3D Connexion - Space Pilot Pro - Any good setups?

[Viking84]

So, as I have run out of sensible goals before 2.1 drops I have decided to shake things up a bit.

Dusted off my CAD mouse, a 3D Connexion Space Pilot Pro, and hooked it up. All axes were instantly recognised by Elite which was nice. As it's name implies it is a full 6 degree of freedom controller, and I have set it up to mirror my ships movement.

Does anyone use one of these types of devices as their main input device, and if so, do you have any tips for good setup / usage? Do you have it on the right side or the left side (as throttle or stick?).

 

[the100thmonkey]

Very nice. I want one.

I would use it as the controller for all translational axes - main throttle and thrusters, so on the left hand.

 

[Viking84]

After playing around for a bit longer I have concluded that it certainly is great for some spectacularly smooth FA-Off docking manoeuvres, however not so great for dog fighting. Have set it up as my Alternative Flight Controls and assigned a switch on the Warthog Throttle to switch between the two.

I will probably have it located on the right hand side, replacing the stick for the times I want some true 6 DoF flight controls

 

[brumster]

I have a SpaceNavigator - I tried it yonks back with Lasse B's little app but it just didn't work well for me not very intuitive, it didn't seem to get the sensitivity right (probably the game more than the mouse/app)....

 

[Viking84]

I use the regular drivers from 3DConnexion, no additional setup required - the axis are recognised by Elite straight out of the box

With more experimentation I find I really like it for the calmer flying, either in FA-Off, or with FA-On and using the throttle for forward motion and controlling pitch, roll, yaw and vertical/horizontal thrusters with the Space Pilot. Especially the bigger ships, like the Anaconda, start to feel like truly huge battleships once you can accurately control all 6 degrees of freedom, rather cool!

Wish someone made a proper 6 DoF controller for flight sims!

 

[Persafarhy]

Not as straightforward as it seems.

I have a Space Navigator Which was recognized by the game and I could map the axis to the galaxy map navigation, but somehow it wouldn't work properly. The controls responded in an incremental way; so, for example, with every +X input the map would scroll sideways faster until -X input was made to stop. The 3Dconnexions Properties app didn't solve it. I tried every setting with no success. I also believe the properties are limited (not the same as SpacePilot) when using the Space Navigator.

After some research I found out about the .xml profiles so I checked the EliteDangerous64.xml in the cfg folder in

...\AppData\Roaming\3Dconnexion\3DxWare

When the driver generates the .xml for the first time, it sets the outputs of axis to "HIDMultiAxis_[insert axis here]". Example for Rx axis:

Spoiler

<Axis>

<Enabled>true</Enabled>​

<Input>​

<ActionID>HIDMultiAxis_Rx</ActionID>​

<Min>-512</Min>​

<Max>511</Max>​

</Input>​

<Output>​

<ActionID>HIDMultiAxis_Rx</ActionID>​

</Output>​

</Axis>

Comparing this to the .xml template for joystick emulation that comes with the software, I realized the joystick template has the output "HIDJoystick_[insert axis here]". So what I did was change the output for all the axis from HIDMultiAxis to HIDJoysticks and tested it. For the above example:

<Output>

<ActionID>HIDJoystick_Rx</ActionID>​

</Output>

That made it work correctly and the advanced settings behaved as intended.

I have a SpaceNavigator - I tried it yonks back with Lasse B's little app but it just didn't work well for me not very intuitive, it didn't seem to get the sensitivity right (probably the game more than the mouse/app)....

So Brumster, check this out. Maybe it solves the problem you had.