If you’re looking for an entry-level, inexpensive option, I recommend the Logitech X52 HOTAS. I’ve been using it for years myself and it’s very sturdy, with no issues after 13 years of continuous use.
I recommend it for the following reasons:
The throttle and stick are separate.
The WT doesn’t support multiple throttles, so a single-axis throttle lever is sufficient.
It has the same number of hat switches and axes as a high-end HOTAS, so it can be used with a wide range of aircraft, from reciprocating engines to jets.
It has a twist rudder, so it’s recommended for people who don’t have rudder pedals.
Whilst true for multiple engine control. I use my dual throttle for thrust vectoring on something like the harrier or wing sweep on something like the tornado.
So it can be good to have depending on the aircraft in question
When I select a number ‘N’ (2, 4, 8, 16) of bombs, rockets, whatever to drop/fire in a salvo, what I’d really, really like is for N bombs, rockets, whatever to actually drop/fire and not ‘X’ bombs, rockets, whatever, where 0 < X </= N. How difficult can that be Gaijin?
The WinWing URSA MINOR is the best cheap product. If you have more budget, the VKB NXT is the better choice. If you have more, the WinWing Orion2 is also good.
Hey, sorry for the late answer and many thanks. I researched a bit on all the joysticks you recommended and while I was wandering the Logitech I found the X52, the X52 Professional and the X56. As far as I know, there isn’t much difference between the X52 and the X52 Prof. however, the X56 does have the dual throttle and if we pray on everything prayable, maybe the individual engine control could come? There’s a suggestion at least, but it’s still not on the ‘considered’ section. Also, I think I’ll try to buy something that comes with both a joystick and a throttle as I’m a mess with controls, so I have many controls assigned to the same key binds. I’m sure that having the throttle with more buttons will somehow relieve the keyboard’s key binds. So basically I’d be looking at the X56 or something similar. When it comes to the PS4/5 controller, I do have the PS (as you can see by my name), though ironically I don’t have a controller (something technical I don’t remember the exact problem). I’m too lazy to go repair it, and it costs €60 to buy a new one. Since I don’t use the PS4 that much (never), I don’t have a need to buy it, so I’ll save the €60 for the joystick (and throttle).
I’ve got a budget and as I don’t want to spend very little on it, I also don’t want to spend too much since it’ll be my first time (more or less).
Well that’s it, thanks for the feedback and feel free to add anything or reply.
It might do or it might be some other amount less than the selected amount. I wondered if a quick button press sometimes interrupted the sequence when the button was released, resulting in only some of the selected weapons being released. However, I made sure to hold the button down a day or so ago when I had four 540-lbers set to drop from the Buccaneer, but only one bomb dropped.
Equally frustrating is the ‘S’ setting for dropping everything, as they don’t drop all at once nor do they drop at a steady rate. Probably fine if you only need to release 5-6 bombs to destroy a base, but not so good if you need 12 500-lbers. The first 8 will ripple off rapidly, but then Gaijin pause, think about it and only then decide to release the remaining 4 or maybe just a couple followed by the final 2 a bit later - not necessarily very helpful at M0.9.
They must have been using some lost alien technology back in the 90s when you could define a stick of bombs by how many bombs to drop at once, number of drops and how many milliseconds between drops. Not only that, but when you came to drop your bombs in War Birds the release you had defined actually happened, not some random other pattern.
Schindibee’s suggestion explains it well. For bombs I find the [2] [4] [8] [16] settings usually work as expected, although rockets are very random and I soon end up with some unexpected number of remaining rockets after a couple of releases. The [S] setting for bombs is fine up to around 8 bombs on bases or any number on larger targets (the bigger airfield modules).
WarBirds handled this with consol commands - open chat, start with a special character and follow the given syntax. In WB you started with a ‘.’ hence they were known as ‘dot commands’ (Il-2 (46) used ‘>’ iirc but in that game the commands were mostly for server settings if you were the host eg icon settings). In WB the commands could be used for some aircraft-related controls, such as bomb release:
‘.salvo n’ /n = number of bombs/rockets to release per button press.
‘.delay mmm’ /mmm = number of milliseconds between each release.
However, I’m not aware of any such consol command functionality in WT, even if it was originally derived from an Il-2 offshoot.
I got the Ursa Minor today, I can’t find how to set it up properly, help would be welcome.
It’s not in the controllers list so I guess I have to set it up myself line by line, problem is, I can’t keep the plane in a position steadily. So it has a big tendency to go back in a default position, making it wobble around and even new acrobatics I never seen before.
So it’s basically impossible to take long steady turns as is, I don’t really know that set up to change to make it so it doesn’t enters a command whent I put the stick back in the center.
I don’t know about joysticks’ control settings, but have you tried using the Toggle SAS button? Might help in getting the plane to be a bit more steady. Sorry I can’t help with anything more.
Congratulations on the Joystick by the way.
Hello there, I did all that already and idk what triggered it but now I can fly the plane even better than with the mouse.
It still need some fine tuning because I can’t aim properly even a static ground target like I could easily with the mouse.
The other big game changer is that now the plane stay still and the whole world it turning around it, I don’t know what triggered this change too but it’s way funnier like that, way harder too at first but after some practice I think it helps a lot to fly sharper.
I still have to buy a VR headset for that, and damn those are so costy.
I can move the head with a thumb joystick on my Ursa Minor but it’s not as easy as moving the head.
VR is great and WT generally support it well. But There is a tradeoff when you use a VR set, you can’t really check your six as well as you can with TrackIR or joy pov and resolution is not as great as a good quality monitor so due to WT rendering problems when someone fly below you unless is maneuvering and pulling vortex conttails it’ll be invisible to you.