I am having a heck of a time with my new joystick. I went from an average pilot to a horrible one in just $26 (including shipping.)

I love it, but it's extremely hard to control. Very jumpy. I think this might be due to the way that VO is designed to be controlled by the mouse and keyboard. A key is a digital switch; it's either on or it's off. A joystick is an analog device, so forcing it to work like a keypress results in something like this:

...O

Where ... is nothing as you gradually push the stick off center, and then O is a full speed snap movement in that direction.

What I woudl like to do is adjust it so that the joystick uses more of an analog movement, something that would look like this:

..ooo000OOO

Basically, the farther you move the stick, the faster the response. Gradual movement of the stick results in gradual movement of the cross hairs/nose of the ship. A more severe movement results in a faster turn.

I mentioned this to a1k0n last night and he said to post a suggestion and the devs would work on it, but *I DON'T WANT THAT*.

There are dozens of people playing this game with joysticks who have gotten used to a certain manner of flight. They would probably find my adjustments as sluggish and difficult to control as I find the current controls jumpy and overresponsive.

What I'm looking for is a method of adjusting MY joystick (Increasing the dead zone is of limited functionality. All it does is move the "switch" a certain number of degrees from center. Instead of a gradual movement flipping the switch from on to off, a more severe movement is required, but the switch still goes straight to ON with no gradual increase.)

I have downloaded Gamepad Companion, but until my house sells I don't have the funds to register it. Additionally, there were no help files available that I saw for it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am using a Cyborg Evo by Saitek on Mac OS:X.

Thanks in advance.

~D.
"Nigel"

Apparently there are arrows to set the dead zone and all that, except that they are white, on a white background... Anyhow.. I have a similar problem, it was suggest that I change the values manually in the config.ini file. I have managed to set the X axis perfectly but the Y and Z axes give me strange values:

JOYX=Turn
xaxisinvert=1
xaxiscenter=0
xaxismindeadzone=-5
xaxisdeadzone=5
xaxisminsaturation=-41
xaxissaturation=38

--> see here my center was 0 so I set my dead zone +/- 5 from it and it works great

JOYY=Pitch
yaxisinvert=0
yaxiscenter=-113
yaxismindeadzone=-21
yaxisdeadzone=-1
yaxisminsaturation=-21
yaxissaturation=-1

--> now this is the raw values from the game after using the "reset" and "set center" features. The center is outside the min and max saturations... I spent 1 hour trying to get it work and couldn't can anyone please please help?

same for the Z axis
JOYRZ=Roll
Rzaxisinvert=0
Rzaxiscenter=129
Rzaxismindeadzone=3
Rzaxisdeadzone=21
Rzaxisminsaturation=2
Rzaxissaturation=22

--> HELP!

Btw it's the WingMan Force 3D on an OSX MBP

thx
AK

*Bump*
HEEEELLLLPPP!!!

Ok, so the joystick calibration is all white on the mac? Oops.
I haven't calibrated a joystick in VO on a mac in a while. I'll fix that.

It must be a bug that your min value is larger than your center value.
We may have a Wingman Force 3D that I can test VO with on Monday.

Thanks Ray, is my description making sense? I think a joystick SHOULD be a linear curve, where a slight movement of the joystick results in a slow movement of your ship's nose, and a larger movement of the stick results in a faster movement of the ship's nose.

What's happening is that the joystick is operating like a switch: the moment it leaves the dead zone, it slams the nose of the ship in the direction you're trying to turn as fast as possible. Of course you then yank the sucker in the other direction, and overcompensate, so you end up sawing back and forth, barely in, or mostly out, of control.

I appreciate your looking into this. Thanks.

~D.
"Nigel"

Yeah Nigel, I got the same problem. and its not supposed to be like that. If you look at my values my X axis works perfectly, just as it should it is "dead" +/- 5 on both sides but then grows linearly till it hits a max. Or else the ship is night unpilotable.

phew!

I'm glad it's not just me. I was banking on the fact that I'm simply a lousy pilot. I'm glad I can actually blame my inadequacies on the joystick.

Come to think of it, I'm not certain that I WANT them to fix this.

Like you, though, I've had more problems with the Y axis than the X axis. In fact. out of the blue today I had to recalibrate, which means first resetting to zero and then playing the log in/log out game to rest the values until I'm flying in a straight line but actually have a decent sized dead zone. When I first logged in I was flying loops for some reason.

~D.
"Nigel"

The joystick calibration is kinda funky.
What seems like your problem is that since the saturation points are defined as inside the dead-zone, the saturation zones seem to start right where the dead zone ends. That would make it seem like a full or none axis.

I'm going to look at the calibration stuff and see if I broke it accidentally.

Ray;

I think one of the other problems is that I have no idea what you're talking about. For the computer-stupid, what, exactly, is a saturation point? Does "saturation" refer to a gradual adjustment like the linear movement I've been trying and failing to describe? Is this something that I can monkey with myself and fix in under a decade, thus turning you loose to work on more important things?

I'm leary of playing with gamepad companion, although it has been recommended to me, because it comes without docs.

~D.
"Nigel"

Ray, not only the Saturation points are the same as the dead zone point, but my center is 100 points outside of that zone...

Please let me know if & how we can FIX this problem and I will dig my Joystick back out of the TRASHCAN!

Thanks, Ray.

Saturation point is normally the value that the joystick returns when it is at the fully extended position. (All the way left or right or up or down).
It can be defined such that when the joystick reaches the specified value, the game thinks the joystick is moved all the way to one side.

I'll try to fix the problem in the calibrator.

Thanks Ray. In the meantime I'll keep flying into things. You know. To do my part.

~D.

Ok, I looked at it and yeah, the calibration menu is broken.
The white background shouldn't be there and the Reset button doesn't reset the axis properly.

If you click slightly below where the first white bar begins (or the first grey bar ends) and then drag left or right slightly and then back, the axis should work again.

Can't seem to get that to work, Ray. I think I'm going to have to just grit my teeth and hope for a bugfix in the next update.

~D.
"Nigel"

I agree >_<, white on white really is hard on the human eye :D

The 1.6.8 update should have both the white background and the resetting of the calibrated values fixed.

Oh, yeah, Ray. I'm sorry. It's all well and good to bitch and moan, but I'm ashamed that I forgot to let you know that my joystick now works perfectly.

Unfortunately, I still suck. But at least I'm well calibrated!

I don't know if Zed's problems went away, but everything seems just peachy on my end. Thanks for jumping on that so swiftly.

~D.
"Nigel"

Klabbath, if you stick is analog, that is a weird thing to use/buy. Sounds more like those pacman digital joysticks to me. I have a 5 axis, 12 button stick that does the ...oooOOO thing just perfectly fine. BUT i also cant stand playing with joystick because its still too unprecise as compared to the mouse.

M. Duncan

raybondo,

there seems to be a problem with the joystick accelerator calibration thingy. I only get it to go 50%, either 0-50 or 50-100. Wasnt broken in the previous version. Also the calibrator elements go under the button on the right of it. So that one can not select and drag them out under.

M. Duncan