Hey Folks! I have been playing air SIM with a mouse and keyboard for over a year now, and I am about to buy my first flight stick and throttle for air SIM, but I don’t know what to buy. I have a budget of 200 EUR. So what should I buy? Should I buy new or second-hand? Should I also buy the rudder pedals?
The LG lower lvl sim gear is all good.
I own one of these
My flight stick and throttle
And its worked well for me for about 6 months
I use an X-56 which is about that budget. But a cheaper one + Pedals might be better.
Thank you, I will probably buy the x52 and Thrustmaster rudder pedals.
For pedals I’d recommend the Saitek pedals. I used those in several projects since ages, and those are the best price/quality wise in my experience (I think my dad and me together had a total of 5 of them up to now in various homepit projects).
My dad also got the Thrustmaster pedals as the Saitek ones were not available recently for quite a while, but was so unhappy with them that he replaced them again with the now again available Saitek pedals just this week.
Issues with the Thrustmaster pedals were a) uncomfortably close footpads (especially if you have the flightstick between your legs as we have with modified Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthogs) and b) lack of “feelable” centering of the pedals, so you never feel whether you’re in neutral position or not.
Don’t forget about head tracking! It’s the best thing to happen to sims and it frees up a hat that can be used for more useful things like trim controls.
Most of us build a cockpit slowly over time. I started very simple and worked my way up over the years.
- Purchased an X52 HOTAS with twist rudder.
- Purchased TrackIR.
- Eventually upgraded to an X56 HOTAS.
- After about 2 years, I finally got a set of VKB T-Rudder pedals (these work great with a desktop setup). I should have gotten these much sooner! Twist rudder does not compare to the control you get with pedals.
- Now that I had pedals, I got a quality joystick (that doesn’t have a twist rudder). VKB Gunfighter Mk.III with the Modern Combat Pro grip.
- And then finally got a quality throttle from Virpil.
Back when I started, quality HOTAS’s didn’t really exist until VKB, Virpil, and Winwing came around. That’s why I made the marginal upgrade from and X52 to an X56. These days, I would have went from the X52 straight to the Virpil/VKB stuff.
The higher end stuff really is worth it once you get the budget to obtain them.
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That.
And the peak obviously being a VR headset.
I’m running a setup now with Oculus Quest 2, Thrustmaster Warthog, Saitek pedals in a custom wooden homepit with partially functional side panels.
Has never been more fun to fly, even otherwise unspectacular vehicles. For example love very much the VR view from Alouette 2 / 3 or Mi-24A.
An alternative to TrackIR is OpenTrack & AiTrack which uses a webcam to track your head movements, both peices of software are free.
Im officially jealous. They look glorious to use but way out of my budget currently
So I Should buy a flight stick, throttle and TrackIR first and then the rudder pedals. If so what head tracker should I buy? How much does all that gear affect the performance of a laptop? And again thank you!
I’d go with stick/throttle (in combo) and pedals first, then headtracker.
Or even a combo with stick, throttle an pedals together, like THRUSTMASTER T16000M Flight Pack.
As for headtracker, I always had Naturalpoint TrackIR (firt 4, then 5 I think).
As those are just input devices, they don’t affect performance in a noticeable way at all, I’d say. I was basically running the same input devices already when I had potato setup 10, or even 15 years ago! I just upgraded to a more powerful modern gaming PC a year ago, after getting the VR set (THAT one of course needs power!)…
Thank you all for helping me out!