Re: [Plib-devel] Saitek X52 joystick with 34 buttons

[steve <sjb...@ai...>]

John Denker wrote:
> Back in December of '05 Trammell Hudson wrote:
>>> I"ve recently started using a Saitek X52 joystick with my Linux box and
>>> have run into problems with plib"s JS module limitation in the number
>>> of supported buttons. It only supports up to 32 buttons due to the
>>> MAX_BUTTONS definition and the fact that it uses an int to store the
>>> button state, but the X52 has 34 buttons (and 12 axes).
> 
> On 2005-05-04 14:20 Steve Baker replied:
>> That"s practically a keyboard!
> 
> No, it's not a keyboard.
> 
> Do you have any idea how many switches and knobs there are in a
> real airplane?

Actually - yes.  I design flight simulators for a living for
L3 Link Simulation.  Every F117, F22 and F16 pilot - and
almost every F18 and helicopter pilot in the US military
was trained on one of my simulators!  Over 25 years in the
business, I've worked on simulators for over 100 different
aircraft types - and also cars, submarines, railroad
locomotives, the space shuttle and space station, air
traffic control towers and even a roller coaster.

So yeah - I have a fair idea what's involved.

> It looks like we may be approaching a culture clash:
>  -- gamer viewpoint, versus
>  -- flight instructor viewpoint.

Well, as a practical matter - if you are a serious flight
instructor and training beyond the 'stick and rudder' level,
you very much need the buttons to have the right kinds of
shape and labelling - and to be in more or less the right
place. I very much doubt that anything Saitek would produce
would be of very much use for serious training.

> Hint:  I'm coming from the flight instructor viewpoint.  There
> are reasonable people in this world who want to build PC-based
> flight simulators that are good enough to ... well ... to simulate
> flight.  You know, flight in real aircraft.

To do this properly, you need a mock-up cockpit - that means that
whilst you might use the electronics from an off-the shelf
joystick - you'll be pulling it apart and using more realistic
switches and knobs.

That means that you can (and will) need to use multiple joysticks
in order to get all of the rotary knobs and such right.

The limit of 32 per joystick controller is not at all unreasonable.

Also, if you are sufficiently hard-core to take on a project like
this, hacking your own version of the PLIB Joystick code is going
to be a very, very tiny percentage of the software work you'll
end up needing to do.

> I assure you that the X52 is a real and practical product.
> It receives good reviews in the usual places.  Indeed IMHO it does
> not have /enough/ knobs and buttons;  the X52 /plus/ a keyboard
> is marginally OK for a modest single-engine aircraft but nearly
> enough for a multi-engine aircraft, or even for a complex single.

Sure - but it IS a gaming device.  No serious flight simulator
designer would even consider using it - it's a joke from a training
perspective.  It's got a heck of a lot of buttons - but they aren't
properly labelled and they are about as far from the right places as
you could imagine - you might just as well use a keyboard for all
the relevence it has to training.  I almost fell off my chair laughing
at the "MFD" display!

The PLIB interface is 'good enough' for all but maybe one joystick
type and then in maybe one application.   The idea that 32 buttons
map onto 32 bits in an integer is a very clean, simple - and efficient
way to handle joystick buttons.  To hack all of that around to deal
with one or two types joystick and for a very, very special class
of user...it's ridiculous.

Please feel free to take the PLIB joystick code and make your
own version of it - it's under LGPL - so there aren't obstacles
to doing that.

Right now - I'm not interested in supporting more than 32
buttons.   If these kinds of devices become ubiquitous and
lots of applications demand them - I might reconsider - but
in general, the world is moving away from joysticks as gamer
interfaces.

> These are rather significant bugs.  If you roll the trim wheel
> it fires the gun!

That's an application problem - PLIB gives you the axes and
buttons in the order the joystick provides them.  The meaning
of them is entirely down to what the application does with them.