Saitek Throttle Quadrant and OFF

[planecrazydale 0]

Hi all,

 

I picked up a Saitek Throttle Quadrant (throttle, prop pitch and mixture) recently to go with my MS FF2. It works great with IL-2, but I couldn't seem to get it to work with OFF. I did some searching via Google and found a couple of posts where people stated that OFF didn't (wouldn't?) recognize more than one controller at a time, which seemed to be the case with me as well. I would go into the "assign controller buttons" section and move the throttle quadrants up and down to no avail. The config settings just wouldn't recognize it. I figured "oh well, it's still an awesome sim and my joystick throttle works so no worries".

 

But then, pretty much by accident, while flying in OFF I bumped the Mixture control on my quadrant and all of a sudden my rpms drop even though I was at full throttle on my joystick. Realizing what I had done, I moved the Mixture control back up and my engine came back up...suddenly I had throttle control from my quadrant!

 

Anyway, long story short, if anyone else has one of these throttle quadrants and can't seem to make it work when you already have a joystick installed try moving the Mixture (red) control on your quadrant and you may find out it will work as your throttle!

 

(But don't move the other controls on the quadrant, it seems to mess up your TrackIr temporarily if you do!)

 

Hope that helps everyone out and sorry if someone else has already given this advice.

 

Dale

[planecrazydale 0]

Firstly I'm curious about the throttle quadrant, I also use a Mickysoft FFBII, instead I went with the Logitech Gaming Keyboard, 18 programable buttons

 

Ala the pedals, it works through the Computer, not OFF ?

 

You need to disable your twisty stick via controls

 

Might you likewise need to disable your Throttle axis in controls ?

 

Got me, but it sounds better than . . MAGIC . . it works

 

 

Disable throttle axis in controls? Never even thought of that, I will give it a try tonight!

 

Thanks!

[HomeBoy 1]

planecrazy,

First, I can tell you first hand that OFF will support as many controllers as you care to install. I understand why you might not think that but what you're seeing is another problem.

 

For some reason (this drives me crazy with MS FS as well), if you have multiple controllers, OFF (CFS3 really I think) loves to "automatically" assign the X axis of each controller to your ailerons, the Y to elevator and Z to your throttle. If you have four controllers on your computer, ALL four seem to want to have this assignment. Naturally, this causes great confusion in the game. I think it's this behavior that makes it look like you can't have more than one controller connected. What I do is bring up each controller in the OFF controller config utility and un-assign EVERYTHING and work through each controller one at a time and assign what I want. If you carefully work through your controllers that way you will find things to work quite well.

 

Hope that takes a little of the magic out of all this. For the record, I absolutely despise the OFF controller interface as I also do the MSFS one.

 

Good luck!

-mark

Edited April 30, 2009 by HomeBoy

[planecrazydale 0]

Thanks alot Mark! I will give it a try tonight.

 

(although I did like the "magic" explanation! That's how I explain a lot of things to my 5 year old!! :yes:

 

Dale

[sitting_duck 3]

Homeboy

 

was wondering if you had tried any thirdparty joystick mapping software. I have the old saitek x45 (and just got another x45 almost new for 20 bucks), but the saitek profiler for the x45 has problems with xp64

 

Not happy about putting more stuff in my taskbar, but would like to be able to map fraps to my joystick.

[Test Pilot 0]

I have the quadrant as well and another thing to notice for, after setting the axis the way you want and getting the null and sensitivity sliders set up, is to remap the button 8 key. Its default is to switch padlock view on or off and so if you move the prop lever out of the way youll activate this command and lock the hat switch. But other than that, it works just about flawlessly, be it in OFF or FSX

[HomeBoy 1]

Homeboy

 

was wondering if you had tried any thirdparty joystick mapping software. I have the old saitek x45 (and just got another x45 almost new for 20 bucks), but the saitek profiler for the x45 has problems with xp64

 

Not happy about putting more stuff in my taskbar, but would like to be able to map fraps to my joystick.

 

SD,

I'm primarily a CH Products guy. Their software is supreme, second to none. With CH, the profile gets downloaded to the controller in firmware and there is no "profiler" that needs to run at all. That really reduces the overhead. Course, there still has to be a driver but every controller needs that anyway. My stick is a home-made hybrid of CH and Logitech Wingman Force and I do use the Logitech profiler software which is actually pretty good. It runs in the system tray as you describe but it's pretty low overhead. I don't recall how Saitek's stuff works but I do know it's similar. I actually wasn't aware that there is third party software around for these things. Interesting.

[Cathy Howat 0]

SD,

I'm primarily a CH Products guy. Their software is supreme, second to none. With CH, the profile gets downloaded to the controller in firmware and there is no "profiler" that needs to run at all. That really reduces the overhead. Course, there still has to be a driver but every controller needs that anyway. My stick is a home-made hybrid of CH and Logitech Wingman Force and I do use the Logitech profiler software which is actually pretty good. It runs in the system tray as you describe but it's pretty low overhead. I don't recall how Saitek's stuff works but I do know it's similar. I actually wasn't aware that there is third party software around for these things. Interesting.

 

Kinda makes my earlier post redundant. I am movving to the Saitek yoke 2 quadrants and pedals, any advice?

[Test Pilot 0]

Kinda makes my earlier post redundant. I am movving to the Saitek yoke 2 quadrants and pedals, any advice?

 

I have the pedals and they work very well with no drawbacks after having them for half a year now. Only advice would be to make sure the in game controller configuration is set up properly. Of course, it's simple to do and likely second nature for people. But as basic a step as that is, I seem to forget it quite a bit and am in for a surprise when I use the rudder and find the plane noses down!

[Cathy Howat 0]

I have the pedals and they work very well with no drawbacks after having them for half a year now. Only advice would be to make sure the in game controller configuration is set up properly. Of course, it's simple to do and likely second nature for people. But as basic a step as that is, I seem to forget it quite a bit and am in for a surprise when I use the rudder and find the plane noses down!

many thanks