I hope you add support for the 3D Axes Explorer Mouse: http://www.3dconnexion.com/ I use it is Second Life and Open Sim all the time. It makes moving in 3d worlds a whole lot easer. I think PA would be perfect with it. It would make moving around the game a LOT easer.
For all intents and purposes, you're going to manipulate units on a 2D plane. Anything that is above the ground will just be either "in the air" or "in orbit," but they will still most likely be locked to specific planes. Only RTSes with space combat (Homeworld) have need of a true 3D battlefield, and we know that PA will not have that, so I doubt support for a 3D mouse will be useful.
A 3d mouse for a game like this would most likely be used for manipulating the camera, but unit selection and orders would likely still use a normal 2d mouse. Might sound odd to some of you but I know plenty of people who used to do similar when traditional joysticks where in their hay day on PCs. Joystick instead of WASD, mouse for precise control.
Yep, I did that. Mainly in the Descent games, until I decided that joystick and keyboard were a better match for proper trichording. (Although some of the best players did keyboard only. No mouse or joystick. I was always mildly envious of them.)
For Descent(s), I always did Y and Z axis strafe (lateral and vertical) on the hat switch, with the throttle for X axis (longintudinal) movement. I usually spent big bucks on joysticks with a bazillion buttons though, as combat flight sims have always been a passion of mine Since those joysticks are all handed, I never considered using it simultaneously with a mouse... :shock:
This is exactialy what I was talking about. For manipulating the camera. I for one and a few other people I know would be so happy if you all added support for devices like this.
The cheaper joysticks were ambidextrous. I swapped when I moved on to a flight-sim quality stick. I did start out with the hat for strafing, but after some debate with fellow players, I decided that the joystick should be devoted to ship attitude (pitch, yaw, roll), and the keyboard would dictate ship movement (forward/backward, up/down, left/right). Turns out it helps a lot with more complex movement. (For me at least.)
well since not many people are likely going to use a mouse like this to play their games it's unlikely that support will be added for one, however, more common things like joysticks might have support added (panning maybe with throttle for zoom?) but we never know.. they did also say there was modding support so someone could develop a plugin to allow the use of a 3d mouse.
Well first of all "a mouse like this" is not a mouse at all. Second, you will use this with the mouse at the same time. You would use this to move the camera and use your mouse to do anything else. I don't know why a lot of people think it is one or the other. This device does not control the mouse at all.
ahhh, now i understand more. but i still do beleive that instead of asking the people at uber to add another possibly time consuming piece of software into their game when there is mod support and you could download the drivers needed to get the device running in the game. although i still think that mouse scrolling would be easier for the vast majority of simpletons like me.
I actually own one of the cheaper models of this (the one with just the control knob and two buttons). There's not a lot that I use that actually takes advantage of it though, which is a shame as for a game with any decent amount of camera freedom it's an awesome tool to use alongside a mouse and keyboard. As such, I too would like to see support for this in PA, especially as with the scale of things I expect to see a lot of camera repositioning, even if two of the rotational axis would likely be only used for getting a cool view of a specific battle. On the other hand, I actually don't know how hard it would be to support this device, and if that means it comes in a patch later down the line rather than at first release I'd be happier with that rather than it delaying release. It'd hardly be fair to make everyone else wait for those of us who've invested in one of these after all.
The trouble is that this is a somewhat specialised input device, much like a joystick or control pad. I'm not entirely convinced support for it could actually be added via a mod (at least not easily) as it's a fairly low-level interface concern. I could be wrong though!
There are MUCH cheaper 3D mouse variants than that. and yes, i would LOVE that. a 3D mouse would make planet navigation so much better.
Techinaly all they would have to do is add support for the camera control to be controlled by external drivers aka such as a joystick or the 3d mouse witch ever is the one being used. I beleave plug-n-play is the term used here, but I am not entirely sure of how to do it my self. I think outside control for the camera is something they would naturaly add for the game. And yes you are right it is not something a mod could do, it would have to be a patch if they did not add an option for using devices such as joysticks and such. Btw there is no reason this would delay the release at all. And besides you talk as if they have even given a release date. They have not. Not adding support for external devices is equealy as bad as not adding textures on all they units or correct anamations to them just to release the game early, it just wouldn't make sense.
