Thank you for this. My experience with Banana etc. has been inconsistent to say the keast. I’ll give ASIO4ALL a try.
2 Likes
Happy weekend everyone. I’m looking for a bit of advice in setting things up with Sim Shaker sound module.
For context, I’ve been using a Woojer Strap single transducer for haptic feedback for a while. It uses the native sound output, which is a blessing and a curse: there is no setup, plug and play, but you get feedback from some things which you might not want also and can’t tune elements.
I received Next Level Racing’s new HF8 haptic pad yesterday and spent the evening getting SimShaker for Aviators/Sound Module and Voiceemeter Banana set up.
On a quick test flight in the Hornet, with no settings changed…not impressive at all. Markedly worse than my Woojer, actually, because there’s no nuance to the vibrations whatsoever. Also the latency imparted, I assume by Banana, is quite bad. I understand that’s an easy fix however.
So, this morning I’m attempting to dial in some settings in hopes I can make this worth keeping.
Does anyone know how to “refresh” after a settings change in Sim Shaker? It seems almost as though what I’m changing, numerically at least, has little effect on the results in the sim between flights and certainly not in flight.
Unchecking a box and restarting DCS does seem to work, but that’s obviously time intensive. Is there some workflow trick I’m missing? Should it update in real time?
Also the FPS hit is much more significant than I expected, I’ll be forced to revisit my settings if I keep the HF8. I have an i7-12700KF overclocked…so I wouldn’t expect it to be badly CPU bound by the export?
Note: the following pertains to a system similar to the article (first post in this thread) with a bass shaker attached to my Office Ejection Seat (cheap swivel chair)
Not sure if I covered Voicemeter Banana in the article or not but I did use it initially and the purchase of the USB sound card helped a lot. Somewhere (possibly in the article too) I bring up the ‘wish’ that, at least for DCS, the dev’s would put direct support for haptic in the hope it reduces the latency even more; SSA uses lua and an external app to do the processing.
Never used a Woojer or the NL Racing pad you mention myself but to me the Stall and G-Force Fx feel scaled to the severity of stall and G number. All the rest seem to be ‘binary’; you pull the trigger; put down the gear/flaps; etc - they are just on/off. Oh, speed brake is scaled too; one-click on the HOTAS and I feel it a little, put them all the way out and I feel it a lot more intensely. All of this of course based on the settings you’ve chosen for each effect.
My best, initial, guess is that the pad you’re using may make the difference? I’m really just speculating here but, the bass shaker can really pack a punch based on the ‘mass’ of it; I have two attached:
- The Butt Kicker puck - rewired to my amp as the amp that came with it melted
- The other one shown in the article
Note that I actually only use the second one most of the time anymore as my butt has grown ‘attuned’ to all this and don’t seem to need as much ‘stimulation’ anymore?
I really can’t go above 50% in the settings or it’s too much. At least in VR (VR seems to ‘enhance’ all this to me). At full stall, even at 50% [stall] it slaps the back of my thighs pretty well, or it would if I cranked it much above 50%. Amp settings play a role here too of course. Again, different hardware than what you’re using so I can’t comment on how yours’s functions or is configured.
I think the SSA software changed slightly here since I wrote the article but what I do now is hit the little, what I refer to as ‘refresh’ button (sorry I don’t have SSA installed on this PC) lets see if I can find it from the picture in the article…
There it is. I don’t believe the documentation mentions this but, well, it’s been several years since I looked at it.
Yes it does cause, for me, a very slight FPS hit: on the PC I was using when I wrote the article it was about 1%-2% (i6700k, circa 2015 PC). On my new box AMD 5900X (purchased new last year) I don’t see much at all.
So, there does appear to be some hit but to me it wasn’t that much.
Note: it’s difficult to isolate what is causing a hit in the Export.lua file (where SSA, and others, interface with DCS): if you Ctrl + Pause X2 you can see the “Lua CPU Usage” values in real time, but, you have to consider anything else that may be using that path internally.
Not knowing your system I can’t speculate here. I do know that WinWing’s software (I have a WinWing stick) has a big effect on FPS so I disable this. This is just one example. I also use Voice Attack + VAICOM Pro which have an entry in the Export.lua also. AND I have my code running (~10,000 lines of lua code) and on my new box I never get above 2% in the lua CPU usage figure with all the above ‘attached’, not just the SSA bits. This last one doesn’t really mean much as I wrote the code to be as unobtrusive as possible.
I’ve had SSA installed for several years and perhaps the dev has changed the ‘polling’ values in SSA’s lua code? I’ll take a look; my, older, version may be using different values but I assume that updates to SSA (there have been many, the latest just a few days ago) change this too, therefore we should be seeing the same results all else being equal.
I’ve looked at that pad you mention, on their site. My guess is they aren’t using any amplification and the gizmo’s that ‘touch’ you are being driven only via the power from the USB port. I didn’t dive deep there but I can’t imagine that would come close to a seat shaker system with a .25 pound (or greater) puck and an amplifier? I have no experience with haptic pads but I’m guessing they all produce more of a ‘buzz’-like feel as opposed to a ‘seat of the pants’ one?
Of course the down-side to the seat (chair) shakers is the potential noise. I covered this in the article; if you don’t isolate your chair from your dwelling other people (wife, kids, dog, cat) will know when you are playing. And it helps to enhance the effects. The Butt Kicker unit is designed such that it’s not bad at all. I however had issues with their amplifier so I replaced it with something of sturdier design. The pads appear to eliminate any noise since they seem to just be ‘tickling’ or ‘massaging’ you? Just guessing here.
You shouldn’t have to restart DCS to adjust settings in Simshaker. I routinely tune new aircraft while playing, but alt-tabbing, watching the effects monitor to see what’s firing, and making adjustments to the levels or un-checking/checking different boxes. Alt-tabbing back into DCS, everything resumes and the changes are immediate. I’ve also not had to use the refresh button, if everything is working right it should be unnecessary. I’d suggest fixing the export.lua in settings. Also, in the Simshaker Settings tab there is a frame rate limiter setting. You might play with that, IIRC is reduces the frequency of simshaker polling DCS in order to minimize performance impact. With my new rig (5800X3D/3080) I don’t notice any impact on performance in VR with it running or not.
One thing to note is that everyone’s physical setup will greatly affect things. I built a new sim pit and used a surplus military aircraft seat; being aluminum it was much lighter than my plywood seat. When I first tried it out with the same pucks placed in the same spots, the effects were eye-wateringly powerful. Your vision would literally blur; probably not a healthy thing and certainly annoying in VR.
My settings all had to be turned down significantly, where I used to run things around 25-30 for most effects, I’m now starting at 1-3 and turning a few up as high as 15. This is with the amps dialed at half or less. YMMV.
My, what large pucks you [must] have there 
Yeah, I recommended that mostly cus, well, a while back it wasn’t updating so I ‘hit that’ [button]. And it worked. So I keep hitting it out of habit. But that was a a while ago.
Similar rig here. I don’t notice much, if any either. I did notice a diff (~2-3%) on the older PC but it may have been the PC + DCS - been over a year ago since I ran that combo. Perhaps they improved something internally? Old PC only had 4 cores (I think); might have made a difference.
They’re the same pucks as before, it’s just that there’s practically no weight to the seat (maybe 8 lbs?) and so they can really shake like crazy, and the only thing to soak up the vibrations is ME.
A year or so ago I was having to occasionally refresh if simshaker stopped tracking with DCS, but that bug seemed to have been solved for me.
1 Like
Update: I experimented for a while tonight after the boss went off to bed.
Has anyone experienced only specific outputs from DCS registering through SSA? I get loads of AoA, G, tubulence and Cannon - chaff/flare works as well…but
Nothing from speed brake, canopy, landing/ground roll, or really anything else as best I can tell.
I sort of think that perhaps the NLR pad doesn’t have the frequency range available to execute on everything that’s sent its way, the way a transducer does?
Or could this be a Lua export issue?
Good question. I have encountered an issue where if my amps were set too low, certain effects wouldn’t be felt despite others coming through fine. So possibly?
That sounds familiar. I’ve noticed (using pucks) that my BIG one picks up the G/Stall (stuff you mentioned) well - really well. But the smaller puck has issues requiring requiring me to crank the values a bit more. In fact if I turn off the smaller one I don’t feel the flaps moving much. Hmm. Now I’m wondering…
Which pucks are you using? I’ve got four of the little (coffee mug size) Dayton TT25-16 bass shakers, and 2x Dayton Audio BST-1, which are larger (6"ish?) and way more powerful. For me, the little TT25s seem to pick up everything pretty well, but clip easier on higher amp settings/louder effects, so I keep their amps turned to about 1/3rd. The two BST-1s seem to have a harder time picking up small effects, and need their amps at about 1/2 to perform well. So in theory the TT25s handle the higher frequency effects, and the BST-1s take care of the low frequency ones. I just have to tune each module in Simshaker, as the default settings would probably liquify (wish I was joking) my eyeballs in short order, if they didn’t result in a divorce first (they would, believe me!).
My wife can always tell when I’m flying a new aircraft, at least before I started proactively turning everything to 1 and starting up from there.
One of those and the Butt Kicker - rewired to my amp - theirs melted on me; smoke, fire, smell, everything. I wasn’t happy.
LOL! Mine too. She snuck in and took a picture of me one evening; had a Mig on my six (turned around in my chair looking at a blank wall), seat shaking; VR googles one. She show’s it to her friends, “see what my crazy husband does…”
Mrs Whiskey has taken a similar video.
Thanks for the help troubleshooting fellows. I’m going to tinker a bit more this morning; but at this point I think I won’t be keeping the HF8.
My suspicion that it’s a DCS/lua export issue seems confirmed. I tested out MSFS, and everything seems as I would expect: I can feel flaps, gear turbulence, rollout, etc.
Also, the Huey in DCS feels much better than the jets.
If I delete the DCS export lua, will it just be recreated?
Yes, you can delete it (or rename it) and a new one should get created. Alternatively you can edit it with a text editor and clean it up. Or just run the ‘repair export lua’ option in Simshaker.
I prefer the repair so that the Vaicom calls in export.lua don’t get deleted too.
1 Like
Update, in case anyone else has the same issue.
My version of Sim Shaker was outdated for DCS 2.8, which caused some telemetry not to come through. I reached out to Andre and he caught it.
1 Like
Huh. I don’t have them all turned on so may not have noticed. Which ones where you not getting?
Thanks BTW.
For the jets, except the Tomcat, I was missing almost everything except G, stall and cannon. The Tomcat was fully operational.
Now that you mention it (Hornet anyway) it has for a while seemed like wing fold, flaps (and maybe another one that escapes me right now) are intermittent. I think that, on the first go it’s fine. On subsequent runs those are missing. Curious if that’s the case, and he fixes it.
If that app ever went away I’d put down everything else and write my own version. I can’t fly without it anymore.
2 Likes