Oolite Bulletins

Alex_F wrote:

Good afternoon,
my name's Alex, from Switzerland, and just recently discovered Oolite. Having played Elite for nights and nights on the C64, it's great to see it is still around! Thanks to all the contributors and developers for keeping this game idea up!

Huzzah! I spent a few days in your nation once, and loved every bit of it! Went up the side of Mt. Pilatus and teetered upon the precipice. Welcome to the station!

G'day Alex.. welcome aboard!

Hello, I'm Avder, and I love two things: hockey and video games.

It had been a while since I had played a good space sim and I didn't feel like replaying the ones I already have so I looked around and discovered Elite. Looking further tho I found that the only version I'd be able to get to run easily would be the NES version through emulation, and that seemed a little clunky, so I kept looking and discovered Oolite and was instantly hooked.

I play the game with a Saitek Cyborg Evo and the keyboard, although I would like to eventually upgrade to a more precise stick and a hands on throttle. Preferrably a stick with virtually zero slop and at least 10 functions available on the stick itself (base buttons make me take my hand off the stick, and I don't want that). I've considered the X52, but given that it uses a similar spring system as the Evo, I'm leery about it. In addition, the throttle doesn't look like it would do all I wanted to do. So basically I'm trying to find a good stick to eventually pair with a thrustmaster standalone pro throttle. And I love my twist, so that eliminates a lot of the gorgeous reproductions of actual air force sticks out there.

The main space sim I've played in the past is the Freespace series, so knowing how to dogfight properly from that makes the fights in Oolight pretty tame by comparison, but I'm more interested in the open-world aspect of it. After you've gotten good enough to solo multiple waves of SF Dragon class fighters everything else seems kind of easy, hehehe. The biggest furball I've survived was something like 28 on 1, although I came out of that pretty torn up. I started carrying energy bombs after that for emergencies.

I'm currently exploring galaxy 4 after just having completed the Thargoid plans mission in Galaxy 3 and obtaining the precious Naval Energy Unit for my iron-assed Cobra III. I do a lot of parcel couriers, as well as trading between mid-high tech and mid-low ag systems, so I'm actually pretty loaded already. I like how you constantly get jumped with you have active contracts, and since you can do many, many parcel contracts at once, I load up on those and I can usually count on at least one gigantic fight by the time I cross the galaxy.

I've been installing more OXP's every time I jump galaxies to make the game more interesting as I visit each map and I'm very amazed at some of stuff you OXP authors have come up with.

Welcome, avder!

G'day and welcome aboard, avder!

avder wrote:

I play the game with a Saitek Cyborg Evo and the keyboard

Hey! I use the very same stick! I feel your various pains regarding upgrading it, also...

welcome commander.

i use a Logitech extreme 3D pro. it has an analog throttle and has 12 buttons and a hat switch. i still fly hybrid though some joystick and some keyboard.
i have found i cant dock with the joystick.

Hey adver, welcome!

I use the X52, what things do you think it can't handle? Maybe I can try them?

Diziet Sma wrote:

G'day and welcome aboard, avder!

avder wrote:

I play the game with a Saitek Cyborg Evo and the keyboard

Hey! I use the very same stick! I feel your various pains regarding upgrading it, also...

Yeah, it's a good stick for how much control it gives you directly on the stick compared to every other budget joystick which seem to be universally 3 buttons, trigger, and hat.

If only I could do something about this sticks natural slop, I'd be extremely happy. I did manage to find a lubricant for the base, and that stopped plastic sticking to plastic, letting me make precision maneuvers a lot easier, but it did not allow the built in spring to return it to center any more accurately than it already does. Nor does a spring mod (essentially exactly the same as the X52 spring mod).

I'm basically using oolite's default 0.5 deadzones for the X and Y axes, with something like 0.15 for the twist axis because of how accurate that axis is and how it has virtually no slop to it. Consequently I'm pretty good at nailing stuff with the port and starboard lasers.

spud42 wrote:

welcome commander.

i use a Logitech extreme 3D pro. it has an analog throttle and has 12 buttons and a hat switch. i still fly hybrid though some joystick and some keyboard.
i have found i cant dock with the joystick.

Yeah, but of those 12 buttons, only 3 of them + the hat + the trigger are directly on the stick. I'm not counting anything that's on the base as I'm planning on eventually getting a standalone throttle. So far the only joysticks I've come across that have more than 8 readily accessible buttons, are the extremely expensive variety, those that do not have a twist axis, or have to be imported from Russia.

If I were to settle for 3+trigger+hat I'd be using a MS Sidewinder 3D Pro, as that is by far the most accurate joystick I've ever used. In fact I was using one up until about a month ago when it finally started glitching enough that I finally considered it past retirement age and I substituted in my Cyborg Evo and realized I really like having two more buttons on the stick (5+trigger+hat), so I've been looking at other sticks trying to find one with low natural slop + more than 12 functions directly on the stick + twist axis.

The MS Sidewinder 3D Pro, btw, is so beloved by Descent players (which I very much am), that the community went so far as to design a proper gameport to USB adapter for it, since it uses some odd digital signalling over analog gameport system that a standard gameport to usb adapter can't accommodate.

Day wrote:

Hey adver, welcome!

I use the X52, what things do you think it can't handle? Maybe I can try them?

It's more a comparison of the layouts on the X52's throttle vs the CH Products Pro USB throttle. Particularly the placement of the mini-joystick, which looks like its in an ideal place to control lateral thrusters such as what you get in Elite: Dangerous, and the entirety of the Descent series. The equivalent function on the X52 throttle seems like it would be inconvenient. And also I'm leery about Saitek products because of how much natural slop my Cyborg Evo has had since day 1. The base of the spring mechanism doesn't fit as tightly against the base as it would need to to completely eliminate slop.

avder wrote:

Yeah, but of those 12 buttons, only 3 of them + the hat + the trigger are directly on the stick...

Six on the stick (five plus trigger and hat) and six on the base (plus throttle)!

Cody wrote:

avder wrote:

Yeah, but of those 12 buttons, only 3 of them + the hat + the trigger are directly on the stick...

Six on the stick (five plus trigger and hat) and six on the base (plus throttle)!

My mistake.

So then, roughly equivalent to what I have now with the Evo.

How much slop does it have?

avder wrote:

How much slop does it have?

Slop? When I were a lad, you could buy a pint of slops in the pub - a cheap piss-up if you weren't too fussy.
Do you mean deadzone? Hard to say, as my 3D Pro is old now and the joystick config thingy in Oolite helps.

As in how much can you move the stick before you feel the mechanism that centers it giving you resistance and how close to fully centered is it after you release it.

And yeah, how much deadzone does it have, if any? And by deadzone I mean how much do you have to move the stick from its center before it registers movement.

And yeah, they're different

Okay... when my 3D Pro was new, the stick was more or less perfect, in that regard. After four years of being thrashed though, it has become... well, sloppy! <grins>
I only have to use minimal deadzone settings in Oolite's 'stick config, so I'd suppose it's pretty good for that. Again, it is old and worn, so it's hard to say.

avder wrote:

It's more a comparison of the layouts on the X52's throttle vs the CH Products Pro USB throttle. Particularly the placement of the mini-joystick, which looks like its in an ideal place to control lateral thrusters such as what you get in Elite: Dangerous, and the entirety of the Descent series. The equivalent function on the X52 throttle seems like it would be inconvenient.

I currently use this mini-joystick for zooming/unzooming the field of view. Quite nice, even if I find it a little bit too much to the left. I expect to control the camera view with it later when we control the camera view independently from the ship direction.
I use the quasi-joystick under the thumb to choose views. Good.
I use the quasi-joystick under the 2nd digit left hand to switch last/next target. Ok.
I don't use the joystick/mouse under the left thumb.

It would really help with my decisions if there were still a place to go and try out some of these sticks. Best Buy hasn't had a game controller demo isle in years tho.

The thing about Logitech that I'm worried about is build quality. They've got a reputation of being hit or miss on anything but their mice. I'm currently using a Logitech mouse that I've been using for over 10 years now and have no plans on ever replacing it. But a stick? I had a Wingman Extreme back in the late 90s and it was....so-so. From the experiences I've read about in the Descent community the Extreme 3D Pro is hit or miss on both build quality and responsiveness, unlike the universal acclaim the MS Sidewinder 3D Pro had.

Whats the Logitech sticks performance like in joytester? And what's its polling rate?

Hmm. It's only $30 on Amazon though. Might just give it a shot anyway at some point.