I appreciate I'm a useless old fuddy-duddy for wanting to play an even-slightly-realistic flight sim, but what are the joystick options these days? I have a Saitek X58 from years ago, which is fairly awful, but I really want something with a separate throttle unit. I don't want to go for the whole Thrustmaster thing with the A10-style stick - I just can't spring that much money. What else is any good? P
Alright, separate stick/throttle is called HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick). Your more modern options are: Thrustmaster T Flight X Saitek X52 Saitek X52 Pro Saitek X55 Rhino Saitek X65F CH Products Throttle & Fighterstick Thrustmaster Warthog The budget options are the Saitek X52 and X52 Pro, with the Pro getting a slight recommendation over the other. Both are pretty similar however, and prices are all over the shop right now due to supply constraints as they're likely to be discontinued. The Saitek X55 Rhino is their newest offering, and it's pretty snazzy. Downside is all-plastic construction (and apparently some build issues on early sticks, unknown if it is fixed?). As with most Saitek HOTAS/sticks you may want to mod it for better feel/accuracy. Magnet mods are pretty easy and fast (and cheap!), spring mods are also possible. The X55 comes with a set of springs so you can select the one you like best in terms of resistance. The X65F is a special beast, as it is a force-sensing stick rather than the traditional style. This means the actual joystick only moves a very small amount, with movements directly related to the pressure you apply. F16s fly like this. CH Products are a long established maker of sim hardware, and they are well respected for quality. However they totally ignore looks, and their products appear as if they've timewarped from the 80s. Don't knock them though, they're well worth a look. Obviously the Thrustmaster Warthog is the daddy, but out of your price range. Best commercial stick out there, all metal construction and feels glorious with stellar performance to boot. Down the other end of the range, the T Flight X is cheapest HOTAS by far at around £40-50, but you pay for what you get... I guess your choice comes down to budget. If you can afford it the X55 Rhino is a good buy, but if that's a bit rich for you I'd look at the X52/Pro or CH Products.
Hi Cei Thanks very much for that in-depth writeup; bit-tech should be doing that sort of thing themselves. Quite liking the understated CH products stuff. Bit more grown up. No black and yellow stripes, and it's cost-effective. I don't feel like paying a lot of money for the bling. Really need to go handle it, though. I remember the days when I could buy a joystick from a shop... P
The original CH Flightsitck still ranks as one of my favourite purchases of all time. I haven't had it for probably 20 years, yet I can still remember exactly how it felt.
CH is a good buy all round, the only issue is finding them in the UK at a reasonable price. My go-to for pretty much anything is FlightStore, as they're generally excellent and you know you are getting a legitimate product. Saying that, Amazon can be cheaper. For a full CH setup, I'd be looking at: - Fighter Stick at £92 (Amazon) - Pro Throttle at £92 Amazon - Pedals at £110 FlightStore This comes in sub £300 for a full HOTAS+pedals setup, whereas a Warthog and pedals is pushing £450. You can skip the pedals, but you'll need to assign yaw to a HAT or similar.
All very interesting. I flinch in horror that £300 is the cheap option, but I suppose those're the breaks. It does make me think that if I'm going to those lengths, perhaps it's worth the extra 50% for the hog. Anyway. Is there anywhere (perhaps in London) that actually has this stuff on display? The CH stuff looks promising but it's visibly plastic, and I want to try and find something that actually has some smoothness to it. I flew a bit of Lock On recently with a Saitek Cyborg and it was the most awful experience - terribly aggressive self-centring and lumpy handling with bits of ABS grinding together. I assume the circa-£100 stuff must be better. Er, please tell me it's better. P
£300 isn't the cheap option - the cheap option is the Thrustmaster HOTAS X at £40-50, or a Saitek X25/Pro around £130. Even the new X55 Rhino is around £170, and it does have a twist stick for yaw without pedals. Arguably, on a sub £200 budget I recommend either the X55 or the CH Fighterstick + CH Pro Throttle combo, with the downside to the CH setup being having to bind yaw to a HAT. The £300 setup would actually be fantastically immersive and all you'd ever need.* You're absolutely right the FLY5 is a hunk of junk, and I wish people would stop buying them and get the Thrustmaster T.1600M for essentially the same money (prices fluctuate, but they're within £2-3 usually). The £100+ crowd is significantly better, but Saitek do love their springs (which are usually the cause of over-aggressive centring, which can be mitigated with a cheap magnet mod). *Until you get the bug and start buying ridiculous things like avionics, flight seats etc,
I burn. I pine. I think I'd want pedals. I'd like to get into display flying, and I fear that a twisty-stick isn't going to cut it for that. Just managed to get Freetrack going, though! And now I have a bit of scotchlite stuck to my head.
The X55 can be locked so the twist stick is physically disabled, then you add pedals. Just to help complicate your decisions. I have TrackIR and it's lovely
The tracking setup I've achieved here is a bit laggy. Otherwise the performance and precision is fine, and the problem isn't, I think, actually with freetrack. I'm using an extremely old CCTV camera, which in some ways is ideal as they don't have IR filtering, but requires I go through an absurdly expensive and overspecified video input board that I have for work reasons and is itself a bit sluggish - it's not designed to be a realtime device. Better may be possible, but hey, it cost me £0. P
I've read the PlayStation Eye camera for the PS2/PS3 is good for FreeTrack. Bit of photographic film works as an IR filter.
Apparently the PS2 camera lacks Win7 drivers, but I haven't tried it. Visible light cut filter can also be improvised from the innards of a floppy disc. Edit: Oh, I take it all back. Someone's drummed up some 7 drivers.
