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| My Custom Layout |
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| Blank Layout |
The two photo images were probably found somewhere online, or maybe images from the HOTAS box or documentation – it’s been too many years for me to remember, but I’m not the person who took the photos. Credit goes to a mystery person.
The rest of it was
originally created using OneNote (2007?). Not certain which
iteration, but it was many years ago when OneNote was a fabulous
program that only stored files locally. And it
was totally free to use, with no limitations. Except one… when the
notes grew to be too big, the program began to drag. Finally it
started running so slow I couldn’t keep using it.
Side note, but a
good one – I’m using Obsidian these days for notes of any kind.
It lacks the easy graphics creation OneNote had, but offers far more
versatility. Working with thousands of notes, graphics, video,
pdf files, no loss of speed. Plus it offers links. Easily associate
anything with anything. Find it all when you need it later.
Hundreds (thousands?) of free plugins available. Some organizational
skills required. Free to use, but they offer a paid syncing option if
you’re interested.
In its original form, OneNote was very easy to create all kinds of notes, and was great at organizing them. I’m afraid Microsoft succumbed to greed, and I can no longer recommend OneNote.
For structured drawing/flowcharts I now use LibreOffice Draw, which is part of a suite of programs and completely free. (They gladly accept donations.) Draw was difficult for me to use, but fantastic after I got used to it. Draw allows for very fine detail work, and I only learned what I needed to learn. Barely scratched the surface.
Two parts of the layout won’t
work without Voice Attack.
(I’ll dedicate a later blog post
to the VA Profile I use to make it work, it's pretty short.)
- One (BUTTON 7 on the
Stick base) is a simple one-push button that will request docking,
turn on auto-dock, and return the active Nav Panel tab to the initial
position afterward. It only works if the Nav Panel is already positioned on
the left-most main tab.
- The other is a series of short commands that have 8 preset Power Settings (shown at bottom of graphic.) They’re attached to BUTTONs 7, 8, 9, and 10 and shift buttons 2 and 3. It takes some getting used to, but makes quick-setting the power levels easy.
The section marked "Category by Color" uses the color choices selected by EdRefCard, when you choose the “Color by Type” option.
I tried to manually
match those colors in LibreOffice Draw, modified slightly to print
more vividly.
In general the
alternate color commands are contextual, you don’t have to do
anything to use them except to be in the correct mode at the time.
There are 3 layers of shift buttons.
- Any command with “2” uses BUTTON 2 on the Throttle.
- Any command with “3” uses BUTTON 3 on the Throttle.
- Any command with “23” uses both buttons at the same time.
This prints out
legibly on a single sheet. But my eyes have been bad from childhood at age 6 to age 65 (only they’re much worse
now.)
So I play with the printer settings to expand the image onto
2 full sheets of paper. Then I tape those together, onto a piece of
cardboard cut to fit. It’s 17” x 11”, and much easier for me
to read.
Bear in mind, this is still a work in progress. The combat zoom controls are currently duplicated because I’m not convinced the wheel on the throttle is working correctly. Once that’s sorted, I’ll remove the ones numbered 10 and 11 on the Throttle.
If you haven't run into it before, the numbering conventions are based on the manufacturer's nomenclature.
The file format here is GIF, because it's clearer and the colors more vivid than uncompressed Jpeg.
The only other commands I expect to change are the on-foot keys, once I start messing with that part of the game. (And those are keyboard only, so they don't show on the graphic above.)
Hope it helps! (I’ll post my current bindings file on another entry.)
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