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I'm now the proud owner of a brand-spankin' new Saitek X52 flight control system. But I have a small handful of complaints about it, and a question for a few of you as well.

First, the question: Remember when Rich posted those pictures of his office on here? At least one of you has a joystick with black covers over the throttle and stick. Did those come with your system or did you buy them separately? If you bought them separately, where? I was pseudo-frustrated with the X52 because it didn't have those covers, but that proved to be the least of my woes.

I remember discussing this stick with someone a few months ago. If you're thinking about buying the X52, here are my pros/ cons for the system. I'd love to know how your favorite joysticks compare, what's better or worse about them and all that...

The Pros
* It's definitely beautiful. It has aluminum triggers, aluminum bodywork, and all of the hand placement areas have rubber to prevent slipping and to make it comfortable to use for long periods of time. And it illuminates in the gorgeous blue I love so much (my vaio and my speaker system both light up with the same blue)
* It's tight and loose in all the right places. The stick is firm when centering but loose during transit, and the throttle's firmness is fully adjustable, so you can make it looser or tighter based on your own preferences
* It has too many buttons to count. The trigger is two-stage (and acts as two different buttons if you want... half-way in it's a trigger, but it can go full-depressed and act as "button 15." The button normally issued as "fire B" has a safety latch over it, which makes it an awesome missile or eject button. And it has more hat switches than anyone could ever possibly need. It also has several rotaries, sliders, toggles, and it has one of those nifty "nubby" things that you'd find on an IBM Thinkpad laptop, which works as a fairly accurate mouse (around 1024/768dpi)
* it's fully-programmable for any game and the entire setup uses the magic bus system... in essence, the stick and throttle trick your computer into thinking they're a mouse and keyboard, and you can program almost every button on the stick

The Cons
* Setup is annoying. It takes a little while to learn how to program it, and there's a commonly-made mistake during setup because it opens the "add new hardware" dialog rather than adding it in the Saitek software itself. It seems a lot of people have had a problem with that based on what I've read recently
* The game doesn't work with BF42 unless you download and install an extremely complicated and time-consuming fix for it... that's annoying
* Also BF related, the throttle is WAY too large for decent helicopter piloting in DC. I hate using a mouse/ keyboard for flying, it takes a monumental amount of fun-factor away from the game for me, but you can't rightly jam this massive throttle around as easily as you could a small lever found on most of the other joysticks in Saitek's catalog
* It's a monster... it takes up a lot more of my desk than I thought it would by looking at the pictures. The throttle is so large that I can't wrap my hand around it and touch my thumb and middle finger together
* One of the buttons on the throttle unit (labeled "i") can't be programmed for jack-squat. VERY annoying because it's conveniently placed exactly where I'd want a missile launcher button or my brakes in MSFS.
* It comes with an on-disc manual and no paperwork in the box whatsoever. To some, that's fine and dandy, to me, that's bloody obnoxious. If I pay $109 for a joystick I expect some trees to die in the process!
* It's REALLY BRIGHT. With all of the lights off in this room it's as bright as the television. However, the LED brightness is adjustable, which is a neat bonus
* I absolutely love 3D rudder twist sticks, but if having a 3D twist turns you off, fear not... you can lock the rudder twist so it doesn't move one iota.

Sorry to yap on and on about this joystick. I figured at least a few people might want to know what I thought about it now that I finally have it. If you're thinking of buying one, go for it, just keep in mind the cons I mentioned. Other than that, it is (imo) the greatest FCS I've ever seen

I think you may be referring to me. We did discuss Saitek joysticks for a few posts... Here's the pic you may have seen it in. If it was this stick you are thinking of, I didn't have to buy anything seperate.

My brother has the X52....he's obsessed with flight simulator lol

lol Dink that's the Logitech MX518 mouse... I just bought one of those as well

The thing I'm thinking of were black bags that cover the stick and separate throttle unit. They say something to the effect of "Remove before flight" or something like that. I can't remember what that thread was called, unfortunately, but if I find it I'll see what it was that had those bags and I'll throw a link on so we can try to figure out what stick has them. I definitely remember that conversation though, and how at the time I had an ST290 and how it sort of looked like your stick but mine wasn't as good, or at least I was thinking that hehe.


I'd love to know how he has his control profile set up. Mostly I'd like it if you could ask him what he uses the safety-fire button for in Flight Sim. I use it for starting my engines but with no rockets to fire or ejector seats to launch, I'm curious how people assign that key . Engine-start was the best use I could think up for it. It's virtually impossible to assign every key to a command in any given game because there's SOO many controls... who could remember them all?

He said he has the safety fire button assined to gear up/down and he uses the blue 'e' button on the other controller for start/stop engines.

Hmm, can't help you then Matt, sorry.

If you haven't played around with the MX518 yet, I think you'll love it Enjoy. One of the best things about it, is that it's so big. I have big hands, so this mouse is so comfortable to me compared to many other smaller mice.

Heh... I bet that thread is what is on my monitor in that picture

Mate, you've obviously bought a comprehensive stick, great for flight simulators. I think you have to accept it won't be ideal for games like Battlefield with their arcadey flying vehicles, but I'm sure it'll be awesome for proper flight sims.

With regard to your question of what other people have, I have the Logitech Extreme3D pro. Simple and fairly cheap, but still responsive and has all the functions I need. I'd rather have yours for a true flight sim though.

I have the same model as Agent Dink, pretty good stick, although I really just got it for messing around in DBPro.

i have the saitek cyborg evo, nice stick it is

I love it. It's perfect for games like BattleField, MechWarrior, FreeSpace, and X2, where realism isn't an obstacle. For the price this stick was unbeatable. 10x better than anything I would have bought at the local computer shop.

lol I wish I could blow up that picture and snag the URL from your monitor. I'll just do a search for it later today

I should make a game that maximizes the potential of this stick, but then how many people actually own one? But it would be neat to make a space flight sim or something. And I could ship it with a profile.dat file with all of the commands pre-programmed, and have a simplified command set for normal sticks, which most people own. One thing I love about this stick is that it has 16 buttons, three hats, a mouse/ virtual joystick, and two rotaries... but then it has three different modes that can each be individually programmed for separate commands (so in effect it has 48 buttons), but then each of those buttons can be clutched to be another button in each mode, so if I'm doing my math right, that makes 288 controls for the game, NOT counting the hat, rotaries, and mouse/ virtual stick. But most of MSFS's commands are radio commands and waypoint settings, so while it's possible to set every single command in FS2004 to this stick, it wouldn't really be practical... so what I should try to do is make a game that could actually utilize every possible button and combination this stick
has to offer It's probably impossible but what an awesome game that would be, hehe.

As it stands, for Battlefield I have the safety fire button set as eject, the "E" button set as "parachute," the trigger (both stages) set to fire, and the throttle fire and pinkie trigger set to dropping bombs (or firing missiles in Desert Combat). But I just thought of something... if I could program the slider switch on the throttle to act as the throttle as well, then I could use that for flying choppers . Now I just need to find someone who knows how to program this behemoth beyond what I've figured out, lol.

@ Robin: I didn't even think of that, that's better than my setup. Here's how I have my X52 set up for Flight Sim 2004 (and MSFS X when I get it)...


What I'd love to do would be to set up the two throttle rotaries so I could use those for elevator and aileron trim, but I can't work out how to program them and I can't figure out how to program the slider either.

Edit:
I love the MX518. I'm not a big fan of corded mice, they tend to snag on stuff, but I'm really happy with this mouse. It's outrageously accurate (the most accurate mouse I've ever owned) and I love the sensitivity buttons that make it so you can set how much the cursor moves around... very awesome indeed, well worth the $60