Oolite Bulletins

Oh yeah, my Thrustmaster uses Oolite with proportional scaling control levels. Mind you it's also insanely over sensitive so there is a "fine tuning" button that is invaluable in combat.

Cheers Spud42

As mossfoot says the control is fully proportional which is a wonderful thing Luckily there is a 'fine control' button which dampens the joystick action when in combat. I have it tied to the right thumbstick down action.

So use all the course movement to rapidly get sight on or near the target and then hit the fine control to help prevent overshoot of the target. It's great!

A slider pot will probably be the 'weapon' of choice. Directly coupled the full movement will be 60mm for the throttle.

Wood, plastic, what ever else comes in handy will be used. A spray of paint will cover the wierd conglomeration this becomes. If it's really bad turning the lights off will also be a bonus.

Interesting point I found whilst googling last night. Joystick pots are designed slightly differently from the 'standard' type. The resistive track they have is actually fitted within the limit of the 60degree travel. I was thinking as per the old R/C gimbals where standard travel pots were used but only about 90degree full movement was the norm. You live and learn!

So the only mind bending bit is going to be working out the ratio for some toothed gear wheels to make the movement of the new stick translate to the relative movement needed to rotate a standard pot through it's range.

BBD

Bangbangduck wrote:

Luckily there is a 'fine control' button which dampens the joystick action when in combat. I have it tied to the right thumbstick down action.

Are you referring to Oolite's 'precision-mode' joystick-button setting, or does your 'stick have its' own?

(Incidentally, the non-linear joystick profiling in 1.79/1.80 is so good that joystick precision-mode is unnecessary, although it's still available as an option.)

mossfoot wrote:

God, after using keyboard only all day it's a miracle anyone made Elite using one back in the day. GHAH!

Now try to imagine what it was like before keyboard precision-mode* was added just two years ago.. (and debuted in 1.77.0)

* Actually, it occurs to me that you may not have realised it exists.. holding down the <Ctrl> key along with pitch, roll or yaw keys gives you finer control.. very helpful in combat and docking!

Diziet Sma wrote:

Bangbangduck wrote:

Luckily there is a 'fine control' button which dampens the joystick action when in combat. I have it tied to the right thumbstick down action.

Are you referring to Oolite's 'precision-mode' joystick-button setting, or does your 'stick have its' own?

No the controller is standard I've just used the joystick setup in oolite to tie that lovely fine pitch setting to the thumbstick button.

I concur that in 1.79/80 this is not needed because you can tweak the axis profiles to within an inch of their lives! But for 1.77 on my netbook it's very useful.

I have only come to realize it exists on the keyboard since downloading Gimi's Keyboard layout PDF.

BBD

Bangbangduck wrote:

I have only come to realize it exists on the keyboard since downloading Gimi's Keyboard layout PDF.

For anyone who's wondering, it should be noted that key only applies to keyboard controls, it won't toggle joystick precision-mode, which can only be toggled via a 'stick button..

Hi Chaps

Well I tracked down some nice gears to use for the diy joystick/tiller. 50 tooth 52mm and 10 tooth 12mm. 6mm thick so nice heavy duty. The ratio is about right a 60degree movement of the larger gear would rotate the smaller just short of one rotation. As the smaller gear is attached to the pot which only has 300degree range we will be able to set end stops to prevent overun though so no biggy.

Spud42. The big red button is a winner It would need to be wired up to the first pair of 555's from the key sequence circuit but replace the rest of the circuit with an opto isolator to link into the keyboard as the ESC requires 2 presses in quick succesion which 555 #2 would provide.

BBD Currently post constrictor triumph and off to inhume a bad chap in the Dixeza system

Bangbangduck wrote:

Spud42. The big red button is a winner It would need to be wired up to the first pair of 555's from the key sequence circuit but replace the rest of the circuit with an opto isolator to link into the keyboard as the ESC requires 2 presses in quick succesion which 555 #2 would provide.

You should be able to simplify that a bit - the escape-pod-activation-immediate hidden setting will make Oolite only require one keypress.

Hi Cim

Thankyou that is good to know and very useful! This would make having a big red knod easier..................

Ooooooer missus titter ye not!

BBD

you mention "netbook" , what model is it? i have an old acer AOA150 would be cool to see if Oolite would work on it.. got a car adaptor so i could keep it in the car to play in downtime between calls...

BBD what part of the world are you in? i have access to many gears of different sizes and teeth profile/number. My current job is with Ricoh MFD/printers etc.... lots of lovely gears and stuff...

spud42 wrote:

i have an old acer AOA150 would be cool to see if Oolite would work on it.. got a car adaptor so i could keep it in the car to play in downtime between calls...

I'd suggest using a lightweight Linux distro and desktop (say, Mint 17 Xfce) on it, so as to free up as many system resources as possible for Oolite.

not to derail BBD's thread but ....
i might have to set it to dual boot again then... it has win7 on it and i use it for work sometimes . it has all our manuals firmware tech bulletins and a 3d parts guide . most of this doesnt have a linux version so im stuck with win7. what the heck i will give it a try and see how bad it is...i could always set up a linux boot USB stick and have oolite on that?? would make that commander portable too... if it can work on a Pandora it should work on a 1.6Ghz Atom based netbook right?

just have to get it back from the housemate.... i let her borrow it to go to China. still has her photos on it.... must see if shes finished with it... yet another project!!!

Hi Chaps

Spud42: I'm in the UK. Your Acer should do the job OK the specs are very close to my eeepc 1000H. But as Diziet Sma says it will run better on a lightweight Linux. I can't run 1.79 it's Uber goodness is just to much for my humble workhorse. 1.77 is solid but using lovely OXP's like griffs shipset, and the BSG set where the detail is just to much for it to handle.

I get the occasional artifact on screen where the GPU may struggle a bit but it's all golden otherwise. The Pendrive you would need to try first. Access time may cause issues with smoothness of play. But I am prepared to be corrected

I'm using Crunchbang as My OS. Everything works great. I did have ubuntu 12.04 on here which served well but when changing between fullscreen and windowed it would cause little Netty to reboot

Crunchbang does not

Let us know how you get on

BBD

Hi there

Currently playing in sketchup, again, to get some idea of the sick setup. As well as trying to keep 'the gubbins' as compact as possible. Here's a link to the How To at flightsim.com on which I am basing my effort. I am only doing a stick and throttle set with the keyboard system as well. Although looking at the How to it would be easy to follow suit with the whole shebang

Thanks to the author who replied to my mail about the gears he used.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.p ... t-Controls

BBD

You are not mad, for this madness has been discussed before......

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... d&start=15

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... it=cockpit

Go in peace o brother. May your labours be fruitful! Especially if you happen to own a 3d printer or a milling machine!

Hi guys

Cheers ClymAngus

It is so good to know I am amongst fellow nutters enthusiasts! There is another setup I found on here where the basic controls were setup as an 'arcade' type device. Another impressive, to go with your examples, method.

Well I've been doddling in sketchup a fair bit and have even tried sketchy physics to simulate gear ratio interaction.........Pointless as it doesn't run so well in linux though sketchup itself does.

But I dared to try using maths, I hate maths another thing that makes my nose bleed, to work out movement arcs based on a 5:1 ration and a 6:1 ratio. That is the 50 tooth gear with the 10 tooth spur and a 60 tooth with the same 10 tooth spur.

Well if I have it right what we have is -

With the 5:1 ratio based on the fact we want the spur gear, attached to the pot, to rotate +/- 150 degrees (300 total) at the most the movement arc is +/- 30 degrees (60 degrees total)

With the 6:1 ratio based on the fact we want the spur gear, attached to the pot, to rotate +/- 150 degrees (300 total) at the most the movement arc is +/- 25 degrees (50 degrees total).

In these images you can see the differnce this makes -



'And' I hear you say. Well having a larger ratio means you move the stick less. Although having scratched my head and done all the above I do wonder if it's worth it for the 10 degrees difference But as and when I get the gears I'll be able to see how it actually feels.

BBD