STECS OTS mini joystick axis confusion

[drhertel]

I have a new STECS throttle, and the mini-joystick on the side does not work as expected. The two axis seemed to be linked together.

When I use Test > Axes1 in VKB Device Config, what I see is this: When I push the joystick up, axis RotX goes to maximum and axis RotY goes to minimum. When I push down, RotX goes to minimum and Rot Y goes to maximum. When I push forward, both RotX and RotY go to maximum, and when I pull backward both RotX and RotY go to minimum. This happens after resetting to default, both before and after calibration.

In the game DCS, the mini joystick is unusable for moving the radar cursor reliably. It wanders in unpredictable ways.

I am new to VKB devices and the software is very confusing, so I don't know if this is correctable with some setting I don't know about. Any help would be appreciated.

[Alex Oz]

configuration file?

[drhertel]

On further testing I realized the actual problem is sitting in my chair.

If I take the time to move the STECS OTS joystick very slowly and carefully, it is working fine. But otherwise when I use it to control the flight simulator radar cursor, the cursor wanders in a crazy path. It is because I can't convince my brain and thumb that what they think is the "up" direction is really a diagonal direction. I may have also had one of the axes inverted in the game software by accident.

Perhaps with some practice and tuning of the sensitivity I could make it work. But instead I decided to use the mini-joystick on my Gladiator to control the cursor instead. For me it is ten times more controllable. I now use the STECS joystick to implement a momentary view zoom, which is very convenient and works great.

I like the look and feel of the OTS conical hat, but as a suggestion a square-shaped hat like the one on the Gladiator's mini-joystick would give more ergonomic clues to the orientation of the joystick axes.

By the way, I was surprised to discover by a Youtube video that the Gladiator mini-joystick can be configured to toggle into a mouse function. That is fantastic feature for the Digital Combat Simulator clickable cockpit controls, which I did not even realize I was going to get when I made my purchase. I am testing it right now. Being new to both VKB and DCS, it is fun to have so many options to play with.