https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-radiosetup.jpg

The Radio / Joystick setup page is where you can setup your radio, or joystick, make sure it's working and remap the controls to suit the mode you like to fly in.

Connecting your RC Radio to your computer

This is the best way of connecting to the sim. An RC radio offers a far better flying experience than a traditional joypad due to the length and travel of the sticks.

- Connect Directly with a USB cable

Many of the newer RC radios have a USB connection that can work both as a way of access your radios internal memory (or memory card) or allowing the radio to act as a USB joystick. Popular radios that have this capability include the FrSky Taranis range and the Jumper series. For additional notes on connecting specific radios, see this page https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/taranis.jpg

- Connecting via a trainer port to a "USB Dongle"

For radios without a USB port, many will have a trainer port of some kind. This can normally be attached to a USB Dongle that will, again, act as a USB joystick and translate your stick inputs into joystick movements. There is a huge variety of these USB dongles, and some are better than others. Please see this page for some additional information about using them. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/Dongle.jpg

- Using a flight controller

If you have a flight controller on Betaflight 3.4 or above which has at least an F4 processor, then you can make a very quick change in Betaflight to allow you to use it as a USB joystick. There is a little setup, and you'll need to have a receiver attached so your radio can talk to it, but you get good stick resolution and you don't have to tether your radio to your computer, so it's quite a good option. Once again, see this page for information on how to set this up.

Setting up your Radio ready to use in the sim

Once you have your radio connected to your computer, using whatever means you have available, the name of it should appear under the "Radio/Joystick" title. Depending on the type of radio, and the connection method you are using, it won't always be obvious. For example, whilst a FrSky Taranis Joystick will appear as "FrSky Taranis Joystick", USB dongles appear as all manner of titles such as "Saili Simulator", "PPM" and simply "Unknown". Whilst an F4 flight controller may appear as "STM32 Virtual Comport in FS mode". If your joystick doesn't appear, but you also see the text "(Alternate Joystick detected)" under the joystick name, then it may indicate that your joystick isn't seen as the primary joystick on your system. in which case read down further on this page to "Multiple joysticks".

- Creating and setting up a model on your radio

Depending on the type of radio you are using, you should create a model in the normal way, but you should turn off any internal or external RF module if possible. In OpenTX firmware this would look similar to the following picture. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/047-modulesetup.jpg

Your mixes should be setup as normal, we will use channels 1-4 for basic control inputs and two additional channels assigned to switches if you want to be able to assign the Flip and Reset commands to a switch. 2 position switches are recommended for this, and momentary switches work best. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/047-mixscreen.jpg It's important to make sure you don't have any trim applied, dual rates, or expo as this can all be setup in the sim.

- Checking that the sticks respond

The virtual radio displayed on the screen will show your stick movements. In many radios this will work straight away, but on others you may find that your physical stick movements to not correspond to the virtual sticks, or that some controls don't respond at all. This is a simple case of radios using slightly different ways of talking to a host computer. If all of your control respond correctly, then you are set - no need to do anything else. If this doesn't happen, you need to do "Calibrate Sticks" but first check that the Mode you fly in is set correctly.

- Mode Setting

The sim defaults to using mode 2 in flight, but will support modes 1-4. To change the mode, simply click on the "Mode 2" text and it will change to mode 3, 4 and then loop around to Mode 1. If you change the mode, odds on you will at the very least need to use the "Remap Controls" option, but you may also need to "Calibrate Sticks"

- Calibrate Sticks

If any part of your control input doesn't work when you connect your radio, the "Calibrate Sticks" option should be your first port of call. When you click on it, the Sim will ask you to perform 2 basic procedures. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-calibration-all.jpg Firstly you will be asked to centre all your sticks. You have 5 seconds to do this - when the timer hits 0, it takes the position the sticks are in as the centre point. After the setting the centre point, you'll be prompted to "Move all sticks around" - this time with a 10 second timer.
https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-calibration-all2.jpg What you are being asked to do is move all your sticks to their full extents and any switches you want to use back and forth. The easiest way of doing this is to move both sticks in full circles a few times and click your switches on and off. When the timer reaches zero, your sticks should be calibrated. However, this won't fix the mapping of your physical sticks to the virtual sticks on-screen. For this, use the "Remap Controls" option.

- Remap Controls

This is the option to use (after going through the calibration) if your sticks don't match what the on-screen sticks are doing, or any controls appear to be missing. Once you click on the "Remap Controls" button it will start to prompt you to move your sticks for each control. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-remap.jpg When you are asked to move a stick, for example for "Pitch" move the stick you wish to use for your pitch input all the way forward. In the case of a mode 2 radio, you'd move your right stick. You are given 5 seconds to move the desired stick, and once the stick's movement is detected you'll see a "Control Reassigned" message, and the Sim will prompt for the next control input. This should have all your physical sticks assigned to the correct on-screen sticks, but if the controls are responding in the opposite direction to what you expect, then you can reverse them in the Sim. If for any reason, your stick wasn't detected when you attempted to remap, then you should take a look at the Radio Debug screen to help determine what might be wrong.

The Ramap controls option is intended for a first time setup in order to get the basic sticks working. Be aware that using this option will remove any previous mapping you have setup, so if you just want to remap another control use the Advanced Setup (described later in this page)

- Reversing a control

Once again, radios are odd things, and the mapping of the stick inputs and the direction they go in once connected to a computer are seemingly quite random. It's very simple to reverse controls of any of the stick inputs in the sim. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-reverse-throttle.jpg Just click on the text of the input you want to reverse. In the above screen, we've reversed the throttle control by clicking on "Throttle". This now shows as "Throttle (R)" where the "(R)" indicates it's reversed. To un-reverse the Throttle input, we can just click on it again. Reversing an axis is also available via the Advanced Setup option - either can be used.

- Deadzone adjustment

New to 0.47b is the ability to adjust the DeadZone of your controller https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-radiosetup.jpg

The DeadZone is the percentage amount of movement from the stick centre that is treated as zero movement, or still centred. It's pretty important in the case of gamepads like Xbox and Playstation as the sticks on these controllers are pretty loose and there's a lot of play in them. A proper RC radio is much more accurate thought and the default DeadZone of 10% is often too much for them. A lower DeadZone will make your sticks feel more responsive.

The way to work out if your DeadZone is low enough is to put it to zero and start flying. Put the quad in forward flight with the throttle on a let go of the sticks. The quad shouldn't drift to one side or another. If it does, try raising the DeadZone a few % and try again.

Setting up a Game Controller

Game controllers are fully supported by the Sim, and are a great way of having a (virtual) go at FPV before investing in a proper RC radio. The only issue with using a typical game controller are with the sticks themselves. A typical RC radio has longer sticks with much more travel in them than a gamepad. This allows the user much more finesse and better, more accurate control. Also with a radio the throttle stick (the default is the left stick Y-axis) doesn't spring back to the centre - which again allows more accurate control. In order to make this more accessible to player with gamepads, we've added the "Stick Type" option. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-gamepad-option.jpg I felt that the sprung throttle was the biggest issue when using a gamepad, so I've added an extra stick type (if you click on the word next to "STICK TYPE" it will toggle between Radio and Gamepad)

Using the stick type of radio will treat your joypad as a traditional radio. While you are welcome to try this out, I've found that using the stick type of "Gamepad" much easier. If you fly using the mode Gamepad, then this will treat the centre of the throttle stick as the zero point (or no throttle), so if you relax your stick then you'll always be coming off the throttle. In my testing it felt easier to push the stick up when you wanted more power than it was to have to pull it below the sprung centre when you wanted to descend.

Because the sticks on a gamepad are shorter, it's also very useful reduce their sensitivity. We start the Sim, by default on a low rate which will help the first timer, but it's also recommended to visit the Flight Assist Menu to select the Gamepad version of this beginner rate as well.

Whilst gamepads are supported, and due to their popularity are well known to the game engine, it doesn't mean that the stick mapping is likely to be correct, although there is often no need to calibrate. If your physical sticks don't match the on-screen movement of the virtual sticks, then follow the instructions for "Remap controls" and possible the "reversing controls" in the "Setting up your radio" section

Coping with having Multiple joystick detected

Whilst it might seem odd to have multiple joysticks connected to a PC (the days of multiple friends huddled around a single computer each with a joystick in hand seems long gone) sometimes other devices are detected as joysticks by the host operating system (mainly windows) in which case you'll want to make sure that your stick is selected by the sim. If multiple joysticks are detected, you'll see the text "(Alternate joystick detected)" under the name of the current joystick. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-alternative-joy.jpg If the name of the joystick/radio is the one listed, then there's no need for any further action, but if your joystick doesn't seem to be the current one, click on the "(Alternate Joystick Detected)" text, and you'll be presented with a drop -down list of the joysticks that are detected on your PC. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-choose-alternate.jpg Simply select the radio you are using. You may need to calibrate, and remap the controls of this joystick, but once selected from the drop-down list it will be saved as your preferred joystick and so will be automatically selected in subsequent sessions.

Using the Advanced Setup options

https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-advanced-setup.jpg New in 0.51b is the Advanced Setup option, which replaces the similar, but much more limited Radio Debug screen. The advanced setup menu was designed to make it easier to setup functions on axis, switches, or buttons. Or remap and calibrate individual controls.

The main screen shows you a representation of how your controller is setup. Moving any of the controls should cause silders to move or, in the case of buttons, a tick to appear in the check box. Allowing you to easily work out which control maps to what. The idea of this screen was to have the exact number of axis and buttons that the controller supports, but this has been limited (currently) because of the number of unknown varients of controllers. So Joysticks or radios that are "known" to the system, such as most game controllers or Taranis-style radios will show the correct numbers of axis/buttons, but in the case of unknown controllers, the sim will show 32 of each - but it should be pretty easy to see which are active, simply by moving your controls around and seeing which ones respond.

- Buttons Vs Axis

It would seem pretty simple to define what a button or an axis is - and in the case of a game controller it is. Axis are the sticks or analog triggers, while the buttons are.... well, the buttons. On radios though, it's a bit weirder. In the case of Taranis-style radios an axis is anything that's assigned to RC channels 1-8, whilst channels 9-32 are defined as buttons. This means that a switch on channel 8 is an axis, but the same switch on channel 9 is a button. It's a bit weird, that's the way OpenTX did it. Of course, in the many varients of USB dongles and others anything could be true!

- Assigning Functions to controls

https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-advanced-dropdown.jpg Assigning a control to a function is very simple. Use the dropdown menu to assign a function to the control you'd like. If you had already used the remap controls from the regular Radio Setup page then you'll probably have Roll/Pitch/Throttle/Yaw setup. The other functions you can assign to an axis are -

• Unassigned - This removes the function mapping from the control input
• Reset - Using reset will place your Quad/Plane back to it's original starting position on the ground
• Flip - If you have crashed upside down, use Flip to flip yourself back the right way up, whilst keeping your position on the map
• Cam Pan - (Plane only) use this control to pan the FPV camera left and right
• Cam Tilt - (Plane only) use this control to tilt the FPV camera up and down
• Cam Angle - (Quad only) use the control to tile the FPV camera up in a range of 0 to 70 degrees
• FOV - Cycle through the field of view settings in the FPV camera
• Flt Mode - (Quad only) Toggle between Acro and Angle mode
• Ext Cam - Toggle between FPV view and an exterior chase camera
• LOS/FPV - Toggle between FPV and line of sight mode

The camera options (Cam Pan/Cam Tilt/Cam Angle) are designed to be used with a slider or potentiometer knob for the best result. As such they are not available to remap to a button control. All the other functions (aside from the main stick inputs) are though. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-advanced-button-dd.jpg One thing to note is that you cannot assign the same function to multiple axis or multiple button controls. If you map a control to an axis where it's assigned to an existing axis already, the existing mapping will be removed. You can, should you wish, assign the same control to an axis and a button.

- Reversing controls

https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-advanced-reversing.jpg Axis controls can be reversed by simply clicking in the "Rev" box. Any controls already reversed in the Radio setup screen will also show here. The tick box only shows when an axis has been mapped to a function.

- Individual Calibration

By observing the movement of the on-screen sliders, you should easily be able to tell if any of your controls need calibrating. Typically you might find that the slider doesn't move the full extents of the slider. If this is the case, simply click on the Calibrate button. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-individual-cali.jpg From this pop-up screen, you can observe your axis movement once again, start the calibration, or close the window without calibrating. There's also an option to specify that that axis has no centre point. This is for axis that don't have a set centre point. Examples are a 2-way switch on a radio, or an analog trigger on a game controller. If you want to calibrate one of these, tick the box first. https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-individual-cal2.jpg Starting the calibration will first prompt to centre your stick/switch (unless you've ticked the "axis has no centre point" box) after which it will prompt you to move this control to and from it's min/max position. The Centre/Min/Max point numbers are included here just as reassurance that the movement is being recognised. (Internally an axis position goes from -1 to +1 but with many more decimal places that is show here) https://github.com/CurryKitten/CurryKitten-Sim/blob/master/Wiki/051-individual-cali3.jpg After the calibration is complete, the pop up window will tell you so and return you to the initial calibration pop-up where you can close the window or redo the calibration if necessary.