[MikkOwl]

what happens if only one of the three peripherals needs replacement at some point?

Judging from the forum stories of how Logitech support was like with the G25 wheel, they will ask you to disconnect and send that specific part in and they send a replacement. Generally the support seemed most generous and willing to please, at times not even asking for the defunct unit to be returned, and simply dispatch a new one directly.

As i understand it, they use their own connector jacks, so you won't be able for example to substitute a pair of Saitek pedals if the Logitech ones stop working.

Are the Saitek pedals not USB? If they are, one would simply connect them to a free USB port and use them instead of the G940 pedals if one so wished.

a small "deadzone" in the middle of the stick's range of motion that they can't get rid off, no matter what settings they use in the profiler. Is this something that depends on what each person is used to with their previous joystick, or is it visible/tangible enough to be considered a manufacturing flaw?

You can get rid of it by using the stick with a sim that makes use of the whole range for force feedback. Alternatively, enable self-centering, which leaves only a minimal zone in the middle where the forces aren't pulling. The stuff you mention is IL-2 implementation (and other games) of force feedback, set up to have a sizable zone in the middle where no pulling forces can reach. Game implementation of force feedback needs to be made with smaller tolerances for the hardware now available.

my sidewinder is so old there is a bit of "wobbling" around the center position where the response is slow or almost non existent. That doesn't bother me at all, because i don't want the aircraft to jerk around the sky everytime i move my little finger. After all, if i want to really move the stick the response is good. If the G940 is similar then i wouldn't mind since it would help cancel out the small, involuntary motions, but having more than a couple degrees of no-resposnse zone makes it harder to judge your inputs.

Agreed on the difficulty of judging the inputs. If I understand things correctly, the sidewinder2 from way back had a fairly short throw (range of motion), meaning that the zone in the middle is also, by extension, smaller. The G940 moves maybe 50 degrees from full left to full right deflection (25 degrees either direction from center). But as we know, it's the way IL-2 force feedback was set up way back in the day when those old sticks were around. Nothing much happened since until now. Logitech is pressuring and helping companies tidy up their crappy force feedback implementations, and the G940 has a chance of being a big success like the G25 wheel was, leading to direct support from developers who know that there's a customer group that has this hardware and wants to make good use of it.

I wrote in detail in my long wall of text earlier here on page 2, which may help you understand the G940 in general better.

IL2 does have constant centering tension, with MSFFB2 I feel the this all the time, more so especially as a stall approaches you go from soft to hard tension then buffeting on the stick, there a also specific event FFB occurrences, most of which I have removed from the FFB folder in IL2 directory as they were a bit unrealistic ie: canon and bump but you need the spring file in there to keep the overall tension.

You are both right, and wrong. IL-2 simulates, in a simplified way, the resistance encountered by the speed of the wind moving over the control surfaces of the wings, when trying to move the stick. Faster speed (unstalled) means more tension, while lower speed (or in stall) means lower or no resistance. But IL-2 is using no relative center but an absolute center of the stick. Even if I trim the plane and do all kinds of things to make sure that, in real life, the stick should be forcefully be moving forward or back due to the forces acting upon the control surfaces of the wings, absolutely nothing happens. The center is unaffected. And worse, they put the treshhold for at how much input needs to be given from the joystick pretty high before the 'wind resistance' on the control surfaces can be felt through force feedback. This gives the 'sloppy center' where there's no effects from the control surfaces, and which is no where near as good as it could have been had they utilized the full range, or even gone with relative center (i.e. the forces could then pull to want to center the stick forward or backward depending on how you trim, you would instantly feel the effects of trimming the plane through the forces and so on).

Can you imagine how it would be like to fly like that? Relative center, true forces acting, the trims.. the stick is more than capable of this, but we haven't gotten to try it out yet. Can't wait!

how does it feel compared to the Cougar and Fighterstick? The stick's shape is a very different from the F-16's, does it changes much when flying or it's just a matter of getting used to it?

The shape of grip and trigger is less square and more rounded, circumference of grip is slightly smaller and the in-reach buttons are a bit easier to manipulate. I haven't flown with my CH Combat Stick (F-16) since the early 2000's and it behaved awfully, so I cannot draw any parallels to the sticks you mention. I have size "L" (large) hands and I find the shape to be a better fit and more ergonomic. Maybe not wearing F-16 nomex pilot gloves also helps?

If your used to hitting your target quickly I would avoid the G940 at-least until new drivers come out. The constant changes in force around the center and thru the x and y axis make targeting more difficult than it should be.
If your like most people and can't hit what your shooting at anyway, the G940 is a nice overall system. Actually you can hit your target with the G940, but it takes a few seconds longer than with a more constant pressure stick...just long enough for his wingman to get in position to shoot you down.

The vibration effects of the weapons firing is adjustable, though even at high settings I dont think it interferes with the accuracy. When taking unloaded shots (correctly trimmed, don't need to apply force to the stick) it is as easy as any other high end stick these days I would gamble. But definitely, when pulling G's + being untripped and experiencing buffeting, it is more difficult to hit. Part of it is the immersion, I think. It's more apparently stressful and urgent what kind of stresses you are putting on your plane with the feedback you are getting. More tense moment one might say.