Review Dec 2009-12-29 littered with innuendo which was inevitable with a joystick review
The oft asked question of new Flight Sim’ers to the older hands in the online “mess hut’s” around the globe are similar, year after year ;
“Do I need a joystick?” (“hell yes!”) and
“Which joystick should I buy?”, and it’s this that has caused so many potential pilots to give up on Flight Sim’s of many kinds through the years.
Buying a cheapo stick will bring you, both morally and quite literally, crashing to the ground! In the opinion of this reviewer and online pilot, a "Hat Switch" is essential. A “hat” as it's referred too, is a thumb button that has either 4, or much better, 8 positions that allow the virtual pilot to pan his/her view around the skies, looking for targets and threats. Ignoring the brilliance that is “Track IR” for a moment, a “hat” is essential if you want to survive and win.
A prolific amount of easily touchable, and configurable button’s is also essential. Frankly, the more the merrier. Don’t use them all to start with, start configuring them when you know what you need most.
Smooth movement of the stick is vital, no jerky movements (some of which come from prolonged use and fair wear and tear, hence I have worn out 5 in my years of flight) and so is some form of adjustment, because all hands are not alike. Like shoes, a stick needs to fit.
Saitek began providing the majority of my online flying buddies with a good range of stick’s long ago when the now historical favourite, Saitek Cyborg , was launched, and I still have two of them. It had fluid controls, was strong, and affordable., has a good hat switch and was left or right hand adjustable. The Evo replaced it and this was my preferred choice with the the throttle moved to the rear under the thumb, while many still preferred the older Cyborg with the “loud lever” at the front.
It’s new stick time. It’s Cyborg X time.
BOX and ASSEMBLY
First off, why is the box so small? I didn’t know what it was when it was unpacked, because joysticks boxes are large, right? Wrong. Not when the stick comes in two brilliantly separate parts.
A large thumb screw enables the shaft to be connected to the base
the metal contacts inside it faultlessly join together.
And it’s narrow too… but…. Hold on…. The throttle’s is a very weird position!
How is a pilot supposed to use those throttle from side to side? Madness….. but then the wings unfolded and my new best friend appeared.
It has to be said, this is a cracking piece of design. Not only does it fit better in my gaming cupboard out of harms way, but it’ll fit better in a LAN bag, and the top shaft/neck unscrews so easily, it’s bound to help prevent damage on the way to the Luft Waffe party at your mates house. So far, so excellent. Back in the day of the Cyborg, it was adjustable with a little tool, clipped to the front of the base. The Evo went onto Alloy Thumb Screws (like PC Case screws) but Cyborg X returns to a little wrench tool hidden in the right foot, of the fold out base.
That’s a little foam shell to keep it tight. Top Class design. Small thoughtful touches build reassurance in a product, and I’m assured
So, onto buttons and shape, and configurability of the physical shape for comfort.
Head and Shaft:
4 thumb buttons on the head, PLUS a very useful scroll wheel which has 4 set positions in the software. An 8 way hat switch, and a twin blue LED down-lighter onto your thumb, which frankly, is useless. If you don’t know where your thumb is, it’ll be the little stumpy digit furthest back on your hand. Opposable digits for the win.
Mocking aside, and moving onto adjustment of the head, which with a quick loosening of the side bolt the head, adjusts a long way forward and back, with 35 degrees of movement. That’s enough to move it out of range of my thumb totally, or so far upright my hand will cramp and explode in a shower of tendons. Find your happy angle of dangle and stick with it. (Original Cyborg had 3 positions and Evo had a tiltable AND left/right leaning head, so we’ve lost the left/right lean here)
Saitek have chosen to leave the wires on display. I’m not bothered. But I’m not impressed either. It’s not a pretty stick anyway. It won't win a beauty pageant.
But nor would an IL-2, and it did a good enough job.
One thing that I feel is worth noting, is that there is no central thumb button. Both Cyborg and Evo had three flat plane lower thumb buttons, with the Evo gaining two higher ones too. The scroll wheel replaces the central one on the Cyborg X. I think for rotating weapon selection's it could be a good choice, but I’ll miss it for snapping back to Forward View after panning the hat switch around.
Shaft Length ooh err missus
On all previous sticks that I’ve used the shaft was fixed length, with a moveable rest plate, to support the palm of my hand. But on the Cyborg X the shaft is adjustable for length. But it does this by leaving a great big gap in it’s sides. And frankly, it’s not comfortable after 3 hours of flight. This is my first real negative. To adjust the length, squeeze a small grey button to the lower left of the shaft and pull the top section up. It’s the Viagra button.
Short Shaft vs Viagra Shaft
It’s only fair to bring in a second opinion on the comfort of a bloke's shaft, so I asked my ever loving and patient wife, and online-wing-
(wo)man to grasp it. She said she prefered it shorter for comfort and long sessions.
Gentlemen… this can only be good news!
Quite literally… while we’re down there, there’s another adjustment. It adjusts the angle that the stick sits when in neutral position and it covers a vast arc, in 4 settings. As with previous Saitek’s, you push a ball pen into a little spring loaded pin and move it.
I’m staggered by the sheer travel of it.
These two images show the stick's adjustment at its furthest forward, with the head adjusted to its furthest forward and the shaft at its shortest, and then fully upright and longer with head and neck titled back
DON’T FORGET: BOTH OF THESE SHOTS ARE OF THE CONTROL COLUMN MECHANISM ITSELF IN THE DEAD CENTRE / NEUTRAL POSITION.
It’s to illustrate the adjustment potential, which is nothing short of impressive.
Twin Throttles and some more buttons;
Here is where the excitement is, for this reviewer: Twin Thottle - and what to do with them?
Hand on heart, I expected to want to configure IL-2 1946 to use them for individual left and right engines on twins and 4 engines heavies (TB3 anyone?). But after playing with it, while it was good… and very useful because the buttons can be pinned together with a click of a button, and split as easily, it wasn’t quite so exciting as I’d hoped. Excellent for taxiing, and also for slewing sideways on run in for bombing, it wasn’t much more use than the rudder (twist the grip as ever).
But the Cyborg X’s box suggested using it for elevator trim, and my word, what a fantastic addition it is! Turn fighting in a Hurricane or a Yak 9 was really improved after high speed dives and climbs, and in the Yak particularly, after a fast cross country level flight, trimmed for speed, to very suddenly arrive in a “check 6 check 6” position, and turning and squirming for my life, re trimming was so smooth and so fast I found myself turning into attack using both throttle AND trim. It was a revelation. Of course I shouldn’t be in such a tactically silly position in the first place, and next flight, having been whooped by twin 109's working as a good team, I trimmed to climb and then diving on my prey, and it was brilliant and nearly naturally intuitive.
The "purest pilot" would probably prefer to have Prop Pitch (the level of aggresive “bite” into the air that the air screw has) on the second sliding control lever, and this would make it similar to a proper throttle/pitch control set on a Spitfire for example, but in the reality of gaming, it’s didn’t make that much difference in IL-2 1946, and a manual keyboard configuration is still simpler as it’s not used constantly in the way it might be in real life.
So, here she is, in all her glory
Wide stance, that’s foldable, removable shaft, massive adjustment and a set of new buttons.
Now to assist those of you with Saitek stick’s of old, here is the Cyborg X, lined up with an Evo and a Cyborg. I feel this is like lining up a set of 3 Porsche 911's from defferent era's.... except the lights on these joysticks are brighter at night!
Yes they’re all mine, and that’s not all of them either!
In Game Play and Control
Although Saitek provide a full set of configurable drivers on disk, plugging the stick into Vista 64 and then doing a Windows Update showed up a quick download of default Microsoft drivers, and bingo, all was perfect. This reviewer likes simple button configs. Having tried X45 and X52 sticks and frankly lost the will to play because of the enormity of setting up and configuring everything, I'm a “one stick” man. This stick is very advanced for it’s size and price and offers good flexibility of set up, both physically and ingame.
Price: Around £30 at time of writing (29 Dec 09) which is astonishing I think
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Saitek-Cyborg-X-Joystick
Pros: Size and Clever Design / Twin Throttle / Massive Adjustment for comfort / Build Quality / Value
Cons: Stick Length Adjustment leaves a large gap
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Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
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