Air Manager misses clicks when turning the Knobster

[sjbell]

Hi,

I have seen this issue for a very long time, but I spent some time today experimenting and eliminating possible causes.

I am in the process of doing my airplane instrument rating so I use Air Manager panels with the GNS 430 and GNS 530 and use Reality XP.

When using the Garmins in real aircraft I have been taught to "count the clicks". ie. Glance over, see what needs to be changed, and then look back to your primary instruments while turning the knobs the required number of clicks.

Unfortunately the Knobster when used with Air Manager will frequently miss clicks when turning either the outer or inner knobs. The KnobXP software works perfectly in this regard and NEVER misses a click.

To test this further I developed a custom instrument that simply increments or decrements internal variables. So with no calls to X-Plane (and X-Plane not even running - eliminating the plugin) we are still missing clicks.

It does seem to be somewhat related to acceleration. If you set 1 for the acceleration parameter of the dial_add function that appears to do a little better than not specifying acceleration at all, but it is still occasionally missing clicks.

The fact that KnobXP works perfectly, my custom instrument eliminated X-Plane and the Air Manager plugin, makes it look like the issue is likely in the Air Manager software itself.

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?

Thanks,
Steve

[ericrolfe]

Did you solve this problem yet? If you like, I can try it with my set up. Just send the siff for your instrument.
I haven't noticed this problem with my set up - I'm using a DIY knobster.
On the other hand, I don't count clicks...

Cheers,
Eric

[sjbell]

Hi Eric,

I apologize for the delay. I thought I had enabled notifications on this thread but apparently I didn't.

The problem for me still remains. It is very noticeable when using the GNS 430 and GNS 530 overlays. The knobster will miss around 25-33% of the clicks.

I've attached the siff file for my test instrument. The right (NAV) side has the knob set to directly increment/decrement the large and small count on the display. It works directly and does not interact with X-Plane. For me it will miss a click about 10% of the time.

It would be great if you could test it please on your set up and see if you get similar results.

My suspicion is that it is a coding issue, but dependent on clock speed. I started off life as electronic engineer and then moved over to software engineering and embedded systems, so I've seen this type of thing before. It definitely is worse when using more complex instruments. Also my set up is a little on the slow side; Xeon 4110 8 core/16 thread but with a 2.1 GHz clock speed. RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. Probably the majority of users are running at a higher clock speed and not seeing this issue.

KnobXP works perfectly, so this is only in Air Manager.

Thanks,
Steve

knobster-test.siff

(137.66 KiB) Downloaded 211 times

[Sling]

Is this a purchased or DIY knobster? If DIY what encoder?

[sjbell]

Hi Sling,

This is the Sim Innovations commercially manufactured knobster (HARDWARE__KNOBSTER_V2).

I have two of them. In both cases they work perfectly with the KnobXP software and never miss a click, but with Air Manager they miss clicks.

Steve

[Sling]

One for Corjan to investigate I suspect.

[Ralph]

Which version of Air Manager and which version of the flight simulator plugin are you using?

[sjbell]

Hi Ralph,

Air Manager 3.7.10.

Air Plugin 3.0 running under X-Plane 11.50 (64-bit).

Thanks,
Steve

[Ralph]

Can you download and install the latest plugin and try again? http://siminnovations.com/wiki/index.ph ... stallation

[sjbell]

Hi Ralph,

Air Plugin is now version 3.2.

Unfortunately this did not resolve the issue.

Thanks,
Steve