Just backed up all my binds and I'm navigating the forums with my Fighterstick USB right now...about to fire up the game and make a fool of myself in the tutorials!
Relative Mouse mode
- Thread starter Bortas
- Start date
Just backed up all my binds and I'm navigating the forums with my Fighterstick USB right now...about to fire up the game and make a fool of myself in the tutorials!
So many uninformed opinions about relative mouse from HOTAS users - again, in the umpteenth thread about it.
The mouse is vastly superior to joysticks. Not because of relative mouse mode, but because it's inherently a much more precise device which requires much smaller movements of muscles specifically developed for fine manipulation of things, represented by much larger motor areas in our brains.
There is a reason why we all use M+KB as the #1 input device of computers, instead of, for instance, joysticks.
The mouse is vastly superior to joysticks. Not because of relative mouse mode, but because it's inherently a much more precise device which requires much smaller movements of muscles specifically developed for fine manipulation of things, represented by much larger motor areas in our brains.
There is a reason why we all use M+KB as the #1 input device of computers, instead of, for instance, joysticks.
Well I just did a quick test and with my stick emulating a mouse in standard mouse mode, I was barely able to control my ship at all...it was dramatically harder than either mouse mode with an actual mouse, or FA off with the stick acting as a stick.
When I switched it to relative mouse, things got dramatically easier, possibly even easier than FA Off with a standard stick, but I have a lot of tuning to do first.
You may be on to something here BL1P.
I'm pretty damn good with with trackpoint eraser nipple thing on my thinkpad, and it's a two axis joystick with about two milimeters of play.
When I switched it to relative mouse, things got dramatically easier, possibly even easier than FA Off with a standard stick, but I have a lot of tuning to do first.
You may be on to something here BL1P.
I'm pretty damn good with with trackpoint eraser nipple thing on my thinkpad, and it's a two axis joystick with about two milimeters of play.
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I am very interested in this. Is there anything I can do to assist ?
Yeah you have to pull the mouse back exactly N dots instead of 2xN.
Well, you can try it yourself if you have a way to convince Windows your joystick is a mouse.
At this point it's mostly about getting the sensitivities, power curves, and deadzone correct.
More about it being intuitively easier to reverse a motion one has just made than infer it's exact mirror in the opposite direction, but yeah.
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I use joyToKey which would enable me to set my Joystick inputs as mouse movements or buttons I believe.
But if its ok with you Ill let you test, as I am sure I would mess it up somehow
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I bow before the power of nipples.
I use joyToKey which would enable me to set my Joystick inputs as mouse movements or buttons I believe.
But if its ok with you Ill let you test, as I am sure I would mess it up somehow
Did some more testing and it's not as promising as I initially suspected.
Much of the improvement to fine control was simply a reduction in effective sensitivity that can be duplicated with lower latency and more precision with an actual joystick curve than mouse emulation + relative mouse. Once I adjust everything to allow for full magnitude inputs, it was more or less just a slightly laggy version of the standard stick controls. Essentially, the mouse emulation was just another filter layer and relative mouse was just turning the emulated mouse back into a stick.
To get an equivalent enhancement to stick utility there would need to be some sort of temporal, rather than positional, dynamic sensitivity, which I imagine would be very difficult to implement without destroying the advantages inherent to the stick (being able to hold an input without degradation, yet not having to worry about losing one's zero point as with a mouse).
I'm mostly back to my original position of the mouse and stick being different, but broadly equivalent controls, even if relative mouse is kept. And I still think the core issue is the silly and arbitrary combination of FA On/Off capabilities that try to balance each flight mode against each other rather than do anything rational, kinda like the 'planes in space' flight model in general.
However, it is curious that the mouse actually has an in-game power curve, but other analog controls only have deadzones. This gives people using third party tools for curves a major advantage over directly connected devices with linear response.
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toggle relative mouse is a must (or better auto switch to relative mouse when Fa off). cheat mode? are you people talking about. relative mouse works exactly as your joysticks/hotas/whatever works all the time.
PS. No, Iam not going to buy joystick or hotas because I simply dont want to.
PS. No, Iam not going to buy joystick or hotas because I simply dont want to.
I think the most straightforward and versatile solution would be to provide a keybind for each of the existing relative-mouse toggles (X and Y axis), but allow duplication of the keybind so that one key will do both (as that's what most users would want).
They could then allow duplication with the FA On-Off selector too, so it's up to us to decide if we want the same key to do all those things simultaneously.
They could then allow duplication with the FA On-Off selector too, so it's up to us to decide if we want the same key to do all those things simultaneously.
Not disputing that, but I still wouldn't do it. Obviously if I lose a limb or two I may reappraise this position.
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
As Aleksander The Grape explained earlier in the thread, that is not true. The mouse in relative mode auto-centers when you stop moving your hand, and then bringing it back to where it was positioned before the movement (basically centering it) stops the rotation. While the joystick needs to be brought back to the center point before applying opposite direction to stop the rotation. That's quite different tbh.
The real-world equivalent of a joystick working as a mouse in relative mode would be the "dead" stick in the F-16. Basically it doesn't move at all, but sensors pick up pressure applied to it and transfer those. So it is always centered as long as you don't apply pressure to it and that centering is immediate without having to move the stick in the opposite direction. That is how the mouse works; centers when pressure not applied in a direction. All retail joysticks that I know of require a movement to the center. Just stopping movement isn't enough.
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Do an experiment please: push the stick right and then let go of it. Does it go back to the center position automatically? I bet most sticks do, unless the springs are broken.
If you don't let go of it but pull it back with your hand, can you feel/see when the stick has reached the neutral position again? I bet you can.
Mice don't have this kind of a neutral position, I mean there's no visible/tactile feedback whatsoever whether you've reached it or not, hence the need of the relative mouse mode.
I really don't understand why it's so difficult to see.
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
That's the point. You have to either let go of it or move it back to center it. No such thing with a mouse in relative mode, you just stop moving and it centers where you are.
Letting go of a joystick in mid battle to center it is absolutely silly, so it may be a theoretical answer, but not a practical one.
Your assertion is technically correct, but it's different when applied to the game.
Here's the difference broken down a bit easier for you.
Movement required to start rotation and stop the same rotation in FA OFF.
Mouse: Move mouse distance x. Stop movement. Move mouse distance x in opposite direction.
Joystick: Move stick distance x. Move stick distance 2x in opposite direction. Move stick distance x in original direction.
See the difference?
There is only one significant difference. If you are using a mouse, all the movements you need to make are much much finer and smaller (only a few millimeters) and you are using your most precise muscles controlled by an inproportionally large area of your brain specifically developed for fine motor skills.
This is what makes the mouse an inherently superior control method, not the relative mouse mode.
Arguendo
Volunteer Moderator
So just removing the relative mouse mode in its entirety shouldn't be an issue then...
Ok but what about a petition to get Fdev to add the relative mode for joysticks ?
Then again, because you seem to have missed it:
If you don't let go of the joystick but pull it back with your hand, can you feel/see when the stick has reached the neutral position again? I bet you can.
Mice don't have this kind of a neutral position, I mean there's no visible/tactile feedback whatsoever whether you've reached it or not, hence the need of the relative mouse mode.