A New Joystick

Scot

I need a new joystick for my PC, anybody got a recommendation?

maskedweasel

What kind of joystick? Like flight simulator?

Scot

maskedweasel said:

What kind of joystick? Like flight simulator?

Flight sim, but potentially anything with flying.

Scot

Also I am wondering if posters have better experiences with weight, suction pads or non-slip pads to keep the joystick in place.

I had issues with suction pads, weight may be the only way to sort out the way a joystick can move around on your table.

Asm0deus

I used to recommend the t16000m but they got jacked up in price by lots soo not so much anymore and feel vkb is the better option now if you want to pay less but still have great quality, the t16000m is just decent quality.

Some option are the T.16000M FCS HOTAS which is kind of the low/mid budget sticks which is what I have except I have the older original green version that came as a single stick instead of a stick and throttle.  I do think this one comes a a couple variotion like duo sticksm stick n throtle and I think you can still find it as a single stick but that may be harder to do.  

There are less expensive low budgets ones but they will be sub par quality etc.

Next up which is higher quality is VKB or Virpil sticks.  If you just want one stick or a stick and throttle my suggestion would be to go VKB cause they will do the job as fine as virpil, they are a less expensive with the caveat of being maybe not quite as quality as the virpils but far more quality than the t16000m by thrustmaster.

If you got more money to burn have a bigger budhet Virpil are great especially for dual stick set ups, alpha primes are very nice! 

Also note most of these quality sticks come in two parts the stick itself and the base it sits on.

One thing to note...customer service availability ans shipping vkb seems to be far better than virpil.

Whne I update my set up I will more than likely be getting the gladiator SCG premium stick.  I would really like the virpil alpha prime stick but they are to hard difficult to get here in Canada and they cost more than I really wanna pay.

cameltosis

The only joystick I have experience with is the T16000m HOTAS.

I feel like it's a good entry into the world of HOTAS, but it's not particularly great. The plus side is it has a ton of buttons that are really well done ergonomically. I especially love all the thumb buttons on the throttle. The throttle is also *big*, as in it fills my hand when I grip it, and that feels good to me (no dirty jokes please!).

There were two big downsides for me.

The first is a quality issue. There is a known, common fault with the design. A small bit of plastic inside the stick often wears down and affects one of the potentiometers. For me, this started happening after about 100hrs of use, becoming unplayable after 120hrs. You can replace the potentiometer, or do some bodge-job style repairs, but it'll never be as good as it was to begin with. I tried to bodge mine, but that potentiometer still regularly thought I was steering left.

It's possible this fault has been fixed with newer models of the T16000M so worth doing a search first.

The second problem I had was a lack of feedback. There's no rumble packs, motors to push back on stick or throttle. The stick just had a single spring in the base, throttle was just sticky. Now, I don't have any other joysticks to compare to, but compared to my wheel (which has awesome, detailed feedback), I definitely feel this was a missing feature. When I got shot in my spaceship, I wanted to feel it!

I've long thought about getting a replacement joystick as I had a blast in Elite: Dangerous flying about, but E:D was literally the only game I needed a stick for, and i got bored. I haven't really come across any other flying games that I want to play.

Scot

Yes there are not that many flying games I am going to playing ED and Ace Combat pretty soon (within the next year), that's what put this on my radar.