Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Topic started by: torc on August 18, 2010, 04:39:10 am
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hi! i've got a new set of saitek x52 pro and rudder pedals... the question is: do you think pedals should move the turn axis like real world (wich is more complicated) or the bank axis? anyone have experience? thanks
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in BTRL the rudder controls controlled the bank axis.
But I really didn't like that, I couldn't fly and I didn't see how you could change it :nervous:.
And I think it isn't more difficult when the rudder pedals control the turn axis.
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You can change it the same way you would in fs2. You can modify which joystick axis does what. To answer your question, torc, it's really down to personal preference. Since there aren't any real space fighters there's also no correct - or wrong - way of doing this, so whatever works best for you.
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Roll, pitch, and yaw. :P
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I'm pretty sure that actual space fighters feature a keyboard, a mouse, and WASD. :p
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I'm pretty sure that actual space fighters feature a keyboard, a mouse, and WASD. :p
Nope, space fighters would run on some pimped-but-bugged-as-hell edition of Windows and would feature the X-Box pad as the recommended controller for full experience in space battles.
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Meh. Get yourself a Wii controller, and you're ready to roll.
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I'm pretty sure that actual space fighters feature a keyboard, a mouse, and WASD. :p
Nope, space fighters would run on some pimped-but-bugged-as-hell edition of Windows and would feature the X-Box pad as the recommended controller for full experience in space battles.
(http://www.fiveminute.net/bsg/mini_images/page6.jpg)
(http://www.fiveminute.net/bsg/mini_images/page7.jpg)
This felt somehow appropriate (http://www.fiveminute.net/bsg/comic.php?ep=mini&page=1).
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Meh. Get yourself a Wii controller, and you're ready to roll.
Blasphemy! Though shall not speak of such foul things when a HOTAS joystick is required.
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The game will require an X-Box controller.
Similarly all artwork will be "hot-rodded" to ensure 10million downloads. All humaniform Cylons will have horns.
Raiders will also spill copious amounts of XXXtreme blood and the entire soundtrack will be Metallica.
Why? Because if it's good enough for Bioware's marketing it's good enough for us!
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Stupid human meatbags, its obvious you play Diaspora by slitting your wrist open and running some multimode fiber optic cable up into your arm.
Oh and you better not try to add a multimode connector to your arm, thats for frakking posers.
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(http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/7171/hughofborg.png)
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in BTRL the rudder controls controlled the bank axis.
But I really didn't like that, I couldn't fly and I didn't see how you could change it :nervous:.
And I think it isn't more difficult when the rudder pedals control the turn axis.
I set it up with roll controlled by the stick and yaw controlled by the rudder on my X36. Having it the other way around seems to be the gaming standard (X-Wing and it's successors are like that), but it's counter intuitive to anyone who has ever flown aircraft. However, I found myself then needing to use a lot of rudder inputs in BTRL, so perhaps the standard configuration suits the game well for most users.
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Yeah, unlike a real aircraft, the FreeSpace/general space sim control paradigm usually requires a heck of a lot more yawing than rolling. I could never imagine playing FS with the twist axis on my joystick set to yaw.
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I tried it once. It was.... different. A little more fun, but different.
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I wonder what exactly it is about space sims that makes yawing more intuitive than rolling, while rolling works best in atmospheric flight sims. Maybe its because flight sims have aerodynamics so you can't practically turn by yawing. Or possibly the horizon helps you keep your bearings while banking into turns, but the lack of any definite up or down makes it too easy to get disoriented while rolling around in space sims.
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I think it has more to do with the accessibility and the gameplay mechanics of the space combat genre than anything else. In a space "sim", everything is much more faster paced, the ships fly like UFOs, everybody can pull +9G, and ships have tank armor plating plus shields. Designers will likely feel the need to make it easier to aim and will thus make pitch and yaw the primary degrees of freedom in order for players to naturally line up shots. Thus, yaw is jerky fast fast.
In a flight sim or even a flight combat game like Ace Combat or HAWX, it's much faster speeds, more fragile fighters, comparably less agile fighters (especially if energy bleeding is present in the flight model), and higher rates of fire. The slow rudder control tends to balance things out which makes pilots have to work harder to get in the same plane of bank and get a good trigger down.
It would be interesting if someone made a space combat game with the same gameplay characteristics as an air combat game. Then banking to turn while having a gimped yaw probably wouldn't feel so out of place.
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I think it has more to do with the accessibility and the gameplay mechanics of the space combat genre than anything else. In a space "sim", everything is much more faster paced, the ships fly like UFOs, everybody can pull +9G, and ships have tank armor plating plus shields. Designers will likely feel the need to make it easier to aim and will thus make pitch and yaw the primary degrees of freedom in order for players to naturally line up shots. Thus, yaw is jerky fast fast.
In a flight sim or even a flight combat game like Ace Combat or HAWX, it's much faster speeds, more fragile fighters, comparably less agile fighters (especially if energy bleeding is present in the flight model), and higher rates of fire. The slow rudder control tends to balance things out which makes pilots have to work harder to get in the same plane of bank and get a good trigger down.
It would be interesting if someone made a space combat game with the same gameplay characteristics as an air combat game. Then banking to turn while having a gimped yaw probably wouldn't feel so out of place.
to be honest, in space, I like yaw and pitch instead of roll and pitch, but the more fragile fighters and less agile, making killing bursts more frequent once on tail is something I too like, and think *this* mod/game/thing should work like such.
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It's because an aeroplane turns by rolling its lift axis - even if the rudder was powerful enough to deliver yaw rates that were comparable to the elevators' pitch rates, the lack of vertical aerofoils around the aircraft's CoG would result in an enormous turning circle while the fuselage tries to act as a lifting body.
In space, since you have no atmosphere, similar pitch and yaw rates would give similar turn rates and circles in both axis.
The real problem, though, would be the g-forces. Humans can tolerate a fair amount of positive g in their vertical axis (positive pitch or vertical accelerations), but not much lateral. So, in real space combat, you'd still need to roll and yaw to avoid breaking the pilot's neck or bruising their brain on the inside of the skull from high yawing and side vectoring forces.
For what it's worth, designs like the Viper are very good in principle - the cockpit is slightly forward of the CoG, so the rotational and linear swings of any attitude change in pitch or yaw will be in the same sense (ie pitch up and the cockpit rises about the CoG, yaw left and the cockpit will rotate and swing left). The Blackbird would be horrible with e cockpit so far aft - the opposite rotational and translational movements (pitch up give up rotation but downward swing of cockpit, and left yaw swings cockpit to right) would be disorientating and vomit inducing, while craft with the cockpit right at the front (like Ralph McQuarrie's original Raider concept) would be subject to very high cockpit g forces just from the swing motion, never mind the change in velocity vector. Then there are fighters like X-wings, whose long, heavy wings would vastly reduce roll rates and long nose reduce pitch rates, and TIE fighters, whose wing inertia would cost them a vast amount of manoeuvrability (as well as visibility). Compare that to the Vipers' stubby wings and relatively short nose, and you'll see the only SW fighter that makes any sense is the A-Wing.
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The Blackbird would be horrible with e cockpit so far aft - the opposite rotational and translational movements (pitch up give up rotation but downward swing of cockpit, and left yaw swings cockpit to right) would be disorientating and vomit inducing
To be fair, they specifically mentioned exactly that when they built it. It's why they changed it from being a home-made fighter to a home-made recon ship. Since they couldn't really turn it, they just made it as fast as they could going straight ahead.
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The Blackbird would be horrible with e cockpit so far aft - the opposite rotational and translational movements (pitch up give up rotation but downward swing of cockpit, and left yaw swings cockpit to right) would be disorientating and vomit inducing
To be fair, they specifically mentioned exactly that when they built it. It's why they changed it from being a home-made fighter to a home-made recon ship. Since they couldn't really turn it, they just made it as fast as they could going straight ahead.
Yes, and Starbuck couldn't contol it for the first few minutes after launch, either. They had some good researchers on the show.
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I wonder what exactly it is about space sims that makes yawing more intuitive than rolling, while rolling works best in atmospheric flight sims. Maybe its because flight sims have aerodynamics so you can't practically turn by yawing. Or possibly the horizon helps you keep your bearings while banking into turns, but the lack of any definite up or down makes it too easy to get disoriented while rolling around in space sims.
Yeah that's what happens to me generally. Well, all the time :P Where as if you are just yawing, you remember where you are.
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Flight sims have to obey real laws of physics that many gamers have experienced for themselves, either as passengers or as pilots of real aircraft, so the game makers can't get away with simplistic or unrealistic control effects. Flight has gravity act in one constant direction and has the main lift vector always acting at 90o to the wing surface. Rates of pitch and roll are always far greater than yaw because aeroplanes rarely have rudder area anywhere near the area of the ailerons, elevators or stabiliators (as used on swing-wing airframes like Tornado, F111, F14, MiG23/27 etc). The amount of rudder authority has to be restricted on aeroplanes, too, in order not to upset roll stability - all control inputs on an aeroplane have primary and secondary effects, with roll and yaw interacting with eachother as their secondary effects.
Space flight sim writers have the advantage that few, if any, of us are personally familiar with space flight physics and dynamics, but also have the advantage that flight dynamics away from major gravitational bodies and atmoshere are much simpler - there is no lift and no fixed gravity point, just inertia. Flight controls will not have any secondary effects, controlling pitch, roll and yaw in perfect isolation. The "etheric rudder" effect, as Lucasarts calls it, linking yaw to a small amount of roll is a designer effect to mimic the movement we see in the Star Wars films, and that flight style was done because film audiences were familiar with aircraft movement but have little understanding of space flight.
In a nutshell, a space fighter would have rapid motions in all axis and would not have low yaw rates like aeroplanes, and the rudder would not affect roll just as roll would not affect yaw. Whether a hypothetical space fighter would have its roll axis controlled by stick and yaw by pedals, or whether the increased yaw rate and unimportance of would relegate rolling to a less useful manoeuvre controlled by the rudder or even a "hat switch" on the stick with yaw controlled by the main stick is open to debate. I suspect that since space pilots would likely be selected from the most capable atmospheric pilots (as we see with real space programmes), the traditional control configuration would be carried over - once pilots become accustomed to one set of controls effects, they will not want to have to unlearn those skills and acquire new ones. This is consistent with the controls on current space craft, including the Shuttle (though that does admittedly operate as an aeroplane for its late descent and landing phases).
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Flight controls will not have any secondary effects, controlling pitch, roll and yaw in perfect isolation.
That's not entirely correct ;). As soon as you turn in two different axis you would experience a precession.
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True, but precessive forces would be small compared to secondary aerodynamic effects, and at the pitch and yaw rates that would be controllable for a human pilot, would probably be small enough to be ignored. they could certainly be dealt with by any fly-by-wire control system.