Hotas Recommendations?
- Thread starter Gleitfrosch
- Start date
How long low tier joysticks last and whether they fail does have something to do with how they are used. I will admit that I manhandle things without meaning to.
By the time you get done buying and discarding TM16000's you could have a good setup. I bought 3 of the things and replaced two via support. The purchased units were me being tired of waiting for support to return emails and demand videos of failures. Some are hard to video in a way they will accept. Finally I wised up that it was not a problem with 'bad luck'. They just will not hold up to the amount of use these games put them to. Twist drift, throttle sticking, buttons failed, having to set huge dead-zones on X/Y, throttle paddles failed, throttle thumbstick failed.
I was of course unfortunate and hit Virpil when they had the cable issue and it took forever to resolve that. After that I've put more use on that than the previous 3 TM1600's combined. The throttle is just awesome and so is the stick. Both have a damped, buttery smooth feel to them.
There are several similar ones, but I think this is the one I followed:
After disassembly, I used an air duster can to blow all the dust out of all the inner workings and cleaned the sensor with a q-tip and alcohol, as shown. I also carefully applied a small amount of 3M White Lithium grease to the pivot spot. It hasn't drifted a millimeter since.
Many thanks! I'll look into that in the morning!
Me too. And it works great...but.
So the X56...
I found just the 16000 joystick at a Walmart when it was closing, got it for $45 CAD which was a good deal IMO. It's a decent stick, a little low on the button count on the shaft but the build quality, as you said, is good.
The new high end Thrustmaster stuff is not quite up to the same quality standards as I remember pre Guillemot in the 90's. I used a FCS Pro, WCSII, and TM rudders for over 20 years. Even after the death of the game port and I had to pick up an active USB adapter for the game ports they kept going. I did, have to change the springs out in the FCS and rudder pedals a couple times and add a drop of silicone grease here and there, at some point I ended up adding a button board, but those things cost me next to nothing. It took my house burning down to end that relationship. The Virpil and VKB stuff I have now seems to be of the old Thrustmaster quality. The expected longevity and quality difference, between the likes of Virpil or VKB and the Logitech or even newer Thrustmaster stuff, is really too large to ignore. I don't consider them expensive when I believe I will still be using them in a decade.
Buying a third T16k in 18 months was my last straw. The wife grumbled about the price ( At the time a Gladiator II with SCG handle upgrade + shipping was roughly $280 or so.. ) but saw the logic. She also grumbled about my dis-assembling it to clean and re-grease it, endless adjustments to the firmware, re-re-re-mapping buttons, and changing springs until it was perfect. I'll freely admit it was a new toy and it didn't NEED any of that, but I digress. Two years on, it doesn't need dead spot adjustments, all the buttons work perfectly, and I'm still happy with it.I hear ya. I have a shelf of lower tier joysticks that began failing which I haven't been able to bring myself to toss, in hopes I'll make a friend at some point that wants to try ED that I can give them to as a starter set. My wife calls it "the joystick graveyard", and now adamantly opposes me buying cheaper flight gear. If your wife doesn't like you spending $150 on a joystick, just wait until you burn through a handful of $50 sticks, she'll change her mind l!
Strangely enough, remembering all the way to my earliest gaming days, I did the same thing back in the early 1990's. Ended up buying a really nice, at the time, CH Flightstick ( $45 ? ) because I kept burning the cheap Walm*rt trash sticks ( $15 ). I still own it, BTW, and it sits in honor on my bookshelf. Many MANY hours playing F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship, and the Wing Commander series, never missed a beat. If I wanted to mess around with USB-Gameport adapters it would probably still work. It doesn't have "twist", multiple hats, or a few dozen buttons, but the gimbals and buttons still work.
We live in strange times indeed when VKB can be thought to play second fiddle to anyone. Those things were the puppies privates for, like, ever… assuming you could actually get your hands on one.
VKB and VPL are both pretty much god tier as far as “consumer” products go.
also special mention has to go to MFG rudder pedals which are works of art.
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I use pedals for roll and pedals for steering the SRV. Leaves my stick free for the turret.
having pitch and yaw on the stick really helps with fixed-weapondistance sniping, which becomes second nature.
Did take me a few days to be able to get back my FA off landing skillz, tho.
but now it’s a breeze and as a plus, I’m better at CQC than I used to be.
Got a VKB gladiator Myself. Great quality for a great price.