Oolite Bulletins

It may be helpful to include usb ID's.

For example: ... which is one axis short of useful, cost me £3, and will be returned to a charity shop presently.

Visiting my dad tomorrow. I can retrieve my current flight stick with the broken button from there. It's only one button that is broken on it. So, I don't think it would be too much of a big deal when configuring it to Oolite 1.91...

Found them both in the garage at my dad's house. Still remarkably intact.



The one on the left is older, purchased in the earlier 90's. I haven't yet tested if its still working. It got one of those HDMI like ports with all the pins and screws on either side. The one on the left is the one (Purchased 10 years earlier.) I told you about. I had connected up to the laptop I also use and assume it may work with my big pc. It uses a USB port and it works with Oolite, however, I'm utterly bewildered as to how I might bind it's controls to the game. It was basically already working with, dive, climb and roll, and the forward laser.

The three working buttons on around the top of the stick itself where I plant my thumb were Torus Drive, HyperDrive, Galactic HyperDrive. While the dial just below that I made the Target Missile, and the button right in the center I made fire missile.

I made the lever to the left of the base the throttle and I had difficulty with that one.

Four buttons just below the stick on the base, I made the fore, aft, port and starboard view screens.

It was bonkers to assume you might have to bind a lot of stuff to what was left on this once state of the art flight stick and just left the rest to the keyboard.

I found that using that stick was just rough flying and was back to using the keyboard for pretty much all of it within no time.

What you have to do to eliminate the rough flying is to calibrate the joystick. This is usually done with the software that comes with the joystick but given its age such software may not be easy to find. Alternatively there might be a way to calibrate a joystick through your operating system.

For a new purchase the Logitech Extreme 3d Pro remains a good buy and is very usable for Oolite at around $35.00. Twelve buttons, a throttle, a hat switch, three axis on the stick itself, am currently on my third one. They last a good long time if you do not abuse them too much. Calibrating software is included. Am not, nor have ever been, a Logitech employee.

Is not tweaking the joystick profile (splines) a form of calibration?

And this can be done by Oolite’s Joystick Configuration (under Game Options) - “Edit axis profiles” at the top of each screen.

And Cody also highly recommends the Logitech joystick.

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 2:28 pm

What you have to do to eliminate the rough flying is to calibrate the joystick.

The potentiometers (an assumption!) in the "throttle" are low-precision components - probably only +/- 20% of quoted range, possibly +/-50% - and the carbon track on most "pots" wears fairly rapidly. If you're designing for precision or longevity, you'd use a wire-wound pot (expensive!) or a chain of more-precise resistors (+/-5%, +/-2% ... what's your budget?)
Somewhere in the software (maybe built into the stick's firmware - use "debug" to run the code from the appropriate address) would be a procedure for measuring the resistance of the pot at low end (the "zero" setting), and at the high end ("span"), then interpolate between the two (with assumptions or questions about the pot's profile - linear track?; log track? ; quadratic?; custom?).
I wouldn't assume entirely that it's a pot. It could be 2 switches at the limits of travel, or even 3 with a mid-point. The split design of the "throttle" looks like it mimics boats (or to a lesser degree, multi-engine aircraft), where you can throttle the left engine (props, screws, thrusters) differently to the right one to yaw the craft (rotate on a vertical axis). That would map to the "," and "." keys on a default Oolite mapping. But the Oolite ... paradigm for yawing is more about bow and stern "thrusters" than throttling the main engines.
How to map that onto the state of 4 (6?) switches ... depending on what's in the hardware is a question indeed.

Didn't original Oolite - sorry, Elite - have a setting for auto-centring of the flight controls after a control instruction .. no that was an early flight sim. Involved atmospheres. But centring the controls was a part of calibrating aircraft, boats, whatever after mucking with the hardware of the steering and control systems. If you have the front end of your car apart, you have to adjust the ... I forget the name - tracking rod? - to adjust the "toe-in" or "toe out" of the steering wheels (which is equivalent to the "span" setting above. You set the "zero" with shims between the wheel support castings and the chassis - to allow for manufacturing tolerances in castings and chassis. I had a trainee once who carefully shimmed between the bolt heads and the casting. Well, different system, same concept.

Sorry, I spent so many years working out how to measure this, that, or the other on a drilling rig - the thinking persists even after you cease to wake up screaming.

a hat switch

For throwing your hat in the air? (including retracting the canopy in aircraft?)
OIC - ejector seat/ escape capsule, whatever.

The switch position (? grey plastic fitting) on the end of one of the throttles is placed to operate with the pinky (little, or disposaable, finger)? You couldn't operate it with the thumb when using one hand on the joystick, one hand on the throttle. Regardless of whether the image is flipped left-right.
When I looked at these options, they were <b>all</b> designed assuming the user was right-hand dominant, which didn't fit for me. So, no sale. So when I broke my hand and couldn't "mouse" due to the "pot" (plaster cast, not potentiometer), I ended up with trackball for a couple of months. With which I had to carry a roll of double-sided "carpet tape" with, because it didn't have feet that stuck to the desk. Does this thing "stick" to the desk?

Commander Mick wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 2:16 am

Looks like a serial connector, nice looking joysticks both...

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 2:28 pm

What you have to do to eliminate the rough flying is to calibrate the joystick. This is usually done with the software that comes with the joystick but given its age such software may not be easy to find. Alternatively there might be a way to calibrate a joystick through your operating system.

For a new purchase the Logitech Extreme 3d Pro remains a good buy and is very usable for Oolite at around $35.00. Twelve buttons, a throttle, a hat switch, three axis on the stick itself, am currently on my third one. They last a good long time if you do not abuse them too much. Calibrating software is included. Am not, nor have ever been, a Logitech employee.

The associated website. Mad Catz no longer has stuff for this flight-stick...

Commander Mick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2025 8:42 am

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 2:28 pm

What you have to do to eliminate the rough flying is to calibrate the joystick. This is usually done with the software that comes with the joystick but given its age such software may not be easy to find. Alternatively there might be a way to calibrate a joystick through your operating system.

For a new purchase the Logitech Extreme 3d Pro remains a good buy and is very usable for Oolite at around $35.00. Twelve buttons, a throttle, a hat switch, three axis on the stick itself, am currently on my third one. They last a good long time if you do not abuse them too much. Calibrating software is included. Am not, nor have ever been, a Logitech employee.

The associated website. Mad Catz no longer has stuff for this flight-stick...

Mad Catz’s “Saitek” joysticks were bought up by Logiteck. These products are supposedly now less durable.

Edited to correct errors.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2025 8:53 am

Commander Mick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2025 8:42 am

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 2:28 pm

What you have to do to eliminate the rough flying is to calibrate the joystick. This is usually done with the software that comes with the joystick but given its age such software may not be easy to find. Alternatively there might be a way to calibrate a joystick through your operating system.

For a new purchase the Logitech Extreme 3d Pro remains a good buy and is very usable for Oolite at around $35.00. Twelve buttons, a throttle, a hat switch, three axis on the stick itself, am currently on my third one. They last a good long time if you do not abuse them too much. Calibrating software is included. Am not, nor have ever been, a Logitech employee.

The associated website. Mad Catz no longer has stuff for this flight-stick...

Mad Catz’s “Saitek” joysticks were bought up by Logiteck. These products are supposedly now less durable.

Edited to correct errors.

So, would Logitech have the correct Download for me?

Checking now...

No luck on the Logitech Website and what ever it has for Serial number was not recognised...

Commander Mick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2025 9:53 am

No luck on the Logitech Website and what ever it has for Serial number was not recognised...

Perhaps try Reddit or some such?

But if it is old enough, do you need it? On the AppleMac one finds no software other than the AppleMac OS and Oolite. So CH combat stick (no programming software needed) works fine. But the Throttle Pro (3 programming options for binding the buttons) doesn’t.

Yeah, it basically still works without a download. However, it could do with better -how you say- calibration.

Did you try splines/axis profiles?

Diziet Sma wrote a good page on how to do it on our wiki.

The Axis profiles within Oolite are very useful and should be set to your preferences. They are not the same as Joystick Calibration however. Via their Spline curve settings the Axis profiles define how the Joystick will function. These profiles can set Dead Zones and the amount of Joystick Axis movement that is needed before the Joystick will react to that particular movement. Joystick Calibration is more Universal and is done outside of Oolite. It defines how the Joystick will react to everything it can possible do including returning to a Zero Point state when released.

To find the Calibration Software for your Cyborg F.L.Y. 5 try the following Google Search. There are several possibilities therein.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cyborg+f.l.y.+5+drivers

As most of these sites seem to be Third Party Sites be absolutely sure to do an Anti Virus scan on whatever files you may download from them before you actually execute them. Not a bad idea to do this on everything you download no matter where it is from.