Comparing low-end to high-end joysticks
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My very first joystick for my XT was this Quickshot marvel
That stick saw a lot of Falcon 1.0 action along with the original Gunship and F-19 Stealth Fighter.
At some point it was replaced by a Logitech Wingman Extreme, which I remember as being a very good stick. Very sturdy, comfortable and responsive.
The Wingman Extreme saw a lot of action in EF2000, F-15 Strike Eagle III, Gunship 2000, F-117 Nighthawk and Falcon 3.0 but it was replaced rather quickly with ……
The mighty Thrustmaster FLCS and TQS ……which I’m still using today.
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LOL @ old joysticks with suction cups….
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I’d like to see what would happen if someone tried to use “use it or die” in their advertising today…
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Since I actually am on the Lower End of Sticks, I owned for about 4 years a T.Flight Hotas X and never had any precision problems with it. Just needs a bit of lubricant every 3 or 4 months to stay loose and not squeaky. They’re a good starter stick, and there’s a great profile for BMS by BlueRaven that can be found Here.
I will warn however unless they’ve improved it it’s a bit sluggish to respond. it has a high deadzone which leads to it needing to be thrown around to get quick maneuvers out of it. And it’s Twist stick is activated basically by a metal Clothespin which in my case came loose and had to be reset. This lead to me needing to disassemble the grip and unaware that only screws and friction held it together, causing it to violently separate and sever the wire going to the trigger. Even after that the stick works fine, albeit without it’s trigger and I gave it to a friend who wanted it for some non-combat flying.
I have a Hotas 4 now, which is basically the X but rebranded for the PS4. It’s sadly gone up in price, (Was $50 for the 4 Compared to $45 for the X) but it’s definitely has a lower deadzone than the X and I’d Recommend it if it wasn’t 30 dollars more for one Quality of Life change and some different badges and paint.The T.16000M FCS HOTAS I was considering, but a lot of people hate the throttle and to me it looks small and cramped. After that, the Warthog is obviously King of the Castle but you’re going to need a good set of Pedals. After that it’s Saitek’s X Series. Which, Hopefully have improved in quality since I feel like I couldn’t go more than a few posts in anywhere without someone saying their’s stopping working after 5-6 months. If I’d not kept running into that, I’d have saved another month and gotten an X-56 myself.
And since we’re on the Topic of Old sticks… You guys are going to make me search my attic for my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2, Aren’t You?
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…heh…never met a force-feedback stick I didn’t break. Fortunately, I never actually owned any of them!
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…heh…never met a force-feedback stick I didn’t break. Fortunately, I never actually owned any of them!
LOL so you’ve just broken other people’s sticks?
(Somehow that came out totally wrong….)
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LOL so you’ve just broken other people’s sticks?
(Somehow that came out totally wrong….)
Nope…you got it totally right…I’ve broken quite few other people’s force feedback sticks over the years! I think I quit touching them after a number, though……
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I used a Cougar HOTAS for years (picked it up for €100 at the local electronics store), but the pots have gone bad and I’ve migrated to a Warthog HOTAS in the meantime, storing the Cougar for later modding once I have some more free time (and expertise on these matters :D)
the WT is a great stick / throttle, and I justified the expenditure by calculating how much it would cost me per day if I used it for only three years and it came out arund 30¢ / day.
I’m fine with that, and I expect the WT to last much longer than three years (my Cougar nearly lasted 10 before the pots finally developed too much spiking to be comfortable).
The only thing I miss dearly on the WT is the thumbstick… steering the cursor with the middle finger just feels wrong and is very error prone.
All the best, Uwe
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the WT is a great stick / throttle, and I justified the expenditure by calculating how much it would cost me per day if I used it for only three years and it came out arund 30¢ / day.
That would definitively be worth it if you played F4BMS every day.
I won’t have that time and don’t even know if i will keep playing beyond say 1-2 months before excitement will fade. (There’s already enough things i’m complaining about - see my other thread spams :D)
But anyway, i have settled with a T.16000M HOTAS now (just ordered), which seems to be a reasonably versatile and good quality stick+throttle for the price (100EUR) for a casual player.
I will report back here for specific testing/comparison of the precision and dead zones between that stick and my current TM low end stick. -
Indeed, that is true. If you only play a few hours each month, then it’s an expensive paperweight.
My favorite online seller lists the TM WH for £306 with a 2-year warranty. If you only flew once a week and each flight only took one hour, £306/104hrs = £2.94/hr. Expensive? Maybe. But then consider that some of us have had their TM WHs for 6-7 years and definitely fly more than 1hr per week…. assuming 1hr flight per week, only one flight per week, over 6 years, all of a sudden, it comes down to £0.98/hr.
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The T.16000M HOTAS is a good starting point for any new/casual BMS flyer, certainly the throttle seems well equipped with buttons. The stick less so, so some hard choices will have to be made as a direct 1:1 mapping between the actual F-16 stick and throttle controls won’t work of course.
Of course, purchasing a TM WH (or rather a TM WH + Cougar TQS with TUSBA) would be the most ideal, the most realistic setup but I think that one gradually needs to go through the process. While financially it may make sense to go straight for the TM WH without wasting money on cheaper sticks … but on the other hand, if you fly with the T.16000M frequently enough and you get to the point where you really want to take it to the next level, it makes purchasing a TM WH a lot easier to justify.
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Thanks guys.
I don’t doubt the general “the more you spend the better it gets”.
But my question is about center-precision (dead zone) precisely.Hi, in your list I would go for a T.16000M FCS HOTAS: IMHO it is a good choice, I own it - and I am not a casual player, I regularly fly BMS several times a week, each counting several hours - and am satisfied with its center precision.
Definitely not the best I have ever tried (I tried WH and it is no doubt superior) but definitely good and better than other sticks with limited price deltas, such as T.Flight HOTAS 4.I’m not sure as I’ve never used a T16000M stick. Both sticks boasts 16-bit precision but the TM WH page states 65536 x 65536 values while the T.1600M HOTAS page states 16000 x 16000 values?? The difference in price is clearly not in the HALL sensor technology but in the construction and switches/buttons of the different units.
+1, HALL sensors for both but definitely different construction quality.
T.16000M FCS HOTAS is good for its price, but nothing to do with his majesty the WH.But anyway, i have settled with a T.16000M HOTAS now (just ordered), which seems to be a reasonably versatile and good quality stick+throttle for the price (100EUR) for a casual player.
I will report back here for specific testing/comparison of the precision and dead zones between that stick and my current TM low end stick.LOL, I read this after my first comment.
When you’ll receive it have a look at my set of TARGET + DX programmed keyfile here (hope you’ll find it useful).The T.16000M HOTAS is a good starting point for any new/casual BMS flyer, certainly the throttle seems well equipped with buttons. The stick less so, so some hard choices will have to be made as a direct 1:1 mapping between the actual F-16 stick and throttle controls won’t work of course.
Agreed, but using TARGET you can go quite close.
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I’ve started with T.Flight Hotas X, had it for less than two weeks and never felt comfortable with it. It was very stiff, too imprecise, with a huge deadzone and a weird diagonal response so I’ve returned it and decided to go for Saitek X52 which costed about 2.5 times more than the former - and what a difference did it make. Yes X52, still being ways from reaching top sticks, has its share of issues - like a few shaky axes and a non-linear response, but I’ve never felt like I was fighting a throttle or a stick to control the plane.
So yeah - the more you are willing to spend - the equally better it gets. That said at this point I’m fine with what X52 offers but if I’ll ever feel the need to switch - it should be something really different - so I’d go for X65F probably. And also right now it’s quite out of a budget I’m willing to spend on a hobby. -
Op made a great decision going with t16000m. I couldn’t recommend it more, even for a seasoned pilot (its still my stick of choice for helis). When I first got my warthog after using the t16000, i thought, “are you effing kidding me?”. Sure, it looked cool and was an exact replica of f16/a10, but my god the sticktion was atrocious! How they can let this thing go out into the wild like that is unbelievable, and Ive tried more than one. While the 16000 was like a hot knife through butter, the hog was like driving a car with the brakes locked up. Even after doing all the tricks I could find like relubricating, polishing the internals, it still sits in my closet collecting dust. Do not ever buy it unless you plan to mod the crap outta it or slap in an fssb. Same goes for cougar. As for saitek, aside from the x65f (which is my fav stick of all time), they are all terrible as well. Dont get anything from saitek that moves. They have an awefully engineered centering mechanism with a spring that pushes against an inverted flanged disk thingymajig. They use it on every moving stick they make and its terrible, stay away. Once you want an upgrade, go for VKB or CH (I know alot of people say CH is a toy but its not. Very good stick with a long throw giving it great precision).
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Op made a great decision going with t16000m. I couldn’t recommend it more, even for a seasoned pilot (its still my stick of choice for helis). When I first got my warthog after using the t16000, i thought, “are you effing kidding me?”. Sure, it looked cool and was an exact replica of f16/a10, but my god the sticktion was atrocious! How they can let this thing go out into the wild like that is unbelievable, and Ive tried more than one. While the 16000 was like a hot knife through butter, the hog was like driving a car with the brakes locked up. Even after doing all the tricks I could find like relubricating, polishing the internals, it still sits in my closet collecting dust. Do not ever buy it unless you plan to mod the crap outta it or slap in an fssb. Same goes for cougar. As for saitek, aside from the x65f (which is my fav stick of all time), they are all terrible as well. Dont get anything from saitek that moves. They have an awefully engineered centering mechanism with a spring that pushes against an inverted flanged disk thingymajig. They use it on every moving stick they make and its terrible, stay away. Once you want an upgrade, go for VKB or CH (I know alot of people say CH is a toy but its not. Very good stick with a long throw giving it great precision).
Years after this post, I am wondering if hollywoodvillain (or the OP) (or anyone else for that matter want to chime in) still feels the T1600M is as good as he says it was back in 2017?
This is not a challenge to the post, I really want to know if those t1600s are good. I was looking at the TFlight HotasX but all the posts about the t1600M caught my eye. -
Hi, i’m the OP and i’m happy to give my feedback after 3 years of use.
Now bear in mind that
1. I’m not really a power user. I use it only for BMS and have been on and off BMS for periods of months.
2. I can’t compare to other hardware as i never touched them.Let’s recap a quick review i gave in another thread, shortly after purchase:
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T.16000M Stick
The stick is good. I won’t go into details, as you can find plenty of general reviews on the net. Just concerning my main criteria, the center-point and overall precision, it beats my previous cheap joystick by far. It has no noticable dead-zone at all. It is relatively stiff and there is a notable resistance from the opposite side when passing through the center point, but from a value-readout point of view you don’t notice and that’s exactly what you want imo.
The base is surprisingly big. A bit too much imo. Especially since you don’t really need that much buttons (12) on the base.
It’s also quite heavy. There must be some metal plate in it. Doesn’t move on the desk.
The top stick button below the hat is difficult to reach because it isn’t on the “thumb arc” like the other buttons. The top button layout is worse than my previous stick tbh.FCWS Throttle
Also good. Smooth throttle axis. Good arrangement of the buttons and plenty of. Perceived quality is OK.
The top right side POV hat is the one most naturally attainable, but since the hat has a symmetric shape, it is sometimes difficult to hit a direction without hitting the adjacent diagonal. So it’s better not to map this to critical stuff.
Mixed feelings for the front analog ministick. This one has an important dead-zone around center and only limited precision. It took me a while to effectively slew radar cursors with it. I had to reduce its sensitivity slightly or even map it to buttons entirely.Now after 3 years of use, i can say the following:
Overall i am very satisfied with my buy. Especially since i bought before the recent HOTAS price surge. (Got the T.16000M+FCWS bundle in a sale for less than 100 Euros)Concerning the T.16000M Stick:
Precision and stiffness feels still the same after 3 years of use. No noticeable wear whatsoever.
Still very happy with the mechanical part.
From ergonomics point of view i would have loved to have at least one more hat switch on the stick instead of on the throttle.FCWS Throttle:
Here it is another matter. It is a known issue that the throttle will start to grip after only several months of use. The factory-lubricant is crap. But it can be handled by replacing the grease at the right places. (Youtube is your friend). No need to buy the much hyped Nyogel 767 - i have achieved satisfactory results with a much cheaper Liqui Moly 3312 silicon grease.
Also confirmed that the frontal analog ministick is really bad and feels getting worse over time.I’d still give it a solid buy recommendation for more casual simmers after 3 years of use.