I played alot of Freespace and using just a joystick is suffice. I now have taken the plunge with newtonian physics with IW and IW2. I never use flight assistance in IW2.

I started using the keyboard and joystick and moved to using the Xbox 360 and a Joystick and I am getting closer to the perfect zero-g flight control setup. I still have to use a modifier button to switch my forward and back throttle to up and down "strafe".

Questions:

Is absolute throttle like the throttle in Freespace where you set a speed and it stays there? In "unassisted mode" this i useless as it will not slow you down. to slow down one needs to apply reverse thrust.

I am trying to figure out how to control all the axes without modifier buttons.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I see some people talking about rudders, but I need forward and reverse thrust. Does anyone use the rudders this way?

Thanks,

Sorry not to answer your question, but to instead ask one of you: How do you operate a Xbox 360 controller and a joystick at the same time? Doesn't the 360 controller need two hands? I'm curious about the details of your setup ...

I hold the 360 controller in my left hand and just use the left side of the joystick. it is nice to have ananlog for all of the "strafes"

This is my current setup:

The 360 analog stick is for Strafe left, right, forward and backward.
My Logitech Wingman 3d (right hand) does the normal space sim functions. (Pitch, yaw, and roll)

The Right Bumper button used to be set to ALT (with JoytoKey, or PPjoy) and when pressed would change the back and forward strafe on the 360 analog to up and down strafe. It worked but didn't feel natural.

So i have settled on this setup:

Everything is the same except now there is no modifier key. and the analog stick on the 360 does strafe up, down, left and right. Strafe forward and backward (essentially thrust forward and back) are now set to the Logitech Wingman 3d POVUP and POVDOWN. This allows me to have independent control on eveything.

I moved the HUD control to the D-pad on the 360 controller.

I tried changing the position of the strafe up and down with the strafe forward and back (thrust) between the 360 analog and the POV on the Logitech Wingman 3d but it felt better having the strafe forward and back on my Wingman 3d on my right thumb.

I am interested in other schemes but I am not sure that having a throttle in my left hand or rudders at my feet will be better than this. Absolute throttle just doesn't work in IWAR with naviagion assistant turned off. It is great in Freespace but not in true zero G.

I thought about setting up a control scheme like normal flight sims but yaw in space sims is so much more important than in flight sims. I just don't think that having yaw on my feet and roll on the x axis would make IWAR more enjoyable or easier.

For right now having strafe forward and back on the POV on the Logitech Wingman 3d gets me close to "authentic" space sim. :)

Hope this helps. I can send you my ini if you would like to see it.

Note: It is nice to have all the extra buttons on the 360 especially having zoom as the "click in" on the 360 analog stick. Feels nice and dangerous. :D

You can also quickly move your right hand to the 360 controller and have acces to alot more buttons quickly. I have power distribution on the colored buttons. Very Quick access.

For free-flight mode you're better off not using the throttle. Instead use the thruster overrides, which provide better control.

With the throttle controls you'll be thrusting constantly which will be almost impossible to control.

Thank you for your input, Ravenger! :)

Maybe you can help me; I see in the default.ini a few ways for forward and reverse movement.

There is thruster and thruster delta and then using the "strafes" on the ZAxis. I am fairly certain that thruster is normal absolute thruster, but what is thruster delta and how is it different from ZAxis? I guess they are the same?

Just curious, what is your setup like?

I'm not really sure which is which - it's a long while since I played with the control inifiles. The best thing to do is just experiment.

My setup is simple - a sidewinder flight-stick and the WASD keys for thruster overrides. I used to have a full CH Products HOTAS system, but I sold that because it was gameport and PS2 keyboard compatble only. Unfortunately under Windows 7 there's no old-style gameport support.

Nice.

I see what Ravenger was saying about the throttle system but I was thinking as a thought experiment one could define the center of the throttle as no thrust, put a deadband around it and then forward and back for forward/reverse thrust. I'm not sure if that would help or hurt control, but it might be interesting to try it out. I've also been thinking that the combination of a joystick + multi-touch trackpad might be an interesting control scheme - especially on a laptop where the trackpad is near the keyboard so you could still access the keyboard. I've been thinking a lot about this myself - i.e. the ideal control scheme for inertial movement that someone would be likely to be able to employ easily without needing too specialized controllers or more controllers than they are likely to own.

Ahh there are times I wish I could design a Military space sim ... :)

Which begs the question. How would the perfect controls for a true zero-g dogfighting space ship be designed?

It would probably have two joysticks and maybe something for your feet or extra contrrols in the thumb position on each joystick. I just do not know where the best place to put all the different thruster overrides.

If i was a zero-g pilot I would want complete and independent analog control over every axis.

I have to say that having the z axis (thrust) controls on my POV on my right hands works really well. I am starting to think that I should put the Z axis overrides on the left stick.

It is almost akin to a FPS, where the Left thumbstick is for the feet and the right thumbstick is for the head. (most setups that is). Then you have to add the roll and the up and down directions.

It might be cool to have fworward thrust overrides on pedals where the right foot controls forward thrust and left foot controls revers thrust.

In actuality, if in the future if there does happen to exist space dogfighting I am sure that the computers will have ways of helping the pilot stabalize his inertia. When things get hairy in battles I will use the navigation assistant to bring my ship to a complete stop.

I try not use it because I want to be able to fly as good in unassisted mode as assisted mode.

Yeah I agree: the double joystick is probably the best control method, or direct brain/computer interfaces if we have those by then, or we're all dead and the Terminator AI's do all the fighting amongst themselves. :P

Of course there is no such thing in space as "a complete stop" - after all even if your not firing thrusters and not rotating, you can still be moving in someone else's frame of reference. :) But I agree that rotation stabilization by a human pilot in a combat zone especially if you get hit with enough force by a colliding object would probably have to have AI help.

I used to use a joystick + separate throttle controller with rudder pedals to play the game. A friend of mine said the only other thing I needed was a space helmet!

Heh, a space helmet...might make a nice disguise for a TrackIR clip.

If I were to design a spacecraft, it would probably use what I would call a "3D yoke" or a "6DoF yoke". Two handles jutting out of the side of a central pivot that moves along every degree of freedom and makes the craft move as you'd expect. I imagine it as sort of like having the handles attached to a Spacetec or 3Dconnexion sort of device in the middle, although there was a different game controller I've long since forgotten the name of that did seem to be this sort of very concept, except the middle hub part was more of a gigantic ring in appearance.

For I-War's sake, I'd add a throttle or slider somewhere that basically amounted to cruise control during normal thrust, or an actual speed control when using LDS.

I normally play with my Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar + RCS rudder pedal setup, modded out the wazoo, but if I wanted something more portable, I'd probably use a 3Dconnexion SpacePilot (or other similar 3D mouse) in one hand to manage movement and navigation, while the other hand's on the keyboard (and possibly mouse) to control other things, such as weapons.

Anyway, as for the throttle questions:

-Absolute throttle works like a conventional throttle lever. You push a throttle 60% forward, it gives 60% thrust, for example. You basically move the control to the exact position that correlates to the amount of movement you want, because every position is an exact coordinate.
-Relative throttle is more like pushing the throttle setting around instead of moving it directly, if that makes any sense. Let's say, you want to get to 60% thrust from idle/0%; to do this, you'd have to press the "raise throttle" control to keep it moving until it hits 60%, and let go. The physical control is released, but instead of reverting to 0%, it stays at 60% or whatever you set it to.

These concepts also apply to mouse input; it's the reason a lot of games have trouble with touchscreen digitizers built for absolute mouse coordinates and not relative mouse movement.

As for ThrottleDelta, I don't exactly know what it does because I don't use it; it's probably relative input for the Throttle axis. Instead, I use the LateralZ axis, which are your forward/back thruster overrides that allow you to speed up beyond normal max throttle limits outside of LDS (but are useless within LDS) and are easier to manage with inertial compensation off. Also, don't forget to bind something to LateralY, which would be your up/down thruster overrides; by default, there's only ONE way to control it, and that would be to hold down a key while moving the main stick itself up and down. Hardly ideal when you need simultaneous control over multiple axes. (Also, I'm pretty sure it's like Descent in that tri-chording = greater acceleration, but it's been a while since I've played.)

Thanks for all the input fellahs! :)

Nameless, in space sims what do you use your rudder pedals for?

I looked at that 3d mouse, that is some crazy stuff. I would like to give that a try.

Rudder is used for roll/yaw (depending on your settings)

I found it easier to aim having the roll on the rudder pedals rather than on the stick.

I use them for roll. That's how I learned from my Freespace days, and that's how it stuck. I suppose it's easier that way for me in a space game because I'm not subject to the aerodynamic manuevering limitations of an atmospheric aircraft.

By the way, you can find the SpacePilot pretty cheap on eBay-even less so than a typical SpaceNavigator PE, which is saying something. It's supported in 3DxWare Beta 10 Release 10 onward (which makes it easy to set it up in games without the use of GlovePIE and PPJoy), so I wouldn't worry too much about software support for the time being.