Elite : Dangerous

[DanceswithUnix]

Well those £399 Oculus Rift adverts on Amazon finally got to me, and it turned up on Saturday.

So what do headset wearers do for input buttons? My brief flight yesterday was quite amazing, I logged out in an asteroid belt "High" zone and so was straight into combat vs an Anaconda and damn that thing looked huge and menacing!

Sadly the second Anaconda was more than I could take, and that got me my first problem. How to slow wake out when that means pressing the "J" key and I can't see the keyboard? I have a Hotas T-Flight X and there really aren't any spare buttons, what do headset wearers do for control inputs? I notice "Gear up" can be done on the in-flight menu on the right, but not much else is up there. I think I am down on buttons for "Jump", "Select Hostile" and power management for diverting pips to shields or engines though I'm sure others will come up. It really breaks immersion when you have to slip the headset up to wake out

[cptwhite_uk]

Voice Attack would probably be useful - voice activated controls

[Ttaskmaster]

So what do headset wearers do for input buttons?

Bite the bullet and reason that if you're dropping a wodge of cash on a VR headset, you might as well drop a couple hundred on a CH Products set... but then, most of us already bought our HOTASes (HOTii? HOTae? HOTum?) before VR came out and things like the full Warthog setup were only about £240.

There is a nice Thrustmaster HOTAS set for reasonable money.
Voice Attack is good, if you can speak quickly and don't have family to wake up...

[DanceswithUnix]

Not sure the family would appreciate me talking commands at the game, cool though it sounds. I can imagine them getting irritated and shouting out the likes of "shields off" and "eject all cargo"

I think my toy fund is too depleted for a new HOTAS stick when I already have one. Perhaps I can make something up using an old USB keyboard and some push switches.

[scaryjim]

Could you take the Zaphod Beeblebrox route and grow an extra arm? Then it could be sat in home position on your keyboard and you could just make sure everything's mapped to be one-hand touch-typeable....?!

[Ttaskmaster]

I think my toy fund is too depleted for a new HOTAS stick when I already have one. Perhaps I can make something up using an old USB keyboard and some push switches.

Oh, well, if you're making up a button box or summat, there's a host of cool ideas online - You can use an old XBox controller board to wire the switches to.
I can't find the bookmark, so it must be at home, but there's a company doing ED themed boxes just like this and they look awesome!

So long as you can find your way around the buttons without looking, you'll love it!!

Remember to post a couple pics...

[DanceswithUnix]

Remember to post a couple pics...

If I ever get time to build one I will.

Best advice I could find with Google was to peer down your nose and you can see a slight gap just big enough to see a keytop or two to press the right keys. You don't see the gap when looking straight ahead, but sure enough it works

I did find an arduino project for building a key box, so another starting point there. That sounded interesting as you can write code that on a button press sends a sequence of key presses to the PC.

[rich835]

Well I do have Voice Attack, and use it a little when I'm playing in the Rift, but not for many ship functions tbh.
What Voice Attack tries to do is great, and you have to admire the effort that's gone into producing the software. However, at the end of the day, it's simply replaying keystrokes that are programmed into it, and that will never be 100% reliable with voice recognition. I've spent hours tweaking it and do have it running fairly well now, but I've ended up turning off a lot of the fancy routines just to make it stable. Simple voice commands like "Deploy Landing Gear" or "Deploy Cargo Scoop" are helpful to me when playing in the Rift.

What I find more helpful are macro keys. I have a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard which has a row of keys down the left edge, I can find these easy enough without looking at them. For example my bottom left macro key performs a request docking permission function, the next one up deploys a fighter and so on. I had a look into Voice attack to see the routine they'd written, and basically just replicated the key sequence into a macro.

Macro keys are very reliable, and if you can momorize where they are so you don't need to look at the keyboard so much, then I highly recommend this approach!

[DanceswithUnix]

It sounds like I should be able to use some sort of "shift" function on my HOTAS to expand the number of things it can control which should be enough. Just need to work out how.

Or I could do a control panel, I am tempted to print one up in black, and I notice Maplin do black push switches for that Disaster Area stunt ship black controls on a black background look. And yes, I have flown into a sun in the past thanks
(that is a Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference for anyone reading that bewildered)

[Ttaskmaster]

It sounds like I should be able to use some sort of "shift" function on my HOTAS to expand the number of things it can control which should be enough. Just need to work out how.

Yes you should, and it should be fairly easy:

If Elite recognises the HOTAS on its own, then when you press a button to assign a command on the in-game options bit, it will come up as Button 1, Button 2, etc...
Then all you need do is hold down whichever button combination you want to create the 'double-down' function and there you go. It should assign the commans as something like [Button 1]+[Button 12]...
If it doesn't do this automatically, you should still be able to assign buttons to SHIFT, ALT, CTRL, etc in the HOTAS's own software.

I do the exact same thing on my CH kit - I have three buttons under my fingers on the throttle, which I use excludively as shift functions - Holding one of those down, I then get four extra controls on the cross-hat. Hold the next button I get four more from the same hat, and so on. Basically a single 4-way hat ends up offering 16 functions. Multiply that up and my basic 35 controls becomes 140!!

Also look around to see if your HOTAS has some kind of map that you can use to record and remember which commands you put where - Summat like this:
http://i.imgur.com/zz9JBo6.jpg

[DanceswithUnix]

Yes you should, and it should be fairly easy:

If Elite recognises the HOTAS on its own, then when you press a button to assign a command on the in-game options bit, it will come up as Button 1, Button 2, etc...
Then all you need do is hold down whichever button combination you want to create the 'double-down' function and there you go. It should assign the commans as something like [Button 1]+[Button 12]...
If it doesn't do this automatically, you should still be able to assign buttons to SHIFT, ALT, CTRL, etc in the HOTAS's own software.

I do the exact same thing on my CH kit - I have three buttons under my fingers on the throttle, which I use excludively as shift functions - Holding one of those down, I then get four extra controls on the cross-hat. Hold the next button I get four more from the same hat, and so on. Basically a single 4-way hat ends up offering 16 functions. Multiply that up and my basic 35 controls becomes 140!!

Also look around to see if your HOTAS has some kind of map that you can use to record and remember which commands you put where - Summat like this:
http://i.imgur.com/zz9JBo6.jpg

Thanks, nice description so I now have some extra buttons. Will see how that goes!

[Ttaskmaster]

I thought I was kinda waffling, but hey if it helps you out then I'm happy with that!!

[DanceswithUnix]

It seems that my once trusty T-flight HOTAS X is now a bit "hull integrity compromised"

Before I just go order another one for £50 off Amazon, anyone got a good alternative? Most of the others seem to be over £200 which I can't justify.

[cptwhite_uk]

It's £38 at Argos

[DanceswithUnix]

It's £38 at Argos

That's rather tempting, and it can be in the local store tomorrow morning. If no-one suggests anything else, I think we have a winner.

Edit: Ordered. Will have a pop at mending the old one as well, but not hopeful. I re-mapped the twist on the joystick onto the rudder control on the throttle but my brain isn't re-mapping to cope with the change

[Ttaskmaster]

That's rather tempting, and it can be in the local store tomorrow morning. If no-one suggests anything else, I think we have a winner.

Edit: Ordered. Will have a pop at mending the old one as well, but not hopeful. I re-mapped the twist on the joystick onto the rudder control on the throttle but my brain isn't re-mapping to cope with the change

Damn. been away and only just seen this - I was gonna suggest the Thrustmaster T16000M system with full on HOTAS. It's only about £100, but pretty darn decent for the money.