Laptop keyboard is what's failing, so it's PS/2. Very hard to screw up that driver. Even I wrote a PS/2 driver before for my own toy OS kernel. On the flip side, I have a USB mouse that somehow registers as a keyboard as well in windows. Either way, it shouldn't read half the keyboard signals, but not all of them. As much as I hate MS and their bad programming and management, I can't hold them to the flame for this one, especially when i don't have this problem at all with other games. X2's joystick deadzone (i assume it's the same for the other X games) ends up applied to the mouse as well. It's documented on egosoft's forums. This is why the mouse needs alot of movement to start working, then seems to be moving so hardcore, making it hard to make precise adjustments with a mouse. Rudder in flight sims is quick on the ground. Something tells me wing commander, but it might not be. I do remember this in a game, though. Whatever it is, i either played it or we both played different games like this. Either way, keeping going is quite natural, as space doesn't have wind resistance (which is why i laugh when i see ailerons and such in space sims, and starwars is the greatest offender). I mean in terms of actual controls, not physics. I want to know how the pilots control rolling vs horizontal movement with a stick. Are there 2 sticks? 3 sticks? Those controls were made for atmospheric flight pilots to control spacecraft, so how intuitive are those controls? Those are the controls we should bee using for space sims. Maybe someday, we'll have war machines that have to transition. How do they compensate? How does coordinate mapping and bullseye compensate?

EDIT: I'm also curious how we would adapt missile splash to space, as well, since the physics would be very, very different (i'm leaning towards they'd be more like laser drones than missiles).

okay.....just as a test (I did spent some time thinking about it and as I haven't got any real idea anymore.....nothing really makes sense)

Plug in a USB-keyboard and disable the onboard and see what happens.

And no, it wasn't Wing Commander :P (with the correct inertia movement involved)

So next try ;)

For the controls, orbiter does offer a manual as well as the Atlantis controls for simulation. Intuitive? hmmmm....wrong wording, me thinks...... only because we are used to those flight controls doesn't mean it is intuitive, or? Just means we are used to THIS way ;)

Again, don't want to spoil, give it a shot ;)

Missile splash? Do you mean explosions?

Rudder:
Two really good articles:
http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/whats-the-rudders-real-purpose/
http://www.empire-aviation.com/flight-instructors/john-e-mclain/understanding-the-use-of-rudder.html

And using this approach in some flight sims does actually give you the best results (even SWOTL did have it correctly in it ;) )

And depending on the plane, you do not even use the rudder for steering. Only smaller planes use the rudder, bigger ones do use the front-wheel for steering, like in the car. (general speeking of course ;) ).

Single engine I presume. You should be able to use different thrust on two-engine planes. An aeroplane flies so differently to a space craft.

Number of engines doesn't really matter. Yes the smaller one-engine aircraft use rudder, but no dual plus engine plane uses their engines to turn. Just imagine the destruction of the engines onto the buildings and surrounding. Also don't underestimate the stress onto the frame of such an operation. Yes, jet-engines do use reverse thrust to decelerate, but just on the runway area. For the last part they do use normal breaks as well, so when they roll to the gate.

For the power of those engines, there are enough videos on the web showing how cars are blown away, just because they did pass behind (like 50-100 meters behind) the plane. Same by the way goes for the danger of being sucked into the engines.

I can only suggest trying to try orbiter, just saying ;)

I did that without the disabling part, as i'm now in contact with egosoft. They're rather perplexed themselves, banking on it being my PS/2 keyboard driver. I just blew that out of the water thismorning when it happened again (i found a temporary work around of restarting my computer when it happens). It's a direct input game, so i checked other games that uses the same input method, and no problem. I think it's a mix between some sort of oversight and something in the OS. I actually got a video of it happening right before i went to bed. Q and W work, but SHIFT-Q won't end the game. Enter on the num pad (emulated since it's a notebook) works, but the rest don't. ctrls and alts work. Everything else doesn't. I thought you meant that didn't work properly. No, the only game i've played where inertia was done right without some sort of strafe drive addon was Ace Combat 3. And that mission was annoying. I think it's quite intuitive. yes, but IRL they don't just go boom upon connecting with something. They go boom when near their target and launch pellets into the target. In space, this could cause problems for non-targets. The general idea is that once fired, wind resistance will slow everything down after time has passed. In space, a miss could end up damaging a far away space station that just happened to be in the vector. And what about the rest of the missile? That's now a projectile, too. Need enough speed to use the rudder to turn, so alot use NWS, anyway. The problem is, if it's a windy day, i hope you can use the rudder to keep aligned with the runway, especially if you're a big bird that uses alot of runway.

I had better stick to space flight as I know that one and it is so different from athmospheric flight.

Only two games I have played with real Newtonian flight physics at slow speeds:
B5:I've Found Her -- Free game and pretty good.
Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos -- You could change the settings to Newtonian. Good game too. Sold here.

I never got around to playing the first Independence War game so do not know about its physics.

Orbiter is good at showing where human spaceflight stands right now and guessing where in ten years too.

btw, I think i found a way to reproduce the issue. If you run out of RAM and programs start getting cached in the page file it seems to consistently happen. Rebooting seems to sovle as well ,but that's not good since my computer never completely shuts down so i have to hold teh power button and suffer the consequences that come with that (task bar doesnt' even work right anymore from doing that too much). RAM benchmark or "scrubber" should cause it to happen.

Sounds like you need to reinstall Windows. Too little RAM is a pest, maybe add some more?

Reinstalling windows isn't an option when this thing doesn't even have a CD drive. And remember the overall specs of the machine: I don't think this thing could handle more ram if i could even find some for it. Overall, the whole thing needs replaced.

That said, this is clearly a bug that's hard to hit without having a piece of junk for a computer. When i contacted them on the forums, they denied it was a bug, despite me using games that use the exact same input library (and consequently drivers), and proceeded to blame the generic keyboard driver (Reminds me of the time Team Ninja tried to blame a brand new solid state drive for their general lack of support for the PS3, but that's a special story). It's not realistic to expect a bug fix, and outside of someone like me, no one will experience it, so the best I can do is figure out how to limit it (just not open my browser) until the day i can afford a new computer (might not be for a year or two at this point). But, this is definitely an obscure bug.

The adorable thing about those keys is that they're designed to react to heat and dissolve. Mine dissolved, unfortunately.


Eventually i'm getting a new computer, that will support linux, too.

You can also look it up inside Windows. In Windows 7 I found it by right clicking on My Computer, clicking on properties and it was listed there, called product ID / product key.

And yes, got the computer straight from walmart.

EDIT: Oh wait, it just took forever. That said, it's not in the proper cd-key format, but it's hashed form.

Ouch, that is indeed not a good computer = not worth doing much about :-(

Yes but I know there was some way to get it out from there but not going to google that myself, sorry.

That's ok. I honestly dont' think it's worth it. The thing is not in good shape, physically, either, since it's ancient. I will say, i've never had a laptop last nearly as long as this one.