Digital Fox Two Professional


		Digital Fox Two Professional Introduction I'm delighted to be able to introduce the newest member of the Fox Two editors, Digital Foxy. What on earth is all this about? Well, for some time now, I've been working with Bob "Sticky" Church who's developed replacement chips for the F-22 Pro, F-16 FLCS and F-16 TQS controllers. These chips are amazing and have revolutionised these controllers. To say that the best just got better, is somewhat of an understatement. I wrote an article for CombatSim on these chips, and my involvement with them, so if you don't know what I'm talking about, or haven't read the article, then head over to their site to read it. The latest information on these chips is available from Bob's site (http://home.att.net/~stickworks/), and you can order them from Flight Sim Central from this link: http://www.fscentral.com/fsc/thrusf22digu.html. Have a quick glance around the newsgroups, and various forums, and you'll see just how much people are loving them.


		Digital Foxy Building upon Fox Two Professional, Digital Fox Two Profesional, (or Digital Foxy as I call her) offers for the first time, a complete Windows interface that fully supports all the features of these new chips. Finally, after all these years, there is no need for any DOS software for your controllers. Digital Foxy, in conjunction with Bob's software that you install with the chips, offers a comprehensive Windows enviroment under which you can develop your files, and more. There are several reasons why you will want to get hold of Digital Foxy. Previous versions of Fox Two, including Fox Two Professional will work with the new chips, but several of their components will not, or are now redundant. Furthermore, they will not offer the support for the new programmability, and problems may arise with certain procedures. So let's look at a few aspects of the new Digital Foxy and discuss how it has changed to support these new chips ... First of all there has been significant rewriting of many procedures, to tighten things up, and to reduce the application's size, thereby making it faster and more efficient. The main executable file is now down to 3.38MB, as opposed to 5.06MB for Fox Two Professional. That's a hell of a reduction, and the result is very noticeable. The chips offer new programmability, which are fully supported with Digital Foxy. These include USE MSENS, USE MTSET, USE ABSET, USE MTX48, USE Hx_4WAY, Additional PORTBx statements, new shorter RAW codes, etc. A new calibration routine has been developed, which allows you to selectively calibrate your different controllers, instead of being forced to calibrate your whole setup. So you can now calibrate your rudders only, without adjusting the calibration data for your joystick and throttle. Long filename support has been introduced. Support for control over the download process has been added, with Foxy able to selectively reenable the joystick after a successful download, for testing or for launching your sims. Current Foxy owners will miss the Launcher as downloading is handled very differently with these new chips. There are many options that have opened up to me for further features in Foxy with these new chips, and as such, I am looking forward to developing Digital Foxy, as Bob enhances the programmability further. Unfortunately, now that I am working and also recently engaged, I simply do not have time to continue developing 3 versions of Foxy, and therefore I will only be developing and supporting Digital Foxy in the future. Please note that Digital Foxy is designed to support only the F22, F16, TQS and TM rudders.


		Purchasing Digital Foxy Digital Foxy is available now, and is included on the Fox Two Professional CDs. You can order and pay for Digital Foxy in all manner of ways - secure online credit card ordering, fax, snailmail, etc. etc. Head over to the ordering page for more information. If you already own Fox Two Professional, and have your chips from Bob, then get in touch with me and I'll let you know how you can upgrade to Digital Foxy. Please note that there is no charge to current Fox Two Professional users. I maintain my position that upgrades to Fox Two Professional are free for life (yours or mine - whichever is the shorter!!).


		Converting F-16 FLCS files for the new chips I've been asked by several people how to convert their .b50/.m50 files, so here's how. 1.) Rename your files with ".f22" and ".m22" extensions. 2.) Convert any macros that have the following: KP/ to AUX/ KPENT to AUXENT INS to AUXINS HOME to AUXHOME PGUP to AUXPGUP DEL to AUXDEL END to AUXEND PGDN to AUXPGDN UAROW to AUXUAROW DAROW to AUXDAROW LAROW to AUXLAROW RAROW to AUXRAROW 3.) Remove any /A modifiers if you use them - convert using the PORTBx IS statement 4.) If you haven't programmed TG1, then you're likely asking the SIM to see the trigger as an analogue trigger. So on a line near the top of your joystick file, add: PORTB1 IS TG1 5.) Delete any of these lines as they're redundant ... USE FCLK USE RCSPRO USE BLANKER USE RCS USE TQS USE WCS USE MTYPE NONE USE MTYPE Bx USE MTYPE Cx USE NOMOUSE 6.) Delete any RPT and Type 3 statements, as they're no longer supported. There will also be some further modifications required - namely to any RAW codes you use, but that's something you'll have to do when you get Digital Foxy, or from Bob's help file.