MY 2020 FLIGHT SIM SETUP! - Drewski's HOTAS, Rudder, and Headtracking Review!

baby great wow bandit is down if you ever feel like you ripped off grantham by making a product review start with a cinematic intro hit that sub button because i just did so hey guys drewski here today is our um is big ole setup video uh this is the video that will describe all of what goes on within my setup for every video of a10 gun runs or any video of little bird action and arma 3 or flight sim dog fights in dcs or anything in between if you ever see me fly in a game in the future or the past most likely i was using this setup flight sims are an interesting breed i feel like flight sims are one of the hardest sort of genres to get into they have the largest learning curve by far as well as to really get into them and to really feel the full strength of the immersion and the the simulation you really have to start investing in some good peripherals to help assist you get to that feeling i've been flying for years i've been flying way back in arma 2 i used to do helicopter piloting for about two years straight in arma 2. uh whenever i got to arma 3 i started to do a lot of a-10 and a lot of ground strike aircraft and helicopters and then now i've also started to learn dcs i started about last year in december so i've had just under a year in experience in dcs flying uh planes like the f-14 the f-18 f-16 uh the su-33 this su-25 so i've had a lot of experience over the past i would say six to seven years on flying with keyboard and mouse flying with uh beginner joysticks flying with intermediate joysticks and then upgrading to what now is a very uh i would say professional flight setup in 2014 i was still living with my parents at the time and my mom and dad gifted me for christmas an x-52 this was a scitec it was about 160 dollars at the time now it's about three times that because of covet and microsoft flight sim becoming a thing in the same year and i've used the x52 for a long time now it's been in a lot of my arma ops been in a lot of elite dangerous gameplays and all that sort of stuff and i definitely have an appreciation for this stick i think it was the best beginner stick i really could have gotten but over the experience of doing arma 3 a10 gun run ops and getting into dcs having ralphie teach me the f-18 i realized very quickly that i was limited by my controls by my peripheral system uh to to play dcs and so i wanted to um get an upgrade and so for the last few months ever since i started playing dcs i was looking around and trying to find what would be the best for me a well-rounded setup that could you know very well adapt to different planes and different games and i wanted something that was just an upgrade i love my old x52 but i think it was time to really get a little bit more professional and higher end with this setup and so when june or july rolled around i started to go online and look up all the different hotas setups that were possible there was thrustmaster scitec logitech there ch products there's a lot of different companies that make throttles and joysticks especially startup companies in 2020 because of the huge demand for flight stick setups because of games coming out like microsoft light sim as well as people being quarantined stuck in their houses getting an interest in flight sims so i mean gaming has gone up by an average of like 30 percent this year in terms of total sales so you know joysticks are pretty hard to find right now but there's more and more companies popping up everywhere around the block my buddy ralphie suggested a company that i'd never heard of before called verbal and not purple but verbal with it with a v and v-i-r-p-i-l the guys and gals at verpal definitely specialize in making uh higher in peripherals for the flight sim market and therefore i don't think these peripherals are affected by the pricing jump that we've seen from the lower end models so right now these are still at the same price as they were i think six months ago compared to the beginner joysticks and the lower and intermediate end joysticks that are probably inflated by about two to three times on average ralphie suggested the website i went and checked it out and i it was immediately attracted to some of the products they had i really like the look of the products the aesthetic and that's kind of one of the most important things for me unfortunately i really like just the way the products look like the gray scitec x52 get that out of here i want the black one for 400 more bucks or something but i just really liked the look of these things they looked very high quality they looked professional i was very interested so i reached out to one of the guys at verple and i said hey i'm a youtuber i make a lot of flight sim videos and and do a lot of stuff in realistic shooters they have to do with flight sims i have all these different videos a10 videos arma 3 dcs all this stuff that i use a joystick and throttle in and i would like an upgrade would you want to send some free stuff my way and maybe i can make a video out of it we call it a deal it's kind of crazy because this stuff never used to work but suddenly it does the guys at verbal sent me the whole package uh they sent me a mongoose throttle a mongoose base an extended joystick and the joystick itself they sent me the rudder pedals with even the helicopter runner set and stuff they sent me all the frames which are super high quality uh they set me up i was very surprised by the amount of stuff that they sent because my 13 year old self would be his pants if he knew that 22 year old drewski had a setup like this the unboxing and setup process probably took around um i don't know maybe maybe like an hour of time getting all the stuff out of the boxes trying to figure out i never really looked at any instructions i kind of just put it all together it was well boxed and everything was packaged in very good packaging i unboxed it all um i kind of figured out which cords go where and it was actually a pretty simple setup the framing to the desk was a little bit complicated because i don't have a big desk and i had to kind of figure out a new way to set up my desk setup to make it work my desk just isn't big enough so i actually set my throttle just flat down on the top of my computer which actually works pretty well and then my joystick is at a 45 degree angle coming off the right side of my desk usually when i'm flying so it's actually kind of interesting it's an angled foregrip so when i when i want to nose down i actually knows 45 degrees to the right but there's a lot of weird anatomy things that have to do with that if you ever watch like travis haley talk about how to shoot a handgun he'll describe how you actually shouldn't shoot perfectly straight up but you should kind of tilt to the side a little bit if you're going one-handed that's sort of a similar situation to this real-life fighter pilots have a slightly twisted joystick and this just worked for me slightly twisting it and angling it off to the right um kind of made it work a little bit easier immediately as i hopped into dcs to try this setup wow okay it's definitely a lot easier to give little small feedbacks oh that was perfect first try first try oh yeah that was good rate's too high first try the hud even set correctly too man what that was a three no way uh first off the joystick itself being able to have such a long axis of movement i can really like shove this thing forwards and backwards and left and right by about a foot in each direction which is much more distance than i used to get on the x52 scitec that thing was maybe five inches forwards and back and left and right so having a large extension to that really does help you have a larger area for small precise movements think of having a high sensitivity mouse on a small mouse pad versus a low sensitivity mouse on a larger mouse pad sort of the same sort of thing there where it's just easier to make those fine adjustments when you're moving in a larger area the second thing i notice is the amount of buttons like the joystick itself has i don't even know how many hats like five or something has one in the center one on the top left one it's an eight eight direction d-pad in the left side there that circle thing is a d-pad it's got a like a three-way direction d-pad on the right side oh my g it's just nuts i i can't describe how uh pleased i was to have that many controls and that many d-pads on the throttle or sorry that's the joystick if you ever have flown the a-10 and dcs you know exactly what i mean when there are many different reasons to have about four hats on your joystick basically the a-10 requires you to have like about three to four d-pads on your joystick or throttle and to have those not be on the keyboard and not have to reach from my joystick to my keyboard to control my targeting pod when i'm you know aiming and firing a maverick missile or uh popping off chaff by having to do a special control hotkey on my keyboard it's just very very nice to have everything in your hands um for dcs this is the biggest improvement i ever could have made this is just huge when i received this stuff too i was struck by how solid the frames were i mean these are solid metal frames that seem to be laser cut they were very very well put together and every part that i needed to manually kind of build myself was very easy and fit perfectly in between other parts and so i was able to tell immediately oh dang okay this is a high quality product i don't wanna you know i i don't think i can accidentally break this product the joystick itself is mostly made up of plastic but it's a very hearty plastic it's not like a cheap chinese plastic and the controls are very very stiff and clicky and responsive and every single button on the joystick is just extremely uh i don't know how to describe it extremely smooth there is a weird kind of roughness to the trigger that i felt um i would describe the trigger as like almost dusty like there's a grainy feeling to it which i kind of that's the one complaint i literally have about this entire setup okay so i've got my microphone right here so that it can hear the sound that the trigger makes basically it's just hard to tell when you actually click the very bottom of the trigger if you're pulling this i kind of just pull it really quickly because i don't want to get confused by the clicks that are in the middle on the way to the last click because if you get confused you're not going to pull the trigger all the way down so i just i just kind of slam this trigger all the way down it's like a two pound trigger probably and comparing this to an xbox controller trigger it's literally silent it doesn't it doesn't make a doesn't make a sound at all i need to ask some other people that have this stick if it's grainy for them as well but i think it's i think that's factory made i think that's not like a issue with my stick i think that's just a weird preference that i have after using xbox controllers for a long time i just prefer a trigger that is really smooth and almost light um and this one is definitely not that but all the other buttons and everything else the paddle switches there's there's pinky switches which i literally found yesterday after flying this thing for a month i never found it i'm so sorry there's a button on the throttle that i didn't find until i was filming the background footage for this video that's just how many controls are on these joysticks and throttles it is insane and let's talk about the throttle setup it's got these beautiful glowing led switches these buttons on it there's there's six of them two rows of three there's also two-way switches down below that and red switches for whatever you want your gears your flaps all that you really need is here there's even circular knobs for your two radio channels which oh my gosh it's the most like useful thing it doesn't sound useful but trust me you eventually start to use all these knobs and buttons and you eventually forget about your keyboard all together and it's awesome like i started uh binding f10 my map key and dcs to a button on the throttle it's so good it is stupid now when i'm flying in dcs i don't take my hands off the controls at all all of my buttons are mapped except for let's say if i want to move my external camera i would have to do that with my mouse unfortunately like a peasant the smoothness of the products themselves is insane too the throttle just has just like i described earlier how the xbox one trigger is super super smooth and i love it a lot that applies to the throttle in this when you push that throttle forwards or backwards it is the most perfectly uh i would say perfect amount of friction on the throttle to not allow you to accidentally throw the thing anywhere but also the perfect amount of smoothness to make it very easy to just gently pull the stick or the throttle back and forth it's super easy with just a flick of a button to separate the throttles the left throttle is slightly less friction than the right one once you separate them but also it's it's like a ten percent difference i'm doing it right now as i'm talking it is a very light difference but i still did notice that not even really a complaint whatsoever i think it's just part of the design there's even mode switches which change the color of the lights on it like oh oh it's rgb that's all i needed i mean this stuff is just beautiful i don't know how else to describe it i'm very uh surprised by the build quality and the smoothness of these products um i really don't think i'll ever upgrade again my joystick and throttle i think this is feature-proof for 40 years if they last that long we'll have to see even this little like flaps slider that's near the throttle i use for wing sweep or on the f-15 and f16 i use it for radar elevation there's stuff like that that you don't really realize you're going to map until you get in the game you actually figure out oh i don't need to have this on my keyboard anymore or maybe there's an axis here and i could use that for my radar elevation or might be my scan up and scan down or maybe my scan left and right talking about xbox controllers as well on the throttle there's actually an xbox controller's joystick like there's one that clicks the same way it feels the exact same and when you move it around it's the same exact movement i would think that that would be like copyrighted or something or i don't know what the legalities of that but maybe they bought it from microsoft and used it in this or maybe microsoft bought it from somebody else i don't know it's the same exact feeling joystick it's kind of nuts it's super useful for moving your little uh pipper around in radar screens and locking on targets or locking onto sam sites with the sc25t frog it is just oh wow i didn't even realize that i needed a joystick on top of my joystick what there are one two three four five uh i think that's it i think yeah five four-way hats on the throttle and one of them is an eight-way they also sent me a rudder pedal which is uh something i haven't used in a long time and if you've used a rudder pedal before for flight sims or arma or anything like that you'll realize very quickly that your brain is not accustomed to using its feet to control a video game you'll start sliding off to one direction with your rudder of your helicopter or your nose wheel steering will start gliding one way and you will just ignore the fact that you have to control it and fix it with your feet your feet just stop working one of my friends i told him i was like make sure like really really focus on the idea of i need to use my feet right now if my plane starts going one direction he didn't believe me then immediately after he started going off in one direction and couldn't control it your rudders will act as steering wheels so yep if you rudder left and right you should be able to see yourself wobble like me right now if you haven't used rudder pedals in a while you will your brain will push left to go left yeah just left to go left yeah yeah but your brain won't like you can think that but your brain won't register if you're rolling into some grass and you need to do it right turn really quick you'll want to grab your joystick and turn but you can't 50 or 25 or something and then start rubbering right don't ever don't like pedaling my brain don't don't um pedal to the metal your rudder just rudder pedals are very important especially when it comes to low level or low speed flying in helicopters uh landing and carrier landings on aircraft and having to use those very fine adjustments with the rudder pedals and just like before how i described that the joystick has a larger range of motion and basically it's like a mouse with a larger mouse pad and a lower sensitivity that is very similar when it comes to rudder pedals versus a twist joystick a twist joystick it's a very small kind of control it's very it's very little you might tilt to one side and accidentally be using your rudder and not even notice it having actual rudder pedals once you get used to them is a much larger axis for mistakes to happen in and so when you do accidentally make a mistake it's very easily adjustable and and fixable uh with those rudder pedals and that's what i really do like about them you can very gradually increase your rudder strength to one side or the other compared to kind of the joystick twist setup which is more of a like zero to 100 sort of feel now one super common question on my streams whenever i stream dcs it's so common that we've added a command just for it is if i'm playing virtual reality when i'm flying in these flight sims because people that don't know what head tracking is they'll see this footage and they'll go hey he's moving his head around and it looks like a it looks like he's actually moving his head around how is he still looking at the screen if he's moving his head around well it's not vr it's track ir it's a little sensor that goes on top of your monitor there's a little clip that clips onto your helmet your helmet your headset i'm not wearing a helmet i guess i can mill some really hard if i want to three little lights will illuminate from the clip that's clipped onto your headset and the sensor will understand what those three little dots are and it will understand where your head is in a three-dimensional space so you can turn around you can look up and down left and right but what's nice about this is that it's customizable and so you can adjust the multiplier for how much your head turns in game compared to how much it turns in real life and so i don't have to look backwards in real life if i want to look backwards in the game i only look about 20 degrees to the left and in game my head will turn all the way backwards and it's very nice because then you're not shoving your head left and right you're only moving your head slightly and it's very very natural it's kind of weirdly natural i remember first trying track ir back in maybe 2015 and it was very odd um but immediately instinctive now honestly to give a review of track ir i'm very surprised i haven't broken this thing yet it's made of plastic it's like 180 for the whole package or maybe 200 for the whole package um it works great for what it is it's a it's just track ir it's a head tracker it's infrared but yeah this thing is plastic i mean i could literally tear this thing in half in half a second if i wanted to it is just so cheaply made uh i hope that track ir comes out maybe with a track ir6 or something maybe with a higher resolution sensor and maybe some quicker delays or something uh but also a much higher build quality and structural support for this clip on the headset because i just feel like it's going to snap in half at any point but yeah i think that's all the products that i'm using in my day-to-day flying in dcs or arma or elite dangerous or any other flight games i really play that is what my current setup is now i'd still suggest if you're going for a cheaper setup the scitec x52 was a great stick it lasted me a long time i've definitely upgraded from that i probably won't be using it too much more and maybe we'll be gifting it to a friend sometime soon but if you were interested in the setup i'm using currently that's the one i'm using currently i'm very pleased with this setup it works extremely well and for anybody that's willing to you know get into higher quality flight sim equipment i definitely would suggest the stuff i mentioned in this video today all the links for everything i mentioned in this video is in the description down below check it out there's all the stuff then they're all amazon links or purple links and stuff um yeah definitely enjoyed making the video i'll see you guys the next one squad video tomorrow maybe hey kapie okay i'll see you guys tomorrow [Music] you

Channel: OperatorDrewski

Views: 2,586,953

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Id: ao8l3XPn6nY

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020