It kinda depends on what kind of aircraft you want to fly.
Thrustmaster t16000m is more geared towards military aircrafts.
If you want to fly Airbus, TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition (which under the hood is the t16000m) is very good and works well with FS2020's Airbus A320 (even better with the free FlyByWire A320 mod)
If you want to fly general aviation aircrafts, the Logitech Yoke is pretty good. The Honeycomb Aviation stuff is much better but cost double your budget.
I fly gliders and helis (for which, btw, x-plane is excellent), and none of the sticks I’ve tried feel right for these, neither of which have center return springiness. I’ve tried to clip the springs off of various sticks but just ended up breaking them. Any advice for a stick that doesn’t have center return dynamics?
How is the feel of the Honeycomb yoke? The pitch axis on the Logitech is so sketchy especially in the flare. I’m
most flight regimes you can trim away the mechanical imperfections, but in the final bit before touchdown it’s a nuisance.
If you want both a stick and throttle for under $200, you'll likely want the Thrustmaster T.16000M FCS (~$150). If you're willing to add another ~$150 to the budget, I highly recommend the VKB Gladiator NXT EVO with the SCG Premium grip (~$210 with US shipping) and picking up the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle alone (~$130).
Either way, the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle does have some stiction and you might want to clean it up, or even better 3D print/buy a slider replacement for about ~$40 on Etsy.
> Either way, the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle does have some stiction and you might want to clean it up.
It really does, I opened mine up and cleaned off all the factory grease, replacing it with a bog standard lithium grease (sparingly!) and the difference is night and day.
Some people swear by the fancy silicon grease and I see a lot of good things but I'm fine with regular old lithium.
If you're a light player an T.16000m will work but they all die with hardware issues at some point. The matching TWCS throttle has similar issues. I'm a heavy space sim player and went through 2 T16000Ms and 3 TWCSs before switching fully over to VKB sticks.
VKB sticks last longer (no issues after 2+ years heavy use), are repairable and VKB will sell you parts. Much nicer if you can afford it. Take a look at their youtube channel if you are curious about the repairibility. https://www.youtube.com/c/VKBSim
I play DCS and I'm using T.16000M FCS + HOTAS (you don't really need paddles unless you're flying helicopter). I'm primarily flying F-16 and these gears are really good. I only have minor complains so far, for example there is only one D-pad on the stick and the grip is too big for my tiny hand to sit on the palmrests
BTW, both FS and xP are excellent. I use them both in various setting - mostly w/gliders and helis. xP (at least 11) is way slower to boot and a bit harder to use. For casual flight, FS is my go to. BTW, I use them both on a Rift, and they are both very good. (I actually would use FS more, because of the boot time, but the thermal sim in FS is way too weak, so it’s too hard to climb a glider. FS is actually a bit more realistic this way, but giving up a little realism for the ability to get to thermal more easily and to a higher altitude is with it. If I need to be scratching around for lift I wouldn’t be flying that day!)
I use a quite old MS Sidewinder Precision 2 joystick from 2008 or so. Works fine with the X-plane 12 demo. Look for something that support rudders by twisting. I spent nowhere near 200$ at the time for this. I'm sure there are better options than this on the market right now. But I must say, this thing was pretty good value for money.
an xbox controller, until you've actually messed around in them and have a feel for what you want to fly, because that's going to determine what controller you want more than anything else.
An XBox controller works great. I have a yoke (honeycomb) that I paid a good bit of money for but is annoying to mount for just a quick flight around...so it sits in the corner of my office.
Whatever you get, make sure it has a twist axis. You can control the plane's rudder with it. Most do - even the basic Logitech Extreme 3D Pro is fine - but some don't.
I'm also curious about this. I love challenging situations in flight sims and it would be fun to replay real scenarios, or even have a tool where you could just set it to randomly pick one or a couple problems off a list and cause them to manifest at some point in the flight.
I haven't done much simming recently sadly, WarThunder VR support has been broken for over a year and sadly my CPU isn't strong enough for X-Plane 11, but I'll probably be picking up one of the new AMD chips this fall so I'm excited to get back into it.
X-Plane 11 has the ability to randomly fail equipment with parameters that you give it. It can also save a scenario so all the components already exist for something like this.
If you are primarily looking out the window, MS wins because they spend a lot of effort making sure to model the entire world in great detail. No shame in that, it's a great way to enjoy a flight sim and MS did an amazing job with it. And in fairness, they really upped their game with the weather engine and flight models as well. It's a fine product.
Otherwise, X-plane 12 is pretty compelling as well and it probably wins in the flight model department in terms of just modeling a lot of weird and niche stuff out of the box. Most people will never notice but it's there to appreciate for those that can appreciate these things.
And with the right scenery, it doesn't look half bad either. E.g. orbx has scenery for both sims and I suspect things look pretty close with that. And there are some nice free add-ons that will get you closer to the MS experience but probably not all the way. E.g. Simheaven.com is getting ready with an xplane-12 release; completely free.
X-plane 12 is a pretty big upgrade if you were using or familiar with x-plane 11:
- volumetric clouds and weather updates
- the rendering is gorgeous in comparison
- lots of refinement in flight models, audio, ATC, weather engine, etc.
- Lots of nice new default planes
- Amazing work on the sound. Seeing a jet take off is one thing. But hearing the rumble is another thing.
Give the free demo a spin. Easiest way to find out if it's worth your money. Works great on recent Macbooks with the M1 processor.
The experience in VR is much much better in X-Plane. Sadly it doesn't have the amazingly realistic cities and world textures of MSFS but the controls work so much better. Especially X-Plane's "ergonomic yoke" which uses the tilt sensor in the controller instead of having to hold up your hand in thin air. MSFS is far behind this.
And why call out VR specifically? Well, VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation. I've flown small planes too and I've never felt that a flightsim was able to provide the feeling of flying. Until VR that is. Now it's amazing.
First, thanks for the info -- you answered my question, too. :)
> VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation.
I completely agree. I'm not a pilot nor interested in becoming one. My Dad owned his company and flew a plane for work[0]. He used the 1980s version of Flight Simulator to get licensed for IFR flying. I was impressed with the latest, but if there ever was a use for VR, it's this. You've got a panel full of instruments in front of you and an array of windows to look out of. At least half of the "controlling" in that game involves looking at specific places/in specific directions. Everything would be much more natural if I could control what I was looking at by ... moving my head.
So far I've held off on buying any VR-related non-sense because I have yet to find something that it would improve the experience of enough to warrant spending money on. It sounds like this might be getting me closer?
[0] I've written at length about this in the past, but he owned his company and sold to manufacturing plants. Many were out-of-state, so the plane allowed him to get to a few appointments and back home without a hotel stay -- or ... "gave him an excuse to own a plane". You pick :)
The VR works and works pretty well. The feeling of looking around in the cockpit is a nice improvement even over my old standby of TrackIR, which I used to use more frequently.
I will say that I think I might dust the TrackIR off and use it again at some point. VR is a little disorienting and uncomfortable for long time periods and just having head tracking with a monitor does get you part of the way there.
I do find it difficult to "touch" the controls in the cockpit, so if you want to actually learn the cockpit layout (rather than mapping a bunch of stuff to your keyboard and/or other input devices) you may want to pause the game while you select things.
The graphics in XP 11 can be somewhat improved with "Orthophoto scenery" and there is a lot of payware available too, but this is a deep rabbit hole with lots of sketchy downloads and mucking about. Even after doing this I don't think the visuals ever get close to competing with the MSFS "out of the box" experience.
I used to spend a lot of time in flight simulators and am very interested in VR. What headsets have you used? Just a Quest 2? Or one of the high end ones?
I don't know much about both, but xplane is developed by private developer, he even made video how he fought against patent trolls: https://youtu.be/sG9UMMq2dz4
I've had X-Plane back since version 7 or so. Get into binges with it and then stop for years.
The reason for that is, my primary interest in X-Plane is DESIGNING planes to see if and how well they will fly. If it had the structural stuff in the short-lived Young's Modulus by the same guy I'd be even more interested… that's a big ask, however, and potentially very dangerous.
Because people literally use X-Plane to design real planes, by making rough drafts of the aerodynamics, weights and balances of their proposed designs. X-Plane is a full-on blade element modeler right down to modelling the propellers of prop-driven planes also as little wings, and flight is simulated by taking all the airfoils etc. at various points of all wings and determining how the plane would fly with this collection of forces… for ALL MODELS.
That's the only engine at work. You don't download 'new flight code' for new planes you get, just the aesthetics and the model that says what airfoils go where etc. and then the sim works out what would happen.
If you wanted to fly your 747 but see what would happen if you stuck a Cessna engine 3 feet in from the left wingtip, MFS absolutely would not know where to begin with that. X-Plane would not only let you do it but would do a pretty decent job of showing what would happen.
So it's kind of not even a comparison…
Pretty hilarious getting downvotes on a nerd site for saying THIS. Bring it. I stand by what I said 100%, these are the things that matter in a simulator. For airplanes :)
I tried the latest MS Flight Simulator on X-Box. It was incredibly difficult to figure out how to set things up to reasonably simulate something like flying an ILS approach. Maybe on the PC it's better, but it just didn't seem to be the focus. And there's background music playing like it's an un-serious video game. X-Plane seems much more oriented towards realistically simulating the tasks involved in actually flying aircraft. Microsoft's seemed more oriented towards having pretty dang spectacular graphics and providing a fun experience for people who aren't really that interested in the rest of the minutiae of piloting aircraft. It's pretty cool that you can see your actual house on the Microsoft one though.
I've found that MSFS works much better when you turn off all the "fun" stuff and use add-on aircraft. I enjoy flying Airbus planes, so using mods like FlyByWire (free) and Fenix (paid) can drastically improve the experience since the built-in A320neo is pretty barebones. Those mods can also load flight plans straight from SimBrief so I avoid ever using the built-in flight planner. I just load up at the gate with an empty flight plan, load in my real plan from SimBrief, and pretend I'm flying a real A320.
That’s not entirely true. They gameafy some aspects for sure, but that’s just about accessibility. You can run it like a full sim and there are great videos of real Boeing pilots talking about it.
Even the old flight sim was so advanced MSFT had contracts with the French military for their mapping tech from the game specifically. This is back in the day now.
I used MSFS a lot for practising VFR navigation / dead reckoning skills, very helpful for that with how good the scenery is. Not sure I could achieve the same in XPlane
Random question but do you people who play flight simulators but never flown a real plane think that if you were on a commercial passenger jet and the pilots became incapacitated that you would be able to take over the controls and land the plane safely?
I have flown a Cessna in real life but never a jet. In sim, I usually fly Airbus, usually at night or in clouds, relying mainly on the instrumentation and charts.
For your scenario, I think if it was an Airbus, the conditions weren't too extreme and there were no failures, I'd have a pretty good shot at a successful landing. If it was a Boeing, I wouldn't know where to start.
I don't think flying is that hard at a basic level. Arguably it's easier than driving once you've got your head around the millions of buttons and switches. The challenge is what you do when things go wrong, and adequately planning for that situation.
We do come across the news some passengers landing the plane with guidance from ATC time to time, and maybe ones with prior "training" with flight simulators may know at least how planes operate in certain extent, perhaps even where right switches are located. This alone may reduce a lot of back and forth with ATC, as they could say "turn the heading knob to 010 within autopilot cluster" as opposed to "you see there's a section of instrument called autopilot on the top center of the console -- you should see the knob that says heading, turn it so it says 010." At least it would be less intimidating to ones that has seen them in simulations. (after all, that's what simulations are all about...)
It's probably safe to say you'd get 50% edge just by knowing how plane controls works (roll, pitch, yaw) -- I don't think a lot of "general public" would have idea what they are, let alone how they are mapped to things in a cockpit.
Maybe if I could get the radio working. After that I've probably played with the autopilot systems enough that I could follow instructions. Such a scenario would most likely happen in a smaller aircraft and I imagine they'd guide me to the largest runway around, and landing a small aircraft on a full size commercial runway probably feels like the runway goes for miles and miles.
Having played lots and lots of flight simulators using Yolks, Pedals, and physical buttons, etc, I think with guidance from ATC, I would be more likely to land a plane safely compared to the general public. How much more is up to debate...
Depends on the plane, weather conditions, air traffic control and the runway. Does the runway support ILS, will ATC help guide you, clear skies & daytime? Probably would work
I distinctly remember in previous versions watching the AI aircraft bounce off the ground repeatedly in an attempt to reach an incorrect flight level given to them by the ATC. That kind of ruined the illusion for me.
It's a great sim, overall, I think it has a different set of priorities from MSFS, which is totally fine. I only wish I could have the best of both worlds.
Readit News
Thrustmaster t16000m is more geared towards military aircrafts.
If you want to fly Airbus, TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition (which under the hood is the t16000m) is very good and works well with FS2020's Airbus A320 (even better with the free FlyByWire A320 mod)
If you want to fly general aviation aircrafts, the Logitech Yoke is pretty good. The Honeycomb Aviation stuff is much better but cost double your budget.
Either way, the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle does have some stiction and you might want to clean it up, or even better 3D print/buy a slider replacement for about ~$40 on Etsy.
It really does, I opened mine up and cleaned off all the factory grease, replacing it with a bog standard lithium grease (sparingly!) and the difference is night and day.
Some people swear by the fancy silicon grease and I see a lot of good things but I'm fine with regular old lithium.
VKB sticks last longer (no issues after 2+ years heavy use), are repairable and VKB will sell you parts. Much nicer if you can afford it. Take a look at their youtube channel if you are curious about the repairibility. https://www.youtube.com/c/VKBSim
https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/t-16000m-fcs-hotas/
But do they have a library of safety incidents, which you can then replay?
I haven't done much simming recently sadly, WarThunder VR support has been broken for over a year and sadly my CPU isn't strong enough for X-Plane 11, but I'll probably be picking up one of the new AMD chips this fall so I'm excited to get back into it.
I have MSFS 2020, I know of at least one user created 'mission' that puts lets you try and land on the Hudson like Capt Sully
X-Plane 12 Flight Model Update – Supersonic Transition, Delta Wings and Mass - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31827301 - June 2022 (126 comments)
https://youtube.com/channel/UCLPA0Dhi1VXQDGbkXwjDUzQ
Otherwise, X-plane 12 is pretty compelling as well and it probably wins in the flight model department in terms of just modeling a lot of weird and niche stuff out of the box. Most people will never notice but it's there to appreciate for those that can appreciate these things.
And with the right scenery, it doesn't look half bad either. E.g. orbx has scenery for both sims and I suspect things look pretty close with that. And there are some nice free add-ons that will get you closer to the MS experience but probably not all the way. E.g. Simheaven.com is getting ready with an xplane-12 release; completely free.
X-plane 12 is a pretty big upgrade if you were using or familiar with x-plane 11:
- volumetric clouds and weather updates
- the rendering is gorgeous in comparison
- lots of refinement in flight models, audio, ATC, weather engine, etc.
- Lots of nice new default planes
- Amazing work on the sound. Seeing a jet take off is one thing. But hearing the rumble is another thing.
Give the free demo a spin. Easiest way to find out if it's worth your money. Works great on recent Macbooks with the M1 processor.
And why call out VR specifically? Well, VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation. I've flown small planes too and I've never felt that a flightsim was able to provide the feeling of flying. Until VR that is. Now it's amazing.
So far I've held off on buying any VR-related non-sense because I have yet to find something that it would improve the experience of enough to warrant spending money on. It sounds like this might be getting me closer?
[0] I've written at length about this in the past, but he owned his company and sold to manufacturing plants. Many were out-of-state, so the plane allowed him to get to a few appointments and back home without a hotel stay -- or ... "gave him an excuse to own a plane". You pick :)
The VR works and works pretty well. The feeling of looking around in the cockpit is a nice improvement even over my old standby of TrackIR, which I used to use more frequently.
I will say that I think I might dust the TrackIR off and use it again at some point. VR is a little disorienting and uncomfortable for long time periods and just having head tracking with a monitor does get you part of the way there.
I do find it difficult to "touch" the controls in the cockpit, so if you want to actually learn the cockpit layout (rather than mapping a bunch of stuff to your keyboard and/or other input devices) you may want to pause the game while you select things.
The graphics in XP 11 can be somewhat improved with "Orthophoto scenery" and there is a lot of payware available too, but this is a deep rabbit hole with lots of sketchy downloads and mucking about. Even after doing this I don't think the visuals ever get close to competing with the MSFS "out of the box" experience.
But VFR flying and just general _enjoyment_ of flying (like the worldwide coverage of terrain and airports and live weather) are much better in MSFS
Both are really good though
The reason for that is, my primary interest in X-Plane is DESIGNING planes to see if and how well they will fly. If it had the structural stuff in the short-lived Young's Modulus by the same guy I'd be even more interested… that's a big ask, however, and potentially very dangerous.
Because people literally use X-Plane to design real planes, by making rough drafts of the aerodynamics, weights and balances of their proposed designs. X-Plane is a full-on blade element modeler right down to modelling the propellers of prop-driven planes also as little wings, and flight is simulated by taking all the airfoils etc. at various points of all wings and determining how the plane would fly with this collection of forces… for ALL MODELS.
That's the only engine at work. You don't download 'new flight code' for new planes you get, just the aesthetics and the model that says what airfoils go where etc. and then the sim works out what would happen.
If you wanted to fly your 747 but see what would happen if you stuck a Cessna engine 3 feet in from the left wingtip, MFS absolutely would not know where to begin with that. X-Plane would not only let you do it but would do a pretty decent job of showing what would happen.
So it's kind of not even a comparison…
Pretty hilarious getting downvotes on a nerd site for saying THIS. Bring it. I stand by what I said 100%, these are the things that matter in a simulator. For airplanes :)
Even the old flight sim was so advanced MSFT had contracts with the French military for their mapping tech from the game specifically. This is back in the day now.
For your scenario, I think if it was an Airbus, the conditions weren't too extreme and there were no failures, I'd have a pretty good shot at a successful landing. If it was a Boeing, I wouldn't know where to start.
I don't think flying is that hard at a basic level. Arguably it's easier than driving once you've got your head around the millions of buttons and switches. The challenge is what you do when things go wrong, and adequately planning for that situation.
It's probably safe to say you'd get 50% edge just by knowing how plane controls works (roll, pitch, yaw) -- I don't think a lot of "general public" would have idea what they are, let alone how they are mapped to things in a cockpit.
I distinctly remember in previous versions watching the AI aircraft bounce off the ground repeatedly in an attempt to reach an incorrect flight level given to them by the ATC. That kind of ruined the illusion for me.
It's a great sim, overall, I think it has a different set of priorities from MSFS, which is totally fine. I only wish I could have the best of both worlds.
If you really want good ATC, yeah VATSIM or IVAO.