Flight Model and Joystick Control / Calibration

[Robert]

I am looking to develop a flight model and joystick control for Celestia. Anyone interested / Have Suggestions etc. I'm Going to be working on this over the next 2 weeks.

[Guest]

I have not tried the existing joy stick support in celestia yet but i have noticed that moving around using the mouse and/or keyboard is not very smooth. Although the mouse and keyboard controls are designed to be very efficient (ie it is possible to quickly zoom around all the planets and view objects from any angle and distance), it cannot be done gracefully. the moment you touch the controls you introduce jerky or stepped movements which are very unspace like. A flight interface using a joystick which was very dampened so that changes to speed and direction were smooth would be a great improvement. Even if celestia had an option to adjust the sensitivity of the existing keyboard and mouse controls would be a great help.

[Robert]

We've done a quick and dirty mod of the source mapping speed and direction to directly to mouse (and wheel) or joystick (and thrust) so you can fly manually from place to place. Is really cool fun to fly now. More "Swoooshing" sounds made by astral navigators than ever before:). We're working on fine tuning speed control to create a couple of sweet spots and the low and high end to enable better maneuvoring, and less chance of overshooting targeted objects. Next stop is mapping roll and pitch to give "plane like" maeverability. Once were done and got it running stable we'll subit it for review :)

[ron]

sounds great robert, i will certainly be keen to try it out as i think this is just what celestia needs. what files are affected by your mods ... will it be just a matter of replacing the celestia.exe file.

ron

[Rassilon]

We've done a quick and dirty mod of the source mapping speed and direction to directly to mouse (and wheel) or joystick (and thrust) so you can fly manually from place to place. Is really cool fun to fly now. More "Swoooshing" sounds made by astral navigators than ever before:). We're working on fine tuning speed control to create a couple of sweet spots and the low and high end to enable better maneuvoring, and less chance of overshooting targeted objects. Next stop is mapping roll and pitch to give "plane like" maeverability. Once were done and got it running stable we'll subit it for review

Would you by chance be adding sound to planet surfaces? If you do make it moddable as I would love to have surface ambience as an added touch to my planet addons!...

[Robert]

And if we did this I cnt help but think it would be a little like leaving graffiti on a far larger scale. I kind of enjoy the "purity" of celestia :)
However... that said:
Planetoid sounds would be interesting... for instance, the chatter of several hundred million pen lids and car keys swiming in the oceans of europa complaining about the uncanny existance of wormholes down the back of sofas:)

Or maybee spooky alien music for planet LV427.... would you want to land there? :P

Or the theme to 2001 during orbital sunrise over earth.

Many possibilities, most corney, however on a more serios note I think audial prompts quoting speed would be useful ie "1 au..." .5 speed of light etc. at the moment checking speed in free flight (at the corner of the screen) is a little like taking your eyes off the road... "whoops, just overshot that planet, u oh, just flew throgh a sun." good idea or not?

[Robert]

sounds great robert, i will certainly be keen to try it out as i think this is just what celestia needs. what files are affected by your mods ... will it be just a matter of replacing the celestia.exe file.

ron

We think it will be ready for people to play with in about a week, currently a recompiled celestia.exe is all that is needed, however it is still quick and dirty.

[Rassilon]

And if we did this I cnt help but think it would be a little like leaving graffiti on a far larger scale. I kind of enjoy the "purity" of celestia
However... that said:
Planetoid sounds would be interesting... for instance, the chatter of several hundred million pen lids and car keys swiming in the oceans of europa complaining about the uncanny existance of wormholes down the back of sofas:)

Or maybee spooky alien music for planet LV427.... would you want to land there?

Or the theme to 2001 during orbital sunrise over earth.

Many possibilities, most corney, however on a more serios note I think audial prompts quoting speed would be useful ie "1 au..." .5 speed of light etc. at the moment checking speed in free flight (at the corner of the screen) is a little like taking your eyes off the road... "whoops, just overshot that planet, u oh, just flew throgh a sun." good idea or not?

LOL...I know one thing Robert, The most useful thing I can forsee other than what your doing would be to add sprite collision...Make it so when the surface of the planet is reached, the ship stops, or cannot pass through the planets surface...

[marc]

Here is the link to the swooshing hack.
Based on ver 1.2.0
Marc Griffith
http://www.users.bigpond.com/ryears/