Force feedback

Force feedback

As of december 2011 I started developing force feedback (also called haptic) support for Flightgear.

Repository

The development is currently happening here: FG-Haptic . It is tested on Linux only, as I have no build environment on Windows. Testers wanted!

No built modules yet available. Only source code and nasal/xml scripts. Requires SDL 1.3 to function.

Features

General features

• In-sim options dialog
• Support for multiple devices simultaneously (currently 4)
• Devices do not need to be the same ones that are used as inputs
• Devices can have different effects applied on them
• Add-on, can be installed on older FG versions too

Effects

• Stick shaker when about to stall
• TODO: Stick pusher
• Control surface forces (JSBSim preliminary support, no YASim or others yet)
• Pilot G forces

Technical details

Pilot G forces and control surface forces are currently handled as constant force effects, and updated 10 times a second. Sometimes they feel a bit shaky, so they might need some tuning...

Stick shaker is a simple rumble effect.

Screenshot

I don't know yet how to add this as an image...

TODO

• Test using spring condition for control surface force loading. This requires some magic to figure out the maximum forces and ramp speeds, as we cannot use the forces calculated by FDM directly. This way the force would be much smoother than with constant force