Elite, Braben, Kickstarter!

Having played the original Elite on BBC Micro and the likes of Frontier later on, I can confirm that those gameplay vids looks really, really close to the original Elite flight model.

 

It looks promising, but I only see myself playing this if it comes to PS4 with a good DS4 implementation that includes use of the gyro .

 

Yes, absolutely wouldnt want to play it on a superior system with proper forcefeedback
ps: just realised I have a braben game
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/v2000

 

Heads up pilots! Lee Hutchinson over at Ars has been super hyped about the Oculus Integration of the beta. They even have a release date set for 16th of December. We'll see if it is worth paying for then. I still remember my older brother playing so much elite on his Commodore 64.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...dangerous-amazing-and-impossible-to-describe/

 

I'm down for $75 open beta program as I couldn't wait. Just playing the tutorials now and they're not easy but that's old school gaming for ya.

This is going to take some time to evaluate properly and to get anywhere but it seems pretty slick and it runs very smoothly on my 2.5k i5-2500/780 setup.
Also a good excuse to whip out the old Thrustmaster. I can't imagine it plays very well without a joystick.

 

Damn I need a new joystick :/

 

Well I can recommend the Thrustmaster T.16000M. It can be had for about 45 EUR, it's all optical accurate without dead zone and most stick friendly games including Elite pick it up fine with little or no customizing needed.

 

1) I have two t.16000m its a good stick i grabbed them for $25 each at microcenter

2) I see a shit storm happening on other forums apparently they decided to remove off line mode as an option ?

 

A good cheap joystick for elite would be Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X
You cant beat a full Hotas with this type of game

 

I'm not sure how it is with elite but I use two sticks for star citizen.

I would stay away from that hotas its cheaply made and doesn't have the 3d hall effect magnetic sensors and I don't believe it supports target either.

 

In the space sims I've played I've found either the kb/m or XB360 pad are the best ways to play them. Is this game or Star Citizen actually better with a joystick?

 

Are you serious?
At least for Elite my answer would be a resounding yes.

The TM + keyboard flies this game like a dream. Maneuvers like the classic Elite approach to a rotating Coriolis station are much easier than it ever was on the 8-bit original, even with a quality microswitch stick.
Hell I hardly even need to line up for approach anymore. You can come in smooth from most any angle and jack up the throttle on the way in.

In Elite combat you'll find plenty situations where you're aiming at a fast moving target a couple of pixels wide and that kind of accuracy doesn't work well with the tiny travel on a joypad thumbstick.
Mouse has that accuracy but really falls apart when trying to do loopings or barrel rolls. Personally I'm not a fan of playing flying games with a mouse (unless the game practically forces you to in order to be competitive, here's looking at you War Thunder).

Anyway, game is terrific. Can't wait to go home and play some more

 

After settling on my HOTAS scheme for ED, I could totally see dual sticks being preferable to that. Lazy flight-sim turn-fighting is a quick path to death in ED if you're fighting with better pilots. What the game really begs for is some kind of 3D stick/ball/thing that can be manipulated on 3 axes to give you a single point of control over your maneuvering thrusters. At the moment most with HOTAS seem stuck with using a hat/dpad switch for their up/down/left/right thrusters and then their main engine forward/back to their throttle. Having the big throttle feels cool, but it's really clumsy for trying to make your ship dance with the flight-assist turned off, which is easily the most rewarding part of the game in terms of piloting.

 

Thinking about it. Since you're manuvering in true 3D space with rotations not linked to main thrust (as in aeroplanes), it makes me wonder if something like a trackball wouldn't be better. It would allow for not only faster and more intuitive controls (the movement exactly matches the 3D rotations of your spacecraft), but has more fine grained control as well. Combine that with another system to manage forward/reverse thrust and I think you'd be able to completely wreck the competition.

For those that can't wrap their minds around it. Put a dot on a ball. That dot represents the nose of your spacecraft. Rotate the ball any way you wish and your spacecraft will orient itself in exactly the same way. With very small movements you can make extremely precise adjustments along any axis or combination of axes (never knew that was the plural of axis. Learn something new everyday).

Regards,
SB

 

Actually reminds me of some CAD friendly 3d input devices ("spaceball"?) that handled 6dof. Having two of those resting at the ends of your office chair arms would be mighty futuristic and probably incredibly intuitive. After trying to use a mouse in this game I don't think a 1:1 type input device like a regular trackball would work well as your ship can't instantly change its orientation to match. They've intentionally hamstrung the yaw rotation speed in order to prevent "turreting" FPS-style aim which makes the combat much more about movement, positioning and prediction and less about cursor->target tracking.

These are older videos (not mine) and there's been some tweaks to the unassisted flight model since, but it gives an idea of what it allows for. With flight-assist turned on you're looking at simplified aero-like flight mechanics where your movement and rotations are automatically countered or bleed off after you've let go of your thrusters or stick. With flight-assist turned off you've got a quasi-newtonian setup where your translation and rotation momentum is conserved requiring you to manually offset any movement you do. What this does offer you though is the ability to use your main engines to build speed, kill them, and then change your orientation independent of your trajectory while adjusting it with thrusters. Can sort of sling-shot circle strafe yourself around objects while retaining a target. Can also easily slam into shit and kill yourself because it's like driving on ice with bald tires. Good fun.

 

I used the SpaceOrb 360 in Decent back in the days. It was fantastic.

 

Yep - that's the thing I was thinking of, teehee. Never used one, but I remember reading the PC Gamer review for it back then. Looks as though the 6dof devices that exist now are throw-based rather than torque/pressure based so they might be a bit too twitchy for orientation/aim control.

 

With the release of Elite: Dangerous nearing, the original 1984 version of Elite can be grabbed for free from the Elite: Dangerous Store
https://store.elitedangerous.com/usd/elite1984.html

* Package includes a disk image of the original Elite for BBC Micro B; BeebEm, a BBC Micro and Master 128 emulator that enables you to run BBC Micro software on your PC; and instructions for getting started with both BeebEm and Elite.

 

Something like that maybe ? 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro ( wireless and connected version ) http://www.cadplace.co.uk/News/Repo...he-SpaceMouse-Pro-Wireless-at-PTC-Live-Global



Thats the not realy cheap version ( 350$ ) .. cheaper and smaller version without screen exist too. and the one without keyboard keyes and wrist support integrated.

 

I went and bought the Thrustmaster Warthog stick (without the throttle). It's ridiculously heavy and awesome! Now I'm just waiting for the 16th.