Is it just me or is orientation in these games a really hard task to handle? I started a few times X-Wing and the other games and I tried also the training mission in X-Wing. But when it comes to the real missions, I get everytime lost in space. I don't know where up and down is (actually there is no up and down in space, I know^^) and I can't find any other ships. If I find a ship then only randomly by accident.

I know that there are in the upper corners these Radars (R and L) and they show some ships. But I don't understand these radars and they don't help me at all to find anything.

Do you have any advice for me? Actually I did not really start to play these games. I'm just trying out the gameplay and I want to start some months later.

Is it an issue that I tried to play X-Wing with the mouse + keyboard instead with a real joystick?

Simply put: your ship is an invisible dot at the center of those circles, L is your front view, R is your rear view, so to have a target in your reticle, pitch and jaw to have it at the center of the L circle

Green dots are rebels/friends, red dots are imperials/enemies, the white brackets surrounds your current target

The dots are the various ships, one display is for the ships in front of you (marked "F" as in "front") and the other is for the ships behind you (marked "R" for "rear"), when a dot is dead center it means it's either right in front of you on the F screen or behind you on the R screen.

Use your targeting computer to know what the dots are, the bracketed dot on the displays is the target you selected in your CMD (if you have any), to cycle targets press Y and T, if you haven't looked at the refcard do so (there are keys that hep select you priority targets, to "save" priority targets, etc), the targeting computer is necessary to get your bearings and to actually know what you are doing.

When in view, the target selected will either pulse red (dos version) or have a square around it (Windows version), since the draw distance of the DOS version isn't that good you can press "i" to have a better idea to get the selected target into your sights once it's more or less in front of you according to the radar screen.

Another advice: with "training mission" I guess you mean the proving ground, if with "real missions" you mean the Tour of Duty, I advice you to first do the Historical Combat missions (though the bonus missions can be done later since they were more of a bonus added to the CD version of the game so they aren't for newbies).

The Tour of Duty missions can get really punishing, I advice to always back up your pilot file when playing the Tours of Duty because X-wing has sort of a "dead is dead" approach, if you get blasted in a mission and the game decides you either got captured or killed you lose all your points, which essentially makes impossible to get to the higher ranks unless you already know what to do and are really lucky.

You can also view the mission map by pressing M. In X-Wing, the map is only a flat 2D perspective and doesn't show how far above or below you each craft is. But in TIE Fighter the map is fully 3D and shows all crafts' relative position in 3D space.

As mentioned, the best way to orient yourself toward a craft is to select it on your targeting computer by pressing T or Y, then center it in your forward radar.

It does take a little bit to free your brain from thinking in terms of atmospheric flight. There is no horizon, ground or gravity; and something being "upside down" is purely a matter of perspective. :-)