colmo

I\'ve been getting frustrated with keyboard control for my burgeoning fleet of aircraft, and have started to consider joystick options. I was surprised to find no official joystick thread, so I thought I\'d start one. I\'ll edit this post to reflect reviews, links, recommendations and what to avoid in the joystick options for KSP. Note that some joysticks are in both the recommended and not recommended lists. This is intentional, and reflects the differing findings of users. Note 2 - the forum migration has broken all the links below, so don't bother clicking them - just read through the thread. Recommended: Saitek X52 - profile by DrSinn - recommendation by foamyesque - recommendation by 707-Engineering Thrustmaster/Guillemot T-Thrust Hotas X - recommendation by dodrian - recommendation by Causeless - recommendation and setup by GWBBQ - recommendation by Lord Wasteland - recommended by marginwalker Logitech Extreme 3D Pro - recommendation by nn04 - recommendation by rekabnot - recommendation by Commander Zoom - recommendation by deadshot462 - recommendation by Phoenix Aerospace Logitech Attack 3 - recommended by Jeb KerBoom - recommended by Cthulufaic - recommended by Vanamonde (but lacks longevity) Saitek Aviator / Av8R - recommendation by Vostok - recommended by Feragorn - recommendation by haltux - recommendation by TerranCmdr Note: left throttle control on Xbox Av8R is a dummy according to Vostok CH Flight Yoke - recommended by OtherDalfite Xbox 360 controller - recommended by Aegrim Microsoft Sidewinders (all models) - recommended by Letum - recommendation and advice by Gabe_Ruckus Not recommended: Saitek Cyborg 3D Gold USB - review by khyron42 Logitech Attack 3 - lacks durability according to sss - needs profiles for planes v rockets according to XenonBlade Saitek Pro Flight Yoke - review by Anariag Logitech Extreme 3D Pro - accuracy decreases with use according to Haltux Previous discussions: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7567.0 Late 2013 edit: Joysticks do work in the native Linux version of KSP. They didn't work well when we had to use Wine.

I edited the part.cfg file to make scale = 2 instead of one, and I\'m no nearer being able to land on it. I really need a joystick! Lack of flaps to slow down is a killer, though I can\'t get my chopper on it either - just too many things going on at the same time for keys to be adequate.

Glad to help You need a decent biplane....(and a joystick helps):

The Camera plugin is a hard act to follow, but I just successfully tested the pusher props as a boat propeller. It was spectacularly inefficient, slow, and I\'m not sure how much thrust came from thrust in air or water...but a nice start. A nice little outboard as a combined prop/control surface would be the ticket...

Taking a few tips from Excaliber, I managed to build a working chopper. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13711 It\'s much bigger than his, using lateral tanks, but those come in handy for tuning the centre of mass, which is easier to move than the centre of thrust (the rotor). When I tried the Ko-AXE, I found it tended to heel backwards and crash - I didn\'t see the throttle warning though! My own design heels forward slightly, but well within trimmable limits, and requires no SAS, as that makes it a pig to turn. As there is no tail rotor, we\'re forced to use control surfaces to make yaw manoeuvres, and as we\'re moving slowly, we need a lot of them! Placing floodlights on the underside really helped in landing - it gives a much better perception of how far away the ground is. A few things I learned were: 1) Keep your mass central - I had a MkI that had lateral tanks on trusses, which liked to go into a flat spin. Removing the trusses improved that handling a lot. 2) Keep the mass low. Most of the upright control surfaces are below the centreline of the craft. This may require using hardpoints to lower landing gear, which will lower CoG even more. 3)If the chopper likes to pitch fore or aft, place wings at nose and tail. If it\'s reluctant to pitch, move those surfaces into the centre. 4) Use plenty of upright control surfaces to prevent spinning. 5) Use a joystick to fly it! You really do need fine throttle control (as the pitch of a chopper directly impacts lift) and you can\'t do that while controlling the orientation of the craft at the same time without major remapping of keys.

Do you mean at first load or in-game? I wasn\'t aware the disk was being accessed during flight.

Just a small note, there was a small fault with the landing gear on the Biplane MkII - I thought I\'d fixed it but apparently not. Now fixed.

Bingo. Yes, that\'s it - say you want to mount a twin missile launcher on the back of a BigTrak. Rotatron, powered hinge, and then there\'s no way to get a truss to sit balanced on top.... Don\'t get me wrong, DYJ, I love your work, just want it to realise it\'s full potential :thumbup:

A powered hinge from Damned Robotic, perhaps? Maybe combi it with a rotatron for 180 degree POV?

Yes, I discovered that was the case after posting! I would like a truss with a centre node - ideal for sticking on a rotatron or powered hinge to counter-balance two objects.

The sacrifice of many, many Kerbals was not in vain as I finally designed a flyable chopper (which sometime successfully lands too). I think the fuel hoses have bugged it, giving infinite fuel. Considering how hard choppers are to fly in the game currently (0.15.2), not having to worry about changing weight balance due to rear-forwards fuel consumption is a small bonus. - Nope, fuel use is fine. It\'s just VERY parsimonious. MkI had the lateral tanks on trusses - the removal of the trusses centralised mass and made the helicopter much easier to handle. MkIIb has corrected fuel hose layout for optimal balance for the majority of the flight. Requires Damned Aeronautics and floodlights from the Bigtrak mod - this is highly recommended as the downward facing beams give you a much better idea of where the ground is on landing.

This will be awesome in the the BigTrak and the various vehicles in the Cart mod. It\'ll also be excellent for rendezvous missions for a real POV. And of course we can put them on satellites and space stations. Would be nice if MechJeb\'s SURF function was persistent so they always faced the right way. Also useful for aiming the various weapons, and of course the cruise missile POV.

Anyone else having trouble in 0.15.2 building a chopper that a) goes straight up doesn\'t spin out of control c) doesn\'t keel over? I just cannot seem to nail centre of mass (basically where the main rotor goes). I have one chopper that works....for a while, then it spins out as fuel use imbalances it. It\'s a big old bird, as anything smaller just doesn\'t work. Handles like a pig too. Tried a Chinook too, but that just tipped instantly on it\'s side for no good reason.

You might be able to use the structural supports instead of radial decouplers to shave some mass off. They don\'t have as much ejection force, but are half the mass. It would buy you some landing gear, easily!

And now my first successful jet - completely stock.

Could I request a few (i.e. a lot) more attachment nodes on the trusses? I\'d like to be able to attach them together at right angles, and a diagonal truss sized for the 1m and 2m pieces (maybe a centre node on the 2m piece to allow the 1m diagonal too) would also be most welcome. Then we could build more elaborate structural supports.

I just had this idea and I see I\'m not the first - they\'re so cute! (Especially when screaming madly as they plunge to their doom). +1 for plushies Kerbals.

I know from racing RC buggies that you can control the attitude of the vehicle in the air using throttle and brakes. To get the nose up, hit the throttle, and the centrifugal force of the wheels will cause the nose to move in the opposite direction, i.e. up. To nose down, hit the brakes and the trajectory will naturally be nose down. I\'m guessing that as the BigTrak is one piece, this doesn\'t happen? If a vehicle was built of component parts, I suspect the physics in-game would be realistic enough to allow this in-air handling.

So it is possible? I\'m not that familiar with the ins and outs of MechJeb yet.

You\'ve just made me very happy...

How did you get the rockets to fire and release in the same stage? That doesn\'t seen to work in stock.

Does MechJeb on the carrier allow you to fly it back to base too? I\'m guessing MechJeb will keep it flying until you switch back to it?

Schadenfreude. Best laugh I had today.

The human body works best at 1G - that\'s why pretty much all the concept generational spacecraft have a wheel to generate artificial gravity (actually centrifugal force). You also need a complete working biosphere - this is what the Biosphere experiments were trying to figure out. Everything will be recycled - absolutely nothing is wasted. We also need an energy source - I\'d guess that nuclear is the best option at present. Given the necessary nutrition (I\'m guessing artificial light too), and shielding from radiation, I see no reason why humans could not gestate and be born in space. The idea of sending folks out there, cut off from the parent race, is an engine of science-fiction - in biology, it\'s a classic founder effect, as the small group is unlikely to have a completely representative collection of alleles. The evolutionary pressures on this small population are so different that, given enough time, they\'d perhaps become a sub-species. Their culture and language could diverge too. I\'d imagine they\'d lose pigmentation (lighter skinned people do better at producing vitamin D in iffy light than those with darker skin folks, and the artificial light would lack the harmful radiation that melanin is so useful in blocking - I\'m not being racist, some of this came as a surprise to me too!), be very smart, be smaller, and have excellent hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. There\'d be downsides - their immune systems would be utterly ignorant of the continued retrovirus pandemics the Earth has every year, and they\'d lose most of their languages - boiled down to a common tongue plus maths, music and programming. All pure speculation of course, based on the assumptions of small population, lack of space, high skill requirements (no room for slackers!) and poor light.

I\'ve been shopping around myself. My initial plan is to get a Dobsonian (offers best aperture for the money, as you\'re not paying much for a mount), and concentrate on looking at stuff and finding my way about the night. Best bang per buck in the UK is the Skywatcher Skyliner 200P (an 8 inch Dob). Celestron and Orion likely have something similar, and probably cheaper than here, maybe on the high side of your budget. Eventually, the plan is that I\'ll save enough and have enough observing experience to get something like the Meade LX80 mount, with I can mount the OTA of the Dobsonian to, probably along with a camera for astrophotography.