Elite Dangerous — HOTAS suggestions?

[Adam Senior]

Hey All — Going to jump back into ED now that I've got an Oculus and was wondering what HOTAS you recommend on somewhat of a budget...

I was going to just get this....
Thrustmaster-T-Flight-Hotas-X-Flight-Stick
Does anyone have any experience? Will I be able to do everything in game without needing a keyboard?

Or should I spend a little more and get this.....which has more programmable buttons...
Thrustmaster-T-16000M-FCS-HOTAS-Controller

Mucho Appreciated.

Adam.

 

[Adam Senior]

I would go for the T-Flight Hotas X.

Regardless of the stick+throttle you buy, you simply won't be able to bind all the buttons you need in an ergonomic fashion without using some of the buttons as "shift" buttons. I did this with the hotas x by using three of the throttle buttons as shifters, which - when pressed - changed the function of the buttons on the stick. This meant I essentially doubled the amount of button options I had available, all through using combinations of holding down a left hand mode shifter and then pressing a right hand button. It works an absolute treat, and I found myself playing for hours with zero need to use the keyboard or mouse (aside from the galaxy map and typing in search/chat).

Here's the template I took, and modified slightly to fit my preferences.

Because of this, I believe there's little point in going for a more expensive product purely for "more buttons", because unless you have 10+ more you'll still need to use a "shift" system. Even if you have 1000 buttons, you can't properly utilise more than the HOTAS X has, as you'd need to bring your hands away from the main controls to press them!

:edit: it's also worth mentioning that the T-Flight has a "notch" in the centre of the throttle's range, where the throttle can sort of soft lock in place. This is really helpful in ED, as you can use the middle as zero thrust, with forward and back as forward and reverse thrust. The T.16000M doesn't have this, so you won't get the helpful notch feel if you do go for that, something I really think you can do with when using a VR headset.

Another good thing about the T-Flight is that you can try it out, then if you decide is isn't for you sell it on ebay for a tiny loss and change

Thanks — This is super helpful — Is there a link possibly to a bin/config file that has this pre configured? So I could technically just start with this schematic and as I play more I can adjust per my own requirements?

Regards,

Adam.