Well, here's to hoping this one can stay on topic. I'll repost some of my first impressions here.
So I finally got about half an hour of time with Free Flight last night in both the Hornet and 300i. I expected there to be issues with getting my controllers working from reports about it, and it didn't work right off the bat. I've got a Warthog HOTAS, T16000m, 2 Cougar MFDs, and Saitek Pro Rudder Pedals all plugged in to my system. BUT I was prepared. I have ED to thank for this because I figured out some 3rd party software solutions while ED was having their own issues with multiple controller support. I actually don't have to go as far as I did for ED in gaff taping up my toe pedals into their middle positions.
My setup involves the use of UJR, vJoy, and TARGET. All I need to do before launching SC is run my TARGET profile and launch UJR. I'll probably continue to use it even when full support in SC is implemented because it allows me to merge my toe pedals into one axis. Because I use TARGET I can map all my controller buttons to key presses, and customize the layout any way I want. I didn't have time to get around to that yet though, so I only tested out the flight model and a little bit of pew pew.
I mapped all my controller axes the way I wanted, with rudder controlling roll and my stick's X Axis controlling yaw. This will help with aiming especially given that yaw is equally powerful to pitch. (Plus it matches up with the in-game modelled controls, which are very cool that they're already in by the way. Although the in-game pedals for roll (when your character moves his legs) seem to be inverted on the Hornet.) I have always been a proponent of roll/pitch/limited yaw vs yaw/pitch/roll. But I'll get over it, and I actually don't mind the latter too much either.
I think the flight model is in a great starting place. Unlike some others, I DO 'feel' the ships' 'weight'. I wouldn't want single seat fighters to turn much slower than they do now. I think the cap speed could be increased though. That's what I think is it's main issue. You never feel like you're going very fast until using the afterburner. The top speed should probably be in between where it is now and the afterburner top speed, closer to the top afterburner speed. In the 300i it takes 8-10 seconds to get to a full stop from afterburner. So if they keep the thrusters' power roughly the same but bump up the speed limit, then I think it would be in a very good place.
But that's all subjective. Why don't we talk about it objectively.
"No inertia." "The ships feel weightless." This is what some people are saying. What does that mean? It means that when you release your controls your ship stops reorienting itself instantly. Zero seconds. What do we have? Well, in the 300i it takes three whole seconds to stop rotating after snapping the joystick back to the middle. That's quite a different story than zero seconds.....
This is also what some of you are referring to as 'sluggishness' or 'floaty'. It's not sluggish. It's inertia. I'm sure it will be tweaked, but I'm pretty happy with how powerful the maneuvering thrusters are on the Hornet and 300i. You can make tighter corrections by applying counter moves on your controls. For example, when applying counter moves I can consistently stop my ship rotating (without overcorrecting) in 1 second as opposed to the 3 seconds. This feels right to me for ships that are supposed to be maneuverable.
Even with all IFCS features on, there is still a considerable amount of 'drifting' in hard turns at full throttle. You can clearly see it if you look at your surroundings like asteroids, space stations, and the 'space dust'. If you pull up on your stick for a rough 90˚ turn during full throttle it takes about 5 seconds before your vector corrects itself down your bore sight. During that time you can clearly see via 'space dust' that your ship is traveling 'downwards'.
I do hope that they eventually implement the ability to strafe in the more restrictive IFCS modes if it isn't there yet. I haven't had a chance to play around with them much. But I heard that it wasn't possible.
The X axis seems to have an increased deadzone while the Y axis doesn't. I can work around this with TARGET in the meantime, but I'm sure it will be fixed. The Y axis seems perfect with no noticeable deadzone. Other than the X axis deadzone, I don't have any other joystick issues. I didn't notice the deadzone issue while trying out mouse-controlled-flying.
Now to the dreaded mouse controls. I don't think they will be a balancing issue in the long run and here's why. Once TrackIR/OR is fully implemented we will be able to aim our gimballed weapons with our head movement. Not sure if OR already works that way or not. That should settle down most of the short sighted HOTAS crowd once they realize that. I think there's a lot of balancing to go still with gimballed vs fixed weaponry. I'm pretty sure everything is gimballed at the moment, which will definitely change.
The sound is obviously lacking. But I was expecting that considering what it sounded like during PAX. If I remember right, they only hired their main sound guy a couple of months ago. I have no doubts that it will get up to par given some time. It will help a lot with perception of speed along with some tweaks to the 'space dust'. The maps are a bit small, but it's alpha and there's no need to get worked up about that yet. Their development plans are obviously already addressing that.
The graphics and details are amazing. I love how the engine nozzles contract for higher speeds and expand for slower ones. It's pretty cool to have your character moving all his limbs already to match your inputs. Those animations are choppy, but that's just alpha polish level. I'm running on 'high graphics' with a butter smooth frame rate. i7 six core with a GTX 680, 1920x1200 resolution. Oh, and I love the orchestral score and themes that they are going for.
And to touch upon HUD elements appearing in 3PV. It has already been confirmed that HUD elements, like the target lock graphic, appearing in 3PV are a BUG that they are aware of.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustrie...omment_2673185
It is indeed a bug. Things that are created AFTER the HUD is hidden don't get hidden
There are bugs. Bugs aren't intended features. Get used to it.
