Calling all VTOL pilots! The Cupcake Challenge Cup Is Here....

[Cupcake...]

It does sound very nice, let me know how you guys get on with it, when my Sidewinder gets put out to pasture I'll probably invest in one of these.

Cupcake...

I just ordered that Logitech Extreme 3D Pro.

It looks really good

Well made challenge and vtol vehicle. I didn't manage to finish it, but thanks to this thread I did go buy a Logitech Extreme 3d Pro, pretty good joystick, especially for cheap. It's the first joystick I have had in about 10+ years. Little did I know that KSP has good joystick support too and the joystick comes with a utility for mapping axes and assigning commands to its many (12, plus 8 direction hat stick) buttons.

[madspy]

Sure, no bother. When I get it I will tell you how well it goes. All of the reviews I have seen are in its favour.

[localSol]

It does sound very nice, let me know how you guys get on with it, when my Sidewinder gets put out to pasture I'll probably invest in one of these.

Good experience overall. Comfortable grip for the right hand, (all of this understanding that I'm not a particularly experienced joystick user) the pitch/roll axes seem a little on the tense side but the benefit of that might be more precision and maybe a hand workout. The twist seems to not have much range of motion, I really don't remember how that compares to other joysticks but the Logitech Profiler software that came with it let me adjust the sensitivity, though how you can adjust sensitivity for a limited range device I don't know, maybe some kind of adaptive correction or non linear range thing, but it helped to lower it.

I'm kinda left wanting some way of toggling on/off the twist axis during flight, I don't know how to do that just yet, since with some aircraft designs an accidental yaw can cause it to go out of control - It's not easy to know whether I'm accidentally twisting slightly while rolling without looking at the yaw indicator and sometimes even a tiny bit is too much. For other aircraft though the twist/rudder is very useful and fun to keep the craft in control while turning hard. Maybe rudder pedals are better.

As for rockets and spacecraft, sometimes they can have very strong roll ability and that can make the 'am i twisting?' problem more of a problem especially with no air resistance, but ASAS is still available to help that and mappable to joystick buttons. It's still worth having even if you use it for certain vehicles since you can use keyboard flight controls while using joystick ones. A third option is michael kim's mouse drive plugin here on the forums.

Being able to switch the function or toggle on/off of yaw/roll during flight would be great too and I haven't found a way to do that yet. Anybody know? Maybe I could have benefited from researching other joysticks first but whatever, I'll have two or ten or a museum. For little green frog-eyed baby-men! (and spaceflight)

Edited June 4, 2013 by localSol

[Cupcake...]

Thanks, that's a very thorough review. I guess you could widen the null zone on the yaw axis so you really have to crack it over before it kicks in, but yeah you're right, pedals would be the ultimate really.

Cupcake...

Good experience overall. Comfortable grip for the right hand, (all of this understanding that I'm not a particularly experienced joystick user) the pitch/roll axes seem a little on the tense side but the benefit of that might be more precision and maybe a hand workout. The twist seems to not have much range of motion, I really don't remember how that compares to other joysticks but the Logitech Profiler software that came with it let me adjust the sensitivity, though how you can adjust sensitivity for a limited range device I don't know, maybe some kind of adaptive correction or non linear range thing, but it helped to lower it.

I'm kinda left wanting some way of toggling on/off the twist axis during flight, I don't know how to do that just yet, since with some aircraft designs an accidental yaw can cause it to go out of control - It's not easy to know whether I'm accidentally twisting slightly while rolling without looking at the yaw indicator and sometimes even a tiny bit is too much. For other aircraft though the twist/rudder is very useful and fun to keep the craft in control while turning hard. Maybe rudder pedals are better.

As for rockets and spacecraft, sometimes they can have very strong roll ability and that can make the 'am i twisting?' problem more of a problem especially with no air resistance, but ASAS is still available to help that and mappable to joystick buttons. It's still worth having even if you use it for certain vehicles since you can use keyboard flight controls while using joystick ones. A third option is michael kim's mouse drive plugin here on the forums.

Being able to switch the function or toggle on/off of yaw/roll during flight would be great too and I haven't found a way to do that yet. Anybody know? Maybe I could have benefited from researching other joysticks first but whatever, I'll have two or ten or a museum. For little green frog-eyed baby-men! (and spaceflight)

[localSol]

Thanks, that's a very thorough review. I guess you could widen the null zone on the yaw axis so you really have to crack it over before it kicks in, but yeah you're right, pedals would be the ultimate really.

You're welcome, I just noticed that KSP also lets you adjust sensitivity and deadzone for each axis and for each control assigned to that axis. I really think having a joystick is a big help in KSP. For any VTOL pilots not familiar, deadzone is an area you can define that makes the joystick do nothing until it passes that "do nothing" range. Useful for doing sensitive maneuvers where you don't want to accidentally put force on one particular direction or not, and even a tiny bit could cause a catastrophe. That's the idea , with the twist on this a deadzone helps but it also reduces the total range of motion so it can be a trade-off, but it does help. You can't make deadzones or adjust sensitivity for keyboard controls (besides the capslock sensitivity control) which is a good feature but can still be a strain on long flights.