Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Thaeris on September 01, 2012, 12:07:51 am
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FS has a rather bad stick code in my opinion - Hopefully, SDL implementation should rectify this problem. A few people have some suggestions for properly calibrating your stick to get around these issues, but I'm not very knowledgeable about that. Considering that I use a stick... that's bad on my part.
If you want a space sim with good stick code, you ought to try Starshatter, which you can now get for free (and is open-source), or you should try to find Tachyon: The Fringe. If you choose the latter, you ought to try talking to JGZinv. :)
Also, don't mind MatththeGeek if he drops in bashing joysticks, because he does that in every stick thread.
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I definitely wanna try my stick on more arcadey games. I bought it for straight up sims, but I want a bit more variety
I'll look up both of those games. I don't know if I've heard of Starshatter, but I've heard a little bit about Tachyon. Thanks for the suggestions.
I suppose I should go back to the mouse and keyboard for FS2. It's a bit of a shame, really
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i overshoot all the damn time too. although i never thought it was a problem with the stick/FS, just that i was just not great at using it. which is weird, because i've never NOT used a joystick, and i distinctly remember being MUCH better years ago as a young lad of 12 on retail. i had a cyborg 3d back then, and an x45 now. the cyborg was really loose, had a bit of a deadzone problem, and i suspect it didn't have a full range of motion either. maybe that's why. or because it was so loose, i didn't muscle it so hard and overshoot. playing for a while on the x45 physically tires my arms out, the cyborg never did that.
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You might try performing something akin to a Scissors formation: Before going straight back to leading your target, continue the overshoot and drop your speed a few ticks for a few fractions of a second, then resume pursuing your target.
The downside to most joysticks is the fact that they sense position differences from the center instead of force, so there's a definite lag going from full stick on one side to the directly opposite. Joysticks that use force sensors are immune to this, but are also rare-ish.
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Honestly, OP, I never liked playing FS/FS2/FSO with a joystick. Jane's F-15? Yes. Falcon 4.0? Yes. Now, DCS A10? Yes. But not FS. Mostly for the same reasons as you. It's the same in FPS games: there's nothing that aims as well as my mouse.
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years of using joysticks has made me better with a joystick than with a mouse.
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Cyborg Fly 5 is terrible for this game, I should know I had one and tried it on freespace open. Buy the Logitech Extreme 3D pro, it works great.
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i overshoot all the damn time too. although i never thought it was a problem with the stick/FS, just that i was just not great at using it. which is weird, because i've never NOT used a joystick, and i distinctly remember being MUCH better years ago as a young lad of 12 on retail. i had a cyborg 3d back then, and an x45 now. the cyborg was really loose, had a bit of a deadzone problem, and i suspect it didn't have a full range of motion either. maybe that's why. or because it was so loose, i didn't muscle it so hard and overshoot. playing for a while on the x45 physically tires my arms out, the cyborg never did that.
My only foray into joysticks was with an X45. I switched back shortly after. Can't hit the broad side of a barn. It's great right up until you actually try to hit something that's not pulling in one direction, or try to turn and hit the bugger on your tail. Precision? Better hope your weapon has auto-aim, or you won't hit ****, at least not if you're me. I wish I could use it in combination with the mouse, but there's too much lag time between switching.
If someone put a trackball on the top of a joystick (for use by the user's thumb), that'd be the shizz!
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I'm telling ya, force sensors are the way to go. The joystick won't have to move more than a millimeter in any direction. :p
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So, which stick do you recommend? Is there a list of force-sensor based joysticks somewhere?
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Honestly, OP, I never liked playing FS/FS2/FSO with a joystick. Jane's F-15? Yes. Falcon 4.0? Yes. Now, DCS A10? Yes. But not FS. Mostly for the same reasons as you. It's the same in FPS games: there's nothing that aims as well as my mouse.
I actually bought the stick for DCS A-10C and it works pretty well. but I never imagined it'd be so hard with FS2
Cyborg Fly 5 is terrible for this game, I should know I had one and tried it on freespace open. Buy the Logitech Extreme 3D pro, it works great.
It's too late now, I already bought the thing. I spent a little over $50 on it and I don't have any more extra cash laying around. Plus it's the only thing I can really use since my desk is small and it comes apart and folds away for storage. That way I can keep it plugged in without worrying about it taking up a lot of space.
I'm telling ya, force sensors are the way to go. The joystick won't have to move more than a millimeter in any direction. :p
I've heard of force sensor joysticks. It's a cool idea, but I like the feeling of actually moving the stick around as if I were flying the craft. Force sensors seem almost like cheating lol
Thanks a lot for the feedback guys. I'll switch back to mouse controls for FS2 and try some other games with the stick.
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Link for joystick mouse script (with on/off toggle) should be in my signature.
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I'm telling ya, force sensors are the way to go. The joystick won't have to move more than a millimeter in any direction. :p
I've heard of force sensor joysticks. It's a cool idea, but I like the feeling of actually moving the stick around as if I were flying the craft. Force sensors seem almost like cheating lol
Rumor has it that the latest mil' craft use force sensor sticks, but I can't seem to find any good references at the moment...?
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I don't blame the code or the hardware. FS2 was always a really hard game to aim in for me; the ships are simply a lot less responsive than in other games like X-Wing (where you can instantly reverse your heading without any delay). But I'm amazed at how good I've gotten at it. Just practice.
Also,
:welcome:
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lol wut? Mouse is fine, you just have to max the sensitivity. Joystick can maneuver just fine, the problem is you can't aim precisely, as it will over shoot.
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lol wut? Mouse is fine, you just have to max the sensitivity. Joystick can maneuver just fine, the problem is you can't aim precisely, as it will over shoot.
I love my M570 trackball to death for Freespace, for whatever reason. It's great for fighting annoying pest ships - I can keep turning ALL day. :D
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I'm telling ya, force sensors are the way to go. The joystick won't have to move more than a millimeter in any direction. :p
I've heard of force sensor joysticks. It's a cool idea, but I like the feeling of actually moving the stick around as if I were flying the craft. Force sensors seem almost like cheating lol
Rumor has it that the latest mil' craft use force sensor sticks, but I can't seem to find any good references at the moment...?
according to the CO of the last ship i worked on (who is a navy pilot) those types of sticks were a failed experiment. pilots needed the tactile feedback of the stick moving.
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I'm telling ya, force sensors are the way to go. The joystick won't have to move more than a millimeter in any direction. :p
I've heard of force sensor joysticks. It's a cool idea, but I like the feeling of actually moving the stick around as if I were flying the craft. Force sensors seem almost like cheating lol
Rumor has it that the latest mil' craft use force sensor sticks, but I can't seem to find any good references at the moment...?
according to the CO of the last ship i worked on (who is a navy pilot) those types of sticks were a failed experiment. pilots needed the tactile feedback of the stick moving.
Did the experiment include pilots that have "never" used a traditional joystick before? Odds are slim, but hey. :P
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i find it amusing the number of military gadgets choosing to employ a gamepad interface. thats got to be one of the worst interfaces of all. thumbs just aint got no dexterity. its like all the cell phone interfaces (tiny keypads and douchscreens) out there. they are all horrible. thing is people get really good with these ****ty interfaces through shear practice. so when some engineer is trying to figure out the best way to control something, they go with the tech that everyone is familiar with, instead of the one that is most suited for the job. this is the same phenomena that causes qwerty keyboards to still be used even though its designed to slow you down.
joysticks are excellent for analog control. they just take practice and become deadly in the right hands.
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Did the experiment include pilots that have "never" used a traditional joystick before? Odds are slim, but hey. :P
I feel more comfortable with having a traditional joystick which I can "feel". A force sensor stick would feel really strange. Also, keep in mind that change of directions provided by such a joystick is instant, but the control surface movement isn't.
i find it amusing the number of military gadgets choosing to employ a gamepad interface.
This (http://terminallance.com/2010/01/15/terminal-lance-4-modern-warfare/) might have something to do with it.
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Force sensing stick
http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/x65f.html
but you are missing out a hell of a lot by not having a ForceFeedback stick
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Also, keep in mind that change of directions provided by such a joystick is instant, but the control surface movement isn't.
It's better to have an input device that's more responsive than what it is controlling, than to have the inverse. Simply put, if your craft/control surfaces are perfectly capable of changing from full left/down to full right/up within an instant, but your controller takes 1 second to signal such a change, your at a tactical disadvantage.
Instead, the limiting factor should be the algorithm that's handling the control system, and in fact it a simple PID system can do the synchronizing quite well (given that it's tuned properly).
I feel more comfortable with having a traditional joystick which I can "feel".
but you are missing out a hell of a lot by not having a ForceFeedback stick
You'd still feel the amount of force your applying to the stick, just as you would a traditional one... however dynamo-sticks lose the positional feedback needed to determine where the limits are. This is both an advantage and a curse of these things: Advantage in the sense that the stick's input limits can be adjusted on-the-fly, curse in the sense that there's currently no way of telling where these limits are without something like a HUD gauge.
Perhaps if the two technologies were combined, say, use the dynamometers when the stick is centered and then use the potentiometers when the stick's outside their deadzones?
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force feedback is nice and all but it throws off your aim. and to be fair most aircraft with a fly by wire system limit feedback to vibration only. if you are into ww2 sims, or any sim where aircraft being simulated has hard linkages to the stick (i think the a-10 has this too but im not sure), then it makes sense, as any shudder in the control surfaces will reverberate all the way to your stick and pedals. but when your stick is hooked into a fly by wire system that hard linkage is missing and you can only recieve the feedback the fly by wire system decides to give you. for an aircraft it makes sense that the feedback not interfere with control input. so the feedback is limited to a rumbler. it even makes less sense in a space sim, where stick merely controls rcs thrusters and inertia wheels which dont generate any return.
on the other had simulators have a major feedback disadvantage. because feedback for a pilot also comes from their feel of inertia. as the aircraft pitches and rolls they can junda feel what the plane is doing. and an astronaut can feel accelerations and rotations in the spacecraft. there is no way to do that in a simulation without a gimbal platform. force feedback can kinda be a cheap substitute for this, but i still come back to my original point. it throws off your aim.
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A-10 has hydraulic system with cable backup for certain systems. And most non-cutting edge aircraft use some form of hydraulic (IIRC, fly-by-wire became mainstream with the newer aircraft, I'm not sure which, but maybe like the 767 and definitely the 777 / A380 etc.. before it was a testbed in IIRC the 757 or somesuch, I really don't remember, but Google is your friend).
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aye, though google often results in a wall of useless text. too many ****tards putting up websites on every mistyped address, and dynamically generated webpages designed to be google traps. i just remember the a-10 being discribed as an old skool stick and rudder plane. you probibly get a little bit of tactile feedback in a hydraulic system though. not yank the stick out of your hand feedback, but you probibly do feel a little bit of directional resistance when the control surfaces (and by extension the hydraulic pumps) are under a lot of stress.
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Yeah, you get some feedback from your brakes, no? (ABS, problems in the brake system, etc) That's hydraulic, which the e-brake being a cable backup hooked to the rear brakes.
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Personally, I use the joystick. But everytime before I play FS2 I calibrate it first. And like Nuke mentioned before this joysticks takes some practice before you could master it. I know that after slamming into a bulk freighter one too many times when playing X-Wing (that's was my first ever joystick-based game). Ah, fun times.
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I have taken to using the thumb mouse on the throttle stick of my x52 for most of my shooting and only use the joystick for gross maneuvering in a dogfight.
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you do realize that a trackpoint mouse like that is effectively a small joystick, right?
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Yes, but I can set it to a different (very low) sensitivity for accurate shooting since it is treated as a mouse, and then keep the main stick at full range for dog fighting.
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thing i like about the ch software is you are allowed to change your sensitivity and gain curve on the fly with some script. so i could just as easily have a button to change my stick sensitivity for an accuracy mode. ive just never really had a use for such a thing in freespace (though my ksp profile uses something like it for atmospheric and space flight modes), since im so good with the stick.
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I think the Fly-by-wire pressure system was addressed by giving the stick a little bit of play (room to maneuver the stick), so that pilots would still feel like they were moving the stick, but that the fine control came from the pressure/force they placed on it.