Sounds like a definite improvement! I'll try it out when i get off work.oh
,and im a mouse flyer,i dont find a joystick appropriate for the type of
aircraft i like to fly.one day i'll invest in a yoke,pedals and maybe even
a throttle setup.
On Apr 11, 2013 2:49 AM, "James Turner" <zakal...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've now pushed all the current pieces of my effort to improve our
usability and learnability experience.
>
> (For those unfamiliar, usability is how well experienced users can
efficiently a piece of software, learnability is how well new users can
figure out *how* to use the software without referring to external help
every 5 seconds).
>
> What I've done is the following (some of which are optional, and all of
which are at the 'beta', not final, stage):
>
> - made a 'right-drag to look' mouse mode, which I think should be
on by default (with the current behaviour available for people who prefer
it). Also there is now visual feedback when changing the mouse mode
'statefully', which is still available via the TAB key in addition to
right-clicking.
>
> Explanation: novice users accidentally right-click and get
trapped in the mode. If you have a joystick, you don't need 'mouse drives
flight controls' mode anyway, though of course novice users are the least
likely to have a joystick. For experienced users *with* a joystick, I
personally find right-drag navigating around 3D cockpits much faster than
right-clicking - move - right-click, but I would be interesting to have
people test and report that.
>
> (Right-drag mode currently lacks other head-movement options
which the regular mouse-look mode has, but these can be added - I'm trying
to keep things simple initially)
>
> - made dedicated animation components for knobs / sliders, with
unified handling of buttons / mouse wheel / dragging.
>
> Explanation: different cockpit developers have used different
(but similar) conventions for interaction with cockpit controls, and often
ones which are unfriendly for laptop (trackpad) or Mac (single-mouse
button) users. The new animations enforce a semantics (what it does) vs
syntactic (how you ask for it) split, so the user can globally control how
they want to interact with knobs and dials.
>
> Right now, *all* of the following are possible:
click-to-increase, middle-click-to-decrease (with press-and-hold to
repeat); mouse wheel up/down; left-dragging along a screen axis to modify.
Options like the mouse wheel direction and drag sensitivity can be
configured in one place, instead of panel XML files hard-coding button
indices.
>
> (Added bonus - there's no need to repeat the action bindings for
each knob four times in the panel files - the XML files are smaller and
more maintainable)
> (Usability will improve further when I figure out custom cursor
support for windows, and we can have 'spin' cursors on knobs)
>
> - added tooltips, and hover-feedback for pickable areas in
cockpits
>
> Explanation: tooltips give feedback of what something is, and its
state, in a readable (even localizable) way. This compensates for
lack-of-resolution / texture-detail / head-movement issues in our 3D
cockpits, and can give positive feedback which is lacking without touch or
sound cues. This was added to help new users particularly, but there is a
'tooltip on click' mode which personally I find very nice, since it gives
direct feedback to cockpit interactions. (AKA, 'is the C172's parking brake
on or off?')
>
> To experiment with all this, try the C172P in latest Git, with latest
fgdata, fg & sg. The C172P is about 75% converted to tooltip / knob
support, some of the radio stack elements remain. Use the Debug menu 'user
interface options' to enable tooltips-after-timeout or tooltips-on-click.
Options controlling the drag-sensitivity of knobs/sliders still need to
exposed. The throttle, mixture, elevator trim controls plus all the obvious
knobs on the main instrument panel are good candidates to experiment with
dragging. (Any interaction with a knob or slider can be shifted, hold down
the shift key; shifted by default is 10x the normal rate, but can do
'something else' to allow push/pull-able knobs)
>
> For more complex aircraft such as the Constellation, Concorde or 747,
adding tooltips will be a lot of work, but greatly assist in figuring out
what everything does.
>
> All feedback is welcome, keeping in mind this is an evolutionary process.
Especially, cosmetic issues are not my main concern right now; if people
like the concepts / XML structures, people with more graphical skills than
me can tweak the visual presentation easily. My preference would be to
enable all of the above options out of the box, with /some/ of the items in
the current debug dialog made permanently available so advanced users can
disable them if desired. (Tooltips especially, since they will presumably
irritate some advanced users once they have memorised the cockpit)
>
> Regards,
> James
>
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apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use
our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account!
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