The best joystick?

[kaszeta]

Originally Posted by Japper

I am not sure if the joysticks that come with the kit are all that desireable or not as they seem to bounce around quite a bit towards their center (off position) when they are released from any position. (perhaps I need to build some debounce into the code to over come this from happening) but what I really want to know is:

What is the best joystick to use?

The time-honored basic joystick is the CH Products Flightstick, with two buttons, trim switches, throttle, and much better response than the KOP one. Alas, it's not made anymore, so you need to eBay them, or trade with other teams (they used to be in the KOPs, our team has several of them, although they are all getting battle-scarred).

One step up is the CH Flightstick Pro, which is basically the CH Products version of the kit joystick (two axis, throttle, hat, and more buttons), and the CH Fighterstick Pro has even more hats and buttons. I bought two on eBay last year for our team. And unlike the basic ambidextrous Flightstick, the Pro sticks are right-handed, which can be a concern for some control types.

There are some really nice three-axis joysticks, but it's *very* difficult finding gameport versions.


Aside number one: At Palmetto last year, a team lent us a CH Flightstick (an old KOP one) when one of ours crapped out during finals, but in the massive haste that is final rounds, nobody can recall which team. If you remember giving Team 95 a joystick during Finals at Palmetto last year, PM me and I can make sure you either get the stick back, or we repay the favor somehow.

Aside number two: Team 95 has a really slick gameport CH Products Throttle with twenty buttons and one axis on it, which we used quite successfully last year. However, we're probably not going to use it again since (a) configuring it requires a special DOS boot floppy, and (b) we're hoping the USB route is where we'll go in the future. PM me if you have a really cool use for it on your operator controls and I'll try to get it sent to you.