Returning to the LOMAC series, with a few questions!

[118thCavalry_SSG_Combs]

Hello,

After a few years of being out of the combat flight simulator loop I was happy to stumble across my very first copy of LOMAC I had bought years ago. Version 1.0. My service in the Military kept me away from having the time invest in flight sims. Now I am a out of the military I am happy to say I have the time to get back into my flight sim gaming passion. And from what I have seen and researched so far ED has brought the sim genre very far from the days of Flanker, Falcon4, Janes FA-18 ect... Aside from all that ill get to the point of my post. What I am looking for are suggestions from the community on Hardware, Hotas ect.. my specs on my machine right now is as follows, and I know its sad

 

Acer Aspire 5745

Intel Core i3-350m

Intel HD Graphics

4GB DDR3

 

Logitech Game Pad (which sucks btw wish i had my old X-45)

 

I bought FC2 and I have it running ok with a lot of tweaking to my graphics.cfg file. The game pad works...for now but i want to invest in a Hotas, I dont have the kind of funding to get a ThrustMaster (maybe one day)

 

Point of my post, Is Saitek still the way to go with a Hotas or our there other options out there now days and I plan on building my own system so which gfx card company should I go with? Invidia or ATI the way to go?

 

Any input from forum members would be great. Thank you in advance.

 

Scout Out!

[EtherealN]

Saitek are good, specifically for "good and cheap", imo. For best of the best right now I'd say the Thrustmaster HOTAS Wathog is the best you can get, but it costs a lot of money. (Though some remain partial to the Saitek force-sensing HOTAS, and the Logitech HOTAS is cheaper.) What I'd say is get a Saitek X-52, non-pro. Cheap and does the job. No point spending more if you are on a tight budget and might be getting something better down the line. (I used exactly that as a stopgap between the death of my Cyborg and the release of the TM hog.)

 

On graphics cards, to be technical there is no longer such a thing as ATI - they're a fully integrated division of AMD now. (So it's AMD Radeon, not ATI Radeon.) Personally I prefer nVidia, I feel they have more solid drivers, but I haven't tested the AMD cards enough to really make a good call. On CPU's AMD has pretty much nothing that can compete with Intel. (Unfortunately.)