FFB-Bridge 1.3 beta — Helicopter force feedback is here (testers wanted)

cool.. thanks.. will try it asap.

very nice yes I have microsoft ffb2 stick and excited to try this. I've flown real heli in real-life and will get back to you.

FTR does not work for me. I assigned the button in the hardware menu and enabled it, but it does not have any impact if I press it during flight. But I can feel cyclic damping. Using the Bell 206 profile.

Is there a way to debug if pressing the button reaches ffb-bridge ? Some tag on the dashboard or so ?

How can I turn an existing profile into a "helicopter profile" ? Just by setting one of the heli sliders ?

Thanks for your work !!

Is it working in the Flight Check? Or not there either?

Well... it now seems to work... not sure what happened before.

Flight Check works and in flight it also works.. with the 206 profile.

Maybe I was irritated because it did not release the forces completely ? Don't know.

Will keep an eye on it.

Sorry for that

No need for apologies - it might well be a transient bug! Keep an eye on it and let me know if it reoccurs. All feedback is valuable.

'How can I turn an existing profile into a "helicopter profile" ? Just by setting one of the heli sliders ?'

This question is still unanswered ;-)

Tuning -> Stick Feel -> Control System -> set to rotorcraft.

I'll move the Control System out of Stick Feel in the next beta - this now controls the whole class of the profile, so it needs to be its own top level setting.

FFB-Bridge wrote: Tuning -> Stick Feel -> Control System -> set to rotorcraft. I'll move the Control System out of Stick Feel in the next beta - this now controls the whole class of the profile, so it needs to be its own top level setting.

Thanks !

Anyone had any issues? Any feedback? Does it work as you expect?

Hi So I tested a little yesterday with my beloved MS FFB2 stick and so far found the following issues: 1- When running the flight test in (heli mode) the stick went crazy, so I had to bring down the damping setting in the hw section to 30% in order to tame it. 2-In the first 3 parts of the heli flight test(simulating parked/hover), there is always stick centering tension even though it says there not suppose to be any there. I did try actual flight in the sim (using the bell heli profile) and it did the same thing always having centering spring tension at parked/hover

Thanks, will look into this.

vracan wrote: Hi So I tested a little yesterday with my beloved MS FFB2 stick and so far found the following issues: 1- When running the flight test in (heli mode) the stick went crazy, so I had to bring down the damping setting in the hw section to 30% in order to tame it. 2-In the first 3...

Fixed the spring tension issue. I'll collect more feedback before I release a new build, but this is done.

Ok tested it first today. Problem with activating cyclic damping on Logitech Force 3D pro. Any setting above 5% gives heavy shake in stick. Only disabling helped me. Used the starter B206 profile

in_04 wrote: Ok tested it first today. Problem with activating cyclic damping on Logitech Force 3D pro. Any setting above 5% gives heavy shake in stick. Only disabling helped me. Used the starter B206 profile

Thanks, this is great since I have no way to test this stick. I have a solution coming up, in the meanwhile you can turn off the damper.

https://ffb-bridge.com/profiles/14-eurocopter-ec-135t1-search-and-rescue-eurocopter-ec-135t1-search-and-rescue

Thanks for this!

Also asking is it possible to add a "friction" type feel effect (where the effect is linear throughout stick travel)? This i what I felt when I tried to fly real heli in real life ( along with small damping). When I fly helicopter in sims I use microsoft tool to manually setup my ffb2 stick and the the effect is called "stick friction". Hopefully will be replacing using that tool with your app soon.

Let me know how you like the new version.

wow... FTR in 1.3 is a blast ..... so cool

Thank you for the quick update. I will test later. Question: in your note for the FTR "The cyclic is loose until you first use force trim; after that, it holds wherever you trimmed it." So are you saying in the initial hover the stick feels loose (except for damper effect), which is how it should be, but after I start flying forward and set FTR trim for forward flight and then come back to hover and re-trim, the centering tension will be still there?? If so that will be incorrect. Then would have to have another command key to release FTR or something. Every time in hover there should not be any centering tension

I have turned everything OFF .. just kept FTR at 100% .. and would wish to have more holding-force around the center. It's a bit like a "null zone". Is this something I can reach with one of the settings I turned off ? I tried w/o success.

Also I'm not sure if FTR now causes my AP trouble... but before I really blame it I need to do way more tests.

But it goes into the right direction :)

Ok force trim and force trim release varies across different kinds of helicopters.. this is a bit more involved that I thought. Let me improve this and push another build.

Regarding the null zone in FTR - yes, that has been improved, the new build will change this

Ok, quite a few updates.

• The hold is firm at the trim point now. It was a linear spring ramp with nearly zero force for the first bit of travel, the "null zone" feeling. It now behaves like the real magnetic brake: resists immediately, same override force at full deflection.

• Force trim on/off button. A second learnable button that works like the pedestal FORCE TRIM switch in the real ships: press once and the cyclic goes fully loose (hover work), press again and the brake grabs right where the stick is.

• Beep trim. Nudge your stick's hat switch and the trimmed position walks slowly in that direction with no FTR press needed. Works out of the box with the hat; hatless sticks can learn four buttons instead.

• Follow-up trim (AFCS ships). Optional: below 40 knots, steady stick pressure slowly re-trims toward the stick, which is apparently how the EC135/H225 family actually behaves in the hover.

• Every helicopter now gets the right trim style automatically. Load anything, from an EC135, to a Huey, or an R22 and the bridge picks the matching behavior: classic force trim (Bell/Sikorsky/military types), AFCS trim (Airbus/AW types), or no force trim with light trim springs (Robinsons and most light trainers, which don't have force trim).

There's a new Trim style picker in Tuning → Helicopter if you want to switch or fine-tune, and everything still saves per profile as before.

This is based on a list of all currently available first/third-party helicopters for MSFS 20/24 and XP12. I'm sure there are some missing ones, please let me know if something doesn't work.

I'm not sure about the auto-detection of the hat switch. Is that a good idea?

Here's the new build - https://ffb-bridge.com/beta

I'll update the main post later, leaving that version up for know.

about your question about the hat switch auto-detection, I am already using my hatswitch for other stuff so as long as we have option to either disable that beep-trim or be able to re-bind to buttons of our choice should be fine