'Hands off keyboard' flying...
Saitek have a long history of producing peripherals for the PC gamer. From gamepads and keyboards to wheels and joysticks, Saitek have had a crack at just about everything. Right now, they produce arguable some of the best sticks on the market, catering for all tastes and budgets but we’re having a look at the flagship stick in their range, the X52 Flight Control System.
Rather a grand sounding name, isn’t it? But deservedly so as the X52 is the latest in a line of dedicated throttle and stick systems which started with the X35, then moved onto the X45 before ending up with the X52, but all aimed squarely at the sim nut, like myself.
So, what does the X52 do that an ordinary stick doesn’t? It’s got more knobs and buttons that you could shake a big ‘knob and button’ stick at. For the anal amongst you, on the main stick there’s 6 buttons (one of which is two stage), 3 toggle switches (each with two states), 2 eight-way hat switches and a three-way mode switch. The throttle has 5 buttons, 1 hat switch, a slider, a scroll wheel and two rotary dials. Now, that may not sound like much, but one of the switches on the joystick is actually a shift button, giving everything a second function… and the 3 way mode switch gives a further 3 functions per switch, so that a possible SIX functions per button or switch… or, including the hat switches which can be programmed as eight separate buttons each, the throttle and stick give you access to over 300 keypresses without ever having to take your hands off either the throttle of the stick.