we need full HOTAS support

Been saying since se1 would have assigned thrusters to a throttle, but 2 joysticks makes me think you could assign one for piloting and another for sub grid weapon aim/firing. That excites me.

@Jolly Joel

Usually 2 joysticks (HOSAS) is meant for full 6AF (Six Axes of Freedom), allowing you complete control in all directions - something HOTAS doesn't do unless you have hats on your HOTAS that you bind to the missing directions.

That said, having the flexibility to be able to bind them to additional features like subgrids / turrets / etc would be great (personally, trying to fly and aim subgrids at the same time is not something I'd be interested in, but I'm not one to yuck your yum).

you know what the best part of this is... all of the cockpit and control stations... are modeled as HOSAS...

but staying on topic, like you, i bought the X52 for games like Elite, Egosoft's X series...actually i bought it specifically for X2... anyways.

YES!

I just looked up the X52, awesome!

and then I noticed that Logitech also do a flight instrument panel.

I would like this in SE.

Can I make one with a Raspberry PI?

Should already be possible in SE1 if the game has all needed data, don't know if everyone ever tried it there. Only the things you can input over such a panel could be a thing where the game needs to have support, but you can also simulate keyboard or controller key presses as a work around. So as long the game has a key bound to the feature you want to trigger over such a panel, no problem here. The modding support may also help here, but we need to wait and see how deep it really will gets and where the limits are.

HOTAS support is here more difficult than such a extra display which shows data. Data only need to be read out of the game which is mostly no problem (if SE would have a AntiCheat engine it would look different). With a Raspberry PI, a little (touch) Screen and some buttons/switches you can also build something like that for yourself especially created for SE (for design of the instruments for example). For such a easy setup you also don't need the strongest Raspberry PI, because there is not much calculations ongoing, creating the 2d image that is shown on the display is the most heavy thing it needs to do. Maybe some day I will try that by my own.

But buying something like this has the advantage of getting it already in a nice case. But if you enjoy DiY stuff, you would likely not buying such a device. :D

Check out the stuff from VKB and Virpil. I bought VKB HOSAS a few years ago for Star Citizen. Upgrading to Virpil. Order is in and hopefully I'll have them soon. I started years ago in Battlefield 2 with Logitech X52. That was my first experience, and I can't do flying games without HOTAS/HOSAS anymore, it just isn't any fun.

As others have said, if you have never used Flight Sticks, you just don't understand the fun that it is to fly a space ship with them. The fine control it gives you over small movements and the fun it creates when doing cool stuff - it really pulls you into the game. SE is great at giving us tools to build vehicles and ships. Please give us the tools to enjoy our builds once they are done too!

And if you've never used flight sticks, buy some cheap...there are some Logitechs for like $50 to get you started. Once you experience it, you'll never want to go back to flying with MKB. I recently sold a long-time gaming friend of mine on trying it and he agrees. You just can't beat the experience.

Yeah, me too. Maybe they don't want to buy a HOTAS to be able to build it in. I don't know why they was against it on SE1, it was there also a topic for a long time and got ignored there. Today HOTAS are a even bigger topic than 10 years ago (thanks to games like StarCitizen/Elite Dangerous) and I see no reason for no support.

The argument that you can't control the full game with it is not really one, because that counts for StarCitizen and Elite Dangerous (since you walk with your character) too. So that can't be really the reason why it is not in the game. And much other reasons, that are strong ones, didn't came into my mind.

Has it maybe to do with the flight model in SE? I wouldn't call that very good when I compare it with SC or ED. But I didn't really tested around with it that much all the time.

agreed even in sc and ed only times i use em is when im............ gasp............ piloting or driving a vehicle otherwise fps im on M/K

the thing is that in SE 1 on pc and console you CAN switch between controller and mouse and keyboard at any time in the game.

there really is no excuse not to do this

Also I feel this should be setup as soon as possible so that everything coming after can be built supporting this type of input system in mind.

I wish the devs would take a look at the control configuration of Elite Dangerous. fully mappable even if you have a mix of controller types. allows anyone to tailor the game to their playstyle. everyone wins.

Indeed.

I toyed with that, the throttle can work but it only presses w instead of mapping to thrust override percent.

Also everytime i talked about HOTAS and se i always said it needs a form of head tracker. I fear since hotas is getting popular on here, we'll get just hotas and not some head tracker as well :-(

Even splitsie responded to me saying that he talked to the devs about hotas but nothing about head tracker

Yeah that's been the only huge drawback I've found with it. The best I've found is to change the acceleration values in JoyToKey.

The main reason I've found it nice is that it doesn't change the controls for my character which stay familiar and vanilla

I agree being able to control stuff like rotor and hinges with different inputs can bring quite a bit to the game. Say you have ramp and can lower it with a slider. Or for example i have logitech heavy eq panel, with it using crane would be blast. Oh and analog throttle/thrust control no more accidentally driving/flying to a wall when trying to do small manoeuvres.

AMAZING

I've been thinking about this lot and it is really hard for me to see why this shouldn't be implemented. It would give much depth and much freedom for designing various types of machines. I'd really like to make use of my heavy eq panel as an crane of other arm controller with loads of buttons. Also flying a fighter and shooting with joystick feels so bad ass.

HOSAS, yes!