Thrustmaster Cougar Interview Part 1 - The Hardware - Page 2 of 2
FRUGAL: One of the rumours I've seen on the net is that the springs will have adjustable tension. Is there any truth in this?
JAMES: I'm not sure. My understanding from having looked at the internals is that it wouldn't be possible, and I suspect that it would be more likely that users will be able to replace the springs with different spring tensions. I don't know, maybe something has changed - you'll need to ask Guillaume about that.
GUILLAUME: Well, adjustable tension for spring is not possible, so we have choosed the possibility to change springs. Actually, we have not define if we will deliver several tension springs in the box or just not, we're working on cost reduction. People comments at E3 will be decisive.
FRUGAL: The hardware sounds great, how good is the driver support going to be?
What driver? :) This is a driverless system using only standard Windows HID and USB drivers. It doesn't have drivers or a software layer running everything. How cool is that! Nearly all sticks have drivers and you get lots of driver problems. These just talk to windows drivers because everything is done within the stick. Calibration is done within the stick, all the coding and everything is retained within the stick. So if I take this stick and program it for Falcon 4 unplug it and walk to my friends place, and plug it in on his machine, then I'm up and running. It's calibrated, it's got all my programming in it, I don't need to do anything - but fly. This is something you can't do with any other stick out there. It is autocalibrating (although it can be manually calibrated) and it saves all that information in the stick, unlike most controllers who store their calibration information in the Windows Registry.
FRUGAL: When you plugged the joystick in just then, you held in the trigger. Why?
Because I'm showing you something that we've kept very secret up to now. I'm flash upgrading the firmware in the controllers. Yes, you heard me right. These controllers are flash upgradeable! Just like you flash your motherboard bios, you can flash these as well. If we want to put more features into the controllers later we can do that. SO not only can we update the software through patches, we can totally change the firmware as well.
FRUGAL: Tell me about what you mean when you say that the controller are "hot plugable."
This means that like many USB controllers, you can connect and disconnect them from your computer without needing to turn it off. And all of the controllers are. So if I want to disconnect the throttle I just disconnect it. If I want to plug it back in I just plug it back in. Same with the rudders. I don't have to faff around at the back of my machine. So people that don't use USB hubs don't have to worry. You can disconnect the rudders or throttle from the stick leaving the main USB connector in, and they'll happily and quickly recognise and adapt to reflect what's connected and what isn't.
FRUGAL: Can you use analogue game port rudders with the Cougar?
JAMES: Yes, no problem at all. Just like the throttle, they plug into the back of the stick. Usually you want all of your controllers seen as one device in Windows, ie. one device that has lots of axes and buttons. I know people say that more modern sims can support 2 or 3 controllers but most sims don't, including Falcon 4 and that's what matters - that we can use these controllers in all Windows sims.
FRUGAL: Will it work with rudders other than the TM RCS and Elite?
JAMES: I don't know about compatibility with other rudders, as I don't have non TM rudders. My understanding is that some of those rudders are wired differently which is why some people have had problems with the digital chips. But I'm no hardware guru so you're asking the wrong person here.
FRUGAL: How many buttons and axes does the Cougar have?
JAMES: Ok as to the number of axes, you have 2 on the joystick, you have your throttle as the third, the range and antenna knobs make 5 in total so far. The microstick adds another two axes, as it's not a 4 button "hat" which is why the controllers have 28 buttons and not 32 compared to the older TM controllers. So that's another 2 axes taking you up to 7. Then when the new rudders come, with toebrakes, they add another 3 axis, so that's 10 in total. Now you will need DirectX 8.0a installed for these because DirectX 7 only reports or recognises 6 axis as far as my understanding goes. DirectX 8.0a I think only recognises 8 axes. Usually what happens is that the microstick isn't reported as being present. It doesn't mean you can't use it it just means we don't tell DirectX to recognise it by default. I'll come onto how we can still use it, and how if I wanted to I could fly from the microstick instead of the joystick if I really wanted to, but what I'm trying to say here is that even though we don't report it to DirectX, we can still do what we want with it and use it as an analogue controller.
FRUGAL: The joystick supports replaceable handles. What other handles are planned for the future?
JAMES: Yes, the joystick does support replaceable handles. You literally just unscrew them, and screw in a different one. It takes seconds and doesn't require any tools. Different handles will come later although of course that depends on how well sales go. Obviously Thrustmaster aren't going to invest in developing new handles if sales are poor, although I don't think they have anything to worry about on that score. It's worth pointing out here that I really hope that people do buy these controllers and support Thrustmaster. In my opinion, if the sales don't go as I think they will, then there will be no incentive for Thrustmaster to develop high end controllers again, and that would be dreadful for us hard core simmers. No-one else is ever going to produce anything like this again. Anyway I've digressed from what you asked me.
Developing new handles isn't as easy as you might think. Forget the circuitry and actual manufacturing for a moment. First of all you need permission to replicate a handle, and that's not easy to come by. One handle I think Thrustmaster would love to do is a Flanker handle because it is a really interesting stick. But it's hard getting permission to replicate that, that's the first thing. The second thing is we have some limitations as to the number of buttons and hats we can put on a new stick. So if we produced a stick that had one hat on it but ten buttons, that would require a rewrite of the compiler, a rewrite of Fox 2 because all the terminology is going to change because of the extra buttons and so on. And obviously that has associated costs. However so long as a new handle doesn't exceed the current number of hats and buttons on the current Cougar joystick handle, then it's relatively easy. I certainly think we may see an F 18 handle at some point, possibly a Flanker, an A 10 handle because that's standard in many different types of cockpit, and maybe a helicopter handle at some point. But it all depends on finances.
FRUGAL: What will be shown at E3? Will it be a production stick or a prototype?
JAMES: It's going to be a metal prototype that has been painted up. It could have been a production stick but at a late stage a decision was made regarding the labelling on the stick and throttle. Thrustmaster listened to their community, and decided that they will instruct the manufacturers to stamp in all the white lettering that you get on the real F-16 controllers. Stamping those into the metal, that will then need to be painted obviously caused a delay for the manufacturing guys because they've got to get all that tooling done. This was an agonising decision for TM to make: Do we go into production early, which reduces costs and have these things there so that people can play around with it at E3. Or do we bite the bullet and say actually it's not going to be there at E3, the real thing, but we think users are going to prefer this increased level of detail in the end because we've gone for the hard core approach all along in this project. And thankfully Thrustmaster I think took the right decision, and I think that will be welcomed by everyone. Their attitude throughout this project was to create a hard core product. They're going for perfection or as near to perfection as they can possibly get. Good on Guillaume for making this decision and sticking to the ideology here.
FRUGAL: When Guillemot first took over Thrustmaster and announced that the F22 and TQS was being discontinued many people in the sim community labelled them the bad guys. Do you think that this has been a motivating factor in making this HOTAS the best there has ever been?
JAMES: What a lot of people don't realise is that Thrustmaster had discontinued the F22 and TQS about a year before they were bought over by Guillemot. There was no tooling available, there was no parts available, there was nothing, not even the electronics or microcode. People on the net have often mentioned how long this project has been in development. But now you know, everything had to be started again from scratch, with a completely different group of people developing the Cougar. In fact the development time is less than that for the F-22 PRO or F-16 FLCS. Mind you I was surprised to hear that the F-22 was discontinued so long before the sell off.
FRUGAL: It doesn't surprise me because literally days after the takeover I was trying to get a TQS. After failing to find one in the shops I turned to my contact at TM and he was unable to find me a TQS in any of their offices. Thanks James for taking the time to discuss these controllers. In the next article in this series, we'll move on to discussing the software.
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