8 replies to this topic

[Joel Schultz]

One of my long-standing gripes about 3000AD joystick support for 3-axis joysticks (X/Y/twist) is that it operates unfortunately realistically from a flight control perspective. That is, X-left is roll-left, X-right is roll-right, Y-forward is pitch-down, Y-back is pitch-up, twist-left is yaw-left and twist-right is yaw-right.

Again, this is realistic from a flight control perspective. And if I was playing a flight simulator I wouldn't have any problem with this scheme. But if you're like me, you've had who-knows-how-many years experience playing X-Wing, TIE Fighter, or Freespace drill into you that the starfighter flight control scheme should be X-left is yaw-left, X-right is yaw-right, twist-left is roll-left and twist-right is roll-right. For whatever reason, as soon as that space cockpit flashes up on the screen all flight simulator experience suddenly vanishes and I'm back in the old-school starfighter mindset, rolling and yawing like a n00b who couldn't fly towards his crusier if it was parked directly in front of me. (Actually, this is one of the reasons I like the commander career because as commander, I don't have to pilot my own ship. )

SC, despite a few requests (including some from me), has chosen not to implement a feature in the game itself to flip the roll/yaw axis mappings for joysticks that report X/Y/twist capabilities*. So the odds aren't good that we'll see an enhancement to the the games themselves. However, his games have to talk to the joystick and do that via drivers, which are software. And that's where the "rescue" is.

I personally have a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick. I hadn't updated my Logitech software since 2004, so I downloaded the latest Logitech gaming software from their website (www.logitech.com). It turns out that their Profiler application has some nice features. First of all, it can load up certain "configurations" when it automatically detects a specified game being launched. For my purposes, I created a profile for the "GCES.exe" executable from the GCES preview.

The really cool feature that the Profiler has is that not only does it allow you to assign (keystroke and other) commands to buttons but it also allows you to assign axes, including altering the axis identity of what the axes will report in as. Thus, for GCES I told the X-axis to report in as twist-axis and twist-axis to report in as X-axis.

Voila! Now when playing GCES (or UCAWA now for that matter as soon as I create a profile for it), I can actually fly again! Yaw is where I like it on the X-axis and roll is on the twist axis.

Anyone else with a Logitech joystick who has the same "pilot's block" I have can do this trick. Presumably other joystick manufacturers also have "configuration tools" to permit tweaking of how the joystick reports is data back to the computer to achieve the same result.

Happy flying!



* For two-axis joysticks, there does appear to be a toggle to switch the roll of the X-axis. That doesn't seem to help if you have more than two axes, though.

[Supreme Cmdr]

The twist axis is a yaw op. Anything else is wrong. Hence the reason I have no intentions of changing it. Just because other games - for the sake of dumbing down the concept - do it the opposite way, doesn't make it right.

[Joel Schultz]

So there you have it, straight from the SC himself. If you need it dumbed down due to years of conditioning flying oppositely on other games, driver tweaks like with the Logitech Profiler is the only way to go, period.

Personally, I don't care which way is wrong or right. For flight sims, give me the realistic "right" flight controller. For space/starfighter sims, give me the "wrong" one.

I like the one I like because I like it like that.

[Supreme Cmdr]

The whole reason the twist axis was introduced is due to the requirement to have rudder controls for flight sims. Before that, most of us had those horribly placed foot rudders (I owned one from CH Products, Logitech et al) for rudders. So when they started adding twist axis to joysticks, that was the point. Which is why a twist axis is for yaw - not roll - in flight games. And traditionally when you pull L/R on a stick, the craft rolls, now yaws. Some games would also allow you to do a yaw (in the absense of a twist axis) by holding down a key (or button) while pulling the stick L/R.

[Zakhal]

Joel Schultz, on Feb 28 2008, 02:35 AM, said:

* For two-axis joysticks, there does appear to be a toggle to switch the roll of the X-axis. That doesn't seem to help if you have more than two axes, though.

I dont like flight sims much and the constant use of twitch on my FF2 makes my wrist ache. This has always been one of the bigger issues I have had with bc3000ad since the beginning.

Today I tried almost everything to switch the x axis but havent yet found anything. The faq says -j command line parameter (and ctrl+j ingame) should help but it doesnt seem to work atleast on UC SE and UC free. I was planning on buying UC CE - I guess theres a tiny chance it might work in that.

I tried a gamepad too (xb360 for windows) but CTRL+J doesnt work with that either. Next Im going to try pinnacle game profile (I just tried joytokey but the control was sluggish) and then Im gonna quit working on this issue atleast for now.

If anyone finds anyway to fix it - apart from buying a logitech joystick (I much like my FF2) - then please share the information. I hope atleast ECHO SQ SE has a workaround for it.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Its hard coded in the game. You can't change it. As I've said before, I currently have no plans to change it.

As the FAQ says, if your joystick has a twist axis, the CTRL+J option will not work.

If you don't want to use a twist axis, uhm, buy a stick without one?

None of the UC games support a gamepad; so I dunno what you're going on about there.

Once again: The twist axis was introduced by HW manufacturers in order to simulate an aircraft's rudder. You don't use a rudder as a roll axis. Its for yaw (i.e. course correction).

What you folks are trying to do is akin to complaining that you can't make your car go in reverse when you put it in drive (or first gear for those of you driving a stick shift). The R was designed for reverse. First gear was designed to go forward, fast.

I'll see if we can get CTRL+J to actually work reliably by switching the op on the axis. If it does, then we'll implement it as a maintenance update for GCES and UCCE.

[coder_1024]

I think I'm in a similar boat. I have a Saitek X-45 HOTAS which I bought for Falcon 4.0 Allied Force (an F-16 sim). It doesn't twist, but it does have a separate flight stick and throttle and on the throttle handle is a rocker which does yaw. So I guess its essentially the same thing as a joystick with twist.

Unfortunately, the Saitek programming software, although it lets you do quite a bit, doesn't let you swap axes as far as I can see.

When flying Falcon, you're rarely pounding on the yaw. You mostly use yaw for taxi'ing around and takeoff/landing. With something like GCESSE you have significant yaw control authority and so its a much easier thing to pull something onto your crosshairs by yawing as opposed to always having to roll so its above you then pull it to you.

In other words, I end up yaw'ing about MUCH more in GCESSE than I ever would need to in Falcon. So the weakness of the yaw rocker on my stick has become more apparent.

The rocker has very little travel so its not very precise for bringing something into the crosshairs, the x-axis would be much nicer for that.

I have CH Pro Pedals which would help, but pedals aren't supported. I believe CH has the ability to merge controllers, but I haven't tried that. That would present a single controller to the game. 'course, then it would have 2 yaw axes, so not sure what would happen.

[Joel Schultz]

coder_1024, on Mar 8 2008, 08:05 PM, said:

The [yaw] rocker has very little travel so its not very precise for bringing something into the crosshairs

Ditto for my stick. It doesn't help either that my stick's yaw rocker is a bit "loose" and so needs a larger dead-zone.

coder_1024, on Mar 8 2008, 08:05 PM, said:

the x-axis would be much nicer for that

Bingo. That's another reason why I like my personal joystick profile with the axis swap.

/me trying to drag the topic back in the direction I had originally intended for it to go

Say, does anyone know of free downloadable joystick profiling tools (or even not-free)? If you do, please post a link for those ones out there who perhaps don't have a "proprietary" profiling software for their favorite stick that supports axis swap.

If anyone else knows of proprietary joystick software (other than Logitech) that can swap axes, please also post.

[SpiderOfDestiny]

I just got UCCE this week, and it has been so long since I played BCMG, that I had completely forgotten about the benefits of the Logitech Profiler. Thanks for posting this topic.

One related tip that I have found quite useful: When programming buttons for commands, such as ctrl+s, make sure that the profiler is set to record pauses. Otherwise, you get "s" in-game instead of 'ctrl+s" about half the time. I like to use the "side" buttons on my Extreme 3D Pro for Tacops, Tactical, Perscan, Docking, etc.

As far as the roll/yaw axes are concerned, I have not re-learned enough yet to have much of a preference. I am still "owned" by the AI fighter pilots either way.