General / Off-Topic Joysticks and Flight Sims

[GuruNot]

Back in the days of Elite on the C64 and Amiga I used to also love the Microprose Games like F-19 Stealth Fighter, fantastic packaging, manuals, keyboard overlays etc. Although not a true flight sim, I could spend hours immersed in the campaigns.

The funding of ED has rekindled my love of flight sims in general so I find myself looking at modern versions and associated joysticks.

I was wondering if any forum members had experience of the Saitek X52 Pro as I am seriously considering this purchase and I reckon it would be good if ED supported it too.

On the Flight Sim front I always believed the Microsoft Flight Sim to be well respected, but as that is no longer an active product I find myself considering X-Plane (just downloading the demo now). It seems to have a very active community and a wealth of features.

Also does the X52 Pro play nice with X-Plane?

Experiences and Opinions appreciated.

 

[JKF]

I have the Saitek X52 Pro and whilst it's excellent for most combat type flight sims it's not very good for most aircraft in Microsoft FS.

I suppose it's really down to what type of control the aircraft your flying uses in real life as that's most likely what the sim has been based on.

WW2 combat aircraft and Cesnas, 737s, etc. use a flight yoke and although I haven't tried a flight yoke I should think the experience is all the better for using one.

For Elite I think you'll find the X52 is excellent and I expect, for simplicity, all ships will be simulated on the basis of a joystick or control pad being the primary means of control. It could be argued that with really large ships control would be a much less responsive system since you'd have a commander giving orders whilst crew carried them out. Can't see Elite going down that road though.

The X52 is highly configurable. As long as Elite allows you to assign the joystick axis as you please you'll be able to assign buttons to you preference even if Elite isn't configurable to that level.

 

[Davidtq]

Ive got the X52pro, great piece of kit, Ive exclusively used it for space games, so I don't know how it fares in proper flight simulations. But for space type games I find it great.

Ive also done substantial remapping in the past to use the stick to control ground vehicles of a game with a space craft element and that felt quite surprising "right" as well...