Shared cockpit procedure.

[Deano1973]

Hi Peter, hope all's well!

Just writing in to ask for a procedural for how to share cockpit controls and functions. We did a test tonight at MODsim, and it was tricky to figure out who had control of what. I lost all control of my brakes at one point, and they never came back even after leaving the other pilot's aircraft.

Is "Enter cockpit" still the main way to do things, upon which one then selects which controls may be shared ( I'm presuming that the entrée pilot cannot control this but it must be the owner who decides what is, and isn't, to be shared ).

It would be good to have a brief ABC of how to go about it if that's possible. I think we made errors as when I left his cockpit we both shot off, him upwards and me sideway with all controls lost. Only leaving the session and rejoining returned our respective controls to us...

Cheers

[Peter]

Hi Dean,

Doing great, thanks.

I'll add this to the manual asap.

1. Owner pilot opens the user list and selects the person they wish to allow access.
2. Click the 'Permissions...' button and enable Cockpit Sharing and which controls are to be shared.
3. The other pilot then opens the aircraft list and selects the aircraft they wish to enter.
4. They then click the Enter Cockpit button and both pilots should then be linked and at the same world position with the same states and indicators.

In the permissions windows, if you select 'Hand over flight controls', they will have control of the yoke/rudder etc and you won't. The other controls can be shared and used by either pilot at any time when shared.

Flight controls are classed as elevator, rudder, aileron, brakes, flaps, gear, trim, spoilers, wing fold, hook.

Only one pilot has access to the flight controls and the owner of the aircraft decided who this is using the permissions option.

I've just fixed a few bugs, mainly the throttle/mixture/propellor controls and heading bug. This will be released next Tuesday hopefully.

When you try the next version, let me know if you still have problems leaving the cockpit or the brake problem.

Hope that makes things a little clearer.

Peter

[Dan-TXHills]

Peter:

I suggest (unless there is some reason that this cannot be done - some issue with having two people in control of these functions) that you include flaps, spoilers and gear in the 'Other' category. Although it is rare for me to share an aircraft with anyone my observation has been that the PNF manages the gear and flaps for the PF at least some of the time - possibly those that do the serious pilot / co-pilot thing might want to chime in to either confirm or refute my impression. Not sure about the wing folding and tail hook thing - seems at least the wing fold might be left in the Flight Controls list since this isn't going to happen while the PF is busy on short final (well, at least I hope it doesn't )

Dan

[Peter]

Fair point, I can move those two, or if anyone suggests having different categories from the current three categories 'flight control', 'Engine', 'Other'. Those were just made up off the top of my head really, I didn't put too much thought into it.

Peter

[jordan96xj]

A friend and I on Hovercontrol had a chance to run through the paces of the shared cockpit as well. I'll share our observations in case anything is useful or helpful.

1. We experimented for about 1+ hours and during this time the sims remained stable. Even when we noticed other problems, we never had a stability issue with the sim, crash-to-desktop, or otherwise having to restart the simulator.

2. At first, we could not figure out the exact procedure to get the flight controls transferred. I ended up reading between the lines on a few forum posts here, and we finally guessed our way through it. Thank you for posting up these instructions. I think they will help those users going through the same motions.

3. GROUND ALTITUDE. When 2 aircraft are linked, there is no guarantee that both aircraft will be operating above the same ground altitude in relation to each other due to different scenery (particularly ORBX vs default). During landing, the aircraft that is relatively closer to the ground can end up with its rendering viewpoint beneath the ground level. I believe the aircraft with the controls will ultimately decide when contact with the ground has occurred, causing the slaved (or non-controlling) aircraft to have to follow suit regardless of its position in relation to the ground. Flight Simulator typically handles having the viewpoint below ground level very poorly with results ranging from blacked out views to rapid changes in altitude and attitude (Up and down by thousands of feet, with rapid spinning, etc). The good news, is that this did not appear to crash the sim or cause permanent failure of the rendering. When the aircraft with the lower viewpoint was raised (by the aircraft in control lifting up off the surface) the rendering would return to normal and the flight could continue on with both aircraft properly situated. In summary, the non-controlling aircraft would always have to stop descending before its viewpoint reached ground level, even if the controlling aircraft is continuing to descend. This is similar to the ground altitude correction applied to the outside multiplayer views, but with more implications related to the aircraft being linked to a common location.

4. After an hour of mostly trouble-free flying, when the 2 players "exited the cockpit", one of the aircraft did end up rocketing to a strange location several hundred feet high, and several hundred feet away, at a strange attitude. Permissions changes and restarting of the joinfs application did not relinquish control of the aircraft and, ultimately, a restart of the simulation was used to correct the issue.

It was a load of fun, and because we remember some of the attempts of prior developers to get this functionality working, we were especially impressed by the stability of the application as well as the smoothness and reliable synchronization between the two aircraft.

[Peter]

A friend and I on Hovercontrol had a chance to run through the paces of the shared cockpit as well. I'll share our observations in case anything is useful or helpful.

Hi, I appreciate your helpful feedback.

That's a good point about the ground altitude. Now that you mention it, that is obviously going to be a bit of a problem. However, I think I should be able to adjust for it in a similar way to the height adjustment when other aircraft are on the ground. I might even be able to smooth out the transition so you won't notice too much of an abrupt change in height.

Someone else had the aircraft flying off on exiting the cockpit. I've already fixed a few shared cockpit issues, so see if it still happens on the next version. What should happen in the next version is when you leave the cockpit you return to your original position/velocity with the cockpit controls as you left them.

I'm surprised that you couldn't get the controls back after exiting JoinFS. That's a bit odd, I'll see if I can repeat that here.

Anyway, I'm glad that you enjoyed trying it all out. It's a lot of fun especially in the helicopters

Peter

[Deano1973]

Thanks for the info Peter, much appreciated!

[Mac@BathUK]

Peter,
As a Member of the Bristol Flight Sim Group, UK, we have recently begun testing your EXCELLENT product.
We have all updated to v1.1.13.
We are having a (new) "issue" that was NOT evident in 1.1.10 and 1.1.11, namely, we cannot now "share cockpits".
We each receive the message that "you have not been given permission to enter/share cockpits.
But.....we COULD share them last week!!
We are all in P3D, we all have default Baron58's, we are parked adjacent at EGGD.
It would appear that your latest iteration has added SOME new attributes, but has LOST this sharing - which is likely to be our club's primary reason for using joinFS.
Any thoughts???
(We are all very confident that you are already "on the case".....keep up the good work).
Regards
B

[edakridge]

Peter has come up with a "Work around". See here: http://pmem.uk/joinfs/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=353

[Peter]

Peter has come up with a "Work around". See here: http://pmem.uk/joinfs/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=353

Indeed, use the workaround for now. Another test version is due in a few days to address this and other shared cockpit issues.

Thanks,
Peter

[Mac@BathUK]

Thank you, guys, for your prompt response.
We had indeed seen this workaround and we tried it last night, but continued to get the "not been given permission" message (which might be the bit that hints towards its long-term solution?)
We will be back on line later today and we will try again.
(I could not rule out that WE didn't do it correctly!! )
We knew you WOULD get it sorted....excellent product and VERY IMPRESSED both with its functionality and Peter's commitment and efforts to respond to everyone's hopes.
Really looking forward to the final ("final", final?!) version!!
B

[Peter]

Really looking forward to the final ("final", final?!) version!!

Ha, I doubt there will ever be a final final version. Improvements can always be made.

Thanks for deciding to test JoinFS, much appreciated.

Peter

[Mac@BathUK]

Sorry, Peter, but we tried again to share cockpits (all in P3D, same stock B58, same ramp at EGGD, same weather etc). We studiously followed the advice in the other post....no joy.
We still - individually, whoever was 'offering' the join - got the message that "...you have not been given (permission) ...", so it seems to be something that is impacting the respective 'recipient' machine. (Rather than the one trying to join)
Hope this might narrow the search?
Close formation flying is tremendous fun (now that we can do it with less than the 5-mile back/forward shuffles in the Sim!)
But, by Jove, it IS NOT EASY, is it!!
Keep going....we are all rooting for you.....
Mac

[Peter]

Hi Mac,

yes, the shared cockpit permissions will be fixed in the next version, which should be out by Wednesday.

It's definitely coming together nicely now.

Thanks,
Peter