IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles Plugin with DashBoard data

Hi!!!
New version of IL-2 FB plugin.
Fixed bug with CPU utilization (thanks to Dustin) and added DashBoard data

Motion data:
This plugin provides pitch, roll, yaw acceleration.

DashApp Data:
Support Speed, Turn, Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Altitude and Climb

I have been testing the flight sim plugins today using my miniature 6DoF platform today. Thought I would share what I found with IL-2 Sturmovik.

In the Profile Editor it shows the forces available as " Roll, Pitch and Heave." In the Tuning Center the forces are Roll Pitch and Yaw which matches what Prilad posted above. A typo?

I am using both the 6DoF platform and the Virtual Axis output for testing.

1. Roll and Pitch work perfectly.

2. Yaw stays either all the way to the left or all the way to the right regardless of either the captured min/max or manually entered min/max. Could the forces listed in the Profile Editor have confused the plugin?
When Yaw is induced by the rudder pedals there is no movement at all of the yaw slider (and of course no movement on the platform).

For Roll and Pitch it works great! Thanks for creating this Prilad.

Historiker, Try new version of plugin (3.0.0.6) I hope Yaw will be work.

Great! Giving it a try now.

With version 3.0.0.6 there is now a small amount of yaw input when the plane is in a yaw state.

But, and this is the odd thing, yaw is still dependent on the compass reading. Here is what I mean:

If the compass is heading 0-180 the yaw slider is all the way to the right and yaw inputs (rudder) only moves it slightly from full right to not as far right. So when heading in one of those compass directions your platform is yawed fully to the right at all times. Yaw input via the rudder can only move it a little bit away from full right. The opposite is true for compass headings of 181-360 with Yaw being all the way to the left.

I was able to manually change the min/max values to something very low (in this case 10/-10) and get much greater range with yaw but the compass issue still persists.

Something that I have found for all flight sim plugins; all of them have the Yaw tied to the compass heading. This plugin is the only one that allows even a little bit of yaw control via the rudder.

Thank you for working on this.

This is my first attempt at writing a plugin for the simulator. And I honestly do not fully understand, how YAW should be change during fly. Can you explain it to me?

Hi Alexey, I very much appreciate your work on this plugin, sorry that I did not get back to you sooner yesterday; I was grading papers and only had time for short responses.

Yaw is not something that you usually want in an aircraft, you want the plane to go in the direction that you point the nose. Unfortunately you have several factors acting on the direction of the aircraft, especially with a big vertical fin on the tail (vertical stabilizer called stab for short). The stab is needed to help keep the plane cutting through the air in a straight line, but if a contrary outside force is introduced (such as a crosswind) the stab can push the plane's tail to the left or right even though the direction of travel remains the same, this is Yaw.

Other factors that can cause this is the propeller of the plane, which causes a vortex around the plane which could push the tail in the opposite direction of the propeller's rotation. The Messerschmitt 109, a German WW2 fighter plane, suffered from this induced yaw. New 109 pilots could be spotted because the plane flew in a yaw most of the time because they had not yet learned to trim the rudder to compensate.

Examples of a crosswind yaw can be seen on aircraft pointing their nose left or right to the runway as they come in for a landing. See the image below.

This is where the rudder is so important. The rudder not only helps to induce a turn in the aircraft, in conjunction with the ailerons, but also helps to compensate for forces acting to turn the tail of the plane. You can induce yaw purpose with the rudder as well. That is why it was so important that I connect my rudder pedals to the platform in order to evaluate a flight sim game plugin.

Pilots also use a self induced yaw to reduce speed on landing regardless of the wind's direction. Stunt pilots use it for almost all of their maneuvers, lol. I am not a stunt pilot, I like my aircraft to return to the ground in the same condition with which they left it.

I am not a full scale pilot, however I have been an R/C pilot for more than 20 years and have learned how to use yaw to great affect. I love a good windy day for flying

For a simulator, feeling yaw in your aircraft would be incredible. It is a physical clue that the pilot can use to correct his aircraft, induce side-slip (sway) and many other maneuvers, especially in combat.

Thanks again for working on the plugins and bringing this great game to our platforms.

David

Hi, David

I read about aicraft navigation here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_(navigation)

Here I read about axises
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_principal_axes#Normal_axis_.28yaw.29

Do I understand correctly that this is the yaw angle is the angle between the longitudinal axis of the aircraft (the car) and the direction of its movement?

Yes, sorry; I tried to put examples into my explanation and might not have given a basic definition.

Your definition is basically correct.

David,

What about SLIP angle as YAW?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_(aerodynamic)

IL2 FB have some angular parameters in telemetry data:

Hi Alexey,

Slip would be analogous to sway in a car, the entire vehicle, plane, car or ship, is moving sideways as well as in the direction of the original direction of travel. It is hard to compare slip in a plane to slip in a car though. The best example would be a car driving on ice. You can be sliding sideways as well as moving forward, but all four tires are sliding rather than just the rear tires like you would in a drift, as a matter of fact drift is yaw.

If you have ever flown in a small aircraft you will feel slip (sway) especially if the air is turbulent. It is an unsettling feeling of moving sideways when you think you should be going forward. I was in Hawaii this summer for a couple of weeks and took an air tour of Kaua'i. The air was extremely turbulent, I swear the plane was flying sideways most of the time

You can have slip without Yaw, the plane car or boat can be sliding sideways even if the nose is pointed in the direction that you want to travel.

They are not the same thing though.


Not sure how to use the telemetry data that you have there. The Slip data makes sense since the angle of slide would be away from the direction of travel either 45 to the left or 45 to the right of travel; since you cannot slip backward at all.

But, having said that, I think the Slip data from the game is to allow you to make your own slip indicator in a home made cockpit. You should be able to use the slip data to create Yaw output for the platform if you are not also trying to give slip (sway) data.

I apologize if this is confusing, I think that it is difficult to meld real world terminology with the available data from flight simulators as they are intended for building real world gauges and not motion platforms.

Hi, David.

I only try to understand what we can do for extracting YAW value from game (IL2).
I have list of DeviceLink parameters, I selected all angular parameters. You can see this list in file "DeviceLink.txt" in IL2 FB directory.
Can you tell me, how we can calculate YAW from enabled parameters?

By the way - IL2 CloD has "Slip" parameter too but has not "drift angle"
And IL2 CloD has real YAW parametes but it has limits 0 - 360 deg. (I think it is compas value ). In current plugin version I imported from game this value. (so as in IL2 FB)

Understandable.

I have read the list of options in Devicelink, and as I said they were provided to cockpit builders for gauges rather than aerodynamic movement. A slip indicator in the cockpit gives an indication of slip because yaw is obvious by looking out the wind screen

I wonder if we can use Azimuth to give a yaw reading if we can also give the aircraft heading. I am not sure of the formula that we would use though. If I could see the data coming from the game while flying I could set a compass heading (azimuth) and then kick rudder left and right to see if Beacon_Azimuth changes slightly left or right.

If you have seen an old fashioned slip indicator it is a little ball in a glass tube which is shaped in a curve. The ball is "pushed" left or right by the force of movement left or right in a slip. You can correct slip by inputting left or right rudder, same as yaw. But Yaw is only angle and not movement in a direction.

Slip is more of a sway movement.

I can't agree. Movement can't be measured at the degrees. I think they mean that SLIP is angle between aircraft axis and aircraft movement direction, like slip angle for cars.

Once again - I don't want make a "holy war". I only want to ask experts - how I can calculate YAW parameter for plugin. As I understand YAW and Azimuth is not the same?

Ok yes would have agree with your findings. I have about the same knowledge in building a plugin like yourself too always run it past an expert like Value1 who normally sets me on the right road. We do thank you greatly in taking this interest.
To me ,please correct if wrong Azimuth is the magnetic compass direction and not the Yaw movement or force. But is used in building part of the yaw algorithm in order to build the correct value for the game plugin.

The purpose of the values out of SimTools is mimiking the sensations you have during a flight.
The movements our body can sense is rotation speed [°/sec] and acceleration [m/sec²].
What we cannot sense is linear speed and direction (migrant birds can).
We mimic the acceleration by tilting the seat (→ Earth gravitation) and by moving with increasing speed.
We mimic the rotation speed by rotating the seat.

Now when flying in a real airplain you can sense the rotation of the airplane when the nose turns from North-East-South-West or similar.
If the plane is pushed sideways by wind (with linear speed),resulting in a difference bewteen direction of the nose (heading) and direction of travel, you cannot feel this.
The only thing you can feel is the change of the direction of the nose.

This is the reason why we must use direction of the nose of the airplane for the SimTools value "yaw".

From personal experience, I hold a restricted pilots licence and use to fly my ultralight quite regularly in Bunbury. Now back in the big smoke of Perth , I have sold it , no room too store it. Shame was a fun hobby. Well to the point I'm making when you were hit with a cross wind you can defiantly feel it shift position in a linear way , and have your hip pressed against the opposite side of the seat to the direction of the cross wind with no roll action, is this not how sway works, because it immediately triggers the muscle memory to apply at little yaw to bring the aircraft back to the right bearing. Once flying for a while these feeling become second nature, but to someone who doesnt fly in a open air plane , they might not be so pronounced.

Yes, as you say, you can feel the force of the wind attacking your body.
Now in the cockpit of a closed airplane (F16, Airbus) you won't feel anything.