Online flying

[Storebror]

Well that'll be much harder to achieve, but it matches my experience that you're usually joining after all Clowns have left.
At 2100 our time, missus expects me to give my full attention to her.
As I'm not prepared to be divorced, I'm afraid I'll have to wait for a day when missus is "out of office" in that case.

Cheers!
Mike

[John Cartwright]

We normally login to the SAS server around 1800 CUT (GMT) on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Sounds viable.
We're GMT+1 here in germany at winter times, so this would be 1900 for Skylla and me, basically the time we meet anyway - if we do. It's a random thing

Can't run Bos

HDD space all occupied by ροяη?

Cheers!
Mike

No, no porn, don't like watching any kind of sport I can't join in !

Rather old rig is all.......and had to be 32bit for the software I ran afore retiring. Unable to upgrade due to Daughter 2 (@ Uni in Central London) messaging me on a regular basis, (like 2 hours ago) 'Dadeee I've run out of moneeeeey!'

[=CfC=Father Ted]

Rather old rig is all.......

As I understand it, if you can run RoF, you can run BoX.  Maybe not maxed-out on the GFX, but it should work.

Anyway,  i know I'm not often about these days, but am keen to to try BoS in friendly MP skies.

[=CfC=Bounder]

Mike and Skylla,
Many thanks for getting the BOS server up and running so quickly.

Those of us that have the prog managed a few sorties last night and it highlighted the amount of work we all have especially with key bindings.
Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago: only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI making it so much harder to get key assignments working without duplication.......never mind......we will just have to work around it.

Bounder

[Storebror]

As I understand it, if you can run RoF, you can run BoX.

Not quite. There's no BoX for 32Bit OS.
See the full matrix here, but remember: For Rise of Flight these are the recommended values while for BoX it's the minimum:

Code Select Expand

                      Rise of Flight                   Battle of <...>
                     
OS (32 Bit)  Windows® XP/Vista/7/8/10                      -
OS (64 Bit)  Windows® XP/Vista/7/8/10               Windows® 7/8/10
CPU          Intel® Coreâ,,¢ 2 Quad / i5/i7 2.6 GHz+   Intel® Coreâ,,¢ i5/i7 2.8 GHz+
GPU          GeForce GTX 260+/Radeon HD5850+        GeForce GTX 660+/Radeon HD 7770+
VRAM         1GB+                                   2GB+
RAM          4GB+                                   4GB+
DirectX      9/11                                   11

Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago

Very true.
I've got a further Saitek Throttle Quadrant together with my X52, but in BoX I don't have enough axis to assign even just to keep the X52 busy.
Toggle keys all over the place with lack of switches and axis.
I think it's a too small niche from the devs point of view.

only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI

IIRC Shift + Ctrl work fine, but Alt and Windows keys don't.

Best regards - Mike

[skylla]

Those of us that have the prog managed a few sorties last night and it highlighted the amount of work we all have especially with key bindings.
Such a shame that the developers have not made the use of HOTAS software compatible (such as Saitek X52) after repeated requests over a year ago: only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI making it so much harder to get key assignments working without duplication.......never mind......we will just have to work around it.

you speak from my heart there Bounder. That's exactly what I'm struggling with too and the one thing that truly annoys me in BoX atm.

only single key entries without the use of shift, ALT or Windows keys are sensed by the key assignment GUI

IIRC Shift + Ctrl work fine, but Alt and Windows keys don't.

Sorry, I cannot confirm Mike .. any control assigned to Shift / Ctrl / Alt will work only flawed for me if at all.

[Storebror]

Interesting.
I'll check that when I get the chance to.
If I get it to work, what do you owe me?

Cheers!
Mike

[John Cartwright]

To confirm what Ted says, after the large update I now get an pop-up saying I can't launch as o/s not compatible.

[=CfC=Bounder]

Many thanks Chaps for all the valuable info......

BD.....we will still fly 1946 for a while to come.....hope you can get an upgraded box of tricks sometime soon.

Bounder

[CFC_Conky]

Yeah, just buy a new computer BD, you don’t have to eat every day, do you?

Make sure the dogs are fed though  .

Pip, pip,
Conky

[Storebror]

Sorry, I cannot confirm Mike .. any control assigned to Shift / Ctrl / Alt will work only flawed for me if at all.

Please define "flawed".
I regularly have issues with all kind of "flag" keys (shift, alt, ctrl) set when I have Alt+Tabbed out of the game inbetween.
In that case, quite like in the good old IL-2 days, I hit left Alt twice, then Tab twice, and if this brings up any ingame dialog, hit escape to close it again.
This usually brings back my game to normal.
Two days ago I've had some issue where the Throttle Hat would no trigger my left/right wheel brake and instead would act like the POV 1 switch. But that switch doesn't even have any key assigned, so there must have been something strange going on elsewhere.

Either case, I've just checked my key assignments and the X-52 Pro mappings I use for BoX, lo and behold even the most basic thing uses Alt and Shift successfully for me:
Trigger 1 = Guns is mapped to Right Alt ("ALT GR") + Space
Trigger 2 = Guns+Cannons is mapped to Shift + Space

Both are working perfectly fine for me.

Best regards - Mike

[skylla]

"flawed" means:
I have set "lower flaps" on LShift+L, "toggle Cockpit light" on L.
WHen I now hit the button for "lower flaps" on my stick (mapped to Shift+L), the flaps will go down and the pit lights go on/off ..
Sometimes it's just the pit light switching and the flaps stay where they are.

I regularly have issues with all kind of "flag" keys (shift, alt, ctrl) set when I have Alt+Tabbed out of the game inbetween.

I do Alt+Tab out of the game a lot, so maybe that's the problem for me then.
Weird thing this, in '46 I never had these kind of issues ..

In any case, I went through all the control settings yesterday again and I'm now quite confident that I can set all important keys I want to map on the stick without having to access an Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Windows combinations .. we will see how that works out ...

[CFC_Conky]

Key binding is trickier than in IL2:1946, one of the nice features however, is the ability to map multiple functions onto one key.

For example, the La-5 has both inlet and outlet cowl flaps, in real life, if you adjust one you usually have to adjust the other so I've bound the functions to one key. You miss out on a bit of fine tuning for that last one or two km/h but for me it's a 'bush pilot' solution that works well enough.

I try not to let perfect get in the way of good enough 

Pip, pip,
Conky

[Storebror]

I have set "lower flaps" on LShift+L, "toggle Cockpit light" on L.

Yesterday an hour after having posted my last post, I thought "oh wait, he might have..." - just that.
Yes, I confirm that "shift + something" and "just something" key settings don't work if you map it to X-52 buttons.
It works with the hardware keyboard, but doesn't work with the software emulation layer from the X-52 software.
Not sure if you can really blame BoX for it, could as well be a design flaw in the X-52 software.
From a programmers point of view, I'm a bit curious how Saitek could have beefed up their part, as you would usually simulate keypresses with the windows api keybd_event() method, with a sequence like "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP".
On the receiving end, if I were BoX programmers, I'd just process the stream of incoming keyboard messages and toggle shift,ctrl,alt flags accordingly to match the key presses.
However it could also be that instead when a keypress e.g. for "L" is being received, BoX checks if that key exists in the mapping with different flags (Shift or not) and if it does, check the Shift state using GetAsyncKeyState.
That would fuck things up because GetAsyncKeyState checks the physical Shift key state, not something it's been mapped to.
However the BoX mechanism must be a little more tricky, as apparently Shift is recognized, but they recognize a false "unshifted" L keypress as well.
This rather looks like the "Shift KEYUP" event timing is messed up... maybe Saitek sends a "SHIFT -> L -> SHIFT KEYUP -> L KEYUP" sequence instead of "SHIFT -> L -> L KEYUP -> SHIFT KEYUP".
God knows... only Saitek and 777 could shed a light on this.

For the moment what works for me is to avoid such combinations of keys with and without flag keys, that's why my gun triggers both use some kind of flag key, that way BoX successfully can distinguish both.

one of the nice features however, is the ability to map multiple functions onto one key

This also comes handy for the lots of functionalities that are similar in their meaning, but differ in the settings from plane to plane.
Elevator trim comes to my mind here...

Best regards - Mike

[CFC_Conky]

Hey Bounder,

Regarding the pricing of the other installments in the BoX series, since one can fly online on all the maps in the series, an alternative could be to just purchase some of the collector aircraft. I took the Yak-1b up for the first time today and it is an even nicer ride than the Spitfire. An absolute dream to fly, a stable gun platform, and the visibility can't be beat with it's bubble canopy.

Pip, pip,
Conky