Fallen Kell

Well, had a chance to continue working on this today. I finished all my fitting issues. The initial pics did not have the 16000.M's PCB in place or the PCB for the thumbstick in place. Today I finished removing the hat switch from the 16000.M's PCB, trimmed the leads from the trigger switch on the top of the board, trimmed some more plastic from inside of the handle to make the space I needed, cut 2mm from the top of the thumbstick's PCB, cut another 1mm deeper into the sides of the thumbstick's PCB (I have a semi-circular cut on each side with a little notch more taken out towards the top), soldered the thumbstick to it's PCB, trimmed all the leads that passed through bottom of the thumbstick PCB, and was able to fit it all together back in the 16000.M flightstick. I need to place electrical tape on the bottom of the thumbstick PCB, run 4 wires up from the base of the 16000.M, solder the thumbstick PCB to the wires, and the wires to the teensy control board, cut the holes for the USB mount, and test out all my electrical connections. I might add a dab of hot glue to keep the thumbstick in place a little better, and I then need to program the control board to properly read the inputs from the thumbstick and act as a USB input device to Windows. Really the hard part is done at this point. Running a couple wires is pretty easy compared to cutting into the 16000.M to make space for the thumbstick and PCB. I will be taking pics before I put it all together. It didn't come out too bad. Unfortunately I wasn't able to center the thumbstick as nicely as I had hoped due to the internals in the handle. I trimmed as much as I could from both the thumbstick and handle without losing structural integrity. I am still about 0.5-1mm from being centered, which unfortunately leaves a small gap on the one side of the thumbstick, but it is what it is... Also, I am disabling the green LED on the base of the flightstick. It is just annoying as can be.

Which is why it was designed for use only for strafe (or FPS movement forward/back/left/right). My mouse is for gimbal control, which sets up my left hand thumb to work on a thumbstick (for which I have years of muscle memory and skill with doing) and my right hand for using the mouse (which again, has years of use doing).

How would you be able to program it to do that? Seriously think about it for a moment, how would it know the difference between when you have lined up a shot and leaving the aiming point exactly where it is, and when it is supposed to return to zero? How would it know to not continue making the slide/strafe and when it should ignore the input it has been given and zero out? You are now essentially trying to write a program to ignore what the device has been told to do at which point it will never be perfect and will not act the way you expect all the time, when there are already other input methods that exist which would work the way you expect all the time (i.e. a self centering thumbstick).

I was thinking this same exact thing when I read his explanation. The trackball is for attempting to simulate having a mouse. The problem with that is you need to develop all new muscle memory in order to use it, and it also makes all other top buttons on the flightstick un-usable while trying to aim. Simply using a mouse gives you the years of muscle memory and skill you have developed back to you. The other issue with the trackball is that it is a trackball. It can not be used for analog input axis easily because it does not self-zero once you release your thumb from its control surface. If you attempted to use this for strafe control like I intend to use the thumbstick, you would never be able to get back to zero input. A thumbstick on the other hand zeros back to middle. Like I said in my explanation, they have choosen the wrong controls to add onto their flightstick. You need additional analog axis controls for Star Citizen as well as a hand on your normal mouse. Who in the world believes that the small trackball on the flightstick will actually be usable in FPS mode, or that you can aim gimbal weapons as well with that compared to using a regular mouse? (Hint, it won't).

So after doing lots of research and looking at all the different options available today on the market as well as the information on the RSI/Saitek controls, I have come to the conclusion that very few of these actually know what is truly needed for proper controls in Star Citizen. I had high hopes for the RSI/Saitek controls, but I don't think a single person who worked on them ever actually played Star Citizen, or if they did, they certainly didn't pay attention to what control types are really needed. As such, I have started down the road of making my own flightstick. I have also come to the conclusion that for Star Citizen, really the best control setup will be Hands On Stick And Mouse And Feet On Pedals. Now hear me out. We all know from playing the current alpha release that keyboard+mouse tends to dominate in the aiming department, especially with gimbal weapons. However, from a flight standpoint, most people who have used flightsticks really enjoy both the immersion as well as the accuracy (of a decent stick) for maneuvering. The problem with flightsticks are that Star Citizen requires more axis of movement/control than what can be provided by the flightstick and throttle setup which are as follows: Analog control: Pitch Yaw Roll Throttle Vertical strafe/slide Horizontal strafe/slide All of the above require analog control. All but one of the above, throttle, are ideally suited for something that self zero's. We also need to take into consideration FPS combat, which is the other part of the reason why having a mouse in the equation makes a lot of sense. My conclusion for having a hand on a stick and mouse would be able to work if the stick had an analog thumbstick providing 2 more analog control axis to the stick. This way you mouse hand would control aiming of gimbal weapons (or view, but ultimately I suspect people will use things like VR or head trackers for this), and your other hand will focus on movement controls. The additional thumbstick will allow for mapping vertical/horizontal strafe/slide, and the pedals will let you map roll (or yaw depending on your preference) as well as forward/reverse throttle (to the pedal "brakes"). When outside of flight mode (i.e. FPS), the analog thumbstick will act just like you would expect for moving forward, back, strafe left/right. No need to shift your hands around, they are already in position with controls available to be able to work extremely efficiently, with possibly years of muscle memory already available to work this way. So I have started modifying a flightstick to get close to the above. I used a relatively cheap but fairly accurate 16000.M for the basis of my modifications. I also picked up a teensy 3.2 controller for providing the additional thumbstick to Windows. Here are a couple shots of the work in progress: http://i.imgur.com/NDSUxpk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FNX2YEw.jpg Unfortunately I lose the hat switch (I would have loved to keep it, but it simply doesn't fit). This is the kind of thing that I wish Saitek would have produced, ideally with the space to also have a hat switch or two. I do not plan on using the trigger on the flightstick to fire weapons, and leave those functions for the mouse. Since I have VoiceAttack, I can perform many other actions without needing to have a lot of dedicated buttons, but if a controller company were to design a stick for Star Citizen, having a few extra buttons available and accessible with just the hand operating the stick would be useful (it is a lot faster to hit a button than to say something for VoiceAttack to run the macro).

This was the one Tolken book that I just couldn't read. There was just too much "song" and "poetry" and "languages" for me to get into it.

Thanks Drum. These are surprisingly useful.

Agreed, especially on things larger than a 1 man fighter...

I don't think it is due to warfare that is the problem, otherwise none of the Star Wars ships, vehicles, etc., would have ever been green-lighted to be released (heck the Death Star "killed" billions of people alone). I think it has to do with getting permission from the IP holder (and possibly royalties) that causes these things to not be done.