I was doing a little looking around at sim hardware, as it’s been at least 6 years since I’ve changed or added anything (it was 2012 when I traded my Saitek X52 in for a CH Products setup and added TIR v5); this got me thinking about how I was trying to get a friend interested in DCS, who has only a basic HOTAS and nothing extra. I then remembered all the various sticks and hardware over the years, thinking about how comfortable some were and how long they lasted.
If I look at what I use most in DCS, I’d say that having a slew control on my throttle is one of the big things I almost always use, a must have for any of the PGMs or sensor systems in the game, even the Su-25T. Without it, it’s very clunky to use any form of TDC in any of the aircraft. The CH Pro Throttle has a little ministick with a click button press, which I use as my designate button. However, it is showing its age and the axises jitter a lot, plus slight movement of the stick during the button press can make it tedious at times. Next up would be having at least 4 buttons on my stick with a hat and a two way button, as I use the four way left hand button for zoom in and zoom out in all my games. The hat is absolutely a must for trim control, there’s just no comparison – I tried using the trim wheels on the stick itself but it just doesn’t work the same. This is followed up by the TIR, where I always have to have it on if I’m playing.
While the CH setup has been a great improvement over the old X52, I haven’t been quite as impressed by the stick’s overall comfort. It offers a lot of functionality and I use pretty much every button on the stick, but I always have to move my hand around to do what I need to do. For example, I have to shift my hand upward in order to use the pickle button and hat, which can be uncomfortable. The throttle is similar, where my hand is typically in place to make maximum usage of the ministick and nothing else. The pedals are the only part that don’t really cause me any issues, a stark contrast to most people who call them the “ball busters”!
Looking back, the most comfortable stick I ever had was the Thrustmaster Top Gun stick. That would have been the late 90s as I recall and I used it to play Jane’s Longbow. This was followed by the more advanced Suncom F15 SFS, but I don’t remember much about the comfort of it. I found it difficult to use and the binding process with the keyboard problematic, so I didn’t use it much outside of the stick. I wish I had kept it from all those years ago, because I’m sure I could probably hack the stick and the throttle into making something decent today. Anyways, I went through a few other sticks after that, before getting to the next most comfortable, the Thrustmaster Afterburner II. While it was just as limited as the older Top Gun, it was right up there in terms of comfort and ease of use. I put a lot of hours into IL2 with it before the stick began to die (buttons quit working, etc.) and a friend gave me a Saitek Cyborg force feedback stick while I held onto the throttle. This was eventually replaced with the Saitek X52 setup which I kept for many years until I got the current CH setup.
Seeing a lot of modern offerings today made me wonder if there’s anything that could reach the functionality with the CH setup while getting the comfort of the Top Gun stick, though I can’t justify the expenditure for any new hardware right now. It also made me wonder about ranking overall what can work in DCS, with the bare minimum of hardware to the absolute max.
As I see it, the starting point is the Thrustmaster T-Flight when it comes to sticks. It lacks a lot of the functionality I consider essential, but I think it’d be adequate early on. I would also have to have some kind of head tracking to go with it; it’s that important – whether TIR or some home baked solution. The button arrangement would be problematic on the stick as there’s no real easy way to control zoom without taking up two buttons or sacrificing pitch trim on the hat.
I have no idea what midrange or top of the line would represent. I honestly don’t see the Thrustmaster Warthog as being the top dog anymore, not with a lot of the independent offerings I’m seeing out there, but I will concede that it is a high end controller.
Does anyone have a big listing of who currently makes what, cost, and what features they have? And your preferred setup?
