RPS Feature "A little bit of gravity is nice, so that your sneeze lands on your tissue"
At last week’s Develop conference in Brighton, I grabbed a half hour with Frontier Developments boss David Braben to talk about what’s going on with Elite Dangerous (fresh from my own wide-eyed experiences of it on a VR headset). Discussed: space, Oculus Rift, why FIFA games don’t sound right, how Star Trek doesn’t talk about gravity, developing in the public eye and publisher-free, and the resurgence of joysticks.
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RPS Feature Beyond The Joystick
If I’m going to be dull and reductive about it, playing videogames works like this: we tell a game something through an input device – say, a gamepad, motion contoller, touch screen or keyboard – and get a response back in the form of images or sound. It’s like a conversation, but it’s shaped by the devices we use to talk. Without the Wiimote, there is no Wii Sports. Without the touch screen, there is no Fingle or Bloop.
If I don’t own the relevant controller, then I can’t play these games. But what if the controller doesn’t even exist? Many games are impossible to conceive of because we don’t have the hardware to act as muse. Are we living on a junk diet of gamepads and mice – or a rich land of controller plenty?
Let’s have a chat with a few developers and see wot what they think.
RPS Feature Saitek X52 Pro vs Logitech Extreme 3D Pro vs Speedlink Black Widow
I’ve spent far too long thinking about and researching joysticks lately, primarily as a result of playing Elite: Dangerous. One thing I haven’t established during all that time is whether ‘joystick’ is the right word for a genre of game controller which also throws out terms like ‘flight stick’ and ‘HOTAS.’ I’ve probably offended someone with just the title of this piece, but then again someone like decided that Hot Ass is a perfectly reasonably thing to call a ‘Hands On Throttle-And-Stick.’ Someone also thought that writing ‘VIBRATION’ in enormous capital letters down the shaft of one of the three sticks I’m looking at here was sensible. Basically, the joy/flightstick industry is a place where innuendo goes to die.
In any case, I’m sticking with ‘joystick’, and I’m using it as a term for three very different types (and costs) of stick I’ve looked at in my recent return to space games. Those are, in descending price order, the Saitek X52 Pro, the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and the Speedlink Black Widow.
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RPS Feature Simulation & wargame news
I’m not saying my trusty Saitek Cyborg flightstick is old, but…
It has ‘MADE IN SIAM’ stamped on the base. It came bundled with a bottle of laudanum and a photogravure of an eagle. The hat switch has three corners. The Force Feedback mechanism involves burly shrews. The manual foreward was written by Pliny the Elder. Altering the deadzones without first placating Anubis, voids the warranty.
It’s not all that often that I peer curiously at a flight sim these days, but when I do I absolutely relish the chance to bring out ol’ faithful. I’ve been lugging the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick around with me for years, even though it’s been out of print since around 2002 and is no longer supported by Microsoft. It’s a relic, but God help me, it’s one of my proudest possessions.
