Three Axis Throttle ***Concept***
Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 0:55
I know there is an intention to develop a modular throttle, hopefully including a space sim variant. I was brainstorming how you could design a throttle grip that would be suitable for what's involved in the control of 3 axes of movement (plus 3 of rotation for 6 total) and wanted to share a concept.
So the favorite right now is HOSAS for space sims, which is basically a work around for there not being any purpose built controller in existence. This is flawed because the axes are all wrong. You need 3 for yaw(lateral about vertical) pitch(vertical about lateral) and roll(lateral about longitudinal) which is either 1 fore/aft and two lateral if on the stick (left/right and twist), or another fore/aft through foot pedals. That part of HOSAS is just fine, the problem comes with the other stick. You need 3 axes for movement of the vehicle and a stick with twist gives you those three, but two of them are lateral axes and only one movement of the vehicle is actually lateral. So you are left with needing to assign either fore/aft or vertical thrust to another input which usual results in inaccurate vertical thrust. There is a better solution using toe-brakes to act as acceleration and deceleration if the game is designed to accept a non-centering throttle (no input = throttle stays at present value). Of course that's not the subject here.
The ideal solution is a throttle that is designed to give you lateral, vertical and fore/aft thrust controls. To do this the traditional axis is used for fore/aft, the vertical would use a twist grip similar to a throttle on a motor bike, and the lateral is provided by translating the whole grip left/right. No doubt any modular throttle will be a two axis design to be used with traditional flight sims, but if these additional mechanisms could be contained in the grip it's self, it would allow a complete transformation. To accomplish this the attachment of the grip would need to be close to the base. In addition the fore/aft axis would need to be sliding and not rotational in order to isolate the 3 axis from each other and reduce the occurrence of unwanted input.
I have attached a terrible sketch of the movement concept. The only important part is the movement of the axes. Ideally the buttons would rotate with the grip so that they would remain in a constant position relative to the thumb. Moving the grip side to side instead of twisting is an advantage because it keeps the other two axes fixed in their alignment. Also, just imaging holding a throttle with your left hand, twisting to the right and then pushing the throttle forward. That's very uncomfortable and awkward.
If you are late in the design stage then this is obviously too late to make such a large change, but if not this could be the perfect answer to a 3 axis space sim throttle. Of course you may have already come up with something 100X better too. I just want to put the idea in your heads.
So the favorite right now is HOSAS for space sims, which is basically a work around for there not being any purpose built controller in existence. This is flawed because the axes are all wrong. You need 3 for yaw(lateral about vertical) pitch(vertical about lateral) and roll(lateral about longitudinal) which is either 1 fore/aft and two lateral if on the stick (left/right and twist), or another fore/aft through foot pedals. That part of HOSAS is just fine, the problem comes with the other stick. You need 3 axes for movement of the vehicle and a stick with twist gives you those three, but two of them are lateral axes and only one movement of the vehicle is actually lateral. So you are left with needing to assign either fore/aft or vertical thrust to another input which usual results in inaccurate vertical thrust. There is a better solution using toe-brakes to act as acceleration and deceleration if the game is designed to accept a non-centering throttle (no input = throttle stays at present value). Of course that's not the subject here.
The ideal solution is a throttle that is designed to give you lateral, vertical and fore/aft thrust controls. To do this the traditional axis is used for fore/aft, the vertical would use a twist grip similar to a throttle on a motor bike, and the lateral is provided by translating the whole grip left/right. No doubt any modular throttle will be a two axis design to be used with traditional flight sims, but if these additional mechanisms could be contained in the grip it's self, it would allow a complete transformation. To accomplish this the attachment of the grip would need to be close to the base. In addition the fore/aft axis would need to be sliding and not rotational in order to isolate the 3 axis from each other and reduce the occurrence of unwanted input.
I have attached a terrible sketch of the movement concept. The only important part is the movement of the axes. Ideally the buttons would rotate with the grip so that they would remain in a constant position relative to the thumb. Moving the grip side to side instead of twisting is an advantage because it keeps the other two axes fixed in their alignment. Also, just imaging holding a throttle with your left hand, twisting to the right and then pushing the throttle forward. That's very uncomfortable and awkward.
If you are late in the design stage then this is obviously too late to make such a large change, but if not this could be the perfect answer to a 3 axis space sim throttle. Of course you may have already come up with something 100X better too. I just want to put the idea in your heads.