Just wanted to say thanks for your kind words and rep everyone, it did take quite a while, but it was too juicy a Q&A to resist
The big question I have is what would you have to feed the force back from? It's space, there wouldn't be any Force Feedback until you got inside a station would there?
What does space have to do with force feedback? It's like sound, there's none in space yet the ships provide us with useful feedback, it can be the same with force feedback. And anyway, forces are exerted on your ship when you do stuff, regardless if you're in space or not. Example, the stick trembling slightly when you fire multicannons, or opposing resistance when you pull high G maneuvers, or vibrating when you get hit, etc... So many ways to make it interesting and fun.
"Forces? What forces are there in a space craft with all electronic controls!?"
Even in space, the ships in ED could easily have full force feedback support to further aid the tactile joystick immersion, if you want it as a commander that is.
There are forces and effects that can be represented absolutely everywhere on a space craft via haptic feedback forces and vibrations. Vibrations from Landing gear operation, landing and take off forces and vibration, atmospheric flight - both entry and exit, atmospheric exit thrust forces, impacts in asteroid fields and with other space objects impacting the shields and hull including other ships or docking rings.
Entering and exiting hyperspace and interdictions. Ballistic weapons fire vibration, combat damage vibrations from ballistic weapons fire and missile hits to shield impacts. Then three could be the vibration forces from using afterburners or sudden reverse thrust. And even some opposite force when nearing stress limits - and in very tight turns, a slow force building up when near blackout and then maybe a stick shaker reminder.
Modern jets, and especially the newer ones do have haptic feedback, all with varying degrees of force. Different countries outfit their versions of the fighter jets with haptic feedback sticks and throttls. There are several companies that do this, supplying very expensive flight sticks and throttles to give the pilot some sense of feedback through he stick and throttle.
And although unlikely to happen now, but I would really like to see some haptic feedback on the left hand throttle of a force feedback HOTAS. To FEEL the ships engines throttle up and down will give a good pilot an extra tactile feedback on the state of their engines. Something no one has really attempted yet.
With space ships, we just take it a little further. With a little artist license in its implementation right across the games universe.
If FD and CIG both looked deeper into remaking anew force feedback for their space games then it could really mkae a come back. And after that, who knows what happens next. But they both have a great chance here to start anew.
This post I made will go into ore detail:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=41345&p=3004059&viewfull=1#post3004059 its the force feedback request thread.
The question is, what is FD going to do regarding full and proper force feedback.
It does require a couple of programmers to go right through the games universe and make notes of where and when haptic events should happen. And then deicide upon which are important enough for the xbox one release. And then go back soon after and work/refine work/refine it.
And then they would have the starting point for full and proper force feedback in its first iteration on PC.
