Modding the Cougar - Force Controlled Cougar (FCC). 22nd December 2002

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A pressure driven Cougar

So what is the FCC? You probably heard a little about it from our forum and some guys were even able to test a prototype at the LLTM in the Netherlands or at my home in December.
For those not having had that chance, I'll try to translate the feeling of the stick in words…Bear with me, English is not my mother tongue and what I am trying to achieve is not the easiest thing to do ;)

The FCC was first known as the Über3. Arend van Oosten and Ian Johnston decided to work together on the project. But for reasons that are theirs, Arend and IJ decided that the Ü3 would be done by Arend in Holland and thus named FCC.

The FCC is a motionless adaptation for the Cougar stick. It transforms the Cougar as we know it in a completely new stick, quite similar to the real F-16 stick. The handle doesn't move and axis movement are transformed electronically to the computer according to the amount of force you use to move the stick. When the F-16 was introduced, pilots had some difficulties to get accustomed to the fixed stick (at least in the Belgian airforce) as a consequence a small directional play was introduced to allow the pilots to notice in which direction they were moving the stick.
As the real thing, the FCC will also feature the directional play. It's kind of strange to induce on purpose an amount of play in a Cougar (we all know the goal of all mods is to delete all the play problems) but this kind of play has no bad meaning and is introduced to help the users (as the pilots) to get acquainted quickly with the stick. Indeed, when the stick is really motionless, it's sometime weird not to have a sensitive feedback for the direction of movement. The directional play gives us that physical feedback.

The FCC is a drop in mod installable in a regular Cougar base. It consists of a force captor PCB and mechanical parts to fix the handle shaft and to make the link between the handle and the force captor. It replaces the following parts from the original Cougar:
• X and Y gimbals
• X and Y potentiometers and casing
• Centre shaft
• Springs
• All four endplates.
• The centre wire connector.

All the wires come preinstalled on the FCC mod. Both the 3 wires connectors to connect in the pots plug and the 5 wires centre connector (from the handle) are supplied and soldered; all you will need to do (after having installed the mechanical part in your Cougar base) is to plug the crimp connectors in the PCB socket and you can go flying, No soldering required.

When I first heard about the FCC, I just had ordered an über2 from Ian – and I really wasn't interested in a pressure driven Cougar. Then, when visiting the Low Land Tiger Meet in Lelystad (The Netherlands) Eagle proposed me to have a flight with his FCC prototype. I sat down in his cockpit, took the FCC in my right hand and…fell in love with the damn thing.
In the past years, I've had the immense chance to fly quite often the block15 flight simulator of the F-16 in the Belgian airforce and guys; I found exactly the same feeling in eagle's pit with the FCC. I could tell about my feelings of the FCC for hours but it wouldn't matter. The important thing is to try it out. Because whatever I say, the first time you try it, it comes as a revelation. First I thought it was only me. But so far, all the guys who came at my house to try the pre-prototype (without directional play) had the same reaction. Conclusion? Well I'm sick – but I'm not the only one ;)


So what?

Being a motionless stick and designed after the F-16, the FCC takes all its meaning in Falcon4 or any other F-16 simulator. But I would say that in general it suits fine any jet simulator. Personally I flew the FCC with F4, Lomac, FA-18 (Janes) and FS2004 (jets) and I'm pretty impressed with the way it behaves. As a general rule of thumb for all these realistic freaks out there, it's great for all fly by wire aircraft.
Now all prop drivers here, I have to say an Über2 or an Evenstrain is much better for dogfights with IL-2 or whatever prop driven aircraft simulator. The FCC works fine but it's not his purpose to shine in these sims. It's mainly designed for jet sims.

But what about the guys doing both? Will they need a second Cougar to be able to continue doing both type of simulator? Well there are ways to overcome the problem.

Imagine this case. One guy really wants a motion stick to fly Forgotten Battles and a FCC to fly Falcon. There is no chance this guy will stop playing FB just to do jet sims and the FCC is bothering him in FB. So he is seriously considering buying another Cougar because disassembling the FCC to assemble the soft Cougar is not an option ...but then buying another Cougar is not an option due to price either.
So what would one need to allow easy switching? Let's see. The handle can be used on both Cougar. So obviously he would need another Cougar base. Anything else? Well yes, the PCB of course and the USB cable. But then these two are easily taken off of the first Cougar to be used in the second one….if only he could find a base!
Got it? The base is all you would need to allow easy switching. As for the problem of finding Cougar bases, Well so far it's dependant on users smartness:
Aimsworth is selling Cougar base for pit builder. These bases should easily mount the FCC. So that's already an opportunity! CW is in contact with Jürgen to see if we can start a cooperation.
• We also would like to present this problem to RealSimulator and see if we can work something out together. As you see we won't neglect any way to reach our goal.
• Some pit builders might wish to sell their base, especially the ones having already bought the Aimsworth Cougar base. Others interested in Debequem or Bricklayer pressure driven Cougar base might be interested to sell theirs too.
• And how about trying to install the FCC in a F22 base? That still needs to be tested but I sure will as soon as possible.

In any case, we have the plan to source Cougar base (we even asked Guillemot to sell us some) and I am sure CW will find an easy solution for this problem. Having another Cougar base to install the FCC in is just the way to go. All the user would need to do would be to disconnect the Cougar, open it, take the PCB and the USB cable out of it. Install them in the other base, snap the connectors in, switch the handle from one base to another one and voilà!


Force, what is force anyway?

Here comes the real difficult part – I'll try to give you a feel of the beast.
Some might think that since the stick is motionless there is nothing to talk about. That's all wrong, The FCC is taking quite advantage of the axis shaping of the CCP !

First, I can't stop thinking that all the CURVE statements syntax were created for the FCC, although the FCC didn't exist at the time. I'm sure the Cougar team had something in mind when creating the curve settings. Indeed in the past two years, I hardly used the curve settings but with the FCC it's something you will get used to.

Let's start by doing a refresher course. There are plenty of ways to apply a change in the axis response for the Cougar. You do it with the curve settings and you can save them in a TMC file (profile) from the CCP or apply change on the fly by using the curve statement in your TMJ files. Another interesting aspect for the FCC is the deadzone. You can apply three on each axis: lower, centre and upper. These are assigned from the CCP, axis shaping tab and can be applied to the device or saved in a profile (TMC) The most important deadsone for us is the centre one. The ideal setting is when the centre deadzone covers a little bit less than the directionnal play. Quite easy to implement.

Obviously, for the FCC, only two axes are of interest: X and Y, both referred at the same time as JOYSTICK. I started by applying curve settings via the CCP, just to test the FCC with different settings.
• With a curve of -32, you need both hands and even one foot to get the airplane moving!
• With a curve of +32, you move the airplane quite easily with two fingers – and it's overly sensitive. I remember James writing in the Foxy manual that he doubted a curve of +32 would ever be applied. Well with the FCC it's doable but you need a large centre deadzone to overcome the fluctuation period around the centre of the axis.

Anyway, it was done for testing purpose and to illustrate the fact that the FCC can be set to the amount of force you like. I gave you the two extremes; now let's find the setting that suits me best.
All tests were done with Falcon 4 and were repeated for different guys.
I created a very small test TMJ file with the following lines:

BTN T7 /P Master_Mode_Air CURVE (JOYSTICK, 11)
/R ICP_NAV CURVE (JOYSTICK, -5)
BTN T8 /P Master_Mode_Ground CURVE (JOYSTICK, 0)
/R ICP_NAV CURVE (JOYSTICK, -5)

That bit of code will assign curve settings according to the master mode given by the T7/T8 position.
• Up is Air to Air mode with a curve of +11
• Centre is Nav mode with a curve of -5.
• Down is Air to Ground mode with a curve of zero.

So that would give us a pretty hard stick in NAV, a normal stick in AG and a soft sensitive response for AA.
Bear in mind that I'm showing just an example, the possibilities are endless and you could apply a different curve for refuelling, dogfights, Missile mode, … you name it. You might even create a second curve "trim system" on one of the rotaries. Some users might want to always keep the same curve – their preference going to a fixed curve settings applied from a profile (TMC) or directly by using the USE CURVE syntax in the TMJ declaration. Other might want a fixed curve for the Y axis and a stronger one for the Y axis,…

The change between AG and NAV mode is hardly noticeable – on the other hand, going to air to air mode really gives it a kick. In dogfight you need to pull more Gs and the purpose of the higher curve setting is to allow you to get there without pulling too much force on the stick. You would succeed in getting 9G with a zero curve but you would start to feel some pain and probably need an armrest as in the real aircraft. With a higher curve you get there more easily. On the other hand, not pulling 9G makes you conserve higher level of energy which is not a bad thing in dogfight either…again; it's a matter of perspective. Personally, after having flown the FCC in F4 for two weeks, I start to like a curve of +8 both on the Y axis and X axis.


It's a good compromise between reality an fatigue ;)
I'm no real F-16 driver but with my past experience of the F-16 flight simulator; I would say a curve of 4 or 5 is the closest it is to the real thing.
To really give an example of the different curve settings, here is a short Falcon 4 ACMI file where I fly some sustained turn (mhahaha, to sustain my turn, I should stop writing review and tests and start to fly F4 seriously) and switch from one curve to another with the dogfight switch as explained above: Download the file (29k)
Load the ACMI, go into Isometric view and activate the turn radius and turn rate labels and set wingtrails to max.
Three circles were made. Each with a different curve setting and I tried to maintain the same level of pressure on the stick throughout all three turns. The first turn is made in AA mode (curve of 11) reaching 8G and giving an average turn rate of 18°/s. The second turn is made with the NAV curve (-5) for only 2.5G giving a rate of only 4°/s. The last turn was made in AG mode at 4.5 - 5G with a curve of zero giving 12°/s average rate of turn.

That's it for the capabilities of the FCC to take advantage of the Cougar programming but what does a pressure driven Cougar brings relative to a regular motion Cougar? Well for the Viper drivers out there, the answer is obvious. It brings immersion and a new realistic feeling. But it also brings something else. It is much more precise than any stick you can dream of. Think about a 4 points roll – it's one of the aerobatic figures very difficult to do. And with the FCC, when you stop the movement, the airplane stops rolling, unlike a potentiometer there is no latency during which the stick comes back to the centre position and pot value are still being decreased. With the FCC, when you stop pulling, the induced movement stops. That makes for a much better 4 points roll.
Okay, you still would have to learn how to perform that manoeuvre but the FCC helps a lot to stop the roll at the correct angle.

Another great feature of the FCC is energy management. Since you need to pull harder on the stick you tend not to go pulling as hard as with any other stick. You have some sort of physical resistance to refrain you. That might start as a great disadvantage but once (and if) you master it, you will be more deadly because you will conserve more energy than your opponent and all you have to do is wait until he hangs out of the sky to take him.
All right, It's not the FCC who makes the ace – it's the man behind the stick. Still the FCC is a formidable tool to get there.


What lies ahead

So far the FCC I'm testing is the alpha prototype. It was done with plumber pipes in a very unorthodox way – it has no directional play but works in game like a charm. The real prototype was received last week. It has some directional play and the mechanical parts are made out of stainless steel. The mechanical parts consist of a plate supporting the new motionless centre shaft and another plate to support the force captor PCB. The two are interconnected together with the 4 spring mounts which introduce the directional play.
As you see the FCC design is pretty simple. It consists of simple parts and very few movements. As such wear will not be a problem on the mechanical parts. Besides, the stainless steel will probably survive the cougar itself.
The force captor shouldn't be a problem either. It's a part used extensively in the computer components business by big companies and they don't suffer major problem. Although, to make our own experience, I'm currently trying to break the one in the prototype I have. So far I had no success and believe me; it went in some hands I wouldn't give my regular Cougar to.

In any case should any problem arise, Arend Van Oosten aka "WhiteEagle" who is the guy behind the FCC is committed to provide a perfect service to this community. I know him and he has all my trust in this. He's also looking for quality products not failing the Cougar modders philosophy.

The prototype is now undergoing extensive testing and a small beta test will probably be done with a few of pre production units. After the success of the beta test, the first production batch of 25 units will be made available for preorder. Payment will be required in advance and it shouldn't take any longer than six weeks to ship the first 25 orders.
The price is estimated today between 250 and 300 euros without taxes and excluding shipping. That may very well vary in the future weeks. Also if it is possible to source Cougar bases, the FCC might be offered for sale preinstalled in a Cougar base (without PCB) at another price.

Don't hesitate to comment this article

Olivier "Red Dog" Beaumont
Thanks to Arend Van Oosten for lending me his own proto so I could test it properly for this review.