Joystick setups, mappings, responses, etc.

[Naked Milhouse]

I would like to open the floor for an exchange of thoughts on joystick setups and/or tips.
I fly with a Saitek X52 and recently subbed in a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro for the Saitek stick which never felt very comfortable in my hand.

I've also found that

Anyone out there have any tips or anecdotes about setups, axis settings, etc?

[Lord Haart]

always use s-curves for a start, linear is usually too aggresive

[captgeo]

as above mentioned, I agree, to further that always check your elevator for centre, if its not centred, uncheck symentry and rearange the line your controls follow

[captgeo]

add to the above make sure you move the centre also

[Naked Milhouse]

Yeah, I've done pretty radical tweaking on a per aircraft and I find that s-curves are useful in some cases and not in others.

[captgeo]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/244050/discussions/0/846965056684887830/

this is the explaination about what I was talking about .

the best place for info is the RoF forum

[Nefaro]

I've been dragging the one dot, on the Elevator controls, down below the center 'Y' line to about -20 degrees. To mostly offset the crazy amount of nose climb most of these aircraft have. Then I even out the rest of the curve across both sides and let it drop off steeply near the end.

You can see a primer on this method, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHTq4wmiCOk

Or, at least, placing your curve lower to offset much of the engine torque, which can play merry hell on aiming when you sometimes actually have to push forward (away from your lift line) to line up a shot - in a turning pursuit! The default curve just makes you push your joystick back & forth through the neutral position, where many joysticks have some variance when transitioning.

[captgeo]

thats a great video, one of the one's that I have seen on how to do what I mentioned, glad you found it.

[Naked Milhouse]

This guy makes some excellent RoF videos.

[Bullett]

I'm probably asking for trouble here, but why does everyone value the extreme realism of this sim and then go to great lengths to make the planes easier to fly? Isn't altering the s-curve negating the accuracy of the flight model?

[captgeo]

not at all, most of whats being disscussed is about your joystick set up, or trimming the aircraft,
this is what makes this game a challenge

[captgeo]

every plane has a different flight model, therefore you will have to set up every one to how you want this plane to react.

if they were all the same, then this would be an arcade game, not a sim.

[Naked Milhouse]

I think what Bullett is getting at is that this trimming and granular, plane-by-plane adjustment threatens the authenticity and quirks of each aircraft. Of course, being able to pick and choose which quirks to leave and which ones to correct wasn't a luxury back then. To play it as a true sim would be to NOT tweak the responses. Even better, shouldn't all those curves be linear?
That said, it is a necessary feature and one that I have used to take some of the stress off my arm when flying. I'm all for realism and immersion, but fighting my plane's attitude for hours on end gets too uncomfortable. I try to find a happy medium between comfort and reality.

[captgeo]

basically I would say no, you are not messing with the authenticity by using the "s " curve set up, the movement of the joystick is actually much shorter then that of the control stick of a fighter plane, therefore what you are doing by using the "s" curve is prolonging the furthest movement as the max that the stick would move

[Jorri]

I'd strongly advise to leave the curves alone. Your planes will no longer respond to your input in a linear way. This will make it impossible to give precise control inputs.

Plus, you are changing the character of these planes. It's a point of preference, but you will never experience these planes the way they really are, when you go about changing your response curves :)

The only exceptions for me would be the SE5a, where a centered joystick corresponds with a pulled back control column in the plane (just check out your elevator deflection when your joystick is centered), and the Fokker Dr.I, which has an insane nose-up tendency.

[captgeo]

very interesting view Jorri, I guess messing with these stock set up's is not the way to go?