Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!kth!draken!Urd!newsuser
From: newsuser@LTH.Se (LTH network news server)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: flight's concept of a 'good landing'
Message-ID: <1989Feb19.193945.12296@LTH.Se>
Date: 19 Feb 89 18:39:44 GMT
References: <8902172038.AA26677@adt.uucp>
Reply-To: dag@Control.LTH.Se (Dag Bruck)
Organization: Dept. of Automatic Control, Lund Inst. of Technology, Sweden
Lines: 28

In article <8902172038.AA26677@adt.uucp> madd@adt.UUCP (jim frost) writes:
>BTW, has anyone given though to building real controls?  Even a
>joystick and peddles (no throttles, etc) would be a godsend.  It took
>me several days to get the hang of turning with a mouse and it still
>doesn't feel right.

We have a ``Dimension-6'' -- a steering ball that senses rotation and
translation in 3 dimensions.  I hooked it up to flight(1), and the
controls instantly felt much more natural.  I'm sorry I can't give
you a detailed comparison between mouse and ball control.

The main problem is that the ball is polled over RS-232, which makes the
program much slower, only about 6 updates/second on an IRIS 3130.

An interesting feature is that you can turn left either by rotating the
ball CCW, or (after toggling a switch) CW.  It feels differently, but
I can't say one is better than the other.

Comments please!

Dag M. Bruck


-- 
Department of Automatic Control		Internet:  dag@control.lth.se
Lund Institute of Technology
P. O. Box 118				Phone:	+46 46-108779
S-221 00 Lund, SWEDEN			Fax:    +46 46-138118