Colonel Pada Vinson, on 05 July 2013 - 07:56 PM, said:
hmm..I really want a 3 axis joystick otherwise id go with thrustmaster. CH products just dont appeal. is there seriously no other viable solution or producer of a quality product? I had hoped saitek had improved on their quality ... meh
1. If you just want a joystick, instead of a HOTAS... then Loc Nar's recommendation of the Thrustmaster T.16000M is a good one. While it is plastic, it is VERY well made and has a very solid feel to it. The T.A.R.G.E.T. profiling software is very capable.
2. If you want a HOTAS that has twisting joystick, the Saitek X-52Pro is actually a good choice. Just make sure you have an option to return/exchange it, in case you get a lemon. Mine was OK, but I have a read a *few* postings of people getting a bad one. Saitek made some improvements to the X-52Pro stick, versus the X-52. I have not found a need to do any modding of mine, FWIW. The Saitek SST profiling software is pretty capable, but widely considered to be a notch below Thrustmaster's TARGET and CH's Control manager software.
That being said, while I use my Saitek X-52Pro throttle and Combat Pro Rudder pedals, I use a mouse instead of the joystick. I *really* wanted to go the HOTAS route, and fiddled with various configuration settings in MWO's USER.CFG file. But it became clear that it was not going to work like it did in MW4, etc. Loc Nar's Controls Demystified treatise (linked above) explains why that is the case.
The problem can be somewhat mitigated by having absolute axis input instead of relative. With Thrustmaster's TARGET you can do that. I have not seen a way to do it via Saitek's SST software... however, you could try
Joystick 2 Mouse as that has the ability to select absolute axis input. By the time I found out about it, using a mouse had become so ingrained that I didn't really give it a try... at least not yet.
Alternatively, you might look into the Razer Hydra. Just have a chair with comfortable arm rests...