SAITEK X65F NEW CONTROLSYSTEM

I dunno, but my gut is telling me that Saitek's marketing weenies are off of the mark on this one.

First off, the price seems somewhat high for the general market which leaves the niche hardcore market. That is not necessarily bad, I mean a tensometric stick is a viper simmers' wet dream, but then you'd think they would have put more effort in replicating the real flight stick and throttle. I think the F22 has a tensometric stick as well, but being newly returned to the sim game I am not up to speed on the details of what other aircraft use this technology.

Secondly, if you are aiming at the high end sim market, the DCS series seems to be what you'd want to be targeting, but from the information we have so far, it is unlikely to fit the bill as far as realism goes.

Saitek seems to have a penchant of throwing all kinds of cool things on a stick without much regard for who are going to be the most likely users of the product or how useful those features are actually going to be.

I think that X65F may end up being a a stick in search of a sim.

Cheers,

Pogo

$500 + .... Too expensive for me!

 

http://www.flightstore.co.uk/prod/SAIX65F/DEPT-FSIM/Y3/

Guys, please, let's wait for the official pricetag and not this estimated price.

It's pretty common that some companies set their prices high, when there's no official news. If you make it cheaper later, everybody's happy. If you learn you have to increase the price and people already preodered, you're in trouble.

So let's not take this premature offer as something real. Wait for official news.

Guys, please, let's wait for the official pricetag and not this estimated price.

 

It's pretty common that some companies set their prices high, when there's no official news. If you make it cheaper later, everybody's happy. If you learn you have to increase the price and people already preodered, you're in trouble.

 

So let's not take this premature offer as something real. Wait for official news.

Possibly, but on the other hand this is a retailer actually taking pre-orders based on his listed price. Even if they cut the price by 25% it is still going to be an expensive stick.

Cheers,

Pogo

Hmm, interesting, a force sensing OEM HOTAS? I might just hold off on a force sensing mod for my Cougar, as that alone costs as much as the entire Saitek X65.

Correct me if I am wrong; but I think the only force-sensing flight controls in a aircraft are in the F-16, F-22 and F-35.

Yeah and thats what disturbs me. I thought it was a couple years back we were begging saitek for a FFB hotas and we get a FSB one instead that really only applies to Falcon sims right. At least as far as I know thats the only realistic sim that would apply. I was hoping this would be an answer to the Logitech stick? Maybe we're reading into this wrong and it is a FFB stick, we shall see......

I love flying with my FSSB cougar. I wouldn't fly without it- even blackshark!

Now , if this is a FSSB type stick - then I will buy it for sure!

Interesting Flim - I must say I started thinking like Pogo, that it's a stick in search of a sim. Certainly for me, as soon as I discovered it probably wasn't force feedback, I started thinking about the G940 instead. What does the X65F have for you over the Cougar, other than the split throttle, that makes it worth the money?

300+ euros for me to go from an X52 to X65F - which it seems gives me only force transducers and a split throttle - doesn't seem worth it to me, when the majority of my simming in the next couple of years will probably be DCS:BS and A10C, plus maybe some Rise of Flight. If I still played a lot of the Falcon franchise, things might be different though.

It seems the decision will come down to force transducers or force feedback (notwithstanding cost and pedals). If the X65F turns out to be both tensometric and force feedback through some technical wizardry, I'll have one faster than you can say "how do I get it in the house without the missus seeing".

Though even now I'm wondering if a centre-mounted tensometric stick would still work well for BS/A10 even if not FFB. I'm pretty used to the trimming after all, and it removes the need to mod it with a shaft extension...

And what would that be?

There are 3 hats, all placed on the stick top. The uppermost one is smaller, the lower is bigger. Compare that to the real stuff (designed by those who know much about ergonomics) - it should be just exactly vice versa, to make it easier for your thumb to reach the upper one and not interfere with the lower one. They've copied the outer look, superficially, but missed something more important.

And thinking of LO experience, i'd prefer to move the lock-on cursor by a ministick, not a hat, even if there are 8 of them. There's a mousehat thingie on the throttle, but there will be certain difficulties adopting it for this purpose.

The lower half of the stick is... fat, that's an X52 heritage. Someone would consider it comfortable, but i'd prefer the traditional forms there.

The "scroll selector" wheel is good to be present, if it acts like a normal rotary. But for some reason this silver shining wheel is placed under your pinkie. That's glamourous, but is that comfortable? When its usability is more important than its look, it's being placed under your 2nd, 3rd or 4th finger.

And lately i've expressed my opinion on symmetric split-throttle design.

I find these functional solutions... very questionable.

Does "tensometric" means that the stick actually does not displace? It stays firm in the center and senses the amount of force applied to it?

exactly - like the cougar force mod

Hi,

well, nice pics you've found on flightstore but item infos told me that X65F won't be my dream stuff... if no FFB... OK, maybe better and quicker responses than my spring-centered HOTAS's, and I am waiting for some test results, but for heli controlling and trimming (weak point of BS with non-FFB)... I started saving bucks for some new FFB HOTAS. I hope that lots of ED forum members' impressions will be mostly positive with that stick's helo trimming :joystick:.

Demands are different:)...

Why does everyone want force feedback so much? Do people realize that in a real modern aircraft, the flight controls are isolated in various ways and you don't feel vibrations, shaking etc. I think FFB makes it less realistic and less precise, not more.

...item infos told me that X65F won't be my dream stuff... if no FFB...

I thought the "F" stands for Force-Feedback and all the others told me that it has FF.

Why does everyone want force feedback so much? Do people realize that in a real modern aircraft, the flight controls are isolated in various ways and you don't feel vibrations, shaking etc. I think FFB makes it less realistic and less precise, not more.

Although I "only" have the MS Sidewinder FFB2, I'd never want to change to a non-FF stick. I always wanted to have the Thrustmaster Cougar (excellent stick) but without FF I decided not to pay over 200 Euros for it.

I think you make a mistake. We're not talking about rumble-sticks. Real FF is not shaking the stick when firing. A real FF implementation gives you the feel of high G's for instance. My MS Sidewinder, although old, does this very good in Falcon4 AF and i even use it for my Nascar 2003 instead of a wheel. It works great and it does'nt just "rumble".

Hi Vega,

as I can see this as a rotorhead... As you fly a real helicopter, you should set and hold the stick in the position the maneuver requires in pitch and roll, unlike fixed wings, where you set pitch and roll and reset the stick to center.

Helicopter trimming means that you set the stick's neutral position (reset force on the stick) where you hold it for your maneuver, and after this, you can release stick if you want. Some helos have this trimmer (Ka-50, Mi-24, Mi-8 ), some don't (Robinson 22). This also means that you can always do smooth maneuvers (for example, in IMC), cause you don't have to fight with the stick force (OK, R22 has almost no stick force:)). You're right, the controls are isolated, for example, in a Mi-24, cause she has hydraulic boosters, so you can't feel the aerodynamic forces themselves on your cyclic, you only have, well, artifical force feedback through multi-spring mechanism, in a determined spring characteristics. But I think no one is talking about vibration sticks here as FFB, see the reply below this.

BS's trimming with non-FFB sticks is, well, a kind of mixture of fixed and rotary wing trimming (as I can think of it). It is not bad, it is a good job solving this difficult problem, it is very usable, but it is caused by the limitations of non-FFB technology (what we are mostly using) and the need for helo trimming, and it is not realistic.

Without heli trim simulation (like in MS Flight Simulator), or without using it (if you don't do it in BS:D), you should set and hold your stick in the desired position, but this doesn't allow your hand to rest or even to fly the helo accurately. With good FFB, this can be realistic and easier.

So, as TrackIR, HOTAS, multi monitor, 15000 dpi laser mouse, 16.1 surround sound system etc.: FFB is not necessary, but FFB can make this ultimate helo sim more realistic.

Cheers!

I thought the "F" stands for Force-Feedback and all the others told me that it has FF.

OK, there are two different infos, but after a few month we'll see it, as the blind man said:D... I definitely need some months savin' bucks to buy one of these, so I have patience...

OK, there are two different infos, but after a few month we'll see it, as the blind man said:D... I definitely need some months savin' bucks to buy one of these, so I have patience...

Always listen to the blind man ;).

I think it is FF. I've just cancelled my G940 order to save some more money for the X65F. If the reviews should be excellent, I'll buy it. Definitely time for a new ace-kicking FF-joystick.

Why does everyone want force feedback so much? Do people realize that in a real modern aircraft, the flight controls are isolated in various ways and you don't feel vibrations, shaking etc. I think FFB makes it less realistic and less precise, not more.

Speaking for myself, it is all about the trim holding. There may be some bonus to some other effects showing up under certain circumstances, but that is not what I'm after.

The trim methods implemented by E.D. for the non-FFB users are work-arounds. While those work-around control schemes make sense when selling software to a mostly non-FFB customer base, it is not the way that I want to fly the Black Shark. Obviously, many people have mastered the 're-center the stick immediately releasing the trim button' technique, but it has also been a major point of complaint for a number of users. It is not an intuitive thing to do. In the actual aircraft, the stick and pedals remain displaced after releasing the trim button. I'd like mine to do the same.

In the actual aircraft, the stick and pedals remain displaced after releasing the trim button. I'd like mine to do the same.

Me too. Does this mean that we'll have to have a FF rudder pedal as well to keep it displaced after releasing the trim button? Are such pedals available, by the way?

If you don't want to re-center your pedals manually, then yes... you need FFB pedals. No, consumer market grade FFB pedals are not available.

However, FFB steering wheels *are* available. I picked up a Saitek R660 FFB wheel for the purpose of linking it mechanically to my old Thrustmaster RCS pedals. I haven't done the linking yet, since I'm currently working on getting a seat mounted to a platform to act as my reference point for then mounting the controls. I believe I have a fairly simple method for connecting them when I get to that point. What I have in mind, at least for starters, will not even necessitate removing the steering wheel from its shaft. Later on, after the concept has proven out, I may elect to due surgery on the steering wheel, to get a more streamlined/compact/elegant arrangement. Knowing my lazy self though, I'm most likely to leave well enough alone (if it is actually working well enough, of course).

Why does everyone want force feedback so much? Do people realize that in a real modern aircraft, the flight controls are isolated in various ways and you don't feel vibrations, shaking etc. I think FFB makes it less realistic and less precise, not more.

I picked up a Saitek R660 FFB wheel for the purpose of linking it mechanically to my old Thrustmaster RCS pedals

Sounds interesting keep us up =)

Hi Su-Berkut,

If you can call your improvements "laziness" then tell me what you do when "active" ;). I would see your vapor-trails then, I guess.

Sounds great. I hope you keep us (or at least me) up to date with your FFB-Rudder-Project. Maybe we could produce a TV-Series called "Cockpit Improvement". I'll ask Tim Taylor if he would want to participate in it ;).

No, really. Sounds like we can expect some interesting solutions from your side. Keep up the work.

So far, it has been a lot of purchases, a few project starts, and little completed of note. I let a lot of things related to this languish, awaiting the purchase of a new desktop PC for sim'ing and gaming. Ultimately, I still plan to buy/build a new PC in the (hopefully) not too distant future... but I can still do things using my trusty old Pentium 4 (dual threaded) @ 3 GHz. It was not really the way I wanted to go, as it was very low on hard drive space, and the old nVidia 7600 graphics card is an AGP card. I just alleviated the hard drive space problem by putting a new 500 GB IDE drive in and cloning the old 60Gb drive (that had my Win XP and Kubuntu) to it. Since it is breathing easier, and can actually be fully defragged now, I'll move forward on other fronts and wait awhile longer. That allows some time to see what comes out from ATI and nVidia's answer, along with possibly seeing 6 core / 12 thread versions of the i7 from Intel.

Movement on the controllers may pick up a little steam here before much longer. I just got most of the needed drilling done on the seat rails... I just need to make a final decision on what I'm going to mount it on, and then follow through.

When I get something interesting done, I'll take some pics and probably start a separate thread for it.

Meanwhile, I'll keep watching for more info on the Saitek X65F. I *really* was hoping it would be a good FFB stick with that nice looking split throttle. I'm still hoping, but I'm steeling myself for the possibility of being disappointed about it.

It seems it is a FSSb type stick- I think it will be a better deal then force feedback! 100 times more precise and just a twitch of the wrist. For those who have not used a force modded cougar- then you will realize it is the best out there period. Flying the blackshark is easy , plus any other aircraft. This is just my opinion. I think the 65f will be a big hit.

Flim - did it take much getting used to the FSSB? How do you know when you're applying full pressure (so you don't stop early, or worse damage the stick?)