ED:O & high-end HOTAS systems

Sirius Johnson

Sirius Johnson
Is the joystick controller going to be updated with ED:O so that high-end HOTAS systems can be utilized to their full potential?

I have a VKB Gladiator K & I need to reduce the amount of available buttons in order for ED to see the stick.

Implementing the more modern controller will allow me to use the full potential of the K.
 

Tividar

Tividar
I use a Virpil Stick and Throttle (same button issue). Joystick Gremlin solved the issue for me. It took me a Saturday to figure it out and get all the bindings set up, but it works flawlessly. Even managed to set up a few macros to deal with PowerPlay cargo and EMC cycling.
 

Andro

Andro
Sirius Johnson said:
Is the joystick controller going to be updated with ED:O so that high-end HOTAS systems can be utilized to their full potential?

I have a VKB Gladiator K & I need to reduce the amount of available buttons in order for ED to see the stick.

Implementing the more modern controller will allow me to use the full potential of the K.
Click to expand...
Paul Eddington said:
He just bought the wrong Hotas....

Nothing like barely supported controllers.
Click to expand...
Funny thing is, I have the same stick and have never encountered this problem. For reference though, I use a keyboard + stick setup and not HOTAS. I also have their software installed (to turn off annoying lights), so maybe that has made a difference.
 

here_it_comes

here_it_comes
No way. This update will only touch ships and ship-related things to the degree necessary on bolting on the FPS.

I doubt it will ever change. I mean, we are limited to 2 fire groups because of console controllers, which already require practically every button be a menu button to sub-actions. No game that is tied into consoles is going to support the level of control that PC users are capable of accessing.
 

Sirius Johnson

Sirius Johnson
LifesAJourney said:
The limit is actually 32 buttons and AFAIK it's a DirectX 11 limitation.

OP, just map buttons with IDs higher than 32 to keys or create virtual devices with up to 32 buttons each.
Click to expand...

I've done that.

I shouldn't have to do that.

If they want me to buy the update, they'll need to update the stick support. Simple.
 

FlyingBrickyard

F
Sirius Johnson said:
I've done that.

I shouldn't have to do that.
Click to expand...

And to think back in the day I would literally spend hours building command and macro files by hand in text editors to do just that so I could use a full HOTAS in games that supported joysticks with only 2 buttons - and was excited to do it.

🤷‍♂️

I just find it a little odd you'd spend the money on higher end gear, but then refuse to take advantage of the tools and flexibility that higher end gear was designed and intended to provide. The whole point of these programmable systems is to free the user from the whims of the software (often system OS) developer when it comes to controller support.

For the record, yes, it would be nice - but it's really not a big deal. That's a big part of the value of higher end devices like these - you can work around the many inherent software limitations.

As it stands I'm running a stick, throttle, rudder pedals (with toe brakes), two MFD frames, and a couple of additional small keypads - some of which are at least partially software aggregated and programmed as virtual devices and some of which are not, and it all works just fine in Elite. It only had to be set up once. It's not like it must be rebuilt every time the game is started.

Beyond all of that, this seems an odd thing to pin a purchase on. I don't do much in the way of FPS games, and I never have. But even I know controlling one with a joystick is... less than optimal, and on the extremely rare occasion I venture into the genre, I certainly don't use my HOTAS.
 

CMDR Harada

CMDR Harada
Sirius Johnson said:
I've done that.

I shouldn't have to do that.

If they want me to buy the update, they'll need to update the stick support. Simple.
Click to expand...

I have the VKB Gladiator K as well. It's an awesome HOTAS stick. Almost 18 months in and I'm still in love with it.

I'll assume you're trying to use the "mode" switching to re-map buttons. This technically works, with the downside that the mode buttons are now presented as virtual buttons mapped to the physical ones, and the physical ones are no longer usable by Windows. The physical buttons occupy the lowest numbers, with the virtual ones using sequentially higher ones. This causes the issue with buttons over the magic "32" number, and ED no longer sees ANY button on the base, since they are now virtually tied to the physical buttons. Irritating. You could use another program to re-map your buttons ( like Joystick Gremlin ), but I dislike running another executable to support ED, especially when I am in VR.

So, what to do ? If you want different modes and the full use of your stick you're hosed. Or you can use your stick natively and accept that it's 'half' of what it could be.. It was causing me to drink and mutter a lot in my office. I wrestled with this for a while, but in the end decided that it was too much hassle to custom map 60+ buttons to keys depending on the mode I had selected.

But there is a fix : Use the VKB software and map the HOTAS keys to keyboard buttons. This way you can run with different modes AND ED can see all the buttons ( as virtual KB keys ).

How MS/ED can see KB keys above 32 but not HOTAS buttons is perplexing.. but as has been pointed out, this is a MS thing and not ED. Short of writing your own driver I don't think there is a solution.
 

TorTorden_VR

T
Elite doesn't really have all that many functions anyway.

Use a couple of buttons, preferably, on the throttle as + modifiers and 32 buttons will be twice as many as you actually need.
 

gorankar

gorankar
Techmonkey said:
32 buttons and 8 axis per controller, if you have more of any on one every game will have issues...
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It's 128 buttons and 8 axis since before 2002 I believe.
Elite has issues with the Virpil throttle having too many inputs without the extra step of keyboard mapping, Neither Xplane 11 or even FSX from 2006 has this issue.
It's ED implementation that is the issue, though I get that they don't consider it an issue. People using high end HOTAS and not going through the added step of binding things to keystrokes is going to be low. However since this is a game where you spend more than a little time typing in system names and chat. It can be annoying when your message box loses focus and you go into silent running or some such thing.

So yeah, we should be able to bind every button without resorting to third party software, or binding keyboard inputs.
 
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