Brian, you’ve got the (purchased) EDTracker, right? How easy is it to get it to work with other games (eg ETS 2, DCS World, Rise of Flight, and I guess Star Citizen)?
More, shorter jumps take less fuel than fewer, longer jumps because the relationship between distance and fuel consumption is non-linear.
Quite dramatically so, it seems.When I did my trek to Empire space yesterday I was a bit bemused as my 100+ LY odyssey seemed to use scarcely any more fuel my than previous 20-odd LY trade route had done. But most of the jumps in the former were 2-3 LY, whereas the trade route had one 12 LY jump.
schurem
3403
You assume correctly. You need to re-calculate the route once you toggle it to fastest route. It needs to redraw the jumps so give it some time. Calculating a 100LY route can take minutes.
Hmmm, that’s very odd, it doesn’t appear to be working for me, plus it defaults to “most economical” each time.
[edit] Also not updating properly are forum posts, but now I’ve read schurem’s post I shall investigate more thoroughly.
It worked with ETS2 right out of the box, but it appears for other games I might have to use another piece of software called OpenTrack to emulate TrackIR in order to make it work. I’ll report back with more.
I barely use head tracking in Elite although it’s nice to have when I need it to look at an enemy while turning into him. Otherwise the Sidewinder cockpit is too restrictive to bother. Often I want to look around at a cool star or port and they’re already past 90 degrees. I’m just as happy doing UI focus with a button.
It’s essential for flight sims but anyone short on cash can hold off here, especially if you have enough HOTAS hats to map buttons to look up, left, and right.
I barely use head tracking in Elite although it’s nice to have when I need it to look at an enemy while turning into him. Otherwise the Sidewinder cockpit is too restrictive to bother. Often I want to look around at a cool star or port and they’re already past 90 degrees. I’m just as happy doing UI focus with a button
.
My two main use cases for it are tracking an enemy and UI focus, both of which I do a lot. I have UI focus on a button (two, actually), but I’d like to free them up. With head tracking, how does the actual focus work? At what point does the cursor switch between panels (or between a side panel and your main controls)?
I replaced the UI Focus button with the head tracker toggle, so all you need to do is look a bit left or right, then down and the panels appear. Pretty easy, really.
You look left, then down. The UI panel then does its animation to appear. Now your hats navigate through that one.
It’s easy and intuitive, though it annoys me a bit that the panel isn’t “already there.” One of the challenges with head tracking is balancing the deadzone so you have a nice steady forward view. When I want to look at a panel, I have to overcome deadzones to the left and down. It’s a minor complaint but it closes the gap with simply using a button.
FWIW I’m using the custom curves on the forum that have dead zones at the panels. That works well.
The other annoying thing is it gets confused about mouse control. The mouse is “2D” so if I’m not perfectly centered on the Starport Services panel for example, the cursor highlight shows up in the wrong place.
I might disable some of the degrees of freedom (lean forward/back and cocking my head) to see if that helps. They don’t have much use.
My opinion might change once I get into serious dogfighting or try a ship with a less restrictive view, assuming that exists.
Brian, maybe I’ll try that toggle. I’m used to having it “always on” though. It feels more natural that way in flight sims. That might not be necessary here. Yeah, and I could minimize the straight ahead dead zone at that point.
Yeah, the toggle is just a genius addition. I don’t need it on ALL The time, but I tell ya, now that I have it, I don’t even touch the mouse, and use the joystick to navigate everything, even station menus.
geewhiz
3412
When you plot a course does it automatically select each system to travel to one by one or do you have to manually enter them using a piece of paper to remember the plotted course (that is what I meant).
geewhiz
3413
I have been using my Logitech G13 for the menus and the Saitek Rhino 55. For everything else.
If I go to controls and use one of the hotas hats for menu navigation is the system smart enough to know that those buttons are only active when in a menu and then the hat can be used for other functions when flying/fighting?
conVurt
3414
When you plot a course through a bunch of systems and jump to the first one, the ship automatically cycles to the next system in queue for the next jump. If for some reason you need to target something else (say you want to scan the star or you get jacked in-system and need to fight), once you’re done, you can return to the Navigation list, and the next system you would have jumped to will have a particular icon associated with it. Select it and you will be back on the plotted course; you won’t need to return to the Galaxy screen and replot the course.
Yes. Try it when you get home. It uses two hats, one to move left-right the tabs and one to navigate within a tab. The only flaw is that it’s sometimes difficult to get to the exit button. (I thought I tried UI cancel and it didn’t work.)
I still use the mouse sometimes when I’m in the hanger ready to do a lot of work. I just pretend like I’m kicking back within the cockpit. :)
Early game quibble: I’m okay with the concept of learning a game naturally as I play, and I’m the last person to call for over-designed systems that funnel me into compartmentalized content, but I’m dying to shoot something here. The quests to kill three boars are too difficult for me right now because I haven’t figured out the easiest ways to find and identify the boars. (You don’t need to tell me; I’ll pick this up as I play.)
Based on posts here, it sounds like Unidentified Signal Sources are what I want. Someone mentioned they are like random encounters and I assume there’s a decent percentage chance I’ll come across a decent fight. (The only one I’ve seen was a quick stomp by AI enforcers where I received an undeserved 77K credit bounty.)
If that’s true, they might want to find a way to nudge me in that direction without having to consult a forum or wiki. Or they could design some simple escort/encounter quests for the early game. Basically, go to this location and shoot something. Hell, even an arena or a combat simulator with my current loadout would work. Then later on I could find combat naturally within the universe.
Again, open play and lack of direction is great… right up until my itch becomes unbearable.
Yeah, the toggle is just a genius addition. I don’t need it on ALL The time, but I tell ya, now that I have it, I don’t even touch the mouse, and use the joystick to navigate everything, even station menus.
Even the galaxy map? I tried using the joystick for that for a while, but no matter how I set it up it was way less efficient than M&K.
Yes. Try it when you get home. It uses two hats, one to move left-right the tabs and one to navigate within a tab. The only flaw is that it’s sometimes difficult to get to the exit button. (I thought I tried UI cancel and it didn’t work.)
Yeah, the exit thing is annoying, especially on the commodities market. You should be able to flick left to get to the exit button.
Spock
3418
I have TrackIR, but I haven’t used it much with Elite. There doesn’t seem to be all that much reason to look around very often, and I found myself bringing up the side panels more often than I wanted. Also, I sometimes wonder whether head-tracking makes my neck hurt a little.
But someone mentioned using head-tracking to navigate the side panels. (Perhaps I misunderstood?) How does one do that? Even with head-tracking, I had to use the keyboard or mouse to make my way around the UI on those panels.
Hey Tim,
If you want a scrap at any time, head to a Nav beacon. Within a minute you’ll find someone wanted. You don’t even need a scanner for this. Kill, get money, and repeat. If you want to step it up, head to ea resource extraction site. Same deal there.
I get tired of the space trucker, errand runner stuff all the time. When that happens I like to head to anarchy nav beacons. Kill (using my k-scanner) and scoop loot to sell at the black market.
Well someone misunderstood. You just use head tracking to bring up the panel, then your normal method to navigate.
