Force feedback
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Development of force feedback (also called haptic) support for FlightGear started in December 2011.
Repository
The development is currently happening at FG-Haptic Gitorious. It is tested on Linux only, as the author (Zan) has 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 four)
- 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 FlightGear 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.
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