I actually had been playing with the default keyboard controls up until the last few years.
A small customization for strafing has led me to this day of the use of "movement decks". A default such 4-deck is the arrow keys on our right hand. As you know very popular now is the WASD 4- deck which can be used as a 6-deck too (QE-WASD, actually, since the default keys for banking is Q & E, one wonders how come the original controls don't use WASD). My customization for strafing was on the numpad, makeshifting a 4(6)-deck ((46)-5123). Another 6-deck is:
[Insert][Delete][Home][End][Page Up][Page Down]
maybe the default 6-deck on the keyboard. Now a movement deck, 4- or 6-, occupies 3 fingers; the pinkie and thumb on both hands are free.
The theme is that for 6 degrees of mirrored movement freedom one needs 12 keys minimum (pitching and strafing in 4 directions, thrusting and banking in 2). So such a minimal approach could use
two 6-decks. Thing is that a lot of movements group in tetrads intuitively; strafing alone, pitching alone, thrusting with side-strafing (horizontal movement cross instead of vertical). Only banking is actually in good place for a 6-deck.
To that end, one might turn to non-minimal approaches that utilize
three decks. One 6-deck to include banking, and two 4-decks for pitching and strafing. The configuration I use at the moment is:
Primary move-controls: [Q][W][E] Secondary move-controls: [▴] Tertiary move-controls: [Num][4][5][6]
[A][S][D] [◂][▾][▸] [1][2][3]
W: accelerate Up: pitch down** Num5: strafe up
S: reverse Down: pitch up** Num2: strafe down
A: strafe left* Left: turn left Num1: strafe left*
D: strafe right* Right: turn right Num3: strafe right*
Q: bank left* Num4: bank left*
E: bank right* Num6: bank right*
Primary fire: [Left Shift]
Secondary fire: [Num][0]/[Num][Enter]
Afterburner: [Space]
*redundancies
**FlightSimThe theme here is interchanging between move-decks the way you change frets on the guitar; specifically, in my maneuvering, my right hand changes the sec. and ter. move-decks in aiming and evading, so that simultaneity "effectively" never dropped. (it takes serious practice tho.
)
For fire and other controls, the remaining fingers are utilized. For instance, my right-hand thumb rests idle*** (so I haven't "maxed it out" like AFP yet) while the pinkie is on [Num][0] when aiming and on [Num][Enter] when sliding
. My left-hand pinkie is on primary fire [Shift] and thumb afterburner [Space]. The pinkie also hits the Automap. (o.O that always gets me killed in multiplayer) Auxiliary controls like flares or bombs (I gotta do sth about bombs...) are hit with my left-hand index resting on [D].
The rest controls are the default ones. My mouse is also resting.
***somewhere on [Ctrl]{R}. I also find that my thumb and pinkie help me locate the other move deck on my right hand, when fretting.
Thu May 24, 2018 9:42 pm by 
