In VR it feels weird if you leave your throttle and stick sitting on the desk where you had them when using TrackIR and a screen. You have your hands up near shoulder level operating controls that are not visible anywhere near there in the VR cockpit.
I want my throttle and stick exactly where I see them in VR, so I feel that I can reach out and touch them.
I moved my Warthog controls so they were attached to my chair and printed a 100mm extension for the stick and everything was in the right place.
This was great, but it had one minor problem.
The increased travel meant that I could not maintain my grip on the stick at full up elevator as I could not rotate my wrist backward enough . Not a big problem as a couple of fingers an a thumb was all that was needed to fly the aircraft. However, it makes it awkward to operate the various HOTAS switches if your palm was not in contact with the stick.
I did some sums and determined that rotating the handle 20° forward would be a good solution.
I tried tilting the whole assembly 20°, but that did not work. The Warthog handle weighs just over 1kg and its center of gravity is where your middle finger wraps around the front of the handle. The tilt moved the CG forward of the pivot point and produced about 1/3 kg nose down torque. Not good at all. Completely stuffed the pitch force linearity. Probably could be fixed by packing shims under the forward side of the centering spring inside the base, but that’s starting to get a bit too serious for me.
The easiest solution was to get my trusty 3D printer to make another 100mm extension with a 20° bend but keeping the handle CG directly over the pivot point.
Like this
I could have printed the whole thing as one unit with the lower nut captured within the extension tube (3D printing can be magic!), but decided to be more conventional with 3 pieces that can be disassembled if required.
I am very happy with the result.
The controls now where they are in VR. With the latest update enabling full use of the Rift touch controllers I feel that I am sitting in a real cockpit now!
If you wish to make your own extension, here are the filles:
Curved extension – 100mm
3D (AMF) files.zip
Gcode files.zip
Layer depth 0.2mm, support to base used when printing the curved tube.
Straight extension - 100mm
Straight - 100mm.zip
***** STL files are now attached to message #6 *********
I could not find a source of panel mount Mini DIN 5 pin plugs and sockets as used by Thrustmaster.
It was easy to just make a short cable using the standard cable plug and sockets available on eBay.
e.g. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/222965347128