Force feedback rudder pedal support?

[Samuli Sutinen]

Hello, I always liked FsLabs Airbus due to the level of realism. However there are already many A320 series add-ons are available between P3D, X-Plane and MSFS, ToLiss being the ONLY developer that has implemented Force feedback pedals support so far to their products as far as I know.

 

My question is, do you in FsLabs have implemented Force feedback rudder pedals sync with the rudder pedals in the sim? In other words, do force feedback pedals move in sync when applying rudder trim?

 

It is important for me as I need an add-on for MSFS with which I can properly simulate engine failure scenarios with my Brunner rudder pedals.

 

Thanking you in advance for your answer.

[Yuchen Yan]

Toliss has a system to calculate the moment on the control surface, which they mentioned in FSWeekend early this year as a part of the hydraulic failure simulation iirc. Because of how the flight dynamic model works in X-Plane, they can acquire the force on control surfaces easily. It's similar to the "XP-Force" plugin works in MSFS2020 and X-Plane.

However, FSL's Airbus uses a different flight model, which works intrinsically different from the blade element method thus the force on the control surface can't be directly acquired.

[Samuli Sutinen]

Thank you for the answer!

The way I understand your answer is that you’re talking about force.

Force to be applied on the rudder pedals can be adjusted with the hardware’s own software. In the Airbus, the force applied on the control surfaces are the same irrespective of airspeed, altitude, number of operating hydraulic systems, etc… as it is FBW.

 

Might be simple to mention but more complicated to implement, and I am not a programmer, but the only thing required would be to have the hardware rudder pedals position directly linked to the rudder pedals position in the sim, so that when AP is controlling the rudder, or while trimming, the hardware rudder would move in sync with the rudder’s position.

 

Exactly like the sim’s rudder moves when hardware rudder pedals are depressed, but on the opposite way, sim’s rudder position commanding hardware pedal’s position.

[Yuchen Yan]

Oh, indeed I was wrong about the aerodynamic force part.

I read FCOM and found that the mechanical linkage from the pedal is to the rudder hydraulic actuator, not the rudder itself. So the aerodynamic force is indeed decoupled with the pedal.

However, on the A320 CEO, the yaw axis is not controlled by fly-by-wire. There's a yaw-damper, travel limit, and trim of which only the trim has the feedback to the pedal.

I'm not familiar with Bruner's rudder (I can't afford it obviously). But I imagine it can simulate the feedback based on preset parameters and telemetry data from the game. Can it read the rudder trim value?

[Samuli Sutinen]

I currently fly another Airbus aircraft, so can’t confirm that 100%, but sounds about right. In all Airbus FBW aircrafts that I know the rudder feedback for the pilots works the same.

 

Unfortunately, like I was mentioning earlier, my programming skills are litteraly none, so I can only guess it can. That’s in my understanding what ToLiss somehow added to their coding.

 

i do believe that Brunner has documents available for developers regarding how to implement the functionality.

 

I will try to find and quote an answer from their technical team regarding the variables that it reads.

[Samuli Sutinen]

I found an answer from Diego from Brunner that I quote below:

 

”

CLS2Sim does not support setting custom variables for Prepar3D, MSFS X or MSFS 2020.

Brunner provides their data and APIs to third-parties for interfacing, but will not implement support for any custom aircraft itself. 

APIs are accessible under https://cls2sim.brunner-innovation.swiss/

”

 

CLS2Sim is Brunner’s software

 

let me know if this is of any help