recommended adjustments and captured a new min/max. It didn't seem to give me any additional travel but I did get back the 'bouncy' roll axis again. I was going to tweak the settings again and re-adjust my mounting point for the actuator to see if it would diminish the rocking/bouncy motion but I fell asleep. I need to play with this as I need to tone down my roll travel.. with the Oculus I don't need that much plus it can sometimes get 'stuck' with all my weight leaning to one side. In simtools, when I reduced the roll actuator travel I got 'bouncy' output too. Last time I increased the acceleration and it got a little grindy but no bouncy bouncy. I'm sure there must be a 'sweet' spot there.

I will continue the journey this evening..

P.S. Even with the motion as is it is pretty cool.. can't wait to get the other forces added so it will do acceleration and bump feedback as the aircraft barrels down the runway!