Oolite Bulletins

Since two days, my joystick deveoped his own life, making accurate targeting almost impossible.

Whenever I gently touch the stick, I get a very decent pich down movement. Also, when I push down by hand and release the stick, it keeps this very small amount. - Does not stay on target then - From "up" it resets to zero properly. I checkd the "dead zone" settings in the game options but that are already at a not so small value (if I remember correctly it was 0.4 ??).
I calibrated my joystick under Win7 and there it also shows a very gentle hardly visible movement when left in neutral position. So obviously a hardware problem. I thought, the dead zone is created to overcome this? Sensitivity is actually the way I like it, so I'd not like to tune this down much more than I already did.

The problem seems to be too much weight of the sticks head or too weak spring force to set it back to zero. I'll open, clean and maybe lubricate it later this week. I'ld still be curious, if I understood the meaning of this dead zone correctly.

And by the way... I use a Thrust Master II. It is meant to be grabbed with a full hand. I tend to use only two fingers and thought there should be better - means: smaller joysticks (which require less force -> better sensitivity) to do so. Looking for joysticks online yields only big full hand sticks. (beside some professional 500€ variants) Any suggestions?

I tend to buy video game style USB joysticks like this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/320549238035

plenty of programmable buttons and two independent "sticks", the little mushroom things, which you work with your thumbs, and cheap as chips. They even have motors built in for vibration, and I really wish Oolite would support that for combat damage etc.

If you're using your stick on a PC there ought to a thingy for adjusting it in Devices and Printers, but it sounds like you've already tried that.

Strictly fingers on keys here. I don't even use a mouse anymore (it annoyed me).

I don't know about Windows, but on Linux you can often cure joystick jumpiness by giving it a few full circles while in flight (I think Linux tries to calibrate the joystick as you're playing, so if your gameplay involves lots of delicate movements it loses track of where the extremes are). I'd try that and see if it helps.

So...
I opened my Joystick, not much to do there, springs still ok, it sees there's a little play in the dead zone...
I cleaned and lubricated it, to use this chance, but this does not cure this very problem.
I set the dead zone to the maximum in the game options, must have helped. No more problems now.

I don't become familiar with playing with the keyboard.

i got a logitech extreme pro 3D and i had to desensitise the stick as the slightest push for pitch also induced a roll .
then last night i had this weird problem of pitch drifting down at a constant rate. i even unplugged the stick and it still drifted down!! could halt it with keys but as soon as i stopped the drift started again..... plugged the stick back in still drift..could stop it with stick but as soon as i let go drift again....

I had to restart Oolite to fix this.. anyone else had weird problem like this? running 1.80