Newcomer / Intro HOTAS or M/KB?

Painkiller

Painkiller
Strykar said:
...I've never used a stick for games, always M/KB, my dog fighting (albeit against the computer AI) seems pretty good and as long as I pick my fights I have very few troubles....
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Hi Strykar, I was in the same situation as you now. Never used a joystick in any kind of games. Was playing ED for 6 months using M/KB , was doing ok in fights with all that turning, rotating, yawing...I got Thrustmaster Hotas X , check video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8zTzGdu7_A . That is entry level HOTAS , price arround 50 euro. I bought Vulture , yesterday found C3 Gimballed Beam lasers and went on to Combat Zone - low intensity (simply 2 factions having PvP , you choose one of them and you get credits for each kill - 36.000 Anaconda, 10.000 cobra mk3, etc...). I was fighting python, conda, viper, mkIII, asp, anything ...Using hotas I was able to keep the ships always in front of me (or staying behind them to avoid damage), using joystick for much easier rotation, pitch up and down and thruster for going backwards when NPC was in front of me...so yes, hotas helps you A LOT (compared to m/kb) ...

One of most known players in ED is using Thrustmaster X , that made me buy it also ...if he can do that, I can do at least 20% :) check its youtube channel for awesome tutorials and videos:

Isinona player : https://www.youtube.com/user/Isinona
Awesome cockpit ED : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUFIFL7zwXQ
Awesome cheaper setup (check the position of HOTAS - its like in planes, I will try to setup my chair like this) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jamv1D5wHeY

Should you get HOTAS ? ...Y E S !
 
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Hellhawk666

Hellhawk666
HOTAS. You will never regret getting one, although it might take you a little while to get used to using it.

Don't spend a fortune. The inexpensive Thrustmaster X-Flight is fine. Spend the extra on TrackIR instead.
 

TorTorden_VR

T
Currently only using m+k, but I have been googling HOTAS's since I pretty much undocked for the first time.
I do quite well with just the m+k, but then again I have the logitech g700 (I know, I hate logitech to) with 4 thumb buttons and 3 extra for the index finger, now used for throttle control, forward\reverse thrust and set throttle to 0 is simply brilliant.

So far, x55\x52 has been a front runner, but saitek leaves a bad taste in my mouth from the late 90's and it sounds like they haven't gotten any better since.
The warthog sounds ok, but it's too expensive at the moment, and still not really bug free.
This leaves me leaning towards a CH fighterstick, pro throttle combo, but that is as expensive if not more than the warthog so that leave me just where I am atm.

So this has me looking at a lower price point, and I today have ordered a thrustmaster x, a price point I don't need to justify and get check to see if for example the CH system would be necessary.
Nothing I want more than a set of proper HOTAS friendly games :D

Now, what's all this I keep hearing about track-ir...
 
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willowfan

willowfan
I'm currently using a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X along with EDTracker and VoiceAttack and am very happy flying with this setup.

I will probably end up getting something like an X52 at some point.
 

Ancipital

Ancipital
the100thmonkey said:
Say that again when the potentiometers fail.

Hall effect sensors > pots.

Additionally, you can adjust the stiffness of the throttle on the X52, X52 Pro and X55.

Inb4: I don't own an X55, so no fanboy.
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Not all pots are created equal. The ones in the CH sticks might outlive the owner- and certainly will outlive my X-55 :) I agree, though, the HOTAS-X is dreadful, and I wouldn't even wish it on Ronald McDonald, and people should avoid it like the plague.

The Thrustmaster T1600M stick is a good start for people wanting to avoid paying a fortune, you can add a CH Pro Throttle when you're feeling flush.

Personally, I say that a dirty great big HOTAS is always the way to go for ED. It's so much nicer.. and also more fun. All those buttons and switches become a godsend, after initial confusion and terror. Add the best head tracking you can afford (I tried the free ones, EDTracker and then TrackIR5- which is annoyingly good, but overpriced) if you want a nicer and easier time, too.

One warning, ED sort of invites throwing gadgets at it, as flying is often so much fun. In the end, I also added CH Pro Pedals and an Oculus Rift DK2 to my (slightly tweaked) X-55. Oh. My. Gosh. Slightly too much fun. But yes, OP, grab a HOTAS and some headtracking. Once you have your controls comfortably laid-out, you'll be in hog heaven :)

Oh, and monkey- FANBOY! :)
 
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TorTorden_VR

T
Hmm, I do know what the headtracker does, but I'm reticent towards spending money on one this year, especially if what it costs can get me halfway to an Ocullus or other vr tech (curious of the valve/HTC, but worried about the price) and all of wich should be mere months away.

By my and many others I think the latter half of 2015 and start of 2016 could be very interesting for VR.
Although I would really like to have it NOW. I'm unsure how much of a finished product the DK2 is but its very tempting.

Anyone know how a mere nvidia 960 handles ED on a Dk2 or would I also need a new/second GPU?
 
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TorTorden_VR

T
Well, depends how much but I could live with that.

Then again atm I prefer gaming in my small living room / HT with 7.1 surround sound and a 90" projected display, wich is pretty immersive in its own right, heck with the subs i have I can feel the engines on my brand new viper, and seat mounted transducers aren't plugged in atm :p

Part of me is tempted to say yolo (god I hate that term, but my usual is censored) and get all hotas gear including rudder pedals...

Update:
Well, took another look at the thrustmaster x (or whatever), and from what I could tell from the pictures got me thinking that it couldn't possible have enough buttons.

Canceled the order for it and have now ordered the CH fighterstick.
24 buttons and three modes should be enough.
Now for the throttle I'm guessing I can wait a bit longer, as well as I can't find a store listing it within these borders of mine, and I'm overly keen on importing stuff, but might end up that way anyways.
 
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Ancipital

Ancipital
TorTorden said:
Hmm, I do know what the headtracker does, but I'm reticent towards spending money on one this year, especially if what it costs can get me halfway to an Ocullus or other vr tech (curious of the valve/HTC, but worried about the price) and all of wich should be mere months away.

By my and many others I think the latter half of 2015 and start of 2016 could be very interesting for VR.
Although I would really like to have it NOW. I'm unsure how much of a finished product the DK2 is but its very tempting.

Anyone know how a mere nvidia 960 handles ED on a Dk2 or would I also need a new/second GPU?
Click to expand...

I'm a DK2 user, and would say that to have a good experience, you're going to want to get more GPU power than that. The thing is, you need to hit 75fps as much as possible- and you also want to be running the game either in ED's own supersampling mode, or NVidia's DSR mode. This is because of the low res on the Rift- it will look really blocky without the supersampling, and text will be really hard to read. Also, if the framerate drops a lot, you will get really unpleasant "judder" as the Oculus timewarp function tries to interpolate.

I'm still using my old 780ti, and it's fine- the only thing I had to turn down was shadow detail (although I use quite light DSR). However, VR users will always benefit from more power. Some people are using dual 980s for it, and still get a bit of judder in stations- which is tolerable.

I would, however, say that a 960-level card alone may not be quite enough. Remember that SLI doesn't scale linearly, and can be a bit temperamental, too.. if you were going the VR route, it might be nicer to look for a deal on a faster card (which you could double up later, when the CV1 comes out, which will hammer your machine).

I don't believe that the CV1 will be out as soon as we expect, so I feel like it's a good plan to just enjoy the DK2 now, while stuff is settled, and we see if Valve/HTC or Oculus are first to market. Meanwhile, playing in VR really is more immersive than any other display tech, despite being a bit primitive and needing tweaking to work well. The 1:1 head tracking leaves stuff like TrackIR for dead- and seeing the game literally surround you, at full scale.. is.. Well, it would have caused headsplosion, back in the days of playing Frontier on my little Amiga monitor.

Also, great call in the CH stick! You'll be tempted to get the pedals, not just the throttle :)
 
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TorTorden_VR

T
Ancipital said:
I'm a DK2 user, and would say that to have a good experience, you're going to want to get more GPU power than that. The thing is, you need to hit 75fps as much as possible- and you also want to be running the game either in ED's own supersampling mode, or NVidia's DSR mode. This is because of the low res on the Rift- it will look really blocky without the supersampling, and text will be really hard to read. Also, if the framerate drops a lot, you will get really unpleasant "judder" as the Oculus timewarp function tries to interpolate.

I'm still using my old 780ti, and it's fine- the only thing I had to turn down was shadow detail (although I use quite light DSR). However, VR users will always benefit from more power. Some people are using dual 980s for it, and still get a bit of judder in stations- which is tolerable.

I would, however, say that a 960-level card alone may not be quite enough. Remember that SLI doesn't scale linearly, and can be a bit temperamental, too.. if you were going the VR route, it might be nicer to look for a deal on a faster card (which you could double up later, when the CV1 comes out, which will hammer your machine).

I don't believe that the CV1 will be out as soon as we expect, so I feel like it's a good plan to just enjoy the DK2 now, while stuff is settled, and we see if Valve/HTC or Oculus are first to market. Meanwhile, playing in VR really is more immersive than any other display tech, despite being a bit primitive and needing tweaking to work well. The 1:1 head tracking leaves stuff like TrackIR for dead- and seeing the game literally surround you, at full scale.. is.. Well, it would have caused headsplosion, back in the days of playing Frontier on my little Amiga monitor.

Also, great call in the CH stick! You'll be tempted to get the pedals, not just the throttle :)
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The 780TI was great, I got a regular 780 when I built my current comp, but it was defective and blue screened every 20minutes, I put my old card back in and that sorted it.
So sent it back, and just kept using my five year old AMD 6970 until I swapped it for this 960 which so far is "good enough", no reason to replace a higher end 7x0 card for current gen, unless for power consumption or some such.

Yea, that's pretty much what I figured, and I am fully aware SLI doesn't 1:1 scale in performance.
VR, well I guess I'm just going to have to wait a little more, sure I could drop $4000 bucks on ED gadgets but I'm also looking at striping and replacing all the water lines and pipes in our house, which is going to suuuuck. But having actual water pressure will be awesome :p

Yea, dont really expect more than just "ok" 1080p perfomance from my 960, and I bought that pretty much thinking I was sticking with 1080p displays for now anyways, until it's time to upgrade again.
Besides, such a huge screen in a darkened room goes way beyond my 10" monitor back then :p

I already want pedals, was googling for them just now...
 
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Ancipital

Ancipital
Yes, I suspect that your water supply is more important. Good water pressure will feel luxurious :)

Adding a TrackIR to your big screen setup would probably be nice, though. (Don't bother with the expensive "Proclip" though, it breaks all the time, the default "Trackclip" works just fine on a hat). You can do it much cheaper with a PS3 Eye camera, a Delanclip and FaceTrack NoIR, but it's not nearly as good. This is mostly due to the camera's smaller FOV compared to the TrackIR sensor, if you ignore the extra setup faff. Either way, some form of headtracking adds massively to the experience- even a cheaper setup.

However, you're absolutely right to shy away from VR right now- you have to throw a load of power at it to have a good experience, and it's only going to need more when the better-specced devices some out with better res/framerate displays. A bad experience in VR would be unpleasant and probably headache-inducing :)

Oh, and I can vouch personally for those CH pedals- they're plain and ugly, but work like a charm. Sturdy and reliable.

(It's a bit scary how tempting ED can be for silly controller/gadget upgrades, isn't it?)
 
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TorTorden_VR

T
Currently hijacked my nephew's web cam and trying this, but the faceAPI just crashes.
PointTracker seem to work but since I dont have any IR emitters etc setup I'm guessing it's not going to be much help.

I need food now.
 

kilvenny

kilvenny
Used M/KB and was okay - X52 HOTAS initially I was awful but now wouldn't fly otherwise. Movement is natural and I am not hunting for keys. Immersion is much better and a lot of movements feel natural.
 

gordon861

G
If you are looking for head tracking take a look at ED Tracker, much cheaper and developed by ED players.

http://edtracker.org.uk/

On the HOTAS question, yes get one it makes a massive difference. Also once the VR headsets like the Occulas go mainstream you will not be able to see the keyboard to type.
 

FederationNavyHQ

FederationNavyHQ
I started with mouse and keyboard but then got an x52 pro. I dont know whether im actually any better with it to be honest but it feels way more immersive :)
 

Boff'in

Boff'in
i had a knacked joystick and got a thrustmaster T-Flight-Hotas X as a replacement.

This is the bottom end of the scale, and really does suffer from not having that hat on the throttle in my opinion, but cheap is cheap.

But here's the thing.

i tried mouse, and just couldn't get into it. (with a knackered joystick I HAD to give this a serious option to play with). But i was always careening out of control.

i tired a simple joystick (despite my fire buttons NOT working), but even with the WASD setup of Iwar2, i was missing that last easy direction of control. i felt it wasn't enough.

Now with Hotas, 'm all over the place, without the WASD keys doing the manouvering, I don't have enough controll on just the throttling forwards and backwards.

I've even flipped the yaw and rotation on the twisty joystick part (even though ED is designed expressly for roll, not yaw) and going all wing-commander.
Ditched the natural hat controlls for "power" (or even the looking) to doing the lateral thrusts.

But i just can't get comfy in anything. There is always one axis that just isn't "right".

A friend has an x54, and it's the same there. Just can't get comfy, even with multiple hats on the left and right hands (yippee) it's never enough, or my motor skills just aren't happy.
Nothing is right.

Until i can mind meld with my computer, i don't think I'm ever going to get a good controller setup.
 
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