Is there a non-gamer's guide to mapping a joystick?

[keoki]

So I'm /not/ a gamer. I'm an engineer nearing retirement age, and I have been playing KSP long enough to have completed a dozen career modes, and in general I know my way around KSP pretty good. I've been building/designing computers longer than most of you have been alive. I'm here because KSP is the first game to attract my attention.

But I don't know beans about joysticks, or flight controls. I got my first modern joystick today. I got it because the keyboard sucks for many types of maneuvers. At least that is what I was thinking when I purchased the joystick... But now the joystick is taking the joy out of the game... I've searched the forums on the subject of setting up a joystick, but I mostly see people talking about it, but not actually explaining it. It seems most of you have been around joysticks for a while, and this is not the first game you have ever tried to map to a stick. So when someone starts a thread talking about it, there are few specifics discussed, only that it is easy, and several tools are out there to improve things so they are even better.

Googling this subject, and it seems most games have the stick pre-mapped, so most people are only changing the defaults, not creating a mapping from scratch. Mapping from scratch is a tall order, when you don't know pitch from yaw.

Is there a good resource out there for someone that has zero joystick experience?

I went through the configuration screens, but I've managed to make flying from a keyboard seem easy compared to the stick... So clearly I got started on the wrong foot.

I have an extreme 3d pro (based on recommendations here) but I really need a basic, but mostly complete guide on what mappings to configure as a starting point. I'll save the sophisticated tweaking and third-party tools for the threads that already exist... I'll get to that next week after I master basic flight controls with a stick.

If there is a file with the basic mappings that I can just get a copy of, I can probably use that as a good starting point... But starting from scratch is difficult when there are no defaults at all. I'm /not/ asking for flying lessons. I only want a starting point for an initial mapping.

[Hyomoto]

While some may disagree with me, control mapping in general leaves much to be desired in KSP. There is a lot that cannot be mapped to the joystick without external software, key binds that can't be changed, and the things you can map to the joystick overlap in odd ways. That being said, it's actually a lot easier than you might have thought. Simply go to the main menu, click settings and select the controls tab. This is all you need to set up your joystick. You'll probably just want to set up your 'staging' controls for now, and it's as easy as picking an axis, then moving that axis on your joystick to map it. You can then adjust sensitivity and invert the axis if need be and that's it. The axis are labeled as pitch, roll, yaw and translation vectors so I doubt you need a list for this. You can set it up however it's comfortable for you.

[keoki]

Simply go to the main menu, click settings and select the controls tab. This is all you need to set up your joystick.

Yeah, you are helping make my point. I have done exactly that... and more. And the results were awful.

Pretend that your post is the only information I have. Pretend I have never seen a joystick or flight control before. Is that /really/ enough information? You sum up the information I am looking for without providing any information. You walked me up to the door I've already been /through/. Almost as if you only skimmed my first post without reading it. I appreciate your spending the time to answer, and I get what you are trying to say. But my questions were about what I should do AFTER I click settings and select the control tab. And I don't mean how does the settings UI work, I did in fact set-up my stick. But the words pitch, yaw, roll, etc... I've heard those words before, but they may as well be words from a foreign language. There is a TON of information on these words when you google them, but that doesn't translate into what axis they should be applied to. Obviously I haven't found the page I'm looking for yet, because 99.9% of the pages that talk about this stuff don't display a mapping of those words to a flight stick. If I'm lucky, I'll find a page that mentions pitch and illustrates it... So I have that ONE. Roll and yaw seem interchangeable, in fact some pages talk about swapping them. All of the discussions start from the point that the controls are already mapped, OR the person reading has mapped controls before. One post here looked really promising, he covered pitch and yaw, and followed that with "and so on..." .

I need the "and so on" part.

The next almost promising post (from a different game discussion I googled into) put yaw on a completely different axis, and the next one discussed switching yaw for roll, but didn't relate either to an axis. Most resources talk about it, providing little more than the "and so on" with regard to specific details. I'm just looking for a documented starting point that includes the words used in the settings UI, so that I'm not left just guessing.

Obviously I should start gaming with a game that already has a basic mapping done. Everyone has to start somewhere. The problem is I'm starting HERE, and have no interest in games. I'm here because the orbital dynamics simulation is interesting, not because I want to play a game. I'm posting this because landing something is rather difficult without a joystick, and using the landing mode of the mechjeb totally avoids me having to learn flight controls (and doesn't always get good results)

And I understand it from the experienced person's point of view as well, I used to have to teach people the use of vi. vi comes naturally to me, but only because I've been using unix for 35 years...

[BagelRabbit]

Here's the difference between pitch, roll, and yaw.

Pick up a ruler. (I'm sure you have one nearby.)

Hold the ruler straight out in front of you with one hand, with the side with the numbers on it facing up. This is your "rocket" or "airplane." Use a bit of imagination.

Turn the ruler up or down so that it's facing the sky or the ground. This is your 'Pitch' axis.

Move the tip of the ruler from left to right. This is your 'Yaw' axis.

Keep the ruler facing straight ahead, but turn it clockwise or counter-clockwise about so that the side with the numbers on it isn't facing upwards anymore. This is your 'Roll' axis.

Note that if you 'Roll' your ruler ninety degrees so that the edge of it is facing up, and then 'Pitch' up or down, it's basically the equivalent of 'Yaw.'

If you're mostly building rockets, the two most important controls to have are 'Pitch' and 'Yaw' control, especially while landing. This is so that you can point your craft in the correct direction when burning, as easily as possible. (Otherwise, you may want to map your joystick in a different way, but I won't get into that.)

To map your joystick properly, Pitch should be activated by moving the stick forwards and back, Yaw should be activated by moving the stick to the left or the right, and Roll should be activated by twisting your joystick clockwise or counter-clockwise. Just like the ruler that you were twiddling around a moment earlier.

As for other controls, such as throttle control, you can put them wherever you have room on your joystick. There are plenty of buttons to press, and you should do whatever feels most intuitive and easiest to you.

I hope this helps!

-UpsilonAerospace

Edited November 15, 2014 by UpsilonAerospace

[longbyte1]

What kind of mappings would you like? You can map your controller manually in settings.cfg (although you probably know that by now). Unfortunately, I don't have my joystick mapped to KSP right now, but I'll do it if you'd like. Then I can just copy the relevant settings.cfg fields and give them to you.

A few other programs that might be useful to you are JoyToKey (apparently it's shareware now, so you'll just have to find the last free version, 3.7.4) or Xpadder, in case KSP doesn't let you map specific buttons.

When mapping roll and yaw, I'd suggest you map yaw to two different buttons, one for left and another for right. Roll can be mapped to the X axis of the stick itself.

Edited November 15, 2014 by longbyte1

[Specialist290]

Just dropping a note in here to let you know I've moved this into the main Gameplay Questions forum, as the Tutorials subforum is meant mainly for completed player-written tutorials. Carry on

[cantab]

In a real aeroplane, assuming you start from normal level flight:

Push forward on the stick and you pitch the nose down. Pull back on the stick and you pitch the nose up.

Move the stick left and you roll the left wing down. Move the stick right and you roll the right wing down. (Some planes have a yoke that you rotate instead.)

Yaw is not controlled by the stick but by foot pedals. Push the left pedal and you yaw the nose left. Push the right pedal and you yaw the nose right. If you don't have pedals, you'll have to decide how you want to control the rudders. For aircraft flight they're secondary, pitch and roll are the main controls and yaw is primarily used to make turns neater.

[-ELF-]

Commonly you will need to map it like:

Roll - move stick left to right.

Pitch - move stick forward to backward

Yaw - use some other controls, or try rotating your stick around vertical axis, which will surely help if supported.

It was described previously, but i just found the picture about Roll, Yaw and Pitch.

© Wikipedia page "Flight control surfaces"

And be sure to ask what else is unclear about where to map some other settings.

P.S. A model of your joystick will help, probably someone around here is using something like that already, and he will share a config file for joystick.

[pizzaoverhead]

A graphical explanation:

We'll use aircraft for the example, because that's what joysticks were made for, and rocketry can be more confusing.

Pitch

Pitching makes the nose of the aircraft go up or down. "Pitching up" means pointing the nose of your aircraft towards the sky, as you would do for take-off. To do this with your joystick, pull it towards you so that the stick is pointed at your chest.

Conversely, "pitching down" means pointing the nose of your aircraft towards the ground, as you would when diving downwards. To do this with your joystick, push the stick away from you, towards the screen.

The pitch axis is often called the X-axis in computer games. On an aircraft, the elevators on the tail are the control surface which cause this motion

Roll

Rolling raises one wing and lowers the other. To roll left, (assuming you are right handed) move your hand to the left in a motion similar to going from a thumbs up to a thumbs down.

The roll axis is often called the Y-axis in computer games. On an aircraft, the ailerons on the wings are the control surface which cause this motion.

Yaw

Yawing points the nose of your aircraft to the left or right. Your joystick allows yawing by twisting the stick, like opening a bottle.

This axis is generally called the Z-axis. On an aircraft, this is done using the rudder on the tail, so this control is also referred to as the rudder control. Most joysticks don't support this and require a pair of foot pedals, the same as most real aircraft use.

For an aircraft, the joystick should move the airplane as if the stick was sprouting from its roof and you were using the stick to turn the plane about.

For all the buttons, there is no standard. You can check out this thread for examples:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67189

Once you're comfortable with using your joystick, I'd recommend trying out the Advanced Fly-By-Wire mod, as it has better support for buttons and allows changing your settings in-game.

Edited November 17, 2014 by pizzaoverhead

[Heagar]

A flight-/joystick is a delicate matter in KSP.

Because the values of the variables of it's engine (Unity) - the program witch is the core of the game - have only an very limited range (from 0.0 to 0.99). Witch means, that all inputs have to be within this limits, and therefore are crude at it's best.

I for myself am using an Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog flightstick with CH Pro Pedals. This is an very good flightstick, but when i tryed to setup it in the usual manner (like for FSX (Flight Simulator X) e.g.) i run into trouble, because it was defninetly too sensitive.

Normally you have in an program the possibility to increase the "deadzone" of a joystick (an certain range, where a movement of it will not be detected as input) as well as set the input to an not linear function. Witch means that at the beginning of the movement range of your flightstick the output will be small, but then increases rapidly towards the end of the movement range.

As the other entrys already have explained, what is the meaning of pitch/roll/yaw, i will only guide you through the setup of your flightstick.

When you start KSP, there is on the first screen a button labeld "Settings". Within the settings choose the button "input", and on the input screen the button "staging UI" (staging User Interface). In the further guide i will refer to it as a path like "settings/input/staging UI".

• On the left side you will see the keymappings with two rows of buttons. Let the first row untouched, the second - at that stage empty - you can map to your joystick. That's because i myself fly only a spaceplane within the athmospere with my flightstick, in space or flying rockets the keyboard is mostly better.
  
• On the right side there are the axis for your joystick. Pick a button by klicking on it and then move your joystick in the desired direction. The axis of your joystick will be mapped to that function then.
  
• Now to the most important part: Decrease the sensitivity a lot ((it's only a linear function) in my case left a space about to half the size of the slider bar), and increase the deadzone a little. That you have to do for pitch roll and yaw. For the throttle - if you have one on your joystick - that is not needed.
  
• The translational movement (pushing your ship in space in the desired direction for docking purpurses without rotating it (keys are I,K,J,L,H,N)), is not used by me to avoid conflicts with the rotational movement (pitch/roll/yaw), because this would be the the same axis on the flightstick.
  
  • You can try however to set it up in settings/input/docking UI. Activated with the key "delete" you have to change between the rotational and translational movement with the key "space". Therefore there shouldn't be a conflict with the axis on the joystick. But honestly i never used this mode.
    

  [*]You can map - rotational movement - to your kerbal under settings/input/kerbal.

  [*]Possible is to map the controls for a rover too, under settings/input/rover. But be aware that the analoge controls are inverted! You have to move your joystick in the opposite direction or invert at least the steering in the VAB/SPH editor.

  [*]The last thing, and very helpful for flying planes you will find unter settings/input/misc. If you have a hat (a switch witch moves in four directions at least) on you joystick you can map that as camera control (up/down, left/right). Or if you have a device like "TrackIR" for head movement detection you can also map it here.

Annotation:

It may be that your joystick was delivered with a progam witch enables you to map the keys/axis outside from KSP to the joystick for a chosen game (in this case KSP). If that's the case and you prefer to map the functions with it, you should read the guide for it. It may be that - like mine flightstick - it give you the possibility, to map the buttons on your flight-/joystick with a second set of key-bindings (128 instead of 64 possible keys mapped).

That is not needed for stock KSP in my opinion, but when you are playing with many mods or a games like FSX or Orbiter it come in handy.

[mdkendall]

I have the same joystick as you, and I got it in order to be able to fly planes. Here is how I have it configured:

The only thing I have bothered to configure are the three flight control axes (pitch, roll and yaw) because these are the things that benefit from continuously-variable input (as opposed to the on/off behaviour of the keyboard). Everything else I still do with the keyboard. It works; I can fly planes much better than before. For rockets I still just use the keyboard.