I May Not Be The Most Ill Equipped Virtual Pilot Anymore

[rox]

A big year for my v-flying career. First in spring I finally ditched mouse looking for an imperfect but good enough Freetrack rig, and then today I went from six problematic years of this...

To this...





I wanted to buy an X-55 for a few months now, but totally didn't plan on buying one today. That is, until I saw a guy selling it for 130 pounds. Considering that the cheapest new X-55 in Croatia costs 175 pounds (and that's supposedly discounted from 190), that's a pretty damn good price for a practically new HOTAS, with warranty, and the extra shelves for the joystick and throttle that attach to a table that you can see in the pictures, which the previous owner crafted himself (won't be using them for a while though, they don't really go with my table). So I pretty much instantly called him, sat in my car and drove 50km to Zagreb to pick it up.

First impressions: what the hell am I supposed to map to all these buttons, spinny things, toggle and hat switches.

[FoolTrottel]

Oh carp, not another one of those pil2ots that go like 'what's it doing now?'

'My engines just stopped'

'My wings just folded'

'My gear wás down! .. I think'

 

 

Good show Rox, that's a massive improvement!

[Crash]

Nice Rox, maybe Rog or Snacko could give some advice.

[rox]

Currently my biggest dilemma is whether to place:

1. Machine guns on the main trigger, cannons on the side thumb button, bombs on pinky button and rockets on pinky trigger, or

2. Machine guns on pinky button, cannons on main trigger, bombs on side thumb button and rockets again on pinky trigger

Option 1 makes more sense visually, but option 2 seems to be more ergonomic, as during maneuvers when I would have to take pot shots with cannons, the thumb button is somewhat hard to press when gripping the stick while applying yaw and roll, and sometimes I even press it accidentally or don't notice that I'm still pressing it after I should have stopped. So I'm leaning at option 2. The only thing I miss on the stick is a thumb button in/near the center of the top part, instead of one of those hats..

[DD_Arthur]

I've got a MSFFB2 and I put cannon and mg together on the trigger.  I do this because I'm not a great shot frankly and if you're going to open fire well why not give 'em everything you've got?

[rox]

There are times when I only use MG, such as for example the P-39 due to very limited and hard to shoot with cannon ammo that I only fire when I think I'm sure to hit.

[Tonar]

I've got a MSFFB2 and I put cannon and mg together on the trigger.  I do this because I'm not a great shot frankly and if you're going to open fire well why not give 'em everything you've got?

 

Same here

[Perfesser]

For the last few years I've had MG's only on the pinky trigger, MG and cannon on the trigger.

It's useful to fire MG only to see if you've got the range, or to get a fleeing enemy to turn or go defensive. When I feel I can get solid hits, I fire everything.