Callsign.Vega

Ya, you really can't compare the Mig-25 to the SR-71. The Mig-25 could do a very short burst to Mach 3.2 with full afterburner in which the engines get destroyed in quick order. The SR-71 can cruise at Mach 3.2+ for very long distances.

That F-18 shoot down was just suspected, not confirmed. True, the Mig-25 could go fast, but it made a lot of sacrifices in it's design. Very poor maneuverability, poor low altitude handling, heavy weight and inefficient engines gave it a very short combat radius. I think the Mig-29 and Su-27 where much better aircraft.

The Mig-25 was designed as a high altitude interceptor in reaction to the U-2 and SR-71. It was fast but performance in other areas was lacking. It actually prompted the development of the F-15, which turned out to be a much better aircraft.

Mig-25 turned out to be a pretty underwhelming aircraft.

I just bought 3- 30" LCD's to run Warthog at 7680x1600 resolution for $4k, the Warthog HOTAS was a drop in the bucket. ;) I am sane, err not married but I do have two mortgages!

A few months ago I bought one of the last production run Cougar HOTAS. It had horrible center play from factory. I then sold it online and made a bit of profit as the manufacturing stopped. I knew the Warthog HOTAS was coming out and had much better features. It sounds like they were pretty surprise so many people are pre-ordering these things. :thumbup:

Do you mean having flown the A-10C sim but never a real aircraft? That might be an issue. Although, when I was 14 I had a couple thousand hours flying is MS Flight Simulator and Falcon 3.0. When I had my first Private pilot's flight at 14, I took off, did a pattern and landed with the instructor just guarding the controls in a 152. Granted a 152 is surely no A-10C, but having thousands of hours of real flight time I don't think flying the A-10C would be that difficult after playing the sim. ;)

That is what Thrustmaster is telling resellers. This place still has 2 pre-order slots left. They say they are getting 10 in the first shipment. http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?action=enter&thispage=01100450100_BDE6442P.shtml&order_id=!ORDERID!

Does HDR always disable AA? That would stink.

A freeze function removes the aura of realism in a simulator. In real combat, you have to make sound decisions quickly. If you can just freeze the simulator and have eternity to think about what is going on, the realism drops significantly.

As someone who has tried both, they both seem equally precise / easy to fly. As a helicopter pilot though, I am use to center stick more as that's what all helicopters feature.

For the features / quality that the Warthog HOTAS is suppose to have, it's easily worth $400. I am glad I got in early on the pre-order list! ;)

Although the F-15E is a great aircraft, I'd much rather have the F-16. I don't think two seat aircraft work well for single pilot simulators.

You want them to include a plug for pedals that haven't been out for well over a decade that maybe .001% if their purchasers would have? Seem's a bit silly. All current and future Rudder's will be USB.

I have one of the pre-orders over at shopblt.com for the stick. My only worry is that since this is the joysticks first manufacturing run there will be problems/defects.

Hah, using rudder pedals over a stick twist grip rudder is elitist? So I can say that you using a joystick over me using my keyboard to fly you are elitist too! The point of a simulator is to, umm simulate controlling an aircraft realistically and a twist rudder does not do that. The only aircraft that I know of that was going to actually use a twist rudder/pedals was the cancelled Comanche helicopter. No sane company would design a realistic replica of a HOTAS and then put some gimmicky twist rudder on the stick. If you can afford a $400 HOTAS I don't think $100 rudder pedals will break the bank. No space for rudder pedals under your desk? Where do you put your feet?

Twist stick rudder is lol ;)

I was thinking about getting this force sensing stick but really there are only a few aircraft that use it. Such as the F-16, F-22, F-35. I pre-ordered the Warthog HOTAS as it seems to have a lot of good features like the X65-F, but in a traditional movement stick. All of the sim's I fly (BS/A-10C soon/MS FS X/Rise of Flight) all have aircraft with traditional movement sticks. Another thing that sold me on the Warthog HOTAS is that the stick base is very small (round) with a very thin "plate" at the bottom. This is so that you can fit the stick between your legs on a larger chair, rest your thighs over the plate to keep it in position. Very nice idea for those of us that don't have/want dedicated cockpit setups.

Flight Sim's being heavily CPU Dependant, really need to go to multi-threaded to utilize 4-6 cores. Sim's like Black Shark really only use 1 core for the main simulator thread (no sound etc), really hampering FPS. My GPU barely reaches 50% utilization at 2560x1600, and only 1 of 4 cores is maxed out while playing BS and I get a measly ~25 FPS. Game designers really have to step it up and fully utilize current hardware.

Ya, the cougar centering was pretty poor. I've read that the Warthog HOTAS uses a ball joint/spring system along with the magnetic sensors so it should be quite a step up over the Cougar in movement/centering/precision.

Going to DX11 is a good thing. DX11 cards will be going on two years on the market soon, not like it's a huge surprise.

I think the F-18 has the same stick type as the F-15. The only one that ever produced such a stick as far as I know is Suncom like over a decade ago.

Yes, they are legit. I've ordered from them before. Shipping is free in the US. I guess it would be a tad expensive to Canada as the box is almost like 10 kilograms.

I ordered from: http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?action=enter&thispage=01100200U025_BDE6442P.shtml&order_id=!ORDERID! It look's like they have 4-5 pre-orders already.

Haha, Honey: the HOTAS Warthog was on sale and there are no returns! It was originaly $600!