13 replies to this topic

[SolCrusher]

I'm thinking about getting a flight stick and i was wondering if anyone would share if they are using one in MWO.

I'm picking one up for another game but thought hey maybe MWO could be fun with one. might as well get one that works with MWO.

i found old topics but nothing to recent.

[pbiggz]

Flight sticks/HOTAS are very cool, but you'll be playing at a pretty dramatic disadvantage against other players who can just click on you.

I'd save the flight stick for Mechwarrior 5.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Unfortunately MW:O's stick support isn't the best.

While you can use a (decent enough) stick in your "off-hand" (kind of in reverse of what you see in the cockpit animations) for forward / reverse throttle (on the X-axis) and left / right turn (on the Y-axis) as a replacement for ws/ad because throttle and turn are actually implemented as truly analogue input channels it's simply not feasible to try to use the implemented joystick input channels for torso pitch and yaw because those are not implemented as truly analogue (where max deflection of the stick = max movement angle of the torso) and without proper self-centering back to original (centered) torso position when returning the deflection of the stick to 0. The implementation tries to emulate a mouse with a stick there and there's simply no way that you'd be able to turn it into an actually worthwhile experience.

To make things worse: There are also no digital inputs for torso pitch / yaw that would allow you to script a decent enough quasi-analogue torso control with one of the better joysticks and their configuations software.

=> For throttle / turn you can certainly go for a stick. I'm actually regularly playing with a left-hand configured Thrustmaster T.16000M as throttle/turn instead of ws/ad for the fun of it but for weapon aim with the torso/arms you're better of sticking to the mouse.

[Meep Meep]

Sticks are immersive but anyone with a mouse is going to tear you apart. As already stated use them in mw5.

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 01 September 2023 - 08:26 AM, said:

I'd save the flight stick for Mechwarrior 5.

i still use a mouse in mw5. i use my throttle and pedals in both but the damage a joystick does to your accuracy is abysmal.

so long as you dont have to fight inertia to get your weapons on target, and you dont have to wait for actuators and servos to reach your setpoint, the lowest order control will give you best results. the mouse is a zeroth order control interface and therefore is the lowest possible. joysticks are second order and are great when the thing you are controlling has some mass to it.

a joystick can also be first order, usually frictioned rather than spring centered, it stays where you leave it. helicopter simmers use those since you are directly controlling the orientation of the swashplate. mw2 supported first order sticks quite well. steering wheels are also first order controls.

Der Geisterbaer, on 01 September 2023 - 10:02 AM, said:

Unfortunately MW:O's stick support isn't the best.

neither is mw5s. unless you like writing config files.

Edited by LordNothing, 01 September 2023 - 04:04 PM.

[SolCrusher]

i played mw2 with a flight stick and was hoping maybe i could get away with it here. mw5 was fun and wrecking the AI was easy.

honestly I'm only playing mwo because of mw5, i felt the need to play against people because AI was just so terrible.

I'm a founder and stuck in Tier 5. i had to drop my tags because i play so poorly. still like dusting off the founder atlas every now and then.

[pbiggz]

mechwarrior 5 gets dramatically better when you mod it. I'd look into that.

As for your tier, don't worry about it. Its worth nothing to you, its a vagary of the matchmaker that you should not have been able to see anyway.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

pbiggz, on 01 September 2023 - 06:22 PM, said:

mechwarrior 5 gets dramatically better when you mod it. I'd look into that.

As for your tier, don't worry about it. Its worth nothing to you, its a vagary of the matchmaker that you should not have been able to see anyway.

It's the perfect example of "comparison is the thief of contentment" and "minor information hazard".

[w0qj]

There's already a similar flight stick forum posting here:
https://mwomercs.com...o-configuration

[Der Geisterbaer]

LordNothing, on 01 September 2023 - 03:59 PM, said:

neither is mw5s. unless you like writing config files.

Well, I don't play MW5 so I can't say for sure but having the option to do it via writing config files would indicate a level of improvement over MW:O where writing config files still won't really get you anywhere useful simply because the torso control is implemented as second order for the stick on the available Direct Input channels instead of first order (which would have downsides of its own on certain mechs but still would get better results overall) and the lack of digital inputs for the torso (compared to ws/ad for throttle/turn) prevents you from replicating first order via config as well.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

I use a Thrustmaster Airbus stick and the throttle from a tflight hotas and have used a stick since beta. I am perpetually tier 3 but can have a good match and have fun. I took a screen of a match today in my 4lb10 ecm Fafnir. whatever stick you get you want a "hall effect" stick which uses magnets senses like 1600o positions per axis

Edited by Napoleon_Blownapart, 02 September 2023 - 05:05 PM.

[LordNothing]

w0qj, on 01 September 2023 - 08:16 PM, said:

There's already a similar flight stick forum posting here:
https://mwomercs.com...o-configuration

that was a necro of a thread from 2012. with no rebuttal.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 September 2023 - 05:43 PM.

[LordNothing]

Napoleon_Blownapart, on 02 September 2023 - 04:17 PM, said:

I use a Thrustmaster Airbus stick and the throttle from a tflight hotas and have used a stick since beta. I am perpetually tier 3 but can have a good match and have fun. I took a screen of a match today in my 4lb10 ecm Fafnir. whatever stick you get you want a "hall effect" stick which uses magnets senses like 1600o positions per axis

hall sensors are nice. but i wonder why nobody does optical. all the sidewinder sticks from the 90s just uses a common mouse sensor to measure position of the x,y and twist axes. probibly running different code on the dsp since it used leds for point tracking. my six axis space mouse is also optical (little utility in a mechwarrior game though).

hall is nice for controls that are fragile or subject to wear. like most thumbstick modules. potentiometers do wear out, but to be fair they tend to be using low quality potentiometers. high quality pots do exist, something wire wound and hermetically sealed. i recently started playing around with some fancy hall array contactless potentiometers / encoders. the pots let you scale your output to match the physical range of rotation. you can set the range minimum/maximum and it will map the position into the full 12-bit range of the output. its i2c but can output pwm as well. the encoder is more or less the same sensor designed for 360 degree operation, so there is no range mapping. but it does have a higher 14-bit precision.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 September 2023 - 06:21 PM.

[The Lobsters]

The best use of a joystick is left hand analogue control of legs, and right hand mouse control of torso. Especially the faster the mech goes as sometime you want to moderate the speed or turn rate. Fire with stick buttons, use left mouse for targeting, right mouse for align legs. With it pressed you can steer with the mouse which is handy sometimes.

If you can get the hang of it, inverting front/back axes on stick means just pulling back to go forward is less tiring than always pushing it forward.

I've not played in a while, but this was the only way i did play. All other ways are just harder after you get used to it.