Any way to "dampen" the spring in the Gunfighter III via VKBDevCfg?

[boom]

I just got my hands on a Gunfighter 3 recently and immediately swapped out the springs to #40(or #30?) and completely disengaged the dry clutches as I don't like the feel of the friction they provide. This means that whenever I perform a snap reversal the oscillations circled in red happens, which is about what you would expect from an underdamped spring.

So my question is this: is there any way to filter out the overshoot/undershoot via VKBDevCfg which in effects amounts to critical damping from the pov of the computer? Maxing out the H-Filter seems to eliminate the oscillations about equilibrium but no amount of changes to Filter would remove the initial oscillations.

I could solve the issue myself if we were given the options to mess with the PID loop in VKBDevCfg since this is such a textbook signal processing problem. We weren't, and the pdf isn't exactly clear on how manual and dynamic filtering works so I'm stuck.I could always try messing with the springs I suppose but I prefer a solution via filtering. Any help would be greatly appreciated as this issue is pretty much the only thing stopping me from fully enjoying my new stick.

[fallout9]

If you try to filter out such a large chunk of data pretty sure you'll get a very blunt result. I'm not even sure it's possible.

[boom]

Ok. I wanna try reducing the sensitivity of the axis before I take the spring out. In the manual it says that the D.rate function could only be enabled with the press of a button. Can I set it up in such a way that it is enabled by default, ie you have to press a joystick button to disable that function instead?

[boom]

Also, I notice that there is a slight difference between the angle of deflection of the GF3 and the angle of deflection of the 3d stick in the DCS Hornet - a small degree of deflection irl, particularly in the x axis, corresponds to a greater deflection in game. I think part of the reason is that the hornet stick irl (and hence in DCS) have a sideways deflection of ~24 degrees rather than the 20 of the GF3. How would I go about "giving up" the last few degrees of the roll axis such that there is a 1:1 relationship for the full 20 degrees of throw?

[fallout9]

I don't think DRate would do what you want, but you could try it out. See this video for proper usage.
You shouldn't have empty space when comparing your grip with the one on the screen; is your device calibrated?

[boom]

Thanks for the link.
Yes it is calibrated and both physical position of the stick and logical positions agree. The thing is, I think DCS doesn't really 'see' the degree in deflection of the GF3, it essentially sees what VKBDevCfg sees: a specific value which runs from 0 to 65535 that corresponds to the position of the physical stick. Knowing the value of the center point and the 2 extreme positions, DCS calculates and interprets the detected value as a certain position being demanded in its own X/Y axis. In most cases this is fine, however in the Hornet which has on the stick a sideway rotations of plus and minus ~25-30 (I'm not sure) degrees from the vertical this results in a visual discrepancy. Because in this instance, the physical stick is in reality a percentage selector rather than a positional one, when I push the GF3 say 10 degrees left or right from the center, which amounts to the half way point between the center and edge of the roll axis, DCS understands this and "pushs" the virtual Hornet stick to its halfway point which is 50% of ~25-30 degrees as opposed to 50% of 20 in the GF3.

From a flight control standpoint the visual discrepancy is irrelevant, I have full control over the percentage of the roll axis demanded from 0 to 100% on either side. However, what I want to know, for the purpose of enhancing immersion in VR, is whether I could change the physical stick from a % slider to a positional slider ie a sideway deflection of the GF3 of say 20 degrees irl would result in the same degree of throw being commanded and displayed in the sim?

I don't really know how else to describe my issue. This is the first time I've dealt with a stick as sensitive as the Gunfighter and I've never really had to adjust axis curves before.

[TrueWeevie]

as I don't like the feel of the friction they provide.

You might want to consider using some damping grease (the inevitable recommendation for Nye Lubricants' Nyogel 776A follows, or their PG44A grease might be okay too).

A smear on the inside of the dry clutches and a light tightening of the clutches might get you what you want; adjust the amount of grease you apply and the tightening of the clutches to taste.

[boom]

Not having to deal with 'sticktion' even with damping grease applied is part of the reason I upgraded from my Warthog tbh. But even if the 'feel' of friction weren't an issue you'd still have some overshoots with the dry clutch tightened all the way as I believe the dry clutches were only engineered to provide critical damping to the default springs.

Since the overshooting is a fundamental feature of all underdamped harmonic motions getting rid of the spring completely eliminates the issue, as one would expect.

But now I run into the problems with centering and sloppiness etc... so I was just hoping to have a simple solution in VKBDevCfg.

I'm going to see if I could fix the oscillations by writing my own PID loop in Joystick Gremlin and if not I'd just swap out the soft centering cam and live with the 'sloppiness' I guess.

[TrueWeevie]

Not having to deal with 'sticktion' even with damping grease applied

This is not the Warthog! The application of grease to that gimbal was only a sticking plaster. It was a generally bad design that is only suitable for cheap, light, plastic, 'toy' joysticks.

I have a Gunfighter with two #50 springs on each axis and a 200mm extension and an MCG Ultimate on top. I have lightly greased the clutches and tightened them just a bit and there's no stiction and a nicely damped feel.

I fly rotary wing in DCS much more than fixed and you need smooth, gentle inputs and whilst I'm no great pilot I have zero problems.

That said you have different problems to solve than I do. Can I ask? Are you experiencing a specific notable effect in flight or are you concerned about what the data is telling you?

Sometimes we can get a bit too worried about the numbers and that can colour our picture of what we experience.

[Drano]

FWIW, I'd taken my dampers off completely until I added an extension. I have just a touch of nyogel on mine tightened just enough to where it feels good to me. I can't imagine tightening them all the way down for any reason. That alone would likely cause something that rhymes with sticktion, lube or not. It would come with them tightened fully but that's a protection from moving around during shipping thing. To be loosened before use.

[boom]

Not having to deal with 'sticktion' even with damping grease applied

This is not the Warthog! The application of grease to that gimbal was only a sticking plaster. It was a generally bad design that is only suitable for cheap, light, plastic, 'toy' joysticks.

I have a Gunfighter with two #50 springs on each axis and a 200mm extension and an MCG Ultimate on top. I have lightly greased the clutches and tightened them just a bit and there's no stiction and a nicely damped feel.

lmao I know that. But friction from the dry clutches on the Gunfighter still 'feels' the same as friction on the Warthog, grease of no grease.
I dunno, I'm a first year physics undergrad and one of the ways we learned about friction was thru 'feel' so maybe I just have an over tuned proprioception when it comes to sense of force.
Besides, I actually like the progressive, non-linear force provided by the spring-cam system, adding a second force on top of that kinda 'ruins' the whole experience you know.

That said you have different problems to solve than I do. Can I ask? Are you experiencing a specific notable effect in flight or are you concerned about what the data is telling you?

Sometimes we can get a bit too worried about the numbers and that can colour our picture of what we experience.

Actually yes, I do a lot of missile evasion and defensive bfm practices (mainly in the F18) which entail a lot of sudden snap reversals on the roll axis, the overshooting and undershooting definitely gets picked up and amplified by DCS and contributed to the F18 being 'twitchy' when I first plugged in the Gunfighter. And I knew it was caused by the new stick rather than techniques or changes to the FM because when I switched back the the Warthog the problem disappeared.

If you wanted to get a sense of how immediately obvious the issue was:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5764

now I'm not saying his problem has the exact same cause as mine, but the way he's 'wagging' or fishtailing on the yaw axis is the exact same kind of instability I had on the roll axis.
ps if you paid attention to his videos you'd see that he had issues on the roll axis as well, it's just that it's not that obvious.

[boom]

I have a Gunfighter with two #50 springs on each axis and a 200mm extension and an MCG Ultimate on top. I have lightly greased the clutches and tightened them just a bit and there's no stiction and a nicely damped feel.

Also, what do you notice immediately in terms of your flying etc with and without the 200mm extension attached? Thinking of adding one to mine but not sure if I should.

[Drano]

Boom, my advice to track this down is to first loosen the dampers completely. Do you still feel some sticktion? You shouldn't. If so then something else is hanging up on the gimbal. You'll have to open up the base and make sure the roller bearings are moving freely across the cam--not sliding but rolling-- as you move the stick through the axii. I'm guessing if you loosen the dampers and still have sticktion that your problem is in this area. Had you disassembled the gimbal to maybe change the cams? Putting all the washers back on the bearings during reassembly is tricky. They have to go back in the right order so as to not be a drag on the roller bearings. It's an easy mistake that's happened many times. There really should be an exploded diagram of this somewhere but that would be too easy I guess.

That said, to be clear, are you experiencing physical sticktion as you move the stick or are you looking at the input from the tester and seeing a less then perfectly smooth arc? If it's that and the stick otherwise feels perfectly fine, then it could be that you have a connection problem. Once again, open the base to see. The wires from the gimbal going to the white connectors on the PCBs have a tendency to come loose at the connector or the connector itself come loose from the PCB. The gimbal does move around all the time. The easiest thing is to take the connectors off and re-seat them. Try again and see if that straightens it out. If not, check each wire at the connector and make sure they're seated in the white connector. Give each a tug. They shouldn't pop out. If any do, put them back in. There should be a tactile click if it's in right. Re-seat the connector on the PCB and make sure none of the wires act like they're popping out of the connector. Test again.

Try that and we'll see what happens. There are other possible culprits but let's move thru the usual suspects first. I'm just another owner trying to help.

[TrueWeevie]

I have a Gunfighter with two #50 springs on each axis and a 200mm extension and an MCG Ultimate on top. I have lightly greased the clutches and tightened them just a bit and there's no stiction and a nicely damped feel.

Also, what do you notice immediately in terms of your flying etc with and without the 200mm extension attached? Thinking of adding one to mine but not sure if I should.

Well, like I said, I'm almost exclusively rotary wing at the mo' so what I say now is pretty much specific to that but the difference is pretty major but entirely unsurprising.

With the extension I get much better felt precision. There's much less goal seeking, much less overshoot and over correction.

It's certainly much more appropriate to the rotary wing experience (see the length of cyclics IRL!).

[TrueWeevie]

Boom, my advice to track this down is to first loosen the dampers completely. Do you still feel some sticktion? You shouldn't. If so then something else is hanging up on the gimbal. You'll have to open up the base and make sure the roller bearings are moving freely across the cam--not sliding but rolling-- as you move the stick through the axii. I'm guessing if you loosen the dampers and still have sticktion that your problem is in this area. Had you disassembled the gimbal to maybe change the cams? Putting all the washers back on the bearings during reassembly is tricky. They have to go back in the right order so as to not be a drag on the roller bearings. It's an easy mistake that's happened many times. There really should be an exploded diagram of this somewhere but that would be too easy I guess.

That said, to be clear, are you experiencing physical sticktion as you move the stick or are you looking at the input from the tester and seeing a less then perfectly smooth arc? If it's that and the stick otherwise feels perfectly fine, then it could be that you have a connection problem. Once again, open the base to see. The wires from the gimbal going to the white connectors on the PCBs have a tendency to come loose at the connector or the connector itself come loose from the PCB. The gimbal does move around all the time. The easiest thing is to take the connectors off and re-seat them. Try again and see if that straightens it out. If not, check each wire at the connector and make sure they're seated in the white connector. Give each a tug. They shouldn't pop out. If any do, put them back in. There should be a tactile click if it's in right. Re-seat the connector on the PCB and make sure none of the wires act like they're popping out of the connector. Test again.

Try that and we'll see what happens. There are other possible culprits but let's move thru the usual suspects first. I'm just another owner trying to help.

If I'm reading the OP right, the stiction is only occurring with the clutches tightened, which is to be expected as you will get some breakout resistance from any plastic on metal contact, whatever the plastic material.

The OP's issue is mechanical at heart I'd say and a fundamental 'limitation' of the mechanical system they're interacting with. If they feel stiction even after the application of decent quality damping grease like 767A, 774VH or PG-44A (and I have to say, I'm surprised at that) then absent the installation of actual physical damping systems I don't think there is a solution.

If they're trying to 'instantly' reverse the movement of a mechanical system there will be some overshoot and they're trying to find a way to damp that completely then I'm not sure what to suggest. The Gunfighter gimbal is the best at the prosumer market level. I have never used Brunner kit (it's pretty damn expensive) and I don't know if that would solves the OP's tight requirements.

Still and all, maybe the OP does have a connection issue. I don't know.