The Global.calib file Myth

The Full Story

hi, i am writing this article to help explain where this fix came from and how it's being used improperly now. alot of that's simply my fault and laziness....

when 1.7 came out, people really complained about excessive blackouts on the forums and in my squad. They accused CRS of changing the blackout model of which i know they didn't. the problem grounded many people as it was so bad they could barely fly. it didn't happen to everyone tho. myself included. what i did, was start to troubleshoot the problem. see there are two variables here to cause excessive blackouts, one the blackout model had changed [it didn't] or somehow joystick controls became oversensitive [which would have the same effect, because even tho you are throwing the joystick the same amount you are actually turning faster cause your control surfaces moved more than before].

so this being my area of semi-expertise [the keymapper and controls], i decided to tackle the problem from this point of view  My method was a bit sloppy though and this is what is causing the confusion and i ran on this theroy cause it worked without fully exploring it and it seems to be getting out of hand and recommended for every problem.

the first thing i decided to try was to ask those whom were having this excessive problem, was to delete their global.calib file. what this did is exactly the same thing as hitting the 'reset to default' button on the calibration screen but i was used to dealing with these files outside of the ww2ol program [lazy me]. the reason i recommended this course of action was to rule out user error with the calibration screen [the user set their calibration filter wrong causing their joysticks to become oversensitive]. well, to my suprise this fixed it for the few people i asked, so then i asked if they EVER used the ww2ol calibration screen and they said 'NO'. well, you can see where that's going. that would mean their defaults would have been corrupt or being read wrong. I jumped up and started posting that this was the fix for this as it worked... but i also did it a bit prematurley and added some ideas without being able to fully test them in a controlled enviroment as it never happened on my machine and have no way to replicate the bug in the first place. i had assumed that somehow the old files weren't working with the new 1.7 version and that's the only build i meant for the fix really  [pre 1.7 calib file used in post 1.7 version of the game], but other people recommended it for every patch...

i tried to gather more info by having people post what was in there global.calib file before deleting it but at that time i also didn't know what the code meant in the file till rickb filled me in. it seems that it was standard default info, so deleting the file shouldn't actually do anything unless it wasn't being read properly. well, finally a build or two after that rickb went into the code that reads the file line by line [painstaking task] and found absolutly NO errors in the file being read with or without default information. and the 'before' files i got to check weren't corrupt or changed from the default info. so that wasn't it. the bug may be there or not, i have no real evidence except that people notice a change but alot of that can be chalked up to 'placebo' effect.

this bug may lie elsewhere, but it's not in the fact that the file is become corrupt or being misread in these post 1.70 versions of ww2ol.

so there is no Hard evidence that this 'fix' works. it 'seemed' to have worked for a bunch of people at one time. please stop recommending people to delete the file. click on the link below to get the proper way to debug this problem. all in all, it's kinda my fault this got out of hand and bad info is being spread. try the way i describe in the link, that is the proper troubleshooting methid to see if your ww2ol calibration is making your joystick too sensitive. so only delete the Global.calib file if nothing else seems to work, it really shouldn't do anything tho.

proper method for fixing excessive blackouts or weird control issues