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PROGRAMMING THE HOTAS

In the previous article we setup our command file and learned how to program a button as well as add a new command while in the HOTAS programming mode. In part two we will finish up by programming hats, rotaries, three-way switches, and the pinky switch.

HATS

The digital X36 controller has four hat switches, two on the stick (POV1 and POV2) and two (Hat3 and mouse hat) on the throttle. All four of these may be designated as four or eight way hats. However, before you start thinking about all the things you can do with 192 possible buttons (4 hats times 8 way times 3 modes times 2 pinkie states) please consider the following. In eight-way mode it is more than twice as difficult to engage the desired position on the hat with your first movement of the hat as in four-way mode. This becomes increasingly difficult when you are flying and jerking the stick all over the place trying to spoof a SAM. I recommend using Hat 1 as an 8-way hat for Point of View (POV) only if your program supports this (Flanker 2.0 for example). You will often find yourself sending the wrong commands if you set Hat 2 as an 8-way hat because it is a long reach for your thumb, especially when you are actively moving the stick. I have also programmed Hat 3 as an 8-way hat. The throttle tends to get a much less vigorous work out when I fly so 'finding' the eight separate positions with this hat seems to work most of the time. All that said, you should think twice about programming things like "Eject" or "Emergency Jettison All Weapons" to an 8-way hat.

The hats have four possible methods of operation, Action, DPad, Mouse, or POV. POV identifies the selected hat as the DirectX POV hat. Many games support a POV hat. There are no options when you select this for a specific mode. In general, I recommend programming in the specific commands for each point of view into either an 8-way or 4-way Action hat. Mouse is just what it sounds like and will emulate your mouse. This can be particularly useful in games that have fully clickable cockpits but limited direct access keyboard commands. If the mouse hat is assigned to Mouse and the mouse button assigned to DirectX Mouse Button 1 (unshifted) and Mouse Button 2 (shifted) then keeping your hands on the HOTAS at all times is possible. There is an adjustment for mouse speed in the setup. DPad sets a hat to control an axis just like the stick, throttle, and rotaries. The limit is still six axis so if you set up a hat this way use caution that you are not duplicating an existing axis. It is interesting to fly just using hat movement.

Fig. 1. DPad Hat Mode

I have used the DPad function to emulate the split throttle of a Su-27 and an F/A-18E. It is at best awkward to use. It is very useful in games like Mech Warrior 3 for things like torso twist and bend.

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The Action function is the primary mode to program keyboard commands into a hat. In 8-way mode, with the pinkie selected as shift, each hat has 48 possible commands. This, times four hats plus 24 buttons in six modes, will test anyone's memory!

Fig. 2. Hat Properties

Let's investigate programming a hat by clicking on the Mode 1 tab while Actions is selected.

Fig. 3. Hat mode: Actions

If we had selected an 8-way hat we would have nine commands available instead of five. Note (important!) that the '0' position is programmable. You MUST set this position to "No Command" or the stick could send whatever is the default DirectX button programmed to this location. The SGE v1.1 software appears to have corrected the error in the original v1.0 software that inserted a DirectX button by default into position "0".

HINT: Always select "No Command" to be sure no output assigned to a particular button, hat, switch, or rotary position. DO NOT leave DirectX buttons assigned to positions you wish to be blank. Very strange results occur even if your program does not support Direct Input!


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