Revvin

Captcha has been pretty much cracked by spam bots unfortunately, the simple one line question option instead of captcha has cut the ammount of spam bots on my forum by at least 80%

Mower> Its not a retail unit it was a throttle and stick that CH Products OEM division created for use by the military for training, they also made a Reaper drone console too. Because of the high tolerances and materials used I would hazzard a guess its cost far outstrips that of TM's Warthog. The only comment made by CH so far has been that an A-10C HOTAS is on their roadmap for a consumer release but there is no date set as yet.

You have obviously not used the product otherwise you'd realise what a false statement that was. The electronics are very different, the CH MFP itself has gone through a new revision of the hardware to improve the performance. The Control Manager software which is not compatible with the Ergodex panel is a quantum leap ahead of its rival.

Have a look at this mod - I don't believe any lubrication is required and is within the skillset of most males :)

I don't believe it was a mistake, Amazon have been doing some crazy deals over the last few months so I wouldn't be surpried if it was a limited time offer. I've bought a large number of games in the last few months for really good prices. On a lesser scale they've had Forza 3 Ultimate Edition for £11.75 but has gone up in price in the last day or so to £17.82. Its on a smaller scale but lots of items I have been watching have done similar things to their prices as Amazon has been really competitive.

Ruggbutt did a review here at CombatAce comparing his six year old CH Fighterstick and Pro throttle against a new one and they both worked identically.

I've just had to count back and remeber just how old my CH Fighterstick is but its 7 years old this month and still working perfectly.

Truly excited when it arrived, bought into the hype and the first one turned up dead on arrival. The second developed a fault in the electronics of the throttle unit while the joystick suffered from excessive paint peeling. The third developed the infamous speedbrake issue as well as paint peeling and increasing slop due to the poor quality material used for the gimbals. I was quite surprised how badly it looked inside, when a local shop tried to repair mine the innards were just a mess of hot glue and paper wrapped around the hat switch connections. Apart from that it felt nice, a bit cold in the winter but ergonomically pretty good though the switched on the throttle could be uncomfortable to reach when the throttle was fully fore or aft. The rotaries are not very precise to use but usable and it was something I missed a little on my CH Pro Throttle. The throttle movement itself I found a little sticky. Slackening off the tension wheel to try and alleviate that problem meant the throttle could fall forward under its own weight. The software was good though, familiar to me as a long time Thrustmaster user. Perhaps a little daunting to new users but it had some decent tutorials though a lot of menu's to find things and little buttons here and there. Today's more complete GUI's for CH, Saitek, Logitech and TM users have moved on a long way. I wouldn't say I hated it, that’s too strong a word, its just a joystick like all the others at the end of the day. I was disappointed, more so when the obvious flaws were glossed over by over eager sim reviewers.

I'm still happy with my TrackIR 3 with vector clip, having just done a small upgrade on my PC I had thought about upgrading to a TrackIR 5 but I don't feel I'd get enough of a benefit to justify the cost when my current TrackIR works well. I also wonder if Naturalpoint could be working on something like Facetrack as the TrackIR 5 has been out a while now.

I wonder if the face tracking done by the likes of the Kinect unit and Playstation Eye camera will be where Naturalpoint takes their next product. There is already a face tracking API available for the PC and it would do away with the need for additional devices mounted on headsets and caps etc, perhaps their next product won't be hardware at all just software that can be used with a regular webcam.

Well I hope it works out for them, it does look like a nice stick, I mentioned popularity because I think having to actually cannibalize the stick to use it would restrict its sales even if it was an F18 stick etc. Do they have any plans to make an interchangeable option?

Thats a shame, if they had made it interchangeable I could see them selling a lot more. I can't imagine many Cougar owners wanting to cannibalize their Cougars for a stick from a plane that is not as widely popular as say an F18, F15 etc.

It looks fantastic, perhaps its because the Mirage is a less popular aircraft than say if you'd made an F18 stick? You said "All you need is to redo the electronic connections from your Cougar PCB to the Mirage stick switches" does this stick need to be hard wired? or does it just plug into the base like the existing Cougar stick and would therefore be compatible with the HOTAS Warthog too?

Gabe Newell is selling mass market FPS games not niche high fidelity flight simulation products. There are plenty of people who have done a great many things for the flight sim community but do so because they are fans of the genre not for personal gain or fame. I can't upgrade my PC so DCS: A10 isn't an option for me right now but hopefully in a few months I will get my upgrade done and buy the game. DCS: A10 has not been released yet. Those who can afford it right now have got to play the Beta but if DCS: A10 is not out for a month or two and you really want to buy it then put a few dollars aside each week. I personally think its worth it for the length of time I'll play it. People are too wrapped up in the 'I want it right now' mentality instead of saving for something. ED have the sales figures from past titles and set the price accordingly to maximise sales so second guessing the economics is pointless. The price is comparable to other less involved titles. ED could have made it much less realistic to appeal to a wider audience but then the rivot counters would tear them to shreds. You can't have it both ways.

I thought TM set up a forum but took it down as it wasn't getting used as everyone was using Frugalsworld? Official or unofficial there should be some sort of forum for Thrustmaster users especially with a new product coming soon

I suppose if he wants to use the Cougar F16 throttle it would make sense for him to mod his existing stick and just use that as a standalone unit unless you can use the throttle plugged into a Cougar that has no stick in place. Perhaps Thrustmaster will consider making a separate F16 throttle, they have all the moulds and tooling for the Cougar, if they updated the electronics and made the interface USB it could work as long as they also correct some of its flaws.

Those pedals look fantastic!

Yes I know that was why I posted, if there is no joystick to connect to the PC then the throttle it would appear is pretty much useless apart from used as a spare to hook up to an existing Cougar stick or broken down for spares. I don't see how it could be used with the forthcoming Warthog HOTAS.

How would that connect to the PC? its a 15 pin gameport type connector?

I don't think its that expensive considering what we paid 8 years ago for the Cougar. The HOTAS Warthog has much more features and hopefully a lot less hassle than the Cougar was. Its the price of a high spec graphics card but will surely still be used long after that graphics card has to be upgraded in a few short years.

Yes I have the Vector Expansion

Its a good point about the years of use. I'm still using the TrackIR 3 I bought many years ago, it still works flawlessly and still gets supported by Naturalpoint. A lot of manufacturers will just dump support once they launch a new product but Naturalpoint has not.

I just don't see TrackIR as being so expensive for the immersion it gives for little fuss, it's certainly not a device only if you are rich - not when you consider how much we spend on this hobby

TrackIR is worth every penny. I don't like flying without it. As Bwaze said its more than just a camera its a sophisticated device and its still the industry leader and the first choice for many sim pilots even though there are cheaper head tracking options out there because its simply the best.

It looks like a very slick piece of kit, impressive list of features. I'm glad to see Thrustmaster move to a full on GUI for their programming, the layout looks good from the early screenshots and brings their programming suite bang up to date rather than the DOS legacy stuff used on the Cougar.