ngetal wrote:Assuming you want 6dof in a space sim like E:D and you have your rotational controls sorted by your main hand stick plus pedals perhaps, and want all the translation controls on your off-hand, a few options you currently have are (along with their drawbacks imo):
- Off-hand stick without twist - you lose one analog axis
- Off-hand stick with twist - one axis (twist) has a good chance of feeling unnatural (to me at least, ymmw)
- Throttle without analog stick - you lose 2 analog axes
- CH-style throttle (analog stick on thumb) - Thumb is focused on maneuvering and have to switch away from that to operate other buttons
- FCS-style throttle (analog stick on index finger) - To me at least, lateral controls with my index finger feel very uncomfortable and imprecise
And then they proposed a new take on things:
ngetal wrote:So I thought, you could have something like the following:
- Throttle-like (horizontal-ish) handle with lots of buttons accessible to the thumb
- One-axis (vertical) mini-stick for your index finger, roughly where a hat is on the CH throttle or the mini-stick on the FCS
- The whole throttle handle can be moved across 2 axes: the "normal" one and a spring-centered lateral one
Which sounded to me far better than anything on the market currently.
Other ideas posited were this, by 'redmercuryvendor':
redmercuryvendor wrote:I'd love to see a T-stick style throttle, with a damped unsprung axis for 'primary' thrust, and spring-return axes for lateral thrust. The tricky part is the mechanism to do that well is bulky, which means commercially expensive.
and 'hon0' and 'redmercuryvendor's conversation about the Stewart Platform Delta Throttles:
hon0 wrote:Look at "delta throttle". https://youtu.be/JsTwS5lIMzs
I prefer this delta stick personally. https://youtu.be/Fj2KQ9aM_M4
redmercuryvendor wrote:I've seen the Stewart Platform based sticks/throttles before, their main issue is the requirement of active force-feedback to provide any sort of haptic feedback: without the servos, your hand is basically floating in mid air with no 'feel' of which axis you are moving in.
And I was thinking that it might interest some of the VKB designers to see what some of us who play a lot of Space Sims are thinking about. The T-stick is similar to what NASA's been using in spacecraft since the Apollo program, if not earlier, and the Delta Throttle or Stick (which can easily be a throttle) might be something that VKB do their own take on, and figure out a way to provide some haptic feedback so users can feel which axis they're moving in, while 'ngetal's 6DOF throttle might be easier to put into production.
Whatever you guys end up doing, I'm sure it will be worth buying, but here's some roads that are currently not traveled by anything but a few home builders.