Opinions on control panels

[TeamTEOR]

In an effort to not have an over crowed control panel I have opted into making mine modular.
Sorry in advance for the weak graphics of the pics, I am not a graphic designer or artist.
I am looking for opinions about the setups. I would hate to create the panels and then regret building them in a certain way because I did not realize something, or a if there was just a better way to build it.

This is my first control panel and what I use for games currently. Yeah I know, it still needs to be finished. That will be done this winter.
The center red buttons are: pause, tab(mame menu), escape, enter, shift(Shazaaam! Key, Key-Wiz 1.5).


Here is the layout I am considering for a spinner with a flight stick.

I have a Oscar Vortex 3 spinner with a PS/2 Opti-Wiz board, however I do not have a flight stick yet.

Here is the layout for a trackball.

I have a 2 inch Happs trackball for this project with a PS/2 connection on it, and it directly supports the three fire buttons.

[surface tension]

It's a nice, clean looking panel. You're definitely taking it in a good direction. The swappable approach is also great if you want to play everything.

My only opinion is that you have a lot of function buttons when I think you could get away with 2. I don't know how the shift key works with key-wiz... can it be set to another button as dual-function (like 1UP on the ipac)? So you have Esc and Pause as primary (as these will be used all the time) and tab and enter as shifted keys (as you will only use these from inside a setup menu.

The function keys could also be smaller to differentiate. But again this is personal preference.

Hope this helps 

[TeamTEOR]

I would love smaller buttons, just been having a hard time locating some online. Originally I wanted to use Atari cones, but they were priced too high to have on multiple boards.