F16 Latching Taxi lights switch`

hi guys.

I have a button i want to use to turn the taxi lights on and off.

You have 7 input fields for taxi lights.

up

down

off

landing

landing/off

taxi

taxi/off

I figured i would use taxi/off which looked great cus i thought that looked like a toggle switch. (same for landing/off which returns the same behaviour)

Perfect seeing as i am using a single switch.

Unfortunately, i think it is bugged.

If i flick my switch (seen as button jOY-BTN8 ) when the lights are on then the taxi light switch in cockpit dances up and down - turning the lights off but wont allow me to put them back on by flicking the switch again.

If they are already off - then my switch will turn them on but not off.

In other words the input is not mapped right and only allows the button to activate once.

Any ideas?

TAXI/OFF is designed for joystick controllers where the input is continuously on in one position and null in the other. E.g. the Thrustmaster Warthog - Throttle EAC switch continuously supplies the input "Button 24" when the switch is ARM but no button input when the switch is OFF. The result is that the light switch will be TAXI if "Button 24" is being held, otherwise OFF. And it functions this way on my client.

If your particular joystick does not provide continuous button held output by a switch or similar control then you will probably not find this command all that useful. Try setting TAXI/OFF to your joystick's trigger button and try pressing the switch briefly and with some duration to see how it works.

Oh ok.

That's a shame.

What you said makes perfect sense. I see now. I had a feeling as such as well, but hoped that someone would say that its a known issue.

Its not a deal breaker. Just would have been nice to assign it to one of my own flip switches like i can in other flight sims.

Blast.

Thanks for your reply.

edit: soon as i sent this - i suddenly had a flashing thought. I wonder if I could use Voice Attack to get around the issue....

...i wonder.....

Lol.

Its like DCS is trying to make this hard!

As you say -its designed for joystick button presses - but i hoped i still could assign a keyboard key press to it. But alas - they have needlessly blocked it.

But here's a fun fact.

Laser arm. (talking about the f16 still)

Laser arm - just like taxi/off is a toggle switch.

Guess what - THAT works. Same single button (flip switch) that i am using to assign a button to it. Flick once (quick pulse of button 11 I think) and it goes on - same button (quick pulse of button 11) and its off.

Perfect.

Dam lights!!! lol.

sigh.

Why ED? ... just.. why?

I'll see if Voice attack can give the button a permanently "on state" when i flick the switch or something.

Hmm works for the F18 like a charm.

Think I am going to have to accept defeat on this one because I wouldnt want to use VA and muck up the f18 to get the f16 to work.

Blast.

You win ED.

Hmm works for the F18 like a charm.

 

Think I am going to have to accept defeat on this one because I wouldnt want to use VA and muck up the f18 to get the f16 to work.

 

Blast.

 

You win ED.

you don't have to muck up anything though, in VA you can wrap it in an 'If F16' statement. If I understand correctly and you want VA to do one thing for one airframe and something different for another.

afterthought: you might need the VAICOM Pro add-on to VA for the above to work(an essential addition imo) :)

I just opened the door a tiny bit to peek into this world of Vaicom and slammed it shut real quick.

Let me just take a breather before I open it with confidence and look like i know why i have entered.

LOL..

interesting. Thanks for the info.

Still - shame the devs cant just tweak controller page!

It is not consistent how the controls are named. E.g "BRAKES Channel Switch - CHAN 1/CHAN 2" will toggle back and forth with subsequent pulse inputs while "ANTI-SKID Switch - OFF/ANTI-SKID" will be in one position while input is on and fall to the other when input removed.

The only clue to their behavior is that the second one is in the "Special For Joystick" category which one quickly learns is for these kind of "on else off" behaviors. The additional clue is that these are not bindable to keyboard keys.

What probably should be the case is that there should be both the toggle state and special joystick commands should exist separately. But trying to be consistent in naming commands you quickly realize that both would be written identically which is probably one got omitted. I think the behavior of the action should be distinguished in the text description. E.g. toggle can be A/B while on-else-off might use a different format such as A (B) or A <<B>> or whatever.

Even further you can imagine all sorts of different action behaviors can have distinct text description formats: cycling forward, cycling backward, advancing forward without cycling, advancing backward without cycling, toggling between two states, press-A-release-B, go-direct-to-state-X, etc.

Often if there's not a specific control action you want, like TAXI/OFF toggle, you can often go into the game's LUA action defines and write it yourself. I think the issue is that the TAXI light switch is 3-position and the odds are that no one made a special command hook to toggle between only two of the states. If you're in the realm of programming joysticks though usually the increase-decrease actions are sufficient.