mitor
Prominent Member
Hiya, gearing up for the release of Elite Dangerous and thought I'd share my impressions of the my new joystick:
I've been looking for a replacement joystick or HOTAS (hand on throttle and stick, basically a joystick with separate throttle control) for a while as I have long since sold my Saitek X52 due to a lack of games and my standby stick (A Saitek ST290) is falling to bits.
With the sudden influx of amazing looking space games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, EVE Valkyrie and No Mans Sky there can’t be a better time to get back into the action!
So I’ve been umm-ing and ah-ing as I vacillated between the expensive X52 pro (around £109 from dabs at the mo) or the very, very expensive Thrustmaster HOTAS cougar (don’t ask the price). In amongst all this though someone mentioned the Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas X, which, aside from the catchy name, also has a catchy price at only £29.99. Figuring I could always just sell it later I thought I’d take the plunge and give it a shot.
So a few days later and I have it in my possession, first impressions are fantastic with the joystick being a decent size and pretty solid. It comes supplied as two separate units; throttle and stick which are hard wired together by a foot of cable, but can join into one, slightly more stable unit. There is only a single USB lead required so the throttle and stick can’t be used separately. Personally I used the stick in its separated configuration. Although it doesn't have suckers to hold to the desk both units are quite wide and offer a reasonably stable platform as long as you don’t get too carried away.
The great impression continues once you go hands on with the unit. The build quality seems pretty damn good, especially for the money and I’d even say that it feels slightly more robust than my older, much more expensive, X52 setup. The travel on the stick is nice and smooth, the throttle is quite a light touch which I quite like. Ergonomically it’s a resolute rightie only affair and I find it fits my slightly larger hands pretty damn well. The styling is a little old fashioned and I would prefer the throttle to be a tad larger but these are really just minor quibbles.
Button placement though is the area where this stick really shines. I’ve found the cheaper sticks to have too few buttons or too many in one place and the X52 series by Saitek seems to have lots of frills I don’t need and not enough buttons that I do. The T Flight has the trigger and a decent clicky POV switch on the stick itself plus two nicely accessible buttons up top.
There is also a third button in a kind of bumper position above and right of the trigger which I found very hard to hit without almost taking my hand off the stick so it’s not all good. The stick has the typical two axis of movement as well as a third axis for rudder control via stick twist which you can disable if you prefer.
On the throttle meanwhile we have three buttons sitting under your thumb as well as two by your ‘trigger’ finger. A great addition here a two way rocker or slider which gives you another analog axis to play with. The suggest is this can be used as an alternative rudder (indeed this is the way the stick works for its PS3 compatibility) but it is a separately programmable axis. I found this a fantastic feature for controlling side to side strafing in Elite. The Throttle has a single détente in the center so you can feel when it is at fifty percent, possibly of use in proper flight sims or so you can easily use it as a full range throttle (with one half being reverse speeds)
Finally there are three extra buttons on the base of the throttle as well as two on the stick for programming functions. Personally, neither of these features matter much to me as I suspect the programming is of more use to console users and buttons not on the controls somewhat defy the point of a HOTAS setup, particularly as I plan playing in Virtual Reality, and won’t be able to see them!
So with all that exciting stuff out the way it’s finally time to plug it in. I went with the Windows 7 auto-configuration and everything worked nicely with no messing about. Elite Dangerous, my current game of choice has a configuration stored for the stick which also works well, just needing slight tweaking for taste.
Initial play is really good and in many ways this feels like one of the nicer sticks I’ve used in a while with a good smooth travel across all axis. The stick does also have the option of changing its resistance via a nut underneath but this didn’t make much difference to me as I preferred it with its stiffer out of the box setup.
Sadly my one real complaint is something that is hard to work around; the stick has a pretty bad deadzone, particularly on the stick twist. You have to move the stick by a few millimetres before the game responds which is almost certainly a hardware issue. This can make lining up shots slightly harder than it needs to be.
Overall the Hotas is still wildly good value for money and is, for me, a colossal step up over mouse keyboard or joypad play.
I've been looking for a replacement joystick or HOTAS (hand on throttle and stick, basically a joystick with separate throttle control) for a while as I have long since sold my Saitek X52 due to a lack of games and my standby stick (A Saitek ST290) is falling to bits.
With the sudden influx of amazing looking space games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, EVE Valkyrie and No Mans Sky there can’t be a better time to get back into the action!
So I’ve been umm-ing and ah-ing as I vacillated between the expensive X52 pro (around £109 from dabs at the mo) or the very, very expensive Thrustmaster HOTAS cougar (don’t ask the price). In amongst all this though someone mentioned the Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas X, which, aside from the catchy name, also has a catchy price at only £29.99. Figuring I could always just sell it later I thought I’d take the plunge and give it a shot.
So a few days later and I have it in my possession, first impressions are fantastic with the joystick being a decent size and pretty solid. It comes supplied as two separate units; throttle and stick which are hard wired together by a foot of cable, but can join into one, slightly more stable unit. There is only a single USB lead required so the throttle and stick can’t be used separately. Personally I used the stick in its separated configuration. Although it doesn't have suckers to hold to the desk both units are quite wide and offer a reasonably stable platform as long as you don’t get too carried away.
The great impression continues once you go hands on with the unit. The build quality seems pretty damn good, especially for the money and I’d even say that it feels slightly more robust than my older, much more expensive, X52 setup. The travel on the stick is nice and smooth, the throttle is quite a light touch which I quite like. Ergonomically it’s a resolute rightie only affair and I find it fits my slightly larger hands pretty damn well. The styling is a little old fashioned and I would prefer the throttle to be a tad larger but these are really just minor quibbles.
Button placement though is the area where this stick really shines. I’ve found the cheaper sticks to have too few buttons or too many in one place and the X52 series by Saitek seems to have lots of frills I don’t need and not enough buttons that I do. The T Flight has the trigger and a decent clicky POV switch on the stick itself plus two nicely accessible buttons up top.
There is also a third button in a kind of bumper position above and right of the trigger which I found very hard to hit without almost taking my hand off the stick so it’s not all good. The stick has the typical two axis of movement as well as a third axis for rudder control via stick twist which you can disable if you prefer.
On the throttle meanwhile we have three buttons sitting under your thumb as well as two by your ‘trigger’ finger. A great addition here a two way rocker or slider which gives you another analog axis to play with. The suggest is this can be used as an alternative rudder (indeed this is the way the stick works for its PS3 compatibility) but it is a separately programmable axis. I found this a fantastic feature for controlling side to side strafing in Elite. The Throttle has a single détente in the center so you can feel when it is at fifty percent, possibly of use in proper flight sims or so you can easily use it as a full range throttle (with one half being reverse speeds)
Finally there are three extra buttons on the base of the throttle as well as two on the stick for programming functions. Personally, neither of these features matter much to me as I suspect the programming is of more use to console users and buttons not on the controls somewhat defy the point of a HOTAS setup, particularly as I plan playing in Virtual Reality, and won’t be able to see them!
So with all that exciting stuff out the way it’s finally time to plug it in. I went with the Windows 7 auto-configuration and everything worked nicely with no messing about. Elite Dangerous, my current game of choice has a configuration stored for the stick which also works well, just needing slight tweaking for taste.
Initial play is really good and in many ways this feels like one of the nicer sticks I’ve used in a while with a good smooth travel across all axis. The stick does also have the option of changing its resistance via a nut underneath but this didn’t make much difference to me as I preferred it with its stiffer out of the box setup.
Sadly my one real complaint is something that is hard to work around; the stick has a pretty bad deadzone, particularly on the stick twist. You have to move the stick by a few millimetres before the game responds which is almost certainly a hardware issue. This can make lining up shots slightly harder than it needs to be.
Overall the Hotas is still wildly good value for money and is, for me, a colossal step up over mouse keyboard or joypad play.