AKDejaVu,
LOL. Thanks for a good one.
Maurym,
Many years ago, whenI got my very first PC, got some simplistic flight sim. Had only a mouse. Tried flying it with only a mouse and .... .... it didn't work , at least for me.
Also, at work many years ago, the company got a brand new Silicon Graphics. Turns out it had a good flight sim as part of the standard package. Being a company machine, it did not have a joystick. But it had a mouse.
The demo flight sim was good. It had a P-38, a 747 and an F-14. (or maybe it was an F-16).
Tried taking off all of the above, with a mouse. Hey, no problem. General flying around, again no problem. Landing those suckers, now I had a major problem.
The fidelity was not enough. I was constantly over or under correcting. Every (and to the best of my memory not a single sucessful one) landing attempt resulted in a crash or ocassionally a very damaged aircraft.
There have been times when joysticks broke on me and I was forced to temporially use a mouse for control. Again, the same problem: the fidelity was not there.
The Wright Brothers used a lever for pitch and a hip girdle for roll in their original design. The rudder was automatically tied to roll control. The guy (oh whats that Frenchman's name)who first crossed the English Channel use a column with an automobile type wheel on it. One rotated the wheel (much like a car's) to control the rudder and moved/pushed the column right or left to activate the alieron.
Know what both these systems have in common? They were not adapted as a standard for real aircraft control. Why? Probably because the control stick/rudder pedals combo was found by ther majority of pilots to be more natural. Same with the yoke.
I know this may not be encouraging, but...
You said
"I'm sorry, but the above reasoning is essentially void, for the simple reason that it comes down to personal preference."
I really don't see this reasoning as void. Consider if someone decided that to turn a car to the left one should rotate the wheel clockwise. After all, you want to go left and (yes) the bottom portion of the wheel is moving to the left, and not the top.
So should this then become the convention?
Depends, if this had worked 100 years ago, people might have adapted to this convention and this would seems as natural to all automobile driver as (fill in your favorite activity)
Ancient auto at one time had two clutches, and hand levers for main brakes. That was a design selected probably because few people had any real experience at designing auto then.
Today, companies design certain aspects of autos because of convention. Steering wheels, gas, brake pedels etc.
I think most if not all of those conventions have become the norm partly because of convention itself but mostly because "they work".
I think (hope anyway) I understand your situation about not being able to work with joysticks. Perhaps you could try ien and warbirds. Last time I was in warbirds, they did allow mouse for control.
delta
