Many people will describe the Cougar as the "Ferrari" of flight controls, it's very well described that way. When it works, it works wonderfully, and will absolutely kick everyone's ass, but half of the week you will be fixing it the garage. In particular the pots that they used on the Cougar is no different than the ones you will find on cheap sticks, after a year or 2, they will begin to develop play. Just look on a few flight sim forums and you will find plenty of people trying to troubleshoot it. There are however, aftermarket 3rd party fixes available, but it's gonna be costly, expect to pay another $300ish just for the fix.
It's too sad that all the flight controls besides the CH products and the Cougars are all "star wars" these days, I missed all the realistic controls the old Thrustmaster put out during the golden age of the mid-90's, while I blame them for being ignorant and greedy for effectively suing Suncom out of business at the same time...*sigh*
I myself am trying to hang onto the SWF-22, F-16TQS and the RCS, but their days may be numbered, due to the lack of Vista driver and the original author of the drivers had stated that there would be no more driver after XP long ago.
I still own the *original* Thrustmaster... I don't recall the model... maybe it was called FCS? Anyway it was their first product... modeled after an F-4 Phantom control stick, it had a metal base, but the handle was plastic. The springs inside were/are very tight. It sits in it's box right now, as I don't do flight sims much any more (Falcon 3.0 was the last for me). I bought it in 1992, I believe. I wonder if it would even work with a modern flight sim game? They came out with an almost identical but cheaper version (all plastic, no metal base) for several years, then dropped it for the f-16 style plastic model. I went to their website recently hoping to find some archival information about the original products, but there wasn't any.
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Many people will describe the Cougar as the "Ferrari" of flight controls, it's very well described that way. When it works, it works wonderfully, and will absolutely kick everyone's ass, but half of the week you will be fixing it the garage. In particular the pots that they used on the Cougar is no different than the ones you will find on cheap sticks, after a year or 2, they will begin to develop play. Just look on a few flight sim forums and you will find plenty of people trying to troubleshoot it. There are however, aftermarket 3rd party fixes available, but it's gonna be costly, expect to pay another $300ish just for the fix.
It's too sad that all the flight controls besides the CH products and the Cougars are all "star wars" these days, I missed all the realistic controls the old Thrustmaster put out during the golden age of the mid-90's, while I blame them for being ignorant and greedy for effectively suing Suncom out of business at the same time...*sigh*
I myself am trying to hang onto the SWF-22, F-16TQS and the RCS, but their days may be numbered, due to the lack of Vista driver and the original author of the drivers had stated that there would be no more driver after XP long ago.
I still own the *original* Thrustmaster... I don't recall the model... maybe it was called FCS? Anyway it was their first product... modeled after an F-4 Phantom control stick, it had a metal base, but the handle was plastic. The springs inside were/are very tight. It sits in it's box right now, as I don't do flight sims much any more (Falcon 3.0 was the last for me). I bought it in 1992, I believe. I wonder if it would even work with a modern flight sim game? They came out with an almost identical but cheaper version (all plastic, no metal base) for several years, then dropped it for the f-16 style plastic model. I went to their website recently hoping to find some archival information about the original products, but there wasn't any.