This TrackIR thing seems to be the sh*t and the option if one wants the best emmersion. But the price tag on a USD$29.95 game is soaring by the moment.

Much more thought is required!!!

It's not impossible to play Falcon without TrackIR, it's merely useful to be able to do so. Don't forget, when the original Falcon came out, everyone was playing it without TrackIR.

Whether the justification for the price of TrackIR can or can not be made depends on how much you are going to use it. For me it was something of a no brainer as I am a sucker for flight sims, and being a pilot in the real world too, I want flight sims to emulate as closely as possible the real thing. Since I use TrackIR in a lot of sims, it works out as a small cost to increase usability if you divide it by all the sims I use it with.

I look at it like this: I would get more enjoyment out of a peripheral such as TrackIR for many hours as opposed to that cost being perhaps the equivalent of a couple of good nights out. But that's my choice, ironically enough, I was out last night at a party with a free bar, so that's kinda blown my argument, but you know what I mean!

You can use TrackIR in things like Armed Assault (ARMA) I tried this, it was kinda wierd, but I guess you could get used to it and it was cool to be running and firing while looking around to the left and right. Racing games such as NASCAR and GT Legends etc can make use of TrackIR too, and if you like doing blocking maneuevers in a car race it is useful.

It is a cool thing, but if you were only going to use it with one sim, there's no denying it's a pricey option.

:D Chock

Truth is I played all Falcon without TrackIR, and IL2 as well, using clever padlock commands on my HOTAS, a good HOTAS can work around very well. Not before half a year ago I discovered TrackIR for FS9 - and immediately was hooked. I have not missed it before, since I did never tried it. After I knew it, I would never fly withoiut it anymore. So TrackIR yes or no should noone ever make to stay away from buying a flight sim.

I found a copy of the manual that I'll look thru. I understand what were talking about when it comes to the cost spread out over several games and not allowing the lack of one item keeping me from purchasing F4AF.

I will keep both issues in mind. Thanx.

I still don't have a TrackIR but Falcon has always been awesome for me. It's the only game to stay on my HD constantly for over 8 years now. So don't let anyone convince you it's a "must". It's just a desirable little thing to have. I have neither a TrackIR nor a HOTAS, and for the longest time I didn't even have a hat switch on my stick, but (especially with my inclinations as a mud-mover rather than dogfighter) Falcon's always been pretty intuitive to me once I learned the ropes (which took me about half a year, but still).

I'm still working this. Today's question; what are the pros and cons btwn these two?

Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar Flight Control System;
Saitek X52 Pro Flight System Controller.

I see the price difference on Amazon. What I'm looking for is durability and ability to stay put on my computer desk (I guess that is base weight).

Utility for F4AF is also important. Thanx again wg.

How does Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar handle the rudder? Is it a twist of the stick?

The current Saitek X52 Pro Flight System Controller is an improvement on earlier versions, THREE of which lie broken in the corner of my computer room after various switches failed on them (including the rudder control on one). So as you can imagine, this has put me off buying the X52, although I am told by a lot of people that the X52 is much more durable and reliable these days. It does have a lot of utility and programmability, but I'm personally going to stay away from it because of my experiences. Others may disagree with my assessment of course.

The Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar Flight Control System is better in my opinion, not got one myself personally, but I have used one quite a bit, as a friend of mine has one of these (that's him flying the other F-16 in the screenshots I posted earlier in this thread). Like me, he also had a Saitek set up, which also broke before he got the Cougar! As you probably know this stick and throttle is actually the exact same shape as the ones in an F-16 (it being modelled on one), which of course means that there isn't going to be anything better for flying a simulated F-16 realistically. You can map the controls to the exact same layout of the real thing (which my buddy has done) and this is really cool. Doing so includes stufff like the fact that the F-16 has a 'dogfight switch' on the throttle which, when selected, automatically switches the aircraft to all the right modes on the radar for close in fighting, and configures the weapons for this kind of fight.

In fairness, the X52 does seem fairly hefty and durable upon inspection, and there is nothing to stop you from setting up the Saitek stick to do a very close emulation of the F-16's switches. But the Cougar is built like a tank, and it really does have some weight and stability. I have never heard of one of these breaking by the way, which goes some way toward explaining why it is so pricey, as you generally get what you pay for in life.

Just a quick point to note: both of these stick and throttle combinations take up a lot of room on your desktop, and while the stick is okay to use at desktop height, I've found that the throttle control is more convenient to use when placed a little lower on your left hand side (on a small table or something similar), more like the location it is on a real F-16 in fact.

Not wishing to completely write off Saitek, I use a Saitek Cyborg EVO stick coupled with Saitek's Pro Flight rudder pedals much of the time (including when flying Falcon). With 12 switches plus a coolie hat (which I don't need for the views because of TrackIR) the EVO does have enough switches to assign in Falcon and make only the odd keyboard press necessary from time to time. But I did have to customise this stick a little bit by trimming a ring out of the centralising spring, which is way too stiff on a standard one and tailor made for giving you RSI!

But, I would search for more opinions than just mine on this matter if I were you, as you will probably find someone with more experience of actually having both of the latest ones. I'd recommend a look at the AVSIM or SIMHQ forums for opinions.

:D Chock

From what I can tell the Cougar has no built in rudder function. Another add-on is needed. My question is if the a/c is in a 90° knife edge how can you maintain altitude w/o top rudder? Won't it become neccessary to dish out to level flight and make yourself vulnurable?

In a gun fight with the target 5°-10° off your nose how can you yaw the a/c to get a gun shot w/o rudder?

EDIT: Another thought; if you're in the verticle with an adversary a little quick nose yaw might make him think you are close to the stall when you are'nt. He may be inclined to stay with you beyond his stall just to see. Then you have him!

Cougar-fans will spank me, but I think you should take CH Fighterstick and ProThrottle into account. The ergonomy makes them a worthy input device not only for flightsims.I sue them for SH3 and Train Sim as well, for example. however, ina lightsim, they belong to the premier league of contemprary input devices.

I can't confirm that rudders are a must in Falcon. In IL2: definitely yes. in FS9/X: not a must, but highly recommended. In Falcon: Definitely not a must, in no way. I never have used rudders in falcon, not in default Falcon, not in the realism patch series, not in the SP3 incarnation, not in AF. You do not need rudders in Falcon, period. And most Falcon flying of the global community in the past ten years definetly has been done without rudders. before AF, you even needed many tricks to get rudders functioning in the various Falcon ijncranatuion sof the different patching branches.

Two beers and warm weather, damn - i spend more time correcting typos than writing text...

Another thought: I rarely end up in Falcon dogfighting. Most of the time I end up configuring the various HUDs, radar, monitor modes, etc. BVR fights are the rule I try to stick to - and I think that is the way it should be. If I come to dogfighting, then most of the time i must conclude I have done some thing wrong in the mission, and planned it badly. F4 is not IL2. And one thing is clear: the airborne enemy in campaign tries to fight BVR very well.

BVR....................
I want to fight!! Id like to feel like I'm in a telephone booth with the guy and may the best, most aggressive man win!! Is F4AF the wrong sim for this?

Some enemy fighters will outdance you, simply that. F4 tries to be a simulation of reality, and in reality pilots avoid to get closer to the enemy than necessary by technical specifications, or orders. the AMRAAM is your weapon of choice - the Sidewinder I consider to be an emergency option only - for needing to use it means that the enemy is closer than I would like him to have.

Some enemy fighters also have superior weapons. The Russians have some of the world's best air combat missiles worldwide. Appearing SU-35s or a SU-27s, for example, often means to jettison all stores, and Condition Red as much as red can be.

No matter if in classival Falcon and over korea, or in AF and over the Balkans: you are far from being invulnerable.

Maybe I am not good enough a Falcon flyer, but i certai9nly was a Falcon flyer who did not get hit very often: my priority always was to survive the mission, and save my wingmen if possible. The AI sometimes is eager to get them killed, so there are some dos and donts that need to be kept in mind.

It is no doigfighting simulator like IL2 8which is extremely weak on campaign and immersion, but is a pure dogfoghter sim). Best think of it in terms of Microsoft Flight Simulator with a campaign and sophisticated simulation of weapons and sensor-related systems. You will need to learn a lot about sensors. Your life and mission success will depend on understanding your various radar modes. Also, you need to focus not on 1-1 duels, but to beat the whole theatre.

I've been flying straight and level, with a a few aerobatic/simulated combat flights since 1978. If I purchase a sim I want to fight. Skybird you mentioned IL2. Would that give me the best opportunity and will the Thrustmaster Couger work?

If you prefer simple, pure dogfighting by eye's sight, IL2 is the option to choose, no doubt. You get reasonable flightmodels with most of the 200 planes. But you miss the biggest campaign ever being made for any military game. But again, if dogfighting is your thing, yes, IL2 is the first choice. these days you can get all the addons and patches in just one package, named "IL2 1946", or something like that (I remember that there was some issue I had with feedback concenring the copy protection, that made me turn from it, you better check for that). It includes IL2, Forgotten Battles, Aces of Europe, and the Pacific addon (including carrier landing and take-offs), all these modules patched according to release date, and installed in one rush.

Search youtube for IL2 videos. There are good and bad ones, ingame action movies as well as composed story-telling films.

Cant comment on the Cougar. Ask Subman, he uses a Cougar, I think.

For IL2, rudders are a must, else you cannot reasonably aim. If you do not have a HOTAs with TWO coolie hats for vision control (all directions at same level, all directions and looking up), your vision control will not be very flexible and will be slow even when using padlocking a lot, and I would seriously recommend to use TrackIR then. Seeing is living.

Personally I prefer going up against SAM sites in Falcon and taking airborne stuff out with AIM-120s rather than dogfighting. Dodging SAMs in Falcon by diving under them while inverted and forcing them to lose their lock with the terrain is really great fun! Nevertheless, I did practice dogfighting the Falcon F-16 a lot simply because I wanted to be able to fight well if I got into that situation.

The rudder most definitely CAN help you win dogfights in Falcon.

In dogfighting (especially in Falcon) it's vital to practice maintaining the best corner speed without afterburners (somewhere between 340 and 440 knots is about what to aim for in an F-16), therefore, well-coordinated turns are a must, which means a rudder control is a must. If you can hold that best corner velocity and maintain around 5g, you can pretty much out-turn anything in Falcon (eventually LOL). Do that and it will be easy to get your lift vector onto the bad guy, to enable you to take a shot. It does require very precise flying to not bleed off speed when doing this kind of malarkey(this is where the rudder is useful). Even so, you still find you need to drop the nose every so often in a low yo-yo maneuever to maintain the speed. But you might be able to get away with a bit of bottom rudder to get the nose below the horizon to assist in maintaining speed instead of doing it inverted with the lift vector, so again, the rudder would be useful here too.

The Falcon 4 manual (both the original and the Allied Force PDF) has a good tutorial and accompanying practice mission in the sim which will demonstrate all this stuff and teach you what to do. Even when you are doing it right it still takes a lot of turns to get on the tail of the Russkie jet you fight in that tutorial (or at least it does when on full realism settings), but if you can do it without using the afterburner too much, you'll kick a lot of people's asses when fighting online, as many people who fly flight sims online haven't got a clue about maintaining corner velocity without the 'burner on!

Incidentally, maintaining the best corner velocity without using full power was what many of the Harrier pilots in the Falklands did, and had done so before when they flew the F4 Phantom. This is one of the main reasons why they completely kicked the Argentinian pilots asses in that war, because the Agentinian pilots were not able to turn with them without relying on 'burners and using up fuel while at their operational range limit. Consequently, they'd turn for home when the bingo fuel warning came on and get a missile up their tailpipe while trying to break off the engagement.

I'm pretty sure Falcon will let you use automatically coordinated rudder (alfhough I'd never use it myself as it wouldn't let you make crossed controls maneuevers such as a sideslip), so I imagine it is possible to fly the Falcon F-16 without a rudder control, but I personally would not want to.

You most certainly can do close-in dogfighting in Falcon, it's actually one of the best jet sims there is for it. But it does require you to practice all that stuff above which I mentioned in order to do it (not really a big deal, as even practicing dogfighting is fun). This is one of the reasons why the Falcon 4 manual has such a legendary reputation as one of the best manuals ever though, because it has pages and pages of stuff on how to do all that kind of thing properly in it.

If I were you, I'd just get an intermediate joystick with a built in twist rudder function and throttle, then worry about getting something fancy when you've decided whether you really want to spend the cash on it. If you really are in the mood to spend more cash right now, you'll do a lot better with a less flashy stick and TrackIR, than a really flash one and less flexibility when it comes to looking around. Remember, you have to be able to see something first before you can dogfight it!

:D Chock

IL2 Just a DOGFIGHT SIM?!
refering IL2 as just a dogfight sim is crazy ;)

and btw IL2 copy protection, I've been using IL2 since the very first day it came out and never had any issues with its copy protection not ingame not systematicly.

back to the simple dogfight sim, the campaign is not indeed the best I've seen around in games.
but for the rest IL2 is more then that!
it depends on the role you take,

you can be a fighter and sweep fighters in indeed dogfights.
which require the old fashion tactics used in those days depending your situation. and thought they seem simple as its just pulling the trigger to kill the enemy without inputting data like in jet fighters but still...a mistake can be fatal as the roles of the hunter becomes the hunted. and using your plane in the wrong way is big mistake to make when trying to take out a enemy.

you can be a Bomber killer and take out the enemy bombers with heavy calibre machine guns and cannons.

take the role of a twin engine fighter, and strafe the enemy airfields.
or you could be a light bomber like the stuka and give the ground forces pure hell.

and ofcourse not the least the Bombers. fend of enemy fighters on the way to your target, stay in formation, level out your plane and input the right data into the bombsight and drop the load ontop of factory's and ground targets. watch out for flak.

and the best of all online play.
get into servers where they made very good dogfight maps which is not only for dogfighting...you get goals to destroy the enemy fleet for example.

and also a very nice feature if you know how to use it. the Mission editor where you can create your own missions, make them as thought as you like too. make goals, use them for online play with friends.

and also IL2 itself.
the game is stable as a brick house.
its system friendly, it doesnt ask much for nice graphics.

and ofcourse in IL2 the planes, fly the planes which are famous by their names the BF109, P47 thunderbolt, A6M2 ZERO, FW190, P51 Mustang.

if you like the old fashion combat from man to man.
get IL2.

Cougar is almost a must for F4 AF. Other sims, its a nice addition that can give you the edge over anything else. It's metal construction means you won't break it either. It's $200 well spent - I have no regrets, only praise. And, if it possibly breaks - it has user serviceable parts in it - unlike other joysticks. Many people customize it like a car. They put specialized pots in it, and tweak various things, etc. Mine is stock - bought it as they first came out, and works fine to this day. I did re-grease it with plastic/metal compatible teflon grease though - found at any model train store.

Unlike other people here, BVR may be the name of the game, but I have found myself in a furball or two unexpectedly. Lining up on a target to take out an armor column - I found myself sandwiched in a US vs N Korea engagement that I could do nothing about - MiG's on one side (East), and F-15's and F-16's closing from the other. Two MiG-21's in formation decided to make me their target and I was allready low level. That Dogfight switch on the Cougar comes in handy! Downed the first one in front of of me with an Aim-120, and the second shortly after with an Aim-9 - I could see the whites of his eyes as I was switching the dogfight switch off and getting back to a cluster bomb attack! Two MiG's died, Many tanks died, and I bugged out for home with my wingman (whom also got a kill)!

I think its the unexpected things that I love about the sim. SOmeone above said that they think they made a mistake when they get into a furball, but I say that is BS. As they said, the best laid plans in war fall apart.....

-S

PS. i think Track IR is better suited to IL2 - not Falcon. I do not use one. The way IL2 is laid out makes it almost mandatory. Falcon makes it only sort of a neat gadget.

Track IR is very useful in Falcon if you fly online with other people. Me and a buddy take turns to lead the flight per mission, which means I get to fly in the number two slot half the time, and so it's great for formation flying on the ingress with the radar silent, as we can get close and look like one blip on the enemy's radar screens, that's always good for a laugh! And keeping a tally on your element partner when in a fight with a bad guy is so much easier when all you have to do is turn your head, good comms being a plus point there too, of course.

Regardless of all that, having used TrackIR to successfully dodge SAMs often (my favourite thing in Falcon), which used to get me much of the time when I had to track them with the coolie hat, losing SA, I really wouldn't want to fly Falcon without it now, it really is a big advantage for situational awareness when the 'telegraph poles' start flying!

:D Chock

I have to say, I've had my moments with the telegraph poles. I have an ACMI of myself getting greedy during egress from target (isn't that the start of all bad situations in F4?) chasing down a MiG-29 with the last Amraam on my wing breathing hot and heavy for just one more kill (I like to remove High threat aircraft from the sky whenever possible - saves your own boys by taking these dangerous threats out). I probably went 50 miles off course to catch him. I wandered into SAM alley going after him (He baited me there - I know it). Anyway, volley after volley after volley was fired at me. 7 in total, and I tell you, I was so out of energy by the last SAM that I was barely missed by the skin of my teeth by an SA-2. I had no idea how close till I reviewed the ACMI after the flight. I need to find that file! Anyway, yes, I've had many good memories (and some bad ones) dodging SAM's.

-S

PS. In the end - I got my MiG! :D :p