anton the gamepad guys need help
 

we need the ability to map the flight controls to the right stick

Too many people are used to flying that way , be it video games , or RC plane trainers.

IMO the current setup is going to scare away customers if they cannot choose

so there should be an option in the final game to map the flight controls to the right stick and the rudder and throttle to the left

I think that would be smart.
Maybe the new game Battlefield 1943 (it has some focus on planes) will draw som people over to try Birds of Prey - but they will not find it easy to flip the controls.
Its like writing with you wrong hand, it works but looks and feel like s**t

I'm dedicated to this and getting a joystick so I'm okay, but guiltyspark has a point. For people that are used to roll/pitch on right stick it is next to impossible to play BoP.

I've always played with plane controls on left, head movement on right. The games I've played were naturally set up like that as well.

I agree, after years of flying RC aircraft, I'm struggling with having to reverse what I know on the sticks. Need to be able to swap them over please.

thats nice , but everyone else doesnt

i was so happy to see this on xbox live this morning ,great game but its hard for me as i fly mode 2 rc planes and i cant risk playing this game how it is and then crash a expensive model because ive got wrong handed playing this great game ,please please make it so you can swap the sticks round ,otherwise i might be tempted to take my controller apart and switch the wires

my first post but i like the game ,so i had to join and just say a lot of us rc flyers fly mode 2 and its setup as mode 1 at the moment and would be a easy addition to the game hopfully

There is something else I see that Anton should fix. The head movement with the right stick. It is a pain for my fingers I have to hold the right stick to moving the view around, it kills the situational awareness because you can´t look around quickly and easily. I would fix it or let people to map their own controls.

To me, look around the cockpit is 60% of the combat and flying and if you can´t do this fast enough...

its the opposite for me im so used to using left stick for pitch and roll when i bought bf1943 it seemed odd to fly but i learned it

Actually, that's not a bad idea. I've got an extra wired controller sitting around, may give it a shot.

Perhaps an easy fix would be to allow toggle of look around mode rather than having to hold it down.

e.g. click the stick to enter look around mode, click again to leave.

You can flip the controls in bf1943 tho. its called southpaw. Most firstperson games have this aswell. After all some people are left handed *cough*mutants*cough*

it said it al, most people are right handedso changed it il2

i am right handed but now i learned right stick for pitch and roll it seemed odd to do southpaw

Yeah I'm totally agree with you guy, I do not understand why they didn't make it this way. hold this bottom is really bad.
This game is WWII game, and to survive we need to look around and locate the nearest target really fast, especially when it's on my six...uh.... :grin:

But it is true though. Most flight games on the Xbox use the left stick for pitch/roll etc. It is only to appeal to the console community. Idk why you see this as a shocker.

What console game has it different? Plane control on the left is how OGF comes, AC6, HAWX (IIRC,used the flight stick for that), BF1943, BSP...

it doesnt matter what other games have it different , if you would read the ******* thread it would become obvious that nobody likes the scheme and they want an option to change it.

every thread is like a battle with you , just say "yes i would like it very much for people to have a choice"

instead of supporting a single , unchangable control scheme which will scare players away

I'm really struggling to finesse my aim in AA because of this and I'm having loads of problems with air-ground, after I've strafed my target I go to increase power and pull up into a climb, but I'm doing the opposite, cutting off the throttle and pushing the nose down.

I don't want to risk learning these sticks, I don't want to make a mistake with my RC planes, I'm not going to be able to play this game without a flight stick.

I can't see why they did not offer us the choice. It seems a big mistake, I can understand they want our right hand free to hit controller buttons, but the current set up is 'south-paw' as far as I'm concerned and it don't work for me, and I am left handed, but I don't play any games in south-paw configuration.

Shame I will not be picking this up at launch now. I'll need to wait until I have money for flightstick and game, I'm a student, that may be a while.

Amen to that, in this day and age every button and control should be mapable by the user. It is 2009.

i suggest you dont get to used to it then , dont crash your planes IRL , i just ordered a trainer and it should be here any day :cool:

Put me down as another who'd like to swap the sticks and remap the controls.

Looking around is more important to me than rocket or bomb buttons, I'd love to have the look modifier on one of the bumper buttons.

anton is there ANY possibility to have this changed before the game ships? or any chance for there to be a patch that adds an option to switch the sticks?

Answer to first question is No.
The game is already GM, it will take month or so to make such a change.
The second question is harder to answer.
First, we need to understand that it is really a problem.
Second, we need to convinve publisher (it will require additional QA, etc).
Third, both Sony/MS charges for updates. A lot. So it won't be before first DLC will appear.

really ? just a option in the menu that will flip the two sticks?

that is weeks long work?

learn something every day

Thanks for the straight answer, guess it'd be faster to reprogram my thumbs :D

actually if you want a quick fix you can physically take apart the controller and switch the sticks

it works very well , but it voids the warrenty on your controller i think

It would ruin my points per minute in BF1943 though. :D

I can get used to it, my right thumb is just more precise than my dopey left thumb, maybe I'll just get a stick.

Few days to make.
Few more days to QA (at least).
Two weaks (at least, can be up to three weeks) to get MS/Sony Approval. If only the QA slot is early enough, BTW.
More money for additional submission, BTW.

And, because the game is already approved, few days to get permission from Sony/MS to do the whole thing.
At least a month.

Nobody will even try :)

well then , i would keep it on the list of fixes then and put it together with a bunch of other stuff to release as a patch ;)

It isn't exactly THAT easy, and it most definitely voids the warranty on your controller.

Don't European RC pilots fly with controls swapped - pitch/roll on left and yaw/throttle on right?

Would that have something to do with the chosen setup?

An option to swap this should absolutely be in any updates.

ive been using cross thumbs not that easy but i dont want to get into bad habbits for my rc flying ,i looked at changing the wires on a old controller but not simple you need to be very good at soldering

most of us in the uk fly mode 2 thottle on the left stick ,and to play a game for long periods with oppsite controls could really confuse you on the rc flying field ,i may have to get a stick as a way round it, love the game by the way

Here's a swapped stick 360 controller...

http://lefthandedly.com/

but you'd probably be better off getting the Saitek/MadCatz AV8R for the 360.;)

Man, you're an annoying little turd. PISS OFF.

Go Russian on his ass...:evil:

There needs to be an option to swap the sticks for sure, it is very frustrating.

wasnt being sarcastic , i really didnt know that such a little switch would take that long

I appreciate that the game is gold but when Anton said it probalby will not be patched because they don't want to spend any money submitting a patch, I lost all interest in this game.

I never told anything like this. Actually, it's publisher who submits patches, not developer at all.
And btw, please stop telling in each thread here, that you lost interest in game. It's a bit inconsequently.

well as a community all we can do is share our feedback

by the end of the week i can see the topic getting brought up to 505 games though , even people from sim HQ are complaining about it.

the problem is the game is gold now , and nothing can really be done about it.

Im sure if it was june and they released the demo things would be different.

Thats why i am so supportive of the idea of every developer doing a mass public test ( a beta , or demo well before release ) so they can observe feedback from more than just select testers and stuff

Yeah.
I appreciate that.

ya , i understand the situation , it doesnt personally effect me cuz i have a joystick though. But i would be pretty upset if i was planning on playing it with a gamepad. For me when i plugged up the gamepad it was like my brain didnt recognize the commands , like throwing a ball with your other hand.

Its not something i could really get used to i suppose

but if there really is nothing that can be done for the game at launch i can help out the community with getting their pad on

I've been playing Battlefield 1943 for a couple of weeks, flying the airplanes mostly. I was using the default configuration with the right stick for ailerons. I have just tried IL-2 demo and the transition was SEAMLESS. I just don't see how a person with two good hands can't reprogram his head for having the pitch controls on the left stick.

Please, don't make a huge problem out of it.

Not as hard as it seem.
For arcade players this layout is more familiar. More close to shooters.
For real hardcore - they have flightsticks.

Having in option would be sweet, but nobody will make patch _only_ for that, at least now, before D1 sells.
If it will add something else to the game, though, it can be.

So this will be on the list for the first patch then. I suppose thats good news, but going from pitch/roll on the right stick to pitch/roll on the left didn't really bother me.

well as ive said the main reason it bothers me is i fly rc planes and feel it will be a bad move on my part to play the game a lot with the current setup ,flying rc is a lot to do with muscle memory and oritation ,im sure there will a lot of people who fly rc who will play this game who will feel the same way ,and i know some peolpe wont be bothered.

i think i will buy a flight stick anyway now, is there going to be a new one out for this game or should i buy a Saitek Avaitor

not 100 percent sure

I have a feeling there could be a bundle , but i could be very wrong

Actually, this is the opposite.
Shooters move with the left stick (froward and strafe, the flight analogy would be throttle and rudder) and look around with the right one (pitch and roll analogy). So for players who play shooters (a big part of 360 players) it's not enjoyable at all!
I love fsims, I used to play IL2 all the time with my sidewinder precision 2 pro, but i don't have a descent stick for the 360. The saitek seems really bad. The Edge ace is discontinued and very expensive.
I also play shooters a lot.
It was a pain in the ass to handle the plane the first time I played the demo.
The second time also.
The third also.
In fact, it seems that each time I launch the game, I have to relearn how to handle the plane with this control layout. This is so sad because the rest of the game is perfect, the best sim on console so far imo.
Now, as a big fan, I will try to accomodate to this. But my friends who aren't big sim fans told me they wont buy it because it's to hard with that "southpaw" control, they keept crashing because the went to 0% throttle instead of pulling up. This sucks for me (because we won't be able to play multiplayer together ;) ) and for 1C, because a large part of the mainstream audiance will lose interest in the game before they could accomodate this.

And even I you patch it like 2 month after release, the launch will suffer this and a huge part of the pie will be lost.

Seems the opposite to me....Its no big deal from my point of view even if I'm using a pad but a full configuration would have been the way to go to cater for everyone.

All the racing games I play have the car movement on the left stick/d-pad and then the gas/brake with the buttons on the right. So... this configuration with the pitch/movement on the left stick seems OK to me. Although I have yet to play the demo...

I suppose an option to switch this layout back and forth on the sequel would then please everyone...

What's the problem? Ace Combat 6 used left stick for control, as did Over G Fighters and HAWX... And I believe Blazing Angels did it as well (not sure though). It's not a weird innovation by BoP.

When BF1943 came it's controls were damn awkward for me. But I got used to them (instead of switching in options menu, lol)... Just like I'm now used to the controls in BoP, after two days of playing.

If it's really such a problem, buy an extra xbox360 controller for $30 and rewire it, or even better buy the aviator joystick for $50.

..you are joking, no custom setup on the controller!

I'll be taking my PS3 controller apart then, this is really bad news.

Just like the racing games that only use the front buttons for the throttle, CRAP IDEA.....

now I'm really pissed off....

It was going so well.....

Phil

Oops! I don't know how I missed this thread but this post should have gone in here. :oops:

Anyway, I'm glad that you responded to this Anton and I will hope that the game is a big hit & perhaps customizable controls will be "part" of an update down the road sometime. Until then, I'll probably be biting the bullit and getting an Aviator stick. I started playing IL2 years ago with a "twist-rudder" Logitech stick so it shouldn't be too bad I suppose. Just not as comfortable as reclining on the sofa with a gamepad. :|

Just remember, in the future, triggers = yaw, just like the pedals in a plane. ;)

Flying with the right stick would be easier but you would have to take your thumb off of the stick to hit any of the face buttons.

HEY IM LEFT HANDED! well actually amba wahtever the word is when u can use both hands. but mainly LEFT HANDED!

Actually, I've been playing shooters for 5+ years and only started playing IL-2 1946 in November 2008. When I first played the demo on the Xbox 360, I had no problem at all with the layout.

Although I agree that there needs to be an option to switch layouts, I really don't see how it is so hard to adjust, or why some people have to adjust at all. RC plane users I can understand why... But why is everyone else having such a hard time? Do RC plane users make up more than half of flight sim fans?

Well, I think a lot of flight sim lovers took their hobby to the real world at a certain point. The ones who can afford fly real planes and the ones who can't, fly RC planes - especially since they became reasonably cheap over the last few years.

The controller layout is a bit tough to master. I only played on realistic mode so far and it was quite a challenge. Looking around in the cockpit takes a lot of concentration and makes using the throttle/rudder at the same time impossible.

Anyway I ordered my Aviator joystick and recommend doing the same to everybody who does not like the joypad controls. I mean, it's a flight sim - who would want to play that on a joypad? ;)