Black Shark Nirvana with TouchBuddy

[DickDastardly]

Hi all,
I've been doing a bit more tinkering with my three monitor setup and have managed to get the view forward on one screen, Shkval on another and this:



...on a third (touch) screen. Thanks to TouchBuddy, all the buttons and switches are touchable (or clickable with a mouse if you don't have a touchscreen), and they all have the same effect as their VC counterparts.

I've uploaded a short video here so you can see the profile in use (apologies for the quality, it was taken on my phone's dodgy camera). If you have three monitors and would like to try the setup yourself just follow the instructions below. If there's sufficient demand I might make a version for two monitor setups too.

Finally, a big thank you to Zorlac for creating the excellent TouchBuddy and Wild Bill Kelso for his TouchBuddy Toolkit.
Cheers,
DD


Installation

1. Download and install Touchbuddy.

2. Backup the following files:

Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\BlackShark\data\scripts\options.lua
Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\FUI\Common\StartImage-2.bmp
Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Config\Export\Export.lua
TouchBuddy\touchbuddy.cfg

3. Download this file to a temporary directory and unzip it. You should see four folders (BlackShark, Config, FUI and profiles) and a touchbuddy.cfg file. Copy and paste the BlackShark, Config and FUI folders to your Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50 folder, overwriting the existing files (which you've already backed up in the previous step). Then copy and paste the profiles folder and the touchbuddy.cfg to your TouchBuddy folder, again overwriting the existing files.

4. In your graphics card control panel, set your monitors to Dual View mode and all their resolutions to 1024x768.

5. Check in Windows desktop properties that your monitors are arranged in a horizontal row with the ABRIS monitor on the LEFT, main monitor in the center and Shkval monitor on the RIGHT.

6. Open the file touchbuddy.cfg in your Touchbuddy folder with Notepad and scroll down until you see the following line:

lomac_data_file = C:\Sims\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\touchbuddy-export.dat

Edit the path to match the location of your Ka-50 folder and save your changes.

7. Launch TB and load whichever profile suits the mission's starting conditions (either DCS-D1ckDastardly-prestartup.tbc or DCS-D1ckDastardly-inflight.tbc). Then click the "Let's Go" button and the panel should appear on the monitor on which you'll be viewing the ABRIS.

8. Launch the sim and select "Options" then "Controls" and change the key assigned to "Expedite Emergency ATGM Launch" to "J".


Now load a mission and you should see a test card on your Shkval monitor during mission loading if everything is setup correctly. Once you unpause, the Shkval, ABRIS and payload strip should all be live and you'll be able to touch (or click) any of the buttons to trigger the appropriate key presses.

N.B. The monitor on which I display the ABRIS is actually 5:4 rather than 4:3. If your monitor has a different aspect ratio then the image will be slightly stretched. Also, I've only tested this setup in Vista and the English version of DCS so I can't promise it'll work in XP or the Russian version (though I think it will).

Limitations

1. It doesn't seem to be possible to obtain the state of most switches and button lights via lua so TB can only deduce what state they should be in by knowing their initial position and keeping track of the number of times they've been pressed in TB. This means that if you click a button in the virtual cockpit then Touchbuddy won't know about it and will get out of synch. (If this happens you can either continue clicking in the VC until the positions match up again or press the "Reset button status" command on the *TB* tab).

2. The CMS display can only show the currently selected program as the number of flares remaining per side isn't obtainable via lua. (The total number of flares remaining is visible in the payload strip, however).

3. The PVI-800 display doesn't change, again due to a lack of data from lua. Hopefully the forthcoming Physical Cockpit Interface Package will give us the ability to export things like the nav display and keypad lights, along with the CMS display and EKRAN (ideally in the same way that the Shkval and ABRIS are currently).

4. The button to change the Nav/INU fixtaking method (labelled NAV TG SHKVL on my version of the Nav keypad) doesn't work. This seems to be due to a bug in the sim whereby no matter what keys you assign to this function, they have no effect. The only way to trigger it is by clicking the switch in the VC.

Other Info:

Check this out:
>>> Black Shark MultiMonitors - VaafWiki
>>> Can't use both monitors - ED Forums

[hannibal]

simply amazing...

[ruggbutt]

That's awesome! Nice work DD.

[Manta]

Wow and Wow

looks great, I am also running 3 screens and look forward to testing this out

[ruggbutt]

I take it this won't run in client server mode with the ABRIS?

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

****Dastardly, do you want to post this in our Profiles section for download too? Or is it too customized for your specific system setup that others won't find it as useful?

WBK

[Ugo_Ripley]

WOW Dastardly !!!
I just saw the video and I'm blown by your profile !!

...picking my jaws up again ;-)

[hannibal]

great work

inspiring

when i finish my profile, i want to use your profile to extract the shkval data on to my profile...

[DickDastardly]

Glad to hear you guys like the profile . I've updated the link in the first post to a new copy which has a couple of minor improvements and fixes, and I've now also finished a version for those with only 2 monitors. You can see this new version in action in this video. The process to install it is as follows:


Installation

1. Download and install Touchbuddy.

2. Backup the following files:

Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\BlackShark\data\scripts\options.lua
Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\FUI\Common\StartImage-2.bmp
Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\Config\Export\Export.lua
TouchBuddy\touchbuddy.cfg

3. Download this file to a temporary directory and unzip it. You should see four folders (BlackShark, Config, FUI and profiles) and a touchbuddy.cfg file. Copy and paste the BlackShark, Config and FUI folders to your Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50 folder, overwriting the existing files (which you've already backed up in the previous step). Then copy and paste the profiles folder and the touchbuddy.cfg to your TouchBuddy folder, again overwriting the existing files.

4. In your graphics card control panel, set your monitors to Dual View mode and both their resolutions to 1024x768.

5. Check in Windows desktop properties that your primary monitor (which will display the view out of your cockpit) is immediately to the RIGHT of your secondary monitor (which will display my Touchbuddy profile and the Shkval and ABRIS).

6. Open the file touchbuddy.cfg in your Touchbuddy folder with Notepad and scroll down until you see the following line:

lomac_data_file = C:\Sims\Eagle Dynamics\Ka-50\touchbuddy-export.dat

Edit the path to match the location of your Ka-50 folder and save your changes.

7. Launch TB and load whichever profile suits the mission's starting conditions (either DCS-D1ckDastardly-prestartup-2mon.tbc or DCS-D1ckDastardly-inflight-2mon.tbc). Then click the "Let's Go" button and the panel should appear on your secondary monitor.

8. Launch the sim and select "Options" then "Controls" and change the key assigned to "Expedite Emergency ATGM Launch" to "J".


Now load a mission and you should see a test card on your Shkval monitor during mission loading if everything is setup correctly. Once you unpause, the Shkval, ABRIS and payload strip should all be live and you'll be able to touch (or click) any of the buttons to trigger the appropriate key presses.

N.B. The monitor on which I display the ABRIS is actually 5:4 rather than 4:3. If your monitor has a different aspect ratio then the image will be slightly stretched. Again, I've only tested this setup in Vista and the English version of DCS so I can't promise it'll work in XP or the Russian version (though I think it will).

Cheers,
DD

@Ruggbutt, local mode only I'm afraid if you want the ABRIS and Shkval to work.

@Bill, I don't mind uploading the profiles here too, but I'll need to also include the additional files from my zips to configure DCS correctly, not just the TB profiles themselves. When using my config files the profiles should work for anyone who has the correct number of monitors.

[CoNa]

Hi DD, this profile is soo über cool!!!
However, I'm using one wide (1680x1050) and one 4:3 (1280x1024) monitor
I don't seem to get them to work with this setup.
Is it a must to use 1024x768 resolution?

I can size up the template and buttons quite easily to be 1024 size,
but will it work with two different types of resolution?
I tried to change both my monitors and also the ingame resolution, but it fails for me.

CoNa