AV-8B Helios

Hi Fakum,

Please do not interpret this long post as me having a go at you. I am definitely not, and I really do appreciate your interest. I can also understand your frustration.

I suspected that once I disclosed what I was up to, there might be some interest, and I also suspected that once I released the video, it would increase the interest level. As I said in the earlier posts, I was genuinely trying to find out if there was any significant interest, and to be honest, the answer seems to be "No". I only know of you and three others.

Gunterlund's earlier post actually caused more challenges for me. If everyone used a single 23" 1920x1080 touch screen then life would be simple. I realised that he and potentially others would gain little benefit from my work due to some short-cuts I had taken so these needed to be addressed.

Let me give you a little background. The profile is the easy bit. If it was just about me sharing the profile, everyone's life would be so much simpler. I could send you the profile today, but it would not run because it binds against a brand new AV-8B interface in Helios, and it is this new interface where all of the complexity lies.

The Helios code that you are running is 1.3.? but it seems that Craig was doing some extra work before he eventually made it open source. This means that if I compile the open source, I get a 1.4.x level that was never released. I am having to guess at how Helios all hangs together under the covers, and I'm having to learn c# and xaml to do this (it is not technology that I am in any way familiar with).

My intent is to release something, but it does not help anyone (especially me, because I would feel obligated to help) if it all falls into a big mess when someone other than me tries to install the new level of Helios.

As you can see from the video, I personally have a workable solution which I am happy with (for me) and I could quite easily have stopped there. I didn't. I am continuing to put in a staggering large number of hours every morning and evening (and all weekends) so that others might benefit from this work.

I have a wife, a Harrier and a new second-hand Hornet, and they are all feeling very neglected. One of these is the reason why I'm trying to release this thing as quickly as possible ;-) . I just don't want to cause virtual aviators grief when they install the code and curse my very blue fin.

Please bear with me. If I could estimate when I might be finished, I would, but I simply do not know how long it will take.

If you're interested, last week I created a kanban which is here which I am using to track the work items. When most of the things are in the "done" column, I'll be ready to release.

Thanks again for the interest. I do appreciate the moral support.

BluFin, I am not at all frustrated. I apologize if I came across that way, I assure you it was unintended. With that being said, I assure you, I was simply looking to get my hands on a profile, even if it was work in progress. I dont think anyone expects a final product from anyone unless they are paying for it. Over the many years, alot of us have taken work in progress profiles and finished them up to their desires, and then shared them. Do as you see fit of course, I appreciate anything I can get my hands on. Good luck on your project. The community appreciates it!

Hi Fakum, The profile I've created does not work without the new level of Helios and the new Helios is simply too fragile to inflict on anyone at the moment. You'll be the first to know when it is ready.

Ah,, ok,, I think I got it now. I did not realize that you have a different flavor of Helios. I thought you simply had a new profile for the current Helios that was incomplete. Thanks,

Hi folks,

Firstly, apologies for the delay. It is absolutely not because I've been off flying my Hornet. My hornet has been in the air twice since the launch, and the Harrier has also been grounded to give me time to work out all of the problems that crawled out of the woodwork after I began the efforts to make Helios with the AV-8B Interface more robust.

I have an ask of anyone who is interested in helping. I need people who are willing to test the installer for the new Helios, and also regression test the new Helios with non-Harrier profiles. Specifically, I am not looking for people to fly the Harrier which is why I am not yet making the Harrier profile available. My plan is to release the Harrier profile once I have confirmation that the new Helios does not cause major problems.

Please PM me if you're able to assist.

Many thanks

I would be happy to help you out, unfortunately I myself have the F18 sitting on the shelf as well due to other commitments. Summer time is tough to get any hobby stuff in. Typical,

I guess I am surprised by the lack of interest in your profile. I am also interested. I am trying to plan a “universal” pit and Helios seems to be a great starting point to create a platform similar to the F-35 allowing for multiple front panels. I really hope you will be willing to share when you are done.

I’m also very interested in your work blufinbima, I am about 2 days into using Helios but loving what it’s capable of and would really enjoy a great harrier profile. Not sure what I can do but I’m glad to help.

I too am interested in both the profile, helping develope it and testing. I will PM you BluFinBima.

Just a quick update. If you recall, the Harrier profile requires a new level of Helios. I have decided not to release the Harrier profile until I can be sure there are are no problems with the new Helios. To this point, I have not had confirmation from any tester that the beta Helios works with their existing profiles.

This should not be interpreted as a criticism of the individuals who indicated that they might be able to perform some testing - each person let me know their ability to test and the reasons for delays - but I wanted to let the people following this thread know that we have stalled due to the test effort.

Someone PM'ed me a while back offering assistance with graphical design. Unfortunately I have lost that person's message. We are looking into the feasibility of an M-2000C interface for the new Helios, and having a great looking profile to run against it would be awesome. If that person is still interested in helping, please PM me again.

Hello BluFinBima.

I was stating a Harrier profile for Helios, https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=216139&page=2

I was looing for references and i just discovered this post.

I never see it before.

You did a great job adding a interface to Helios. This is something i was thinking to do some time ago, but the dificulty of create a new version, distribute it, and the possible malfunction of some systems, makes me go for another way.

The thing is, i dont want to interfere with your work, and if you want to publish your profile, i can go for another airplane.

Anyway, you can PM me if you like it, and see what we can do for the comunity.

..

I would love to see a Harrier profile for Helios!

I am curious which part BluFinBima's profile required changing the Helios code, when Capt Zeen has been able to make many profiles with any changes? Perhaps that could be looked into? Because I am also wary of installing a new version of Helios that may not be backwards compatible.

Hi Snacko, Capt Zeen does some VERY clever stuff in his profiles to attempt to cope with not having a dedicated interface for an aircraft. Ultimately this can introduce limitations, and I'm sure that it is a pain that he would like to avoid.

Gentlefolk,

I realise that progress has been not as speedy as anyone would have wished, but as I tried to explain, getting a stable new version of Helios out was a priority, and to do this, it needed to be tested. I wasn't flooded by requests to test Helios, and therefore the progress was what it was.

Helios 1.4 Beta 3 has just been released into the wild and can be downloaded. Assuming no disasters, I would expect to release my profile for the AV-8B in the next 5-10 days.

If you download the Helios and find it stable and to your liking, then please give the file some stars, and tell others about it.

Cheers, BlueFinBima

Downloaded. Thanks. Looks like you did a lot of work!

Would it be possible to store the HeliosSettings.xml in the installation folder, instead of the My Documents\Helios folder? And also save the path to the My Documents\Helios folder in that HeliosSettings.xml file?

The reason I ask that is that then we could have 2 My Documents\Helios folders. One for the new profiles, and the other for the legacy profiles. And we could edit that xml file to point to the new folder.

Also, this would help with a bug where Helios crashes while writing the HeliosSettings.xml, and only part of the xml get's written. Causing Helios to continue to crash on load there after. This bug is hard for users to fix because when they uninstall Helios and delete the folder, and reinstall, the corrupt file still remains. They don't think to delete their Profile folder since it's the program that is crashing, and they don't want to lose all their profiles. This caused me problems on several occasions until I noticed that file was corrupt.

Just some thoughts. Thanks for your work. Cheers!

Hi Snacko,

first things first. Have you experienced the crash (CC or PE) with 1.4? Do you know that partial settings XML is still a problem? I certainly have not encountered it.

As for location, what you're asking makes sense, but I'd have to think about the consequences of doing that a little more. My initial concern is that Helios does not give the CC or PE the ability to choose the location of the Helios data directory. I don't want to go down a path which only benefits those who hack the xml. I would never do such a thing myself ;-)

Let me think about this.

Cheers, Neil

Snacko,

BTW, I don't believe that we've broken backwards compatibility of profiles so the two program instances should play happily with the same data (with the exception of the profile editor layouts which is only a one time inconvenience). Our intent is to keep that backwards compatibility. Please let us know if you see profiles that no longer work.

Cheers, BFB

Hi Snacko,

 

first things first. Have you experienced the crash (CC or PE) with 1.4? Do you know that partial settings XML is still a problem? I certainly have not encountered it.

No, I have not used it enough to experience the crash. And the crash was a rare event. But many who have had Helios crash have been unable to get it working again. I cannot say all of them were this partially saved xml setting file. But since it is saved in the folder with the images and profiles people do not think to look for program errors there, and the crash becomes very hard to diagnose since you focus on the program's install folder... where the program's settings should probably be saved. This could also be resolved if Helios were to have some error handler around the code that opens this file. I don't think it does because no error message is displayed.

Snacko,

 

BTW, I don't believe that we've broken backwards compatibility of profiles so the two program instances should play happily with the same data (with the exception of the profile editor layouts which is only a one time inconvenience). Our intent is to keep that backwards compatibility. Please let us know if you see profiles that no longer work.

 

Cheers, BFB

I was just referring to this point in the Readme.

4) You can choose not to Uninstall Helios 1.3 and install this code to a different directory and this should work ok.

* However * there are no claims of backward compatibility of profiles so if you edit a profile with this release of Helios, then it is likely to cause problems if you attempt to open it again in an older version of Helios so point 1 above is very important.

Are you saying it's a "one time inconvenience" because once we edit and save an older profile in 1.4 it should work fine in 1.4 PE and CC? This was the main thing I was concerned about when you first started this project. If so, that is good news and my concerns in my last post about having 2 Helios folders in My Documents is not an issue. :thumbup:

This could also be resolved if Helios were to have some error handler around the code that opens this file

I would not make a claim that error handling was one of Helios' strengths. Having probably experienced more exceptions in Helios than the whole Helios user community put together, I'm well aware of this unfortunate attribute of the program. We'll try to improve this as we go.

I was just referring to this point in the Readme.

That was me being (overly) cautious.

Are you saying it's a "one time inconvenience" because once we edit and save an older profile in 1.4 it should work fine in 1.4 PE and CC? This was the main thing I was concerned about when you first started this project.:thumbup:

No, I was referring to the layout file which is only used for the state of the tabs / panels etc inside the Profile Editor. It is effectively the same thing that happens if you delete profilename.layout.

If action 1) in the readme is performed, what is the risk?

Having written this reply, it has given me a chance to consider the original suggestion. I'm now convinced that the right course of action is to leave the settings.xml where it is, and improve the error handling so that Helios will still start if the settings xml file is mal-formed. Putting dynamic data in the program folder is really not the right course of action.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

All the best, BFB

The 1.4 release seems to be working quite well, no issues so far with other profiles. I was wondering how close we were to getting our hands on your av8 profile BluFin

Good prompt... next time I come up for air, I'll dust off the profile, completed the documentation and post it.

Hi all,

I've just bought the AV-8B ,

I'm using 3 monitors in surround and I want to export to my 4th monitor (not using Helios at the moment)

found this thread and used the export files, but the fonts seems very thin and dark hardly readable.

I've tried to play with the definitions lua for font size values but got weird results and no increase in brightness.

How can I control it, if possible?

is it a known issue?

Many thanks for the support!

Ron

Yes, I've had the new version of Helios installed, waiting to try the new profile.

Sent from my Moto Z Play using Tapatalk

http://cafe.naver.com/dcstr/17131

 

Thank you Sicario for your fine work!

I have a 4th monitor, non touch, that I wish to use for the AV-8B with Helios,

but I have MFD cougar on the bottom of the monitor, not top as it is more comfortable and goes a long way back for me.

I see I cannot change or adjust your profile to fit my monitor. Is there a way I can re-arrange it?

I took an example from LOZ A10-C profile - where I can re arrange everything to my needs...

Thanks!