Reply to another controller design thread

First off... this thread will get buried and resurface at a later point.. Im in the preproduction phase right now...
The concept is not so much the internal stuff.. I guess thats all obvious at some stage of what goes inside. Im more concerned with making the housing for the controller than I am how it will work.
The only part which may be of interest is that I will infuse it with TrackIR.
I work for a military contractor company which builds input devices, so I can take any 3d model and mill it out of hard durable plastic. A friend of mine is an engineer who can pretty much make anything you can believe of. Im just wanting to find something that can be functional but set up in a very abstract kind of way.
one idea is to build one of these and put a few hundred buttons and sliders into it.


or something like this




or even




I would be able to have the outer brain with a soft thin rubber shell so you can still press the buttons with ease.