Understanding Anthropomorphic Controls and your Joystick
Aug
11
Written by:
8/11/2011 10:28 AM
For those that haven't heard about it, IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover contains a feature that's called Anthropomorphic Controls. This feature ensures that the pilot can't do things in the cockpit that a real pilot couldn't do considering they only have two hands.
When your hardware is setup correctly, Anthropomorphic Controls will add a huge level of immersion on two sides. One, on your side as a pilot you will need to understand that you can't just start flipping switches, moving dials and pulling levers. You'll need to plan your moves and execute them in an efficient manner. On the other side, your opponent is limited in the same manner and if you are better at control management, then that will give you an edge.
Many people are finding anthropomorphic controls quite daunting and report that it is prohibiting them from doing anything for extended periods of time of up to a couple minutes. Let me assure you, that Anthropomorphic Controls will not prohibit you from doing things for more than a second or so when you have your controls set up correctly and tweaked.
What the issue actually is, your controls. I'm not putting anyone down here for having inferior equipment; my controls did this to me at first too.
What's actually going on is that the control axes are actually providing very small amounts of input almost constantly. If you move a rotary to a certain position it may report a jittery position to the computer while other positions doesn't show any jitter at all.
So, while your control axis such as a rotary set up for elevator trim is providing constant input, the game will interpret this as you, the player, always doing something with one of your hands. This will prohibit you from doing anything else with that hand.
If your stick also has this 'jitter' on the axis, now both your hands are tied up and you can do anything else except stick control and elevator trim, assuming these are the only axis that have the jiters.
Not to worry, you don't have to replace your stick; all sticks are like this from one degree to another, even brand new ones. This has been going on for years and the software, i.e. games and sometimes drivers, account for this, providing a way for the user to reduce these effects. IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover gives you the ability to cancel out the jitters.
Now, at this point you have really three options on how you want to deal with it. The first is just disable Anthropomorphic Controls. I don't recommend it as it adds so much to the game. Not to mention that servers out there can force this feature on if you want to fly there. Also, squadrons may require that in order to have victories count; they must be achieved on full real / full switch servers.
The second option, is to transfer all ancillary controls, all trims, prop pitch, radiator controls, etc off all inputs that are axis. This works out great for me really. I've put elevator trim on my throttle's mouse wheel; I've put oil & water radiator and prop pitch controls on my stick's three way switches. I highly recommend this, as I think the placement of these actually adds more immersion.
If you are really set on having ancillary controls set up on rotary & slider axis, then this it what you'll need to do.
In your control setup of IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, go adjust your axes. Select each ability, throttle, roll, pitch, oil radiator, etc. in turn, and increase the 0% and 100% dead zones. Creating or increasing a dead zone sets an amount of control input that is ignored by the game. This is specifically included to account for this.
You'll have to use trial and error on each input, but to start off I'd input a fairly large amount use the same amount on each input. Then if you find that you are having an issue, such as not being able to increase throttle far enough, you can come back and reduce the dead zone for that control.
Once you have your controls tweaked out you'll no longer have Anthropomorphic Controls issues. You'll still not be able to do more than 1 thing with each hand, but now you'll be able to "stop adjusting elevator trim" and move to "increasing the throttle" in about .5 seconds instead of waiting 10, 20 or even 30 seconds or more.
2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Understanding Anthropomorphic Controls and your Joystick
I fiddled around with the deadzones a bit and flew around for about an hour, no control lock ups! I think on my end it was more of a problem with one or more of my rotary dials not being fully engaged and it would lock me out until I adjusted it to full rotation. Adjusting the deadzones a little more worked like a champ. I am happy now:-)
Regards,
Grangest
By Grangest on
8/11/2011 11:49 AM
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Re: Understanding Anthropomorphic Controls and your Joystick
@Grangest
Anthropomorphic Controls will lock you out until it receives no input from the axis. In your case it sounds like the extremes what the area it wasn't sending input. Other sticks may show jitters at the extremes but show nothing in the middle. All very stick specific.
At any rate, I am glad you got it working!
By krupinski on
8/11/2011 12:04 PM
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