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Star wars yoke - can you use optical?

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mamerJ:

I've been looking at building a Star Wars yoke and was wondering if you need to use the 5k pots or if optical would work? Was anyone tried this?

J

2600:

Assuming you mean in MAME, optical would "work".  Fire the game up and start playing with a mouse or trackbal. Same thing.

The real thing uses a 5k pot and the play would be more accurate with a pot.  The value of the pot depends on your choice of encoder.

So really it's up to you and how picky you are.  Many people play with a trackball and like it just fine, other's prefer a yoke.

Minwah:

Somebody made a homemade optic-based yoke once...it looked awesome.  However, the creator said it did not play well since calibration was lost all the time.

So in short, you should use pots, not optics.

BTW I found the yoke project from this site somewhere, so have a look through the project examples or search the boards if you want to find it.

mamerJ:

The sidewinder hack it is then

ChadTower:


There is a reason they used pots rather than optical.  They function differently.

A basic optical controller only moves the onscreen object while the controller is in motion and has no way of detecting center.  That is why opticals are 360 degree steering wheels and spinners.

A pot based controller moves the onscreen object the entire time the controller is not centered.  It's an analog joystick.

Star Wars, with an optical yoke, would not function the way the game was designed.

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