I added Panama Red's Thunder & Lightning mod. Immediately, I was pleased that I did so because the rumbling sound of thunder really adds so much to the atmosphere!

However, I did notice something strange. Every time the thunder roars (I've yet to see lightning), my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 stick vibrates. Sometimes too if I'm pitching up or doing some seemingly gentle maneuver, I can hear the sounds of my air frame stressing. It seems like the thunder is registering stress on my aircraft.

Unless there is a new weather phenomenon I've never heard of, this seems all wrong. The force feedback happened every single time thunder sounded, but the air frame stress sounds only happened every so often.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any way to fix this "bug"?

I'd hate to lose this wonderful feeling of thunder, but I don't think this is normal.

Guru

I also have a MS Force feedback stick. I don't think there are many of us here with one.
I haven"t used that mod since WOFF 3 and I don't recall that happening. I will test it out and report back.

Cheers

Thank you, Robert.

I have no idea what improvements (if any) have been made to the Ultimate Edition's weather engine, but thunder really, really adds so much to the sim. It would be a shame not to be able to use it. I can see it getting a little annoying after a while having feedback with every thunder strike.

Please let me know what you discover.

Guru;

I flew a QC mission with weather set to "Thunderheads" and when flying I heard the tunder but felt nothing on my stick. The only vibrations I got back during flight were a couple of shots when I approached stall speed while climbing up into the clouds. I was flying a Pup.

Maybe it is a scenario thing. What aircraft were you in and was it QC or Campaign mission?

Robert,

Oh . . . that's interesting.

I've been flying the B.E.2 training missions. Perhaps it's something to do with that.

I'll try another plane and see if this happens again. And I'll trying a Quick Combat fly around.

Thank you.

I used that mod a lot, but I noticed that when lightning struck my game would freeze momentarily. Have you had that happen to you?

Hey, Robert. I just flew a Quick Combat with a Nieuport 10 during a thunderstorm, and the exact same thing that I described before happened.

However, I don't know why I hadn't realized this before, but it hit me that while I get force feedback when I'm taxing or landing on the ground and when I fire my guns, I don't get any force feedback at all when I'm flying. I can bank, turn, pitch up and down, but . . . nothing, no forces at all.

Perhaps the strange lightning problem is related not to this mod but to my force feedback in general.

When I use FSX, Rise of Flight, and Cliffs of Dover, I have full and complete force feedback.

Here's an addendum to my previous message.

Now that I realized that my force feedback wasn't working as it should, I did a search and found an old post about this in which Oldhat gave a solution .

He recommended changing the FFB values for the elevators and ailerons in each plane's xfm files to 160 and -160 respectively.

I did this, and - low and behold - I finally had force feedback when I'm flying! (Thank you, Oldhat! Your one-and-a-half-year-old advice has drastically improved my enjoyment of this sim!)

I then did another flight through thunderheads, but - yet again - force feedback and air frame stress registered for every thunder strike.

I don't understand what would be causing this. I looked through all the files in Panama Red's mod, but none of them seemed related in any way to force feedback.

All my Thunder and Lightning Mod did was bring back the original CFS3 thunder and lightning.

I did tweak it so the thunder and lightning was at longer interval times between each strike versus the original thunder and lightning which was about every 10 seconds in CFS3.

Thanks for replying.

Yeah, I don't think what I'm experiencing is directly related to your mod, per say. It seems like the native thunder effects are triggering some kind of aircraft stress. Some how when thunder sounds some information is telling the sim to apply stress to my plane. This in turn causes the force feedback.

I just don't know how to correct this, and it's even more perplexing because I seem to be the only person experiencing this!

.

Perhaps the lightning-related FFB reactions are being caused by the sudden change in barometric pressure produced by the rapid heating of the air in the lightning channel. I'm sure the devs modeled this into the sim engine.




just kidding

.

This probably won't help you much but here is the result of my test. I flew an Albatros DIII (for my friend Olham ), with thunderstorms on and I deactivated my special flight FM so I was flying with stock WOFF UE FM's. I had force feedback effects on take off (ground bumps) and force feedback resistance when banking (this varies with the type of aircraft you fly and some have almost no feedback when banking.) I didn't however get any force feedback effects during lightning or thunder.

So what is the answer you ask? I really don't no. I would suspect that possibly you need to go back to complete stock WOFF UE and try it if you haven't already. Also try flying an Albatros DIII to experience banking resistance. If you don't get any then something is wrong and I suspect it is something with activated mods but that is just a guess.

Let me know how things go.

Robert,

Thank you so much for trying. I really appreciate your help here.

Yeah . . . I think (sometime) I'll try to deactivate everything and try different planes. I guess I can live without thunder if needs be.

By the way, can I ask you an additional question?

I wasn't getting any force feedback under stock FMs. However, when I altered the xfm files for the planes I was flying, I finally got force feedback. This came from the post I mentioned before that suggested changing the FFB values from 30 and -30 to 160 and -160.

This was for the Nieuports and I did the same for all Nieuports in the game. However, when I checked the Spads xfm files I noticed that there the FFB values were originally 78 and -80.

What I'm wondering is should I change the Spad values to 160 and -160 like the Nieuports or is there some determined ratio that I need to calculate and follow. 30:160 or something like that?

Thank you in advance if you can help. (And thanks again for the thunder experiment.)

The ForceFeedback setting are something you have to play with to determine an acceptable level. It really just needs to be strong enough to give you the feeling that there is a force at play when you move the stick and of course is very useful when approaching stall speed as it gives you a very positive input that you best take appropriate action. Without feedback you have no warning and must watch carefully your air speed indicator. Generally when landing or taking off, I generally don't wrap my hand fully around the stick and this avoids all the strong vibration that you would normally get and I believe prevents unnecessary stress on the stick. (I think you will understand this last point and how to achieve it.)

Here is a link to my dropbox that contains custom FM's for select aircraft. It is in JSGME Mod format so just put the folder into your mods folder and activate it to test. I suggest first you look into the folder to see which aircraft I have modded and then test them out. You should see some subtle feedback difference but also I have changed the flight handling characteristics for these aircraft but the new WOFF UE closely resembles those changes so you may not notice it. The changes primarily were to allow for more sustained side slip to reduce airspeed when landing. At any rate you can look at the files to see what the feedback settings are.

Best Regards;
Modded FM's

Robert,

Thank you so much. I'll try those out.

Interestingly, I too noticed that side slips were a bit . . . well . . . ineffective compared to my experiences in sims like Rise of Flight and FSX. There are times when you are trying to land in limited conditions, but side slips, which I've used quite effectively elsewhere, just weren't doing what I expected them to be doing.

I'm eager to try out your changes.

That's an issue with certain aircrafts in WOFF that has bothered me for quite a while now. It just feels so wrong that it breaks any kind of "immersion" whenever I use rudder -- and ROF taught me to use rudder a lot

I know what causes it, I've spent hours trying to fix it by editing XFM files, but either it is a fundamental flaw or I'm missing something.

Ankor if you look at my FM's you will see what I changed and I have been able to model sustained side slip. I do believe that OBD have modelled this more realistically in WOFF UE for the most part, at least for the aircraft I fly. I haven't tried them all and my FM is set up for specific aircraft. You can do likewise for any you wish to test.

Any questions just PM me.