[Brainstorming] Airbus Sidestick Animation tagging

[F747fly]

This is an issue that has been bugging me ever since my failed A350 project. I thought about this long and hard and can't get my head around this one, the pieces just don't come together for me here so maybe some of you guys can help.

What's the issue?

The issue I'm facing concerns the tagging and rigging of the multi-movement sidesticks as used on modern day Airbus aircraft (A32X, A33X, A34X, A35X and A388). The movement of such a stick includes two motions, forward/backward and left/right. Normally these motions would be included in two different objects, forward/backward would be in the "stick" (vertical part) and the left/right would be in the "yoke" (part allowing for "steering"). As the concerned type of sidestick does not have separate parts to control these individual inputs on the elevators and ailerons/spoilers it would seem necessary to tag this part with two animation tags which is obviously impossible.

Addition to the issue

Additionally, this type of controller features a rubber housing to protect the underlying mechanisms. This non-rigid surface would require an armature animation rigging. This is what I've been focussing on thus far, as the sidestick itself is rigid and would simply be an extension to this part. Therefore I have modeled a simple example of this part:

First thought

My first thought on this problem was to somehow incorporate the two animation tags required for the individual motions in the rigging. I had two thoughts on this, both of which resulted in nothing for me. The first idea was to somehow use empties to imply one of these tags on the armature, which itself would be tagged with the remaining tag. The second thought was to have two identical armatures, both influencing the same parts of the mesh, and tag and rig those with the two animations required. Both of these thoughts seem to be flawed but let me know if anyone has any idea if either of them might work somehow.

Other then that I'm at a complete loss....

Technicalities

Here are some technical things that might be useful:

Front

Side

Top

Note: The orange object is the armature, located in the centre of the object,

 

[ErickC]

I think that you're overthinking it. Animate the stick one way and link it to a dummy animated the other way. As to the base, You could probably get away with a single bone animated one way linked to something (a dummy? Another bone?) animated the other, I bet. I say "single" because, as someone who has only ever driven standard gearboxes, that assembly is going to flex more or less like a cone (videos of A320 sidesticks support this idea). Can you have a bone influence a skinned mesh and also move a solid object linked to it? If that's the case, then you might do this:

-Dummy at top of hierarchy moves bone left/right
-Bone is animated fore/aft
-Base is skinned mesh influenced by bone
-Stick is solid part linked to bone

I avoid bones like the plague (they're not free; actually, in terms of performance, they become very expensive very quickly), so I'm not sure if this little hierarchy is possible.

 

[Heretic]

In the default A321 VC, the cover is simply split into three parts, one for each "level". Of these levels, each is either rotated according to pitch or roll inputs. It may not be the most accurate solution, but it's quite efficient.