Realistic hardware controllers

[Sid]

The thread on the Apollo AGC has made me think again about something I have been planning to do for a while now - build realistic rotational and translational controllers for KSP which are modelled loosely on the Apollo\Gemini items.

By realistic I mean internally as well, kind of ( ever seen inside one of those things ? ). Constructed using titanium, aerospace grade aluminium and built like an item that really was going to be flown on a real spacecraft.

How would you have the control system work ? I have given up on using a joystick with KSP because the interface is buggy. Or was, I gave up in about 0.19 and haven't tried again. So I'm thinking switches to provide keypresses rather than potentiometers.

How to switch between fine and coarse controls ? - there are two obvious ways, having the controller use a single set of switches and selecting the mode with a seperate switch on the unit. Or more complex have a second set of switches built into the controller - moving the hand control slightly out of the detent fires fine thrusters, further movement fires coarse thrusters.

Any ideas from the community ?

I'm thinking about making a very limited run of controllers for sale, to defray the costs of the first one. Would anyone be interested ? The units wouldn't be KSP specific, you would be able to use them with any sim. They wouldn't be cheap though, given the amount of machining involved and the materials used. Would be pretty cool to own however...

[Majiir]

With a simple plugin, you can feed flight controls directly to the game instead of mucking around with keypresses.

[Sid]

The interface will be a commercially available USB board designed for people who want to use their own custom hardware with a sim.

So if the default mapping is in place it can send a 'W' to command pitch up. Or alternatively map pitch up to a joystick button input provided by the board.

No need for a plugin. That part of the design is fixed.

What I don't want to do is use an analog joystick axis for thruster commands unless the way KSP deals with joystick inputs has gotten better. I had to unplug my stick because it glitched all the time ( and it's wasn't the fault of the stick )

I'm really asking how people think the controller should work in terms of what I suppose you could call ergonomics. I know how I'd currently like it to work, but I want some other ideas.