Star Citizen: Chris Robert`s new space sim (the Wing Commander guy)

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Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Well, most of the parts I need for my custom joystick have shipped. I need to pickup a new multimeter, but other than that, I think I have everything I need.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
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I wonder if those ship UI's will touchscreen compatible. They sure look like they're almost optimized for that sort of input.


I hope so, and I would assume they probably will be since CIG's SC HOTAS comes with a touchscreen for controlling ship functions.

I have no interest in the SC HOTAS, but I could definitely see myself setting up a tablet for controlling that stuff if they develop an interface for it.

I don't like having to lose flight control to modify those values right now (the mouse-interface mode). With a tablet, I could just set it beside my off-hand stick and modify as needed.

I've tried VoiceAttack, and while that's pretty cool (especially when you want to feel like Captain Picard shouting orders), but I game in my living room, and I doubt my wife wants to listen to that all night. ;)

Well, most of the parts I need for my custom joystick have shipped. I need to pickup a new multimeter, but other than that, I think I have everything I need.


Have you picked out the thumbstick you're going to use yet?
 
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Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
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I have about 6 hours now flying my M50 around Dying Star with the new dual-stick flight controls.

A few notes:

The T16000M is really stiff. It pulls hard back to center. This would absolutely wear me out to use it as a primary pitch/yaw stick - I didn't notice it as much until I started putting in some extended flight time. My CH is sprung light enough that you can essentially fly with a fingertip.

This might be a personal preference thing, though.

There is a "zip-tie" mod though for the T16000 spring, where you just zip-tie a couple of the spring coils together - seems like a lot of people say it makes a huge difference in the tension so I'm definitely going to give it a shot.


I still think it's a great stick for the price - but one might consider more options for a primary stick if you don't like high spring tension (pending modding). I still consider it a really good option for a strafe stick.


One thing I was a bit surprised with - mapping the forward / reverse throttles to the toe brakes is killer. This is really evident when you're strafe circling around an object and trying to maintain or close a distance. I'm WAY better at this with the foot throttle than I was with the hand throttle.
 
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Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
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Great notes Stringjam. I'm enjoying reading how you're settling in to your HOSAS. I'm also interested in Fallen Kell's custom stick.

I have heard (on Reddit, I think) that CIG plan on making a companion tablet app for SC to move certain functions to. I'm sure it'll be very reminiscent of the functionality the higher-end SC HOTAS offers.

I haven't had much time to put into anything SC related this weekend. I had to troubleshoot and end up pulling the engine out of my beater, then strip it down. Plus all the other things I had to do this weekend and I had very little free time. Friday night I did get to try swapping roll and yaw on my X52 Pro. I used to love having pitch/yaw on the stick on my X45 and use the "rudder" rocker for roll. However, on the X52 Pro with twist I can't seem to train my brain to it yet. I think I might really be starting to hate twist sticks. I absolutely loved that rudder rocker on the X45 and it makes me sad more setups don't have that. It was just so good. Managing three axis on one stick just seems a bit of a compromise to me.

Oh well, I guess I'll try practicing some more this week. Or I'll break down and buy some pedals and slave roll to them. Pitch/yaw on the stick works so well for steadying aim.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
Oh well, I guess I'll try practicing some more this week. Or I'll break down and buy some pedals and slave roll to them. Pitch/yaw on the stick works so well for steadying aim.


I held off on pedals for a long time, but I'm really glad I have them now. They work so well for a lot of different things - roll / strafing / throttles, etc.

The only thing I have left to deal with is free-look. I'm thinking of trying IR tracking for that, but it's kind of an expensive purchase if I don't end up liking it.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
Well, even if SC doesn't release a tablet ship interface, the community already has it covered using Roccat Power Grid:

100_3_zpscg6kkr1u.jpg


https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...0/star-citizen-roccat-power-grids-by-third/p1


This will also be totally updated for the 2.0 UI update.

The cool thing about this is you can just run it on some cheap Android tablets, and use multiple tablets to get whatever config you want. As you can see above - he has a couple of small tablets flanking a bigger center tablet.
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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Well, even if SC doesn't release a tablet ship interface, the community already has it covered using Roccat Power Grid:

100_3_zpscg6kkr1u.jpg


https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...0/star-citizen-roccat-power-grids-by-third/p1


This will also be totally updated for the 2.0 UI update.

The cool thing about this is you can just run it on some cheap Android tablets, and use multiple tablets to get whatever config you want. As you can see above - he has a couple of small tablets flanking a bigger center tablet.

Amateur question, how does something like that work? Are the tablets plugged into the PC to share the game info?

Working off my phone link has too many pictures to make sense of what is happening.
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
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Amateur question, how does something like that work? Are the tablets plugged into the PC to share the game info?

Working off my phone link has too many pictures to make sense of what is happening.

The tablets are on the same Wifi network.

You have to run Roccat's software on your PC, and then you need the app on the tablets. You're basically binding various keyboard buttons to the tablets i.e. 'boost' button in the app is really just the app recognizing that button as the Tab key on your keyboard. So whatever you have bound to Tab in game will recognize that input from the app.
 
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jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
48,511
219
106
Well, even if SC doesn't release a tablet ship interface, the community already has it covered using Roccat Power Grid:

100_3_zpscg6kkr1u.jpg


https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...0/star-citizen-roccat-power-grids-by-third/p1


This will also be totally updated for the 2.0 UI update.

The cool thing about this is you can just run it on some cheap Android tablets, and use multiple tablets to get whatever config you want. As you can see above - he has a couple of small tablets flanking a bigger center tablet.

That looks expensive. :eek:
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
That looks expensive. :eek:


I probably won't go with multiple tablets, but you can get a single 10" Android tablet for less than $80.

Those smaller ones are less than $60.

Not exactly "cheap," but not bad either.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,009
417
126
That looks expensive. :eek:

Probably not as much as you think. I mean, half the time you can get a free tablet anymore with a new phone purchase/contract or PC purchase, so a lot of people have them laying around. Add in one or two old smartphones and you are done.

I myself have a Samsung S3 laying around which I would easily add to this kind of setup, but I am probably going VR, in which case, the tablets will not really be that useful to me.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
I read the weekly update/monthly report over lunch today. Holy smokes. Are they really THAT close to releasing 2.0 or is this all hype (like Star Marine) that's going to come back and bite them in the ass?

I'm hopeful that they really are close and this isn't hype (i.e. they learned their lesson on setting expectations).
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
I read the weekly update/monthly report over lunch today. Holy smokes. Are they really THAT close to releasing 2.0 or is this all hype (like Star Marine) that's going to come back and bite them in the ass?

I'm hopeful that they really are close and this isn't hype (i.e. they learned their lesson on setting expectations).


There doesn't appear to be many blockers left to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it this month. The fact that they are doing zero patching or hotfixing to 1.3 is a pretty good indicator...
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
Well shoot....last week's weekly update says: "So that’s just about it for this week’s report. We really hope that we won’t need to write another, or many, of these reports because we are certainly “close” to the 2.0 release, it’s just really, really hard to predict just how close we are. "

That got my hopes up. Probably too high.

I mean, not writing another weekly report means 2.0 is released this week......
 

nsafreak

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 2001
7,093
3
81
If they manage to release SC Alpha 2.0 this week and it works well then it's quite possible they'll see a large uptick in pledges.
 

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
I read the weekly update/monthly report over lunch today. Holy smokes. Are they really THAT close to releasing 2.0 or is this all hype (like Star Marine) that's going to come back and bite them in the ass?

I'm hopeful that they really are close and this isn't hype (i.e. they learned their lesson on setting expectations).

Star Marine was being worked on by an outside studio, so I think when they were finally presented with the product they realized how far off it was. Since that's no longer the case, they should know very well how much longer it is. Barring any huge unexpected blockers, we should in fact have it soon.

There doesn't appear to be many blockers left to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it this month. The fact that they are doing zero patching or hotfixing to 1.3 is a pretty good indicator...

A very good indicator.

Yup. I think the response from Disco in one of the chat rolls was "Very, very, very, very soon".

http://zone-archive.com/tmp/hype_train.html


I mean, not writing another weekly report means 2.0 is released this week......

Well, it's going to go to the PTU first for at least a week. So, we'll be seeing that sometime soon I would hope.

BTW, the launcher itself has received an update, so don't get too hyped up everyone.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,009
417
126
Well, it's going to go to the PTU first for at least a week. So, we'll be seeing that sometime soon I would hope.

BTW, the launcher itself has received an update, so don't get too hyped up everyone.

That said, launcher updates are usually a sign they are about to drop something very different on us.
 

Worthington

Golden Member
Apr 29, 2005
1,433
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81
Just saw that the newest version of the VKB Black Mamba went up for pre-order so I grabbed myself one. Now, just to get a nice Crosswind Pedal set and I'll be well on my way.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
Just saw that the newest version of the VKB Black Mamba went up for pre-order so I grabbed myself one. Now, just to get a nice Crosswind Pedal set and I'll be well on my way.

Interested to hear your review on that one. The 3-trigger design is pretty cool.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
145
106
www.neftastic.com
One thing I'm not liking at the moment, and it may be that they just haven't gotten it refined yet, is that ship physics in the game just isn't right. Ship movement is currently very, very raw and chunky. In fact it seems to have regressed a good bit from a year ago.

Also ship masses don't seem to be reflected in the game at all. I was watching the press demo video the other day, and for example the constellation - it just wooshed right off the landing pad and turned on a dime... just like the hornet did. Again, I'd expect this is just one of those polish pass refinement things that we're going to have to wait for, but right now it really doesn't feel good. I thought they'd have this farther along at this point than they do.
 

jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
48,511
219
106
Probably not as much as you think. I mean, half the time you can get a free tablet anymore with a new phone purchase/contract or PC purchase, so a lot of people have them laying around. Add in one or two old smartphones and you are done.

I myself have a Samsung S3 laying around which I would easily add to this kind of setup, but I am probably going VR, in which case, the tablets will not really be that useful to me.

Maybe, but it's still a lot for one game! :p

VR is an excellent point. I'm waiting for OR...not sure I'll be able to drive everything well at that res with a single 970, though.