Hello hive mind, I’m after opinions.
I have the Thrustmaster TCA airbus side stick and love it.
I have on my wish list both the Thrustmaster TCA quadrant and T.Flight pedals. The question is - which should I buy first?
I mainly fly in VR, mostly IFR with the TBM and (more and more frequently) the FBW A320, plus a few other aircraft just for fun now and again (172, spitfire, Longitude, CJ4).
My gut says I should get the pedals next, because it’ll boost immersion for me in VR, and the Sidestick has a throttle axis that I can use for a while longer until I get the Quadrant as the final addition.
People who have all three controls (Joystick, Throttle and Pedals), tell me which one would you sacrifice if you had to and why?
My budget for my next purchase is £90.
All thoughts welcome!
I don’t know the case of Airbus since everything is pretty much automated, but in my opinion yoke and pedals are intrinsic components of flying GA, allowing the pilot and aircraft to become one single machine. Throttle is nice to have, but if I had to live without it I would try to replace it with some slider (although I admit that the one in the TCA airbus side stick in placed in a rather unfortunate location).
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probably intrinsic components of flying…full stop!
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As a t flight pedal owner, i can’t really recommend them. I’m not sure what other pedals there are and if they’re any better. But i really don’t like the t flight ones. Ofcourse it’s better then using the twist in the joystick, but the problem is that these pedals are not smooth at all. So small corrections are very hard to do so you end up going all over the place during take off/landing when there’s some crosswinds. They spring they use is also very light so this makes it even harder to make small adjustments. It feels like the pedals are a little sticky sometimes and you need to push harder, but then when it goes you push it to far. I added some rubber bands to make it a bit better. but still the stickyness is really bad.
Other then that, if you have to choose between pedals or throttle i’d go for the pedals though (but search for different/better ones) It makes for better realism and better rudder control. More immersion.
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Pedals, helicopters are starting to arrive now.
I did have quite a few different joysticks, yokes and pedals over the years and if you are not going spend money on high quality metal pedals, a twist grip joystick is noticeable better for rudder control.
Especially if they are cheap (and oftern sticky) plastic pedals, where you can’t keep the heels on the floor, overcontrolling during takeoff and landing will be a constant problem.
Contrary to your hands, your feet and legs are much less able to adjust to the reduced size/force required to move the toy flight controls.
Keeping an aircraft straight with pedals where you need to even keep the heels on them, is already a task IRL, even more so with toy pedals in a sim.
The Airbus/T16000M throttle range is very small, so additional throttles would be my choice without the need to even think about it.
Thanks for the thoughts so far folks, really interesting.
So, I absolutely cannot afford more expensive pedals right now. And to be honest, I think I’d be hard pressed to spend more than £150 period. That kinda leads me to the Logitech G Saitek Pro, but those have had mixed reviews too…
T Flight pedals, ignoring the glowing paid-for reviews, I had kind of settled on an average verdict of “They’re okay, but are good value for money”. Plus, if I’m not happy with them I can always return them, right?
The Quadrant feels like a more sure-fire thing in terms of quality. And I’ll use it a lot for TBM flights.
I take the twist grip accuracy point, but immersion is also important to me and the toe brakes alone are really as appealing to me as the rudder axis!
Really tricky…
Pedals are definitely adding to the immersion. The problem is that the control problems by far outweigh the added immersion and they add frustration.
Furthermore, you need fine power/thrust control during the whole flight, pedals, except for taxiing and pushing the crab angle off, basically not at all (except if you are flying prop aircraft without AP during cruise)
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I agree. If you don’t want to spend more, don’t buy pedals. It adds inmersion but youll find yourself frustrated after a while because it’s impossible to get good control with them.
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Been simming for 20yrs. Only just bought a set of pedals this year second hand on ebay. Never knew what I was missing all these years. They are great. Logitech G saiteks.
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Thanks folks.
So, it sounds like I should get the throttle quadrant now, then in the next few months look at spending a bit more to get some better pedals.
Sounds like I should give the Logitech G pedals a try!
A friend of mine is using the logitech g pedals and as far as i can tell they suffer from the same problem the t flight one does. The only thing i liked bettet about then was that the space between the two pedals eas bigger. Only tried them 2 times though so not 100% confident about the smoothness.
You might have allready seen this one but here’s a comparison between the two. (i believe the saitek is the same as the logitech)
I have those pedals (saitek) too,after playing a few months without any pedal at all.
Maybe not the best out there, but a good upgrade for a reasonable price.
You need to get used to it because they are not completely linear in smoothness over the whole range (especially the taildraggers are harder to keep straight at the start) but I enjoy them.
Very interesting thread. Thanks all.
So forgive me, but reading this, can I assume you can run a yoke and throttle quad without pedals, and still use a joystick but isolate the rudder and braking inputs to the joystick?
Thanks guys.
Yoke (no rudder control) without pedals is a no-go.
Three hands required in this case, one for the yoke, one for the throttles and one for the joystick rudder control.
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I dont know about the joystick but I used the Saitek yoke buttons C1-C2 for the pedal function,but i prefer pedals, its way better to control everything at the same time (throttle too )
I think that one can only get used to such plastic pedals if you aren’t a real pilot and haven’t used pedals IRL. That way it’s likely easier to adapt to the semi-realistic operation.
edit: the same goes for buttons for rudder control. Totally unacceptable if you have flown real aircraft.
I’ve found one can adapt TFlight pedals to the aircraft using sensitivity and other controls in the initial set-up. I set up a couple of profiles for different GA.
100% get the pedals next. They are game changers.
