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Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2023 11:05 am
by charmless

Hi people!

I've been thinking about picking up a flight stick to use with both my PC and MiSTer. Are there any good recommendations out there? The one I'm looking at currently is the Logitech G Extreme 3D Pro (wow, that's mouth full) but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks!


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:19 pm
by Hetzen

Having the yaw twist is good for games like Elite. I've not used this one, but have got frustrated with a similar priced one that had loose dead zone.


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:18 pm
by remowilliams

That is the exact flight stick I use with my real retro pc (courtesy of https://github.com/dekuNukem/USB4VC) and with my emulation NUC / DOSBox.

I've also used it with MiSTer (now that MiSTer correctly recognizes 2 controllers/2 axis) but the extremely unfortunate inability to save custom keybinds puts a huge damper on usage there...


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:33 pm
by thorr

Nice little gadget! I have a USB wombat for my Mac LCIII from bigmessowires.com. That looks like a nice alternative with more to it. I also just got my Retro PC up and running with Windows XP. It has native drivers and is about as new of hardware that you can get and still run XP. It runs XP games perfectly and some Windows 98 games with some work. I am thinking about trying to install PCem on it for troublesome Windows 98 and DOS 3DFX games, but it might be too slow. I have to try it and see. It is a 2.66GHz Intel Quadcore. I have it hooked up to my CRT TV which took some doing on XP that doesn't like interlaced resolutions. I also have Windows 10 on it that I would use for PCem and other games that don't work in XP. I am using one of these with custom progressive resolutions for various video modes like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, and it works perfect to convert to 480i with no perceptible lag: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017LVMAWG/ I first tried CRT Emudriver with an ATI card, but I couldn't get it to work in XP. I am using an NVIDIA card now with progressive resolutions in XP and it is much easier to deal with for custom resolutions. The NVIDIA card also handles interlaced just fine in Windows 10 and doesn't need to go through the converter. Of course my resolutions are limited to 480i and 240p based resolutions in that case.

Back to the topic at hand... I use a Thrustmaster Hotas: https://www.amazon.com/Thrustmaster-T-F ... B07DLKVKD5 To get it to work with the MiSTer, I hold down a button when plugging in the USB cable to put it into the appropriate mode and it works perfectly. It's great for the Playstation core and pretty much anything else with analog controls (ao486, arcade, etc.).

Regarding the custom keybinds, I am thinking about making duplicate cores for the various games that need it. Basically copy the ao486 core to a "WingCommander" core and just have the one game on the hard drive, and set up and save my custom bindings. There are not that many games that need it that I care about so it seems doable. I would just set them up one at a time when I want to play a new different game.


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 8:55 pm
by jca
thorr wrote: Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:33 pm

Regarding the custom keybinds, I am thinking about making duplicate cores for the various games that need it. Basically copy the ao486 core to a "WingCommander" core and just have the one game on the hard drive, and set up and save my custom bindings. There are not that many games that need it that I care about so it seems doable. I would just set them up one at a time when I want to play a new different game.

What about using mgl?


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 9:22 pm
by thorr
jca wrote: Fri Jul 07, 2023 8:55 pm

What about using mgl?

Thanks! I didn't know what that was until you mentioned it, so I looked it up and found this: https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... -arguments

From what I understand, it won't help in this situation. It's more for cores that have ROM files and launching different games with those ROM files. It does not appear that it works with ao486, and if it did, it would be with the hard drives, and I am not sure, but I think that alone is not enough to have separate key bindings. I think the key bindings are per core, not per ROM, or hard drive in this case. So copying the core to a new core name seems like a doable approach, but I don't think MGL would be. If I am wrong though, I would love to know more about it!


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 10:21 pm
by jca

Look at AmigaVision/MegaAGS.


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 10:38 pm
by jca

More explanation:
You mentioned WingCommander which we will use as an example.
Create games/WingCommander and place your VHD there.
Create _Computer/WingCommander.mgl:
<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_Computer/ao486</rbf>
<setname>WingCommander</setname>
</mistergamedescription>

Start your mgl make your settings in the OSD, mount the VHD and save your settings. These will be saved as WingCommander.CFG
Next time you start your mgl ao496b will come up as you configured it, will boot the VHD and if you start the game using AUTOEXEC.BAT your game will start.


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 10:52 pm
by jca

I am not sure your method would work: renaming the core does not do much besides renaming the core.
It will use the games/ao496 and all the configuration files will be named ao486..., including input mapping.


Re: Flight sticks

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 11:05 pm
by thorr

Thanks!! This is very helpful, and I am glad to have this information before going down the wrong rabbit hole. I appreciate your help!