Joysticks
At the risk of appearing as though I'm showing off my toys I'm going to talk about my joysticks.
I've owned the following joysticks:
BTN H1U /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Down
/O /P KD(X1) DLY(100) KU(X1) /R Glance_Fwd_Rel
BTN H1D /I /P /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Up /R KD(X47) DLY(60) KU(X47)
/O /P KD(X20) DLY(100) KU(X20) /R Glance_Back_Rel
BTN H1L /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Left
/O KD(X23) DLY(100) KU(X23)
BTN H1R /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Right
/O KD(X24) DLY(100) KU(X24))
Even if you use an existing profile the setup is very involved. For example, take a look at the no less than twenty eight steps in setting up Jastangs Falcon 4 profile. And you will probably find things in the profile you need to change anyway requiring you to mod the profile code.
I knew that the Cougar wasn't for the faint hearted and was prepared to do the reading and learn Foxy. The one thing that I wasn't prepared for was the slop around the centre position of the joystick. I can't even begin to describe how much the centre play completely pisses me off. It totally detracts from the stick making it feel cheap which it is certainly not. It is completely unforgivable that a stick this expensive has this much centre play. If you've come from CH products you'd be astounded that it got past QA and left the factory in this condition. I found the cause on my stick is the poor fit of the stem of the base of the joystick into the gimbals. It has about 1.5 mm mismatch in the gimbals which doesn't sound like much but that translates to 6 mm of centre play at the top of the stick. By centre play I mean movement of the stick that doesn't translate into movement of your plane, it also feels very loose and sloppy. There is a document available in a zip file on the Cougarworld website (7 MB) that describes the three types of axis play you can experience with the Cougar.
To fix these issues people mod the Cougar either adjusting the existing gimbals or more commonly with complete replacements for the gimbals. The replacements the Uber II Nxt replacement gimbals and the hall sensors it requires or the RealSimulator force sensing kits are expensive and are DIY. The list of fixes and mods for the Cougar can be viewed on the Cougarworld site at Frugalsworld.
I've owned the following joysticks:
- CH Products Flightstick
- Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro
- Saitek X-36 gameport HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick)
- Saitek X-52 HOTAS
- Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS
The CH Flightstick was easily the smoothest, most accurate and best quality controller I've ever owned. It took an absolute hammering in space sims including X-Wing and worked faultlessly for a very long time. I stopped using it when I needed a joystick with a POV (point of view) hat. Years later when I was using the Saitek X-36 I pinched a potentiometer out of the FlightStick to keep the X-36 going after a X-36 potentiometer wore out.
The Sidewinder Pro offered a twist handle for rudder control and a POV hat. Aside from flight sims it also saw a lot of use playing Mechwarrior providing an easy way to rotate the mechs cabin. I found it and the twist rudder useful much later for flying the helicopters in Battlefield 2. I ended up butchering it for parts including using the gameport cable for home made rudder pedals.
My first HOTAS, the Saitek X-36 gameport (not USB) was great value, looked reasonably realistic but very quickly wore out. Also it used a AT keyboard pass through arrangement and was unable to be used reliably with newer PS2 motherboards or versions of Windows beyond Windows 98. It became obsolete as Saitek dropped support for it. But incredibly, I've since found third party drivers created by Alfredo Costalogo to run the X-36 gameport under Windows 2000, XP and Vista including 64 bit! You can find Alfredo Costalogos website at http://x36driver.byethost13.com/. He has some developers docs on the X-36 as well. I still have my X-36, but I haven't tried any of his drivers myself yet.
The Thrustmaster Couger I'd read a lot about. People talked about the incredible metal controller with the powerful Foxy software. The first and only time I saw it for sale in a shop was in a Hardly Normal store in Brisbane and they were asking an insane $650 (AUD) for it. On Ebay even the second hand ones seemed to go for $400+. Way too expensive, so I settled on a Saitek X-52 choosing that over the CH HOTAS because I couldn't get "hands-on" locally with the CH HOTAS before buying it and it was both more expensive outright and required delivery charges.
My first HOTAS, the Saitek X-36 gameport (not USB) was great value, looked reasonably realistic but very quickly wore out. Also it used a AT keyboard pass through arrangement and was unable to be used reliably with newer PS2 motherboards or versions of Windows beyond Windows 98. It became obsolete as Saitek dropped support for it. But incredibly, I've since found third party drivers created by Alfredo Costalogo to run the X-36 gameport under Windows 2000, XP and Vista including 64 bit! You can find Alfredo Costalogos website at http://x36driver.byethost13.com/. He has some developers docs on the X-36 as well. I still have my X-36, but I haven't tried any of his drivers myself yet.
The Thrustmaster Couger I'd read a lot about. People talked about the incredible metal controller with the powerful Foxy software. The first and only time I saw it for sale in a shop was in a Hardly Normal store in Brisbane and they were asking an insane $650 (AUD) for it. On Ebay even the second hand ones seemed to go for $400+. Way too expensive, so I settled on a Saitek X-52 choosing that over the CH HOTAS because I couldn't get "hands-on" locally with the CH HOTAS before buying it and it was both more expensive outright and required delivery charges.
The Saitek X-52 was a good value controller that was incredibly easy to setup. With the exception of a dodgy Microsoft Windows update that caused problems it was all smooth sailing. The whole spacey silver with LEDs look didn't grab me at first, but playing with the lights turned down became cool. It was very easy to program and responsive, if a little too soft. I modded the stick by putting in a spacer to compress the spring to make the stick stiffer. You have to be careful though because if you compress the spring too much you might wear the base of the stick. I didn't mod the hall sensor magnets as others have done (Lockon.Ru Forums) to improve its input characteristics.
Compressing the X-52 springs
It was only when I saw an Aussie post on a Frugalsworld forum about buying a Thrustmaster Cougar directly from the US I looked at it again. I bought mine from Provantage and including freight it was a lot cheaper. I was also graduating from uni soon and that gave me an excuse to buy one. So after selling a whole lot of my old crap on Ebay including my treasured but not recently used eighteen year old Hewlett Packard 42S RPN calculator I had the money and placed an order. A week and a half later it arrived. Shortly after that I received an unexpected additional bill from the courier company for $50 (AUD) for "Australian quarantine fees" - I guess that customs must have thought it had a raccoon in it or something.
What is a Thrustmaster Cougar like? Well it is the most user-hostile computer peripheral I have ever experienced in all my time computing. I've used a lot of stuff so that is really saying something. It just isn't for people without a lot of commitment and perseverance. Many people get them broken out of the box, with a large batch missing the grease inside that is absolutely necessary to stop the poor quality metal insides (the "gimbals") quickly turning into a pile of metal shavings. (The gimbals are the part inside the base of the joystick that translate the joystick movement into the turns of a potentiometer). So first thing you have to do is pull it apart and check and possibly grease it. There can be an issue with the speedbrake that you have to check and fix before it breaks and some have an issue with the antenna knob potentiometer spiking. My Cougar antenna rotary dial has a large dead zone, that is movement at the end of the turn of the knob that doesn't provide input. The throttle has an incredibly loud annoying clicking indents that to remove requires you to disassemble and mod the throttle. The throttle intents are (I've read) in the wrong place anyway. The stick itself is incredibly stiff out of the box because of the rubber boot around the bottom of the joystick and the resistance springs, you can end up with a sore arm after a long session using it. The pinky toggle lacks feedback and feels a little weak like it could break at any time, but I haven't seen reports of this happening - it just feels a little flimsy. And the red button on the top of the stick doesn't feel very good - not providing effective tactile feedback that you've pressed it correctly.
And that is before you even install the software, plug it in and update the firmware. Once it has installed the eight devices in your computer you then have a very elaborate calibration to go through. You can chose to let the device auto-calibrate if you don't have issues with your rotary knobs. If you bork a step in the manual calibration you have to start right from the beginning. You've then got a calibrated Windows joystick. To use the programming capabilities you use Foxy which is completely intimidating. Here is some sample Foxy button code from Jastangs Falcon 4 Profile:
What is a Thrustmaster Cougar like? Well it is the most user-hostile computer peripheral I have ever experienced in all my time computing. I've used a lot of stuff so that is really saying something. It just isn't for people without a lot of commitment and perseverance. Many people get them broken out of the box, with a large batch missing the grease inside that is absolutely necessary to stop the poor quality metal insides (the "gimbals") quickly turning into a pile of metal shavings. (The gimbals are the part inside the base of the joystick that translate the joystick movement into the turns of a potentiometer). So first thing you have to do is pull it apart and check and possibly grease it. There can be an issue with the speedbrake that you have to check and fix before it breaks and some have an issue with the antenna knob potentiometer spiking. My Cougar antenna rotary dial has a large dead zone, that is movement at the end of the turn of the knob that doesn't provide input. The throttle has an incredibly loud annoying clicking indents that to remove requires you to disassemble and mod the throttle. The throttle intents are (I've read) in the wrong place anyway. The stick itself is incredibly stiff out of the box because of the rubber boot around the bottom of the joystick and the resistance springs, you can end up with a sore arm after a long session using it. The pinky toggle lacks feedback and feels a little weak like it could break at any time, but I haven't seen reports of this happening - it just feels a little flimsy. And the red button on the top of the stick doesn't feel very good - not providing effective tactile feedback that you've pressed it correctly.
And that is before you even install the software, plug it in and update the firmware. Once it has installed the eight devices in your computer you then have a very elaborate calibration to go through. You can chose to let the device auto-calibrate if you don't have issues with your rotary knobs. If you bork a step in the manual calibration you have to start right from the beginning. You've then got a calibrated Windows joystick. To use the programming capabilities you use Foxy which is completely intimidating. Here is some sample Foxy button code from Jastangs Falcon 4 Profile:
BTN H1U /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Down
/O /P KD(X1) DLY(100) KU(X1) /R Glance_Fwd_Rel
BTN H1D /I /P /H KU(X3) Trim_Nose_Up /R KD(X47) DLY(60) KU(X47)
/O /P KD(X20) DLY(100) KU(X20) /R Glance_Back_Rel
BTN H1L /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Left
/O KD(X23) DLY(100) KU(X23)
BTN H1R /I /H KU(X3) Trim_Roll_Right
/O KD(X24) DLY(100) KU(X24))
Even if you use an existing profile the setup is very involved. For example, take a look at the no less than twenty eight steps in setting up Jastangs Falcon 4 profile. And you will probably find things in the profile you need to change anyway requiring you to mod the profile code.
I knew that the Cougar wasn't for the faint hearted and was prepared to do the reading and learn Foxy. The one thing that I wasn't prepared for was the slop around the centre position of the joystick. I can't even begin to describe how much the centre play completely pisses me off. It totally detracts from the stick making it feel cheap which it is certainly not. It is completely unforgivable that a stick this expensive has this much centre play. If you've come from CH products you'd be astounded that it got past QA and left the factory in this condition. I found the cause on my stick is the poor fit of the stem of the base of the joystick into the gimbals. It has about 1.5 mm mismatch in the gimbals which doesn't sound like much but that translates to 6 mm of centre play at the top of the stick. By centre play I mean movement of the stick that doesn't translate into movement of your plane, it also feels very loose and sloppy. There is a document available in a zip file on the Cougarworld website (7 MB) that describes the three types of axis play you can experience with the Cougar.
To fix these issues people mod the Cougar either adjusting the existing gimbals or more commonly with complete replacements for the gimbals. The replacements the Uber II Nxt replacement gimbals and the hall sensors it requires or the RealSimulator force sensing kits are expensive and are DIY. The list of fixes and mods for the Cougar can be viewed on the Cougarworld site at Frugalsworld.
So you are probably thinking - what a bloody whiner, send the frigging Cougar to me you unappreciative spoilt git! Well, the thing about the Cougar is the hype that surrounds it and the cost builds up expectations that are probably unrealistic. But even with its problems looking at it and Foxy you know that the designers have tried to give you the most powerful and amazing HOTAS they could. It just falls short of this goal because of the poor "made in China" build quality, poor quality control, poor quality metal for the gimbals and use of potentiometers (albeit high sensitivity pots) that eventually will wear out. But despite these problems the HOTAS just screams at you to fix it and realise its potential. So I'm sticking with it and trying to work out how the hell I can possibly afford a Uber II Nxt mod and get one while they are still available. The most realistic scenario is I'll have try to fix the sloppiness myself by mucking around with the gap in the gimbals. I'm a little pissed I sold my HP 42S for it, but at least I didn't pay the ridiculous price I first saw for Cougars in Australia and I've still got my Saitek X-52 if it all goes pear shaped.
posted by Thommo at
1:57 PM
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