The Saitek Hotas Hotas is
a fairly affordable combo and averages about a quarter of the price of
the old Thrustmaster gear (average £75 in the UK compared to £350 for
the TM gear). It consists of the X35T throttle and the X36F stick. The
X36F has 2 4way hats (these can be changed to 8 way hats in the software),
3 buttons, a flippable launch button and a trigger. It also has a pinkie
finger shift switch which doubles the functions af the afforementioned
hat switches and trigger. The X35T has 2 rotaries, 2 4-way hats (one
of these has mouse emulation built in), a 2 position switch, a 3 position
switch, 2 buttons and a built in rudder.
So how much control does that give us? Before I calculate this I shall
make the following assumptions. 1. That the rudder will be used as a
rudder in sims (it can be programmed like any other keys). 2. That the
hats will usually be set as 4 way (we lose some functionality with shift
and modes when the hats are set to 8 way). Whilst I've no doubt that
you will sometimes use the hats in 8 way mode and there may be times
when you would assign different functions to the rudder it is easier
to calculate the number of functions if we work with these assumptions.
So with a basic config you have 13 possible controls on the stick and
19 on the throttle giving us 32 possible commands. This should be adequate
for a lot of sims but Falcon 4 will be crying out for more. If we use
the shift key on the stick we can now double it, as the rotataries on
the X35T (unlike those on the Thrustmater TQS) can be shifted. What we
end up with is 26 functions on the stick and 38 on the throttle a total
of 64 functions. Still not enough? Not a problem as we can use the 3
way mode switch allowing us to practically triple that figure. After
accounting for the fact that the mode switch will no longer have any
functions (except selecting the mode) we end up with 78 possible functions
on the stick and 105 possible on the throttle giving us 183 possible
functions plus a rudder. This should be more than enough for any sim
and compares very well to the Thrustmaster's 202 when you consider the
price difference.
The stick and throttle are fairly straight forward to program. First
you need to create a command file that gives names to each control ie
Gear = g then you create the config by choosing either the stick or throttle
from a drop down menu. At which point you are presented with an image
of the selected item, then you simply click on the buttons image, choose
a type of operation for the button ie auto repeat etc, then select the
command from the list you created in the command file for each of the
modes. This may sound like a long process on paper but is fairly simple
in practice. The hardest part of this is deciding what controls to put
on which buttons, this is a hazard of any hotas.
The stick and throttle are pretty well put together. Unfortunately the
stick looks like no flight stick I've ever seen and has less tension
than I would have liked. It has a sword like hand guard which is something
you don't usually see in combat aircraft controllers. That being said
it is comfortable in your hand and all the hats and buttons are within
easy reach. The flippable launch switch acts as a surrogate master arm
switch, when the switch is up in the safe position the button can't be
pressed, once flipped into the launch position it will fire. This is
a feature I found really cool (especially before they added a working
Master Arm switch to Falcon 4) .
The throttle is a real beauty, it feels very solid, is well contoured
to the hand and has a rubber palm rest. All the buttons, hats and rotaries
are in comfortable positions and it has a traditional arced throttle
movement. There is a tension screw underneath that allows you to set
the tension of the throttle to suit your tastes. I have to say I really
like this throttle it is an absolute joy to use. The rudder being built
into the throttle is a great idea too as many people just don't have
the floor space for a traditional set of rudders. I found the rudders
to work as good as my pedals and the hand operation did not detract from
my enjoyment at all.
Installation was straight forward and trouble free, the supplied instructions
were pretty good (Saitek must have ben listening to their customers because
my first X35/X36 combo had very poor documentation). There were one or
2 problems though. I found that sometimes when not playing games my shift,
alt or control key would appear stuck and occasionally the stick would
send zx to the keyboard buffer. Both of these seem to be related to ps2
keyboards as neither problem appeared on my other PC which has a traditional
din style keyboard socket. Unfortunately the Saitek combo's keyboard
connector is the din style and no adapter is supplied. This is only a
minor issue as the adapters are cheap and easy to come by. Hopefully
all these problems are fixed in the USB version. As soon as I get my
hands on the USB version I'll let you know.
In conclusion I would have to say that despite one or two minor problems,
this is an exceptionally good hotas. It represents excellent value for
money. When you take into account that the F22 pro and Tqs have been
discontinued it puts the Saitek gear on the top of the heap for features.
I would be very surprised if any other available combo could match the
Saitek for features vs price. I would highly recommend this combo to
the simmer on a low budget and at present I think the simmer on a high
budget would be hard pushed to find a hotas with a better feature set.
You can download my Saitek config for Falcon 4 by clicking HERE
