Are dogfights easier with a joystick than with a mouse

[Philip Coutts]

A decent JoyStick and Voice Attack are invaluable, you can allocate a lot of handy commands to VA which frees up the buttons for other tasks.

Also a Tracker and a few cans of Beer and/or Whisky for extra immersion.

I think I need voice attack badly. I'm running out of buttons big style and that's before adding in ECM and stuff like that.

[SJT]

Voice Attack is great. I use it for configuring power distribution quickly (among lots of other functions) which frees up a hat switch on the stick as well.

I'm in two minds as to whether to get a tracker now or wait for the consumer version of the Oculus.

[Philip Coutts]

I guess the answer to the OP is it is up to you (helpful I know!). Me, I can't fly using the mouse at all, let alone fight anything with it. I started playing in the Alpha and used an xbox 360 controller and it worked perfectly. But the Hotas is just better. It feels right, it feels like you are flying so for me, no contest it has to be Hotas.

[Mobius]

during the Alpha I used the xbox joypad, it done the job but I have since moved onto the X52-pro, going to any other mode from here would be a backwards step. though I really enjoyed freelancers mouse mode, I don't think I could be comfortable using it now. so im going to say get a joystick.

[SJT]

I've just removed the detent widget from my X52 Pro Throttle. It makes a big difference to fine control.

It's dead easy to do with the following instructions and you can replace it easily as well. Unless you're a big flight simmer needing detents for afterburners/reverse thrust, there's no need for it.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=115981