Joystick

Elements of a video game lever:
1 Lever
2 Base
3 Fire button
4 Additional buttons
5 Self-Discoverer
6 accelerator
7 Directional button
8 Ventosa

A joystick or joystick (from English joy, and stick, stick) is an input peripheral consisting of a lever that rotates on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. It is the primary control device in the flight deck of many civil and military aircraft, either as a center control stick or a side control stick. Some sticks have supplementary switches to control various aspects of the aircraft's flight.

Joysticks are also used to control video games and usually have one or more buttons whose status can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick. Joysticks are also used to control machines such as cranes, trucks, unmanned underwater vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras, and zero-turn mowers. Finger-operated miniature joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.

Aviation

Cabin of a planner with his joystick visible

A prototype command lever for the Gemini Program, 1962

Joysticks were designed as controls for the ailerons and elevator, and are known to have been used as such on Louis Bleriot's Blériot VIII aircraft in 1908, in combination with a pedal-operated rudder bar for the yaw control surface on the tail.

The origin of the term "joystick" it is not entirely clear. It is said to have been worn by the French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie in the early XX century. Other sources give credit to some of his fellow pilots: Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce and A. E. George. Loraine is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary for using the term "joystick" in his diary in 1909 when he went to Pau to learn to fly at the Bleriot school. George was a pioneer aviator who, along with his colleague Jobling, built and flew a biplane over Newcastle, England in 1910. He supposedly invented the "George Stick"; (George Stick), which became more popularly known as the joystick. The aircraft control column designed by George and Jobling is in the collection of the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Joysticks were present in early airplanes, though their mechanical origins are uncertain. The coining of the term "joystick" it can actually be attributed to Loraine, as it is the earliest known use of the term, although he certainly did not invent the device.

Electronic joysticks

History

The two-axis electric joystick was invented by CB Mirick at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and patented in 1926 (US Patent No. 1,597,416). At the time, the NRL was actively developing a remote-controlled aircraft and the joystick was possibly used to support this effort. In the granted patent, Mirick writes: "My control system is particularly applicable to maneuvering unmanned aircraft."

The Germans developed a two-axis electric joystick around the year 1944. The device was used as part of the radio control transmission system called the Funkgerät FuG 203 Kehl used on certain bomber aircraft It was also used to guide both the Henschel Hs 293 anti-ship missile and the Fritz-X guided bomb against maritime and other targets. Here, the lever of the Kehl transmitter was used by an operator to direct the missile towards its target. This stick had on-off switches instead of analog sensors. Both the Hs 293 and the Fritz-X used FuG 230 Straßburg radio receivers to send the Kehl control signals to the artillery control surfaces. A similar joystick was used for control of the American Azon guided bomb, strictly to direct the bomb laterally on the vertical axis.

This German invention was used by the team of scientists from the Heeresversuchsanstalt in Peenemünde. Here, a part of the German rocket program team was developing the Wasserfall missile, a variant of the V2 rocket, the first surface-to-air missile. The Wasserfall development team modified the control system to convert the electrical signal to radio signals that were transmitted to the missile, eliminating the need for the cable.

In the 1960s, the use of joysticks became widespread in radio-controlled aircraft systems such as the Kwik Fly produced by Phill Kraft (1964). The now-defunct firm Kraft Systems eventually became a major supplier OEM joysticks for the computer industry and other users. The first use of joysticks outside of the radio-controlled aircraft industry may have been in the control of motorized wheelchairs, such as the Permobil (1963). During this time period, NASA used joysticks as control devices as part of the Apollo missions.

In many modern aircraft the joystick has been given a new life for flight control in the form of a "side stick" (side-stick), a controller similar to a video game joystick but used to control flight, replacing the traditional yoke. The side lever saves weight, improves movement and visibility in the cab, and may be safer in an accident than the traditional "Control Yoke".

Electronic games

Mach 2, analog control lever of CH Products, as was used in many old household computer systems. The small knobs are for calibration (mechanical), and the sliders are attached to the self-centered docks.

Ralph H. Baer, inventor of television video games, and Bill Harrison, disclosed the uses of joysticks in video games. In these early games, the horizontal and vertical position of a point displayed on a screen could be controlled. The oldest joystick for electronic games with a fire button was released by Sega as part of their arcade game Missile from 1969, a shooting simulation video game that used it as part of an early dual control scheme, where two directional pads are used to move a motorized tank and a two-way joystick to fire and aim the missile towards the approaching aircraft displayed on the screen; when a plane is hit, an explosion is animated on the screen along with an explosion sound. In 1970, the game was released in North America as S.A.M.I. by Midway Games.

In 1973, Taito designed a four-way stick as part of Astro Race, an arcade racing game, while in 1975 Western Gun, an arcade game of the multidirectional Martian Killer type, it introduced a control with two eight-way levers; one lever served for movement and the other to change the direction of fire. In North America, the game was released by Midway under the title Gun Fight. In 1976, Taito released Interceptor, a first-person combat flight simulator involving piloting a fighter plane by using an eight-way joystick to aim and fire at an enemy plane.

The 1977 Atari CX40 controller, known as the "classic" by Atari and developed for the Atari 2600, it was a digital joystick, with a single fire button. The Atari controller port was for many years the standard specification for de facto digital joysticks. Joysticks were commonly used as controllers on first and second generation consoles, giving way to traditional controllers with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System in the mid-1980s.

In 1985, Space Harrier, a third-person rail shooter type arcade video game developed by Sega, introduced a true analog joystick, used for movement. The stick could register movement in any direction, as well as measure the degree of push, which would move the player character at different speeds depending on how far the stick was pushed in a certain direction.

A different variation of an analog joystick is a positional gun, which works differently than a light gun. Rather than using light sensors, a positional gun is essentially a fixedly mounted analog joystick that registers the gun's position to determine where the player is aiming on the screen. They are often used in video games. arcade shooting with guns. Examples of these video games include Sega's Sea Devil in 1972; Taito's Attack in 1976; Cross Fire in 1977; and Nintendo's Battle Shark in 1978.

Cyborg 3D Gold de Saitek around the 2000s. Note the accelerator, your additional buttons and your switch at the top.

During the 1990s, some joysticks such as the CH Products Flightstick, Gravis Phoenix, Microsoft SideWinder, Logitech WingMan, and Thrustmaster FCS were in high demand among PC gamers. They were considered as a prerequisite for flight simulators such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon and LHX Attack Chopper. Joysticks became especially popular with the mainstream success of space simulation video games such as Star Wars: X-Wing and Wing Commander, as well as the 3D shooter video game Descent. VirPil Controls' MongoosT-50 joystick was designed to mimic the styling of Russian aircraft (including the Sukhoi Su-35 and Sukhoi Su -57), unlike most sticks used in other flight simulators.

Since the turn of the 21st century, however, these types of video games have lost popularity and are now considered a genre "dead," and with that, video game joysticks have been reduced to niche products. In the NowGamer interview with Jim Boone, a producer at Volition Inc., he stated that the poor sales of FreeSpace 2 could have been due to joysticks selling poorly because they were "outdated" and because more modern first-person shooters, like Quake, were "a lot about mouse and [the] keyboard." He then added: "Before that, when we created Descent , for example, it was very common for people to have joysticks. We sold many copies of Descent. It was at that time [when] the "FPS" A more modern game with mouse and keyboard was released, unlike other keyboard-only games like Wolfenstein [3D] or something like that."

Since the late 1990s, analog sticks (or thumbsticks, since they are controlled by the thumbs) have become a standard in controllers for video game consoles, popularized by the Nintendo 64 controller designed by Nintendo, and has the ability to indicate the stick's displacement from its neutral position. This means that the software does not have to keep track of the position or estimate the speed at which the controls are moving. These devices typically use potentiometers to determine stick position, although some newer models use a Hall effect sensor for greater reliability and reduced size.

Arcade stick

An arcade stick is a large controller for use with home consoles or computers. They use the stick and button configuration of some arcade cabinets, such as those with specific button arrangements. For example, the six-button layout of the arcade video games Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat cannot be comfortably emulated on a console controller, so licensed arcade sticks for these games are manufactured for use. on home consoles and PC.

Hat switch

Hat switch - at the top, in green

A hat switch is a control on some joysticks. Also known as a POV (point of view) switch. Allows you to change the view in the virtual world, navigate through the menus, etc. For example, many flight simulators use it to change the player's views, while other games sometimes use it as a substitute for the crosshead.

The term n#34;hat switch" is a shortening of the term "Coolie hat switch", which is named after the similar-looking hat.

In a real plane, the hat switch can control things like the aileron or the rudder trim.

Assistance for people with disabilities

Specialized joysticks, classified as a pointing device under assistive technology, are used to replace the computer mouse for people with fairly severe physical disabilities. Instead of controlling video games, these sticks control the pointer. They are often useful for people with athetoid conditions, such as cerebral palsy, as they find it easier to understand than a standard mouse. Miniature joysticks are available for people with conditions involving muscle weakness, such as dystrophy muscle or motor neuron disease. They are also used in power wheelchairs as they are simple and effective to use as a control method.