Warthog HOTAS

[kestrel79]

Anyone have one of these? Curious to how it is with CloD? I have read some threads at SimHQ with people having issues.

[Skoshi Tiger]

I'm using a hotas WartHog.

I's going OK except there are issues with the way the switches on the throttle opperate. Most of the switches are standard toggle switches which means that when you throw the switch it stays in that position. COD does not recognise that you have only thrown the switch once and will repeatedly issue the command.

In some situations this is ok but lets say you assign a switch to close radiators a unit , if you throw the switch and leave it in that possition the radiator control in game will continue to close to fully closed. In this case when I want to adjust the radiators to get any sort of control you need to toggle the switch repeatedly (returning it back to OFF imediately after turning it on) until you get your desired setting.

A momentary switch would be much more gooder! (is that a word?)

Also some of the switches that are obscured by the trottle leaver making it awkward to opperate.

Apart from that it works great!

I'm not using Target so there may be ways around some of these problems for the technecally inclined!

Cheers!

[335th_GRAthos]

Very nice Joystick and Throttle and with so many switches and buttons that you can put everything you want!

The bad news:
The Stick is done for modern Fly-by-wire airplanes: You give the plane a movement with the stick (e.g. 20° left), the plane takes the position and subsequently the computer keeps the plane stable at the situation you put it in.
So even if the stick is very stiff, you have no problems.

In CoD it is not fly by wire and there are few trim controls so you are obliged to keep the stick continously at a certain position in order to make the plane keep a certain direction.
Good luck to your right wrist if you like flying 1-2hrs...

~S~

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

The bad news:
The Stick is done for modern Fly-by-wire airplanes: You give the plane a movement with the stick (e.g. 20° left), the plane takes the position and subsequently the computer keeps the plane stable at the situation you put it in.
So even if the stick is very stiff, you have no problems.

In CoD it is not fly by wire and there are few trim controls so you are obliged to keep the stick continously at a certain position in order to make the plane keep a certain direction.
Good luck to your right wrist if you like flying 1-2hrs...

~S~

Too true! But unless your going force feedback it is true with all joysticks that are held in a centre position.

It's Not quite authentic but it works for me, I've got my trim mapped to a home brew controller, What I would normally do is move the stick to the attitude I want to maintain and then trim until I've reduced the pressure (ie moving it closer to the centre position) on the stick.

Luckly with the heavy spring on the Warthog you get a good feel for that center position. (and you get your 30 minutes of exercise a day! )


Cheers!

[recoilfx]

It's actually very easy to reduce the centering force for the warthog with very easy mods.


There are three ways:
1.) Extend the shaft. This will give you more accuracy and less centering force.

2.) Unscrew the top 8(?) screws from the silver ring and the four black screws hidden under the 8 screw silver ring. Remove the black heavy spring and place the four small springs from the bottom on top of piston through the rods.

See this tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBMBR8M0z2E

3.) Replace the bottom four springs with more powerful springs. In my case, I purchased a pack of assorted small springs from homedepot and stacked 4 small springs on top of the bottom springs.

[kestrel79]

Does it have a lot of trim wheels? One of the things I like about my x52 is all the rotories on the throttle to map stuff with.

I do own DCS A10c, but I'll mainly be flying CloD with this. My x52 gives my arm a workout when flying so I can only imagine what a real stick like this will do. Build strong wrist muscles.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by kestrel79

Does it have a lot of trim wheels? One of the things I like about my x52 is all the rotaries on the throttle to map stuff with.

No it does not, you will be very dissapointed by that, it only has one trim wheel and it is not very good (IMHAO)

But with so many good and easy to handle switches, you will be able to use the button trims.
Remember this is an "authentic" throttle and stick of a real warplane (A10) so Thrustmaster made it look authentic (= no addiitonal trim wheels ).



@recoilfx:
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
That is great to know!

My Warthog stick did not survive 24hrs with me, I put the stick back in the box and still use my SW2FFB ...where I leave the stick, the position stays as long as I do not engage the light sensor


~S~

[Hood]

Warthog user here. Use Target and once you get a good understanding of how the bindings operate you have lots of possibilities. In fact I think using Target really makes the thing work better.

I would have liked rotaries as on my X52 throttle and this was a possible barrier, but the quality and "feel" of the stick are a quantum leap ahead. I am very happy with the switch from my CH Fighterstick + X52 throttle.

Hood

[ATAG_Snapper]

I use TARGET as well. Once I got it figured out I've found it pretty straightforward (I only use "basic", haven't done any scripting for it). The Warthog HOTAS also works great with COD as a simple "plug 'n play", it's easy to assign the various buttons, switches, and axis to the aircraft controls using the in-game menu. Many, if not most, players wouldn't really need TARGET for CoD, I don't think.

Plug 'n play would've done me fine except I wanted to use a joystick button to turn FRAPS on & off. FRAPS doesn't recognize Directx controls as a hotkey (Naturalpoint's TrackIR have figured it out, though). I eventually got a reply back from FRAPS -- they seemed surprised that anyone would want to use a joystick button as a hotkey when you have a perfectly good 104-key keyboard right in front of you in the heat of a dogfight! And then they returned to their Pong office championship.......

@Recoilfx: as with Athos -- Thank you!!!! Nothing like a little video to clearly show how to do what appears to be a simple task. Like Athos, I brought my FFSB2 out of retirement because I found the big Warthog stick too stiff <uh, pardon?> and clunky. I've only returned back to it for the extra on-stick controls and the use of TARGET, but didn't exactly love it for prolonged maneuvring. I also like the suggestion on the video to simply use a few washers under each of the four repositioned smaller springs if you find the stick a little too mushy. I use a couple of levers on my CH Quadrant for trimming which work extremely well -- more responsive than button/hat controls IMHO.

[recoilfx]

I think it's ridiculous that Flight Sims developers do not ship default profiles for the major joysticks. I hate the amount of time I have to spend on adding all these key bindings before I start the game. Sometimes I don't even know what to bind since I havn't learned what the function is yet!

There are what, only 7-8 major joysticks (Warthog, Cougar, x52, g40, t1600m, hotas x, 3d extreme pro, msffb2, ch combat sticks).. If they spend one day of an employee time just make these few default profiles, it would save us so much time and the game would seem more polished.

What ticks me off even more about CloD is that some of the major functions such complex engine management operations aren't even bond to the keyboards.