Control of Starfuries

Star Furies--gotta love that design, but *how* would you control the dammned thing? As someone pointed out in the _Space Combat_ thread, spacecraft ain't airplanes and a single joystick+pedals wouldn't cover all the angles.

From what I can see, SFs have four thrusters per pod, giving a total of

    4 x Fore                fvp, fdp, fvs, fds*
    4 x Aft                 avp, adp, avs, ads
    2 x Port                pv, pd
    2 x Starboard           sv, sd
    2 x Dorsal (top)        dp, ds
    2 x Ventral (bottom)    vp, vs
   --
   16

* For purposes of discussion I have given `names' to each--`fvp' means `for-ventral-port' for example, which refers to the forward facing, top left thruster from the pilot's perspective.

I assume that the paired thrusters are directed through the center of mass such that firing both port thrusters for example would move the craft to the right rather than rotating it.

This being the case we end up with six degrees of movement: ie. in terms of an xyz plane (with the SF in the center), you have movement along each axis, plus rotation around each.

How would you control such movement? Although I can imagine a setup with two joysticks and some kind of foot control, you end up with a situation where only accomplished ambidexterous acrobats need apply to be SF pilots.

Then consider the funky maneuver which we have seen in at least on episode where a SF being tailed by a raider does an about-face and blows them away:

So to rotate (say to starboard from the pilot's POV) around the z-axis, you would need to fire adp+avp+fds+fvs together to start the rotation followed by *exactly* the same amount of thrust from ads+avs+fdp+fvp at the right time to stop the rotation at 180 deg.

Sound simple? It gets worse--the bad-guy is unlikely to be exactly behind you, nor even in the same plane, so you need a) initial rotation about *two* axes to get them into your sights, and b) continued rotation to keep them there so that you can get them before they get you.

Yikes! We need some big-time computer assistance here--but how much, and how do you instruct it? Voice? Lotsa buttons? Ideally, a voice directed AI which would respond to a scream of ``Faaaarrrrrkkkk'' by spinning, targeting and blowing your attacker away would be nice :-)

Control of Starfuries - Part 2 by Ed Santos

20 October 1996

For control, there's a device called a spaceball that has 6 degrees of freedom, which the Logitech CyberMan tried to imitate. Basically its a ball on a post that senses the pressures on it. It can sense rotation about three axes and translation along three axes.

As for controlling thrusters, its rather easy to program a computer to do so. It's called 'fly by wire' and is used by some aircraft for control. eg. the F-117 has unconventional control surfaces and is unflyable by pilots without computer control.

The spaceball can be controlled by one hand with a bank of switches within easy reach of the fingers for some control options, eg. trimming of the control, like on radio controlled vehicles.

The other hand can be free to operate other ship functions, maybe a trackball to guide the targetting computer through a cursor on the HUD.

Control of Starfuries - Part 3 by Thorfinn

20 October 1996

Nak. Ask anyone who's ever played the game Descent how to control it. That's got the full 3 axes of translation, plus the full 3 axes of rotation.

The way I'd do it:

First, to set up some axis information:

        Y
        ^    Z
        |   /
        |  /
        | /
        |/
-X <----|------> X
       /|
      / |
     /  |
   -Z   v
        -Y

Where Z is 'forward/backward' along the 'main' thrust axis of the starfury. That gives the 'thrust' axes, quite clearly. I'll just refer to them as the X/Y/Z-axis. When I refer to 'translation' I'll mean 'acceleration along the axis'.

I'll denote the rotational axes as 'Z-turn' for rotation about the Z axis, Z-left for anticlockwise around the Z axis, Z-right for clockwise around the Z axis, etc. When you perform 'rotation', you almost certainly want the craft to start rotating when you tell it to, and to stop cleanly when you tell it to. If you achieve rotation with flywheel motion, then that'll do the trick nicely. If you use thrusters, it's a pain, because you have 'lag' in the controls, but that's adjustable to.

When I say 'control strip', I mean something that looks rather like the control strip of a soundboard, usually with a light 'stop' in the middle, and possibly 'stops' at appropriate other points.

Left control surface (positioned under fingers of left hand):
    A 'thrust' control strip, with full reverse and full forward at opposing positions along the strip, which handles acceleration in either direction on the Z-axis.
    A 'translation/rotation' toggle, which changes the behaviour of the joystick on the right hand control surface, from rotation to translation. Default mode should probably be rotation. Yes, this will sacrifice *some* flexibility, but I believe situations where you actually want the rotation *and* translations involved are so rare that it's not worth training your pilots to be ambidextrous.
    Possibly various other controls, perhaps involving target selection, and suchlike. You probably want a holotank display so that you get a view of the battle around you, as well as what's on your main screen. *possibly* you might have target selection involving a 'touch-holotank', but that could get problematic in combat.
    Quite possibly, an auto-motion selection component, but we'll pretend we don't have that.

Right control surface:
    A joystick, with two modes, controlled by the toggle on the left surface.
    In rotation mode:
        Right/Left causes Z-right/Z-left rotation. (top right, top left)
        Forward/Back causes X-left/X-right rotation. (nose down, nose up)
    In translation mode:
        Right/Left causes X-axis translation.
        Forward/Back causes Y-axis translation.
    Several buttons on the joystick, probably 4 is about maximum dealable with.

Footpedals:
    right/left pedal causes Y-right/Y-left rotation. (nose right, nose left)

> We need some big-time computer assistance here--but how much, and how do you instruct it?

Fly-by-wire, using control surfaces described above. Yes, you become dependent on your nav-computer, but because yer a fighter craft, you *need* it, badly.

> Then consider the funky maneuver which we have seen in at least on episode where a SF being tailed by a raider does an about-face and blows them away:

Oki. Assuming the raider is approximately on your -Z axis, and slightly along your Y axis, and you're probably thrusting rather hard...

You decide you want to turn and attack, but maintain speed.

Reach for the thrust control, and decrease down to zero, at the same time as you slam your joystick to the left, and slightly back.

Default joystick mode is rotation, so, you turn quite happily until you're pointing towards them.

At some point during this process, you make sure your target selection stuff is selected properly, so you've got the raider in yer 'hot box'.

As you cross the point where you're at a 90 degree angle to the axis of the raider, slam your thrust control into full reverse, which keeps you pulling away from him, assuming that's what you want to do.

When you're into approximate position to get weapons lock, alternate modes on the joystick, so you can jink away from weaponry.

Start pulling triggers as soon as you get lock-on of whatever, and blow him outta space.

Whee! :) No problem. Of course, this assumes that there's reasonable computer control of your weapons systems too... which I'm guessing there would be, because even controlling direct fire weaponry at the kinds of ranges you get in space would be quite nightmarish.

If you *don't* have computer handling of direct fire weaponry, then you probably want *another* toggle, which changes the joystick from 'ship control' to 'weapons control'. Possibly just a third setting of the rotation/translation mode toggle.