flight controls

[Goggles Paesano]

I'm new to playing NMS. In the short time I've played, I find that the flight controls leave a lot to be desired.

Using the mouse, which is not a problem for me in other games such as GTA5 or the BF series games, I cannot control the ships well in NMS.

That is because these flight controls make no sense. It's like someone who never played a flight game before installed them.

On the mouse:
They have the elevators (for pitch) attached to vertical mouse movement - this is correct
But then they have rudder controls (for yaw) attached to horizontal mouse movement - this is incorrect.

Why would you combine pitch and rudder on the mouse? It should be pitch and roll.

But roll is attached to the keyboard. It should be attached to the horizontal axis of the mouse. The rudder should be attached to the keyboard instead.

I find this to be unplayable with the pitch and rudder on the mouse and roll on the keyboard. It's completely illogical.

Is there any way to swap the pitch control from the keyboard and put it to the horizontal axis of the mouse and put the rudder on the keyboard?

Please let me know, thanks.

[PeaceMaker]

Flying controls on a mouse makes no sense at all, no matter how you shape it. There should be a joystick compatibility or possibly gamepad, not mouse.

[Goggles Paesano]

I disagree with you there. I can do excellent flying with the correct control setup on the mouse - Pitch + Roll. But this game doesn't have it. Pitch and rudder (Yaw) on the mouse? Ridiculous.

[wkitty42]

NMS uses arcade style flying controls... not normal earth-like aerial flying controls... in NMS you don't really roll and use the rudder+pitch to turn... you just turn... there's also the difference between the flight controls being tethered or locked if you're using the mouse...

personally speaking, i just use my (xbox) controller and maybe sometimes grab the mouse or keyboard for something... i find it much easier to use the left stick for flight/movement, the right stick for my view direction, and when i'm flying and want to roll, i use the left and right bumpers... i won't mention how much more comfortable it is to sit back in my nice comfy chair with my controller in my hands and just play

[uni790]

Ok, I do have to disagree with mouse should have roll, that has always been a bad move in my book, but meh personal opinion, they really need to allow changing more controls though, I even tried plugging in a controller to use, but the controls are awkward even on it, ended up using the defaults with tethered flight, and flight sensitivity pushed to 100, it's "workable" that way.

But yea, devs should probably look towards Elite Dangerous, or at least Warthunder to see how they should have set this up.

[Grimmslayer73]

Flight controls are about as basic as you can get.... point with the mouse in the direction you want to go. While I can't imagine roll being attached to the mouse, I do think the controls should have a lot more customization options so we can set up however we like.

[Goggles Paesano]

Well that just sucks. How could this still be the case? Wasn't this game released in 2016? Nobody complained about this?

[Jaggid Edje]

Some people did complain, but most of us just configured the options provided to make it work perfectly fine. The defaults are horrible, but there's several settings that make it decent (imo).
I've played a lot of games that involve flying spaceships and once I got things set 'just so', I find NMS to handle better with a mouse than 99% of them. In most other games I revert to using my Flight Stick or a gamepad, I don't need to do that for NMS.

[Faceplant]

It makes perfect sense to me. You're not flying an aircraft, your flying a space ship. You push to the side, and the side thrusters fire, and you push vertical and the vertical thrusters fire. There's really no point in rolling unless you care how things are visually oriented.

That said, I use a controller and fly with tethered inverted because I'm used to pushing the stick forward to go down, but otherwise, I don't generally care, even flying over a planet how I'm rolled.

[Brew]

Some people like arcade controls, and this is definitely a more arcade-y game. There have been many posts on Elite Dangerous forums, which is a lot more of a simulator space game, bemoaning roll on the horizontal axis, they can't control it, etc. And people chime in that they've remapped controls to put yaw on the horizontal axis and it's much better. The least responsive, slowest rotation axis, in that game. Never made any sense to me. Flight sims have been around for decades, but there are still many people who have no idea of their control style, and expect their craft to steer like a car I guess.

You get used to the NMS style though. It's a goofy colorful game, and goofy arcadey controls actually kind of fit in with the rest of it.

[Goggles Paesano]

I'll give a try to changing the controls from direct inverted to the car like controls and see how it goes.

I know I'm not gonna like it.

And it kind of ends any hope of well controlled dogfights near the surface or in space.

What a missed opportunity by the developers.

[Brew]

I never thought of NMS flying as "controlled"... :) Especially until you've got some pulse engine upgrades, it's ponderous and slow to respond to inputs. Near planet surfaces, you can bounce off things and spin around... it can be dizzying. I would not try to be too top-gun about ship-to-ship combat. Just keep jousting and turning around, keep shields charged with sodium, and you'll eventually win. It's an arcade... (actually, I have not messed with the new difficulty settings; you can probably make it harder now, come to think of it.)

[SirProsik]

At least on Steam we have "controller" support. GoG is just out of luck or have to use 3rd party mods to get a controller to "work". I hoped that once the game was ported to the switch that the controls would be added for the Pro Controller but no still no luck on GoG at least. The buttons got 'fixed' on steam though.

[General IVAN]

I like the flight controls for PC, but I can agree that they can be complicated, perhaps in the menu there is a way to change them?

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Brew:

Some people like arcade controls, and this is definitely a more arcade-y game. There have been many posts on Elite Dangerous forums, which is a lot more of a simulator space game, bemoaning roll on the horizontal axis, they can't control it, etc. And people chime in that they've remapped controls to put yaw on the horizontal axis and it's much better. The least responsive, slowest rotation axis, in that game. Never made any sense to me. Flight sims have been around for decades, but there are still many people who have no idea of their control style, and expect their craft to steer like a car I guess.

You get used to the NMS style though. It's a goofy colorful game, and goofy arcadey controls actually kind of fit in with the rest of it.

This is not a flight simulator. Flying a spaceship like an airplane in space makes no sense.

The only reason you bank to turn in an airplane (typically) is because you can turn faster and easier using the elevator and lift from the wings. You can also use the rudder to turn, which is essentially the same as the flight controls in NMS.

Of course, we fly space ships that don't have control surfaces because (even through we hear explosions) there is no air in space. Banking to turn in a spaceship makes no sense.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Goggles Paesano:

On the mouse:
They have the elevators (for pitch) attached to vertical mouse movement - this is correct
But then they have rudder controls (for yaw) attached to horizontal mouse movement - this is incorrect.

Why would you combine pitch and rudder on the mouse? It should be pitch and roll.

These are space craft. There are no elevators, rudders, or ailerons, or even functional wings for that matter.