Almost my entire career playing ED has been with an Xbox 360 pad up until recently when I plugged an X52 Pro HOTAS in that had been hidden away gathering dust in the garage. I've never used a flight stick before (in any game, ever) and found that doing so busted me immediately back to "newbie" in terms of my flying capabilities. The feeling of trying to control my ship, especially in battle, was like jumping up and down while simultaneously patting my belly and the top of my head while someone threw rocks at me. At first. But I persevered, and after a few hours of play and several rather embarrassing trips to the rebuy screen at almost 7 mil a pop, I finally am getting fairly comfortable with it. All in all, I'm very pleased that I tried a flight stick out; the immersion factor compared to the 360 pad was a HUGE difference, and right away I love the sense that it kind of made me feel I was in the cockpit of a space ship.
I'm so happy with it that I can't imagine going back to using the controller. Which brings me to the reason I started this thread; I'm considering going off the deep end and buying a Thrustmaster Warthog, but am a little nervous because it doesn't turn on the Z axis and I gather that rudders will be mandatory. Right now I just have a very basic desk, and the way I utilize the X52 Pro is to just set it up directly on the desk and kind of lean forward to put my hands on the controls. In this position I couldn't use rudders, so I gather that I need to lean back to effectively put my feet on the rudders, which begs the question where do I put the HOTAS where I can reach it comfortably? Perhaps I'm overthinking; the X52 has a twist control for the Z axis which I use constantly, and perhaps I could just map that to another button on the Warthog?
I don't know as I'm a total noob when it comes to flight sticks. I've literally only got about 5 hours of ingame use of one. I'm hoping to hear the communities thoughts on how they prefer to set up their desks & sticks.
I'm so happy with it that I can't imagine going back to using the controller. Which brings me to the reason I started this thread; I'm considering going off the deep end and buying a Thrustmaster Warthog, but am a little nervous because it doesn't turn on the Z axis and I gather that rudders will be mandatory. Right now I just have a very basic desk, and the way I utilize the X52 Pro is to just set it up directly on the desk and kind of lean forward to put my hands on the controls. In this position I couldn't use rudders, so I gather that I need to lean back to effectively put my feet on the rudders, which begs the question where do I put the HOTAS where I can reach it comfortably? Perhaps I'm overthinking; the X52 has a twist control for the Z axis which I use constantly, and perhaps I could just map that to another button on the Warthog?
I don't know as I'm a total noob when it comes to flight sticks. I've literally only got about 5 hours of ingame use of one. I'm hoping to hear the communities thoughts on how they prefer to set up their desks & sticks.
