new player completely lost

the flight assist was off
I changed my mode for the FA key binding (Z) to "Hold", so that FA is off only when I'm holding the key down. This lets me have it available for combat maneuvers but prevents accidentally switching FA off without realizing it. (It didn't help that I was having trouble recognizing if the voice alert was saying "on" or "off".)
 
the flight assist was off
When I read the opening post, I recalled a guy posting on the forums waaay back who asked why landing was made so hard. Turned out he had both flight assist AND rotational correction off. First thing that came to mind was 'might this be a similar case?'. Glad you found it :)
 
As you progress in this game, there are a few really got tutorials, about flying with FA OFF as well. You should have a look at those... ;)
 
Actually the OP isn't alone. The controls aren't an issue for me, but over the last 10 years I've gamed now and then with the same bunch of lads online, and of these lads, 5 or so of them bought ED when it was released along with myself. All of them had trouble with the controls and stopped playing the day they bought it.
I remember they asked me how to do something, like how to send an in-game message, and I replied "Okay, you press 2, E, S, space, ..." and we all burst out laughing before I finished.
 
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ive been trying for months on and off to get this game to play.i cant.i end up spinning or crashing time after time.for even the simplest actions theres some ridiculous convoluted series of 30 buttons that have to be pushed in a perfect sequence to get the game to function.am i wrong or is this game just tedious

I was the same way back when. It hadn't even occurred to me that I was basically going to have to go a buy a flight stick to get anywhere. Or that it would require six button presses to lower the landing gear!

I don't think I'd regarded the original game as a simulator so it was all a bit of a surprise. (I get the impression that for lots of simulator enthusiasts, learning the controls IS the game).

But it's NOT actually as scary as it first seems and if you persist things will eventually become second nature. I got myself a Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas thing and all was well.
 
I think your HOTAS might be broken.
Click right to go the side menu, click back and forth to find tab, click down several times to find landing gear, click landing gear.

Dunno. I've grown to love all this stuff. The way it makes you feel like you're operating some hugely complex machine. But to me it often feels like a hugely complex machine designed in the 1980s.

But I suspect a more futuristic, context-sensitive, intuitive and user-friendly interface would actually feel wrong for the genre.
 
Click right to go the side menu, click back and forth to find tab, click down several times to find landing gear, click landing gear. . . . But I suspect a more futuristic, context-sensitive, intuitive and user-friendly interface would actually feel wrong for the genre.

I'm sure a 'futuristic, context-sensitive, intuitive and user-friendly interface' would simply allow you to map landing gear to a single button. 😉
 
Click right to go the side menu, click back and forth to find tab, click down several times to find landing gear, click landing gear.

Dunno. I've grown to love all this stuff. The way it makes you feel like you're operating some hugely complex machine. But to me it often feels like a hugely complex machine designed in the 1980s.

But I suspect a more futuristic, context-sensitive, intuitive and user-friendly interface would actually feel wrong for the genre.
Perhaps mapping the landing gear to a button on your HOTAS is a good idea?
 
Perhaps mapping the landing gear to a button on your HOTAS is a good idea?
Well obviously you can do this. But when you've just bought the game you're confronted by a staggering amount of controls. I'd never heard of a HOTAS when I bought the game. If you're not a person who plays flight sims it just feels absurdly over-complicated. There are probably more buttons going on than there are in all the other games I have put together!

It's worth the effort, but you can't blame newcomers for being a bit intimidated.
 
the flight assist was off
If you'd stuck with it until you could fly instinctively like the ghost of Neil Armstrong you'd have been a legend. But I'm glad you've found the easier route!

I still remember to this day they asked me how to do something like how to send an in-game message, and I replied "Okay, you press 2, E, S, space, ..." and we all burst out laughing before I finished.
ED is to videogames what Linux is to operating systems. Once you're fully immersed it's second nature, but in the meantime the instructions you get in response to a basic query can seem ridiculously complex and arcane. Especially if the response begins with, "Simply..."

Dunno. I've grown to love all this stuff. The way it makes you feel like you're operating some hugely complex machine. But to me it often feels like a hugely complex machine designed in the 1980s.
This was the conclusion I drew a while back. It's as though the futurists of the late 1960s to early 1980s had suddenly been given access to 21st century rendering hardware but had somehow skipped all of the real-world innovations that happened in the years in between.

Some of this is probably deliberate, with those periods also being the roots of David Braben's influences. Other aspects may be more down to poor or inconsistent design choices and unwillingness to go back and change things. But ultimately I don't suppose it matters much either way, since I can't see the fundamentals changing any time soon.

ED isn't quite what I had in my head when I was daydreaming about the "real" Elite in 1984, but it comes very close a lot of the time.
 
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