I've recently found myself dumping endless hours into Orbiter, and yesterday I went digging through my old things to find my Joystick. I know it is here somewhere, and it would really help on those landings (all my attempts to land the XR2 without utilizing decent or attitude autopilots have ended poorly). The thought occurred to me, however... What sort of control setup would a real spacecraft use?
The joystick + throttle + rudder combination works well for pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust. But what about for translation maneuvers? Ever if there is a second joystick - you have six axis of control and only 4 axis available to a joystick. And if the joystick twists, sure, that's six axis right there, but that's two left/right axis and one front back, which sounds confusing when one is more easily mentally geared to make front/back correlate to up/down.
I'd probably still use the keyboard for translation as it is fine and accurate enough for docking as it is - but I'm still curious how the Shuttle - or any future spaceplanes - do or might handle the issue of control.
The joystick + throttle + rudder combination works well for pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust. But what about for translation maneuvers? Ever if there is a second joystick - you have six axis of control and only 4 axis available to a joystick. And if the joystick twists, sure, that's six axis right there, but that's two left/right axis and one front back, which sounds confusing when one is more easily mentally geared to make front/back correlate to up/down.
I'd probably still use the keyboard for translation as it is fine and accurate enough for docking as it is - but I'm still curious how the Shuttle - or any future spaceplanes - do or might handle the issue of control.
