By Anders Hallin on Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 06:15 pm:
Right, I got a bit inspired by that post about
joysticks. I would like to claim that the best
joystick ever created was the one and only:
*drumroll*
TAC-2
*fanfare*
Oh, the memories.
Of course, the TAC-2 was designed for a completely
different purpose than the joysticks of today, but
that doesn't matter to me =)
By TomChick on Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 06:21 pm:
I'll bite. What's a TAC-2?
I've still got a battered Thrustmaster FLCS and TQS on my desk and a huge sprawling set of Thrustmaster rudder pedals underfoot. I bang my toes on the damn thing all the time.
They don't get nearly as much use as they did in the good ol' days. I love the workmanship and movement of CH's Flight Stick Pro, but you can't beat the programability and ergonomics of this Thrustmaster suite.
-Tom
By wumpus on Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 09:29 pm:
tsk, tsk, Tom-- OR IS IT REALLY ICHABOD? I remember the TAC-2!
http://hem.spray.se/davha/eget/joystick.html
wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com
By TomChick on Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 09:47 pm:
Ah. "Released in the early eighties," it says. That explains it. I was busy discovering beer and girls back then. I didn't get around to computers until later in the decade. :)
-Tomchabod
By Anders Hallin on Friday, February 9, 2001 - 05:38 am:
I got my Amiga around '90 I think, and I used a
TAC-2 until I sold the Amiga. You wouldn't believe
the kind of punishment that joystick could
withstand. A lot of the games back then were of
the stick-jerking kind (I'm still talking about
joysticks for computers).
By tim elhajj on Friday, February 9, 2001 - 03:40 pm:
"but you can't beat the programability and ergonomics of this Thrustmaster suite"
Yes, TM gear is way programmable, but ergonomic? I don't think so. I got rid of my F-22 because I just couldn't get used to how stiff it worked. Maybe you think that's not really an issue of ergonomics, but let me tell you I was damn uncomfortable trying to do much with that stick. Obviously I'm used to a completely different tactile sense when it comes to joysticks and could not make the conversion to TM. But I wonder how anyone manages to do anything close to precision movement when you have to *shove* the stick around.
By Mark Asher on Friday, February 9, 2001 - 07:40 pm:
So what's the joystick of choice these days among hardcore flight sim jockeys?
By TimElhajj on Friday, February 9, 2001 - 08:38 pm:
"So what's the joystick of choice these days among hardcore flight sim jockeys?"
heh, at the risk of sounding decidedly softcore, I've been using the an MS Sidewinder FF for most of this past summer. I love FF in WW2 sims and Mig Alley. Even if the twisty handle isn't too realistic, the stick is way sturdy. I've had it for 2 years with narry a hickup.
The perfect joystick does not exist. One reason I responded to the TM post was because I was so bitterly disapointed with my F22. I'm sure it had to do with how difficult (and expensive) they are to purchase these days and the way people uniformly rave about them.
They are pretty awesome as far as programming, but only in a weird anachronistic DOS sense. Why is it so difficult to get a stick with the programability of TM gear, but also in an easy, intuitive, and bullet proof package?
The stick I've enjoyed the most was the Suncom Talon. It looks good and I really like how smooth it feels and how easy it is to program. But the programming functionality is not very robust and the damn things fall apart every 6 months. LOL, lets not even talk about the stupid SPI software they created--it extends the programmability somewhat, but no where near the level of TM or Satiek. Besides, setting up the SPI thing to work on the stick requires a huge time commitment (well, not as much as learning to program your TM gear, but enough that I'm not going to do it more than once in a life time).