In an empty universe of HOTAS systems available for pilots, there is one to rule them all. It’s name is Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. In case you have any doubts — order it now. Open the box, enjoy it and then try to pack it and send back without having tears in your eyes. As soon you hold it in your hands, you will forget that you’ve just spent nearly £300 on the gadget for your hobby.
I am not going to give mine back, even if someone pays me double price or threat me with severe consequences for refusal. No way! It is mine! Mine forever.
First Impression
Open the box. No! Feel the weight first. As soon a postman puts it in your hand you will think: Bloody hell! This thing is heavy!
And it is. So open this package already! And there is the box: Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. One and only replica of HOTAS system from legendary A10 Warthog — The Tank Killer.
This is an impressive looking machine both from the outside…
And from the inside…
Take a look at the throttle and joystick’s elements. This is exactly what you will find in your Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog box. It looks like this:
This is what you will find inside. These two elements seem to be literally taken from A10. Full metal jacket HOTAS on your desk. Have a look at my unboxing of Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog below:
The Feeling
As soon as you hold the Warthog in your hands, you will feel like a real pilot. Cold metal. Quite heavy operation. Size. Industrial look. Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog certainly wasn’t designed to cut corners. My old Thrustmaster T Flight looks next to it like a very old plastic toy. Sorry, I love T Flight but reality is harsh — I cannot even compare these two. I am not going to compare it with Saitek X55 or X52 for now as I never used them but whatever they are they aren’t Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. No way!
Before buying your own Warthog, have a look at your desk and see if it’s big enough to fit it on. Remember to leave some space for the other stuff normally going with your computer! The base for joystick is about the size of an average mouse pad. The throttle unit looks like a big brick of metal and takes about as much space as the actual brick (or two). Getting some extra space for your Warthog will be worth it! No more joystick “walking” around the table during the game. Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog is too heavy to do that. If you somehow still manage to move it around you can always use some screws and attach it to the table. Thrustmaster took this possibility into account and prepared some screw holes on both elements.
What else would you like to know about the feeling? Lay your hands on this piece of gear and forget that you are not in an actual cockpit on a fighter jet or a futuristic space craft (whatever rocks your boat). Especially after powering it up and seeing all of those cold green lights.
The Functionality
Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog is full of switches, buttons and caps. Initially it might be a bit overwhelming as it is difficult to imagine how you are going to assign functions to all of those switches. Soon enough however you will realise that everything has it’s own place and reason.
OK. Time to talk about the elephant in the room…
Everybody knows that Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog has no Z AXIS action or if you like this twisting move on the joystick which will let you to do the yaw movement. Saitek Hotas system and also T Flight from Thrustmaster has something like this but Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog is the replica of A10 Warthog cockpit elements, and actually A10 has pedals fitted for the purpose of Z AXIS movements or whatever this will be called in real pilots world…
If people are buying Warthog for the purpose of flight sim gaming — this is not big deal. They will usually end up with pile of additional elements, including pedals after all. For space gamer this choice is not so obvious as everybody knows that flying the space ship is completely different to flying the plane. Well, I know because I am Elite: dangerous Commander. And I was very worried that this will destroy my game experience. Guess what. I barely remember that there should be something like twisting move on my joystick. I did exactly the same thing as so many other Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog users. I assigned this particular function to one of the many caps and levers.
For all those Elite: Dangerous players, please look below on one of the possible binding. Take a look on Throttle. Small button called “Slew Control+Push”. You can easily change it from head movement or X and Y Mouse Axis to Yaw function:
Thrustmaster prepared a ‘ready to use’ solution; however to use it, you must install a piece of software called T.A.R.G.E.T., which stands for Thrustmaster Advanced Programming Graphical Editor. If you use this software, you will be able to install ‘ready to use’ bindings from Thrustmaster. These include bindings for space games such as Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. According to Thrustmaster prepared bindings Yaw should be bonded to the cap I mentioned above.
This worked for me for a couple of weeks, but I needed to change it to a different set up when I started to work with the Voice Attack. In one of the future CodeRM11 articles I will show you my exact bindings and on our YouTube channel you will be able to observe this set up in action.
It seems that the legendary “no Yaw” problem is taken out of proportion. I spoke with many pilots using Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog and it looks like nobody actually remembers that their joysticks does not have Z AXIS anymore.
There is one more thing about Warthog worth mentioning. The two part kit requires a lot of power. Please be sure to buy powered USB hub to not overload your computer.
The experience
The experience of flying with Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog is unique. Before using this system I was always using plastic joysticks and neither of them came close to what Warthog has to offer. What you will notice while flying with Warthog is the precision of every move. Lack of annoying, huge dead zones. And there is also functionality of all buttons and levers, soon letting you forget about most of the keyboard bindings. I love the joystick in particular. Even though it slightly resists your hand every time you move it, it responds as quickly as you require it to. No delays. Just close-to-reality feeling of heavy metal working nicely with your hand. And no squeaky plastic handle going up and down with no resistance, making your craft dancing around like a weightless paper aeroplane! I am pretty sure that good people at Thrustmaster simulated even this aspect of Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog — works heavy and this is how it’s supposed to be to maintain precision.
The price
You probably think that the price cannot possibly be a good reason to buy Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. It surely is not the cheapest piece of kit. You probably are right. Now go and buy all those cheaper options and lose one and only opportunity to have a real HOTAS system on your desk. Quality has the price. The price of Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog is adequate to what are you paying for. I would be very worried if this gear’s price was lowered significantly at any point. This could mean that we are not receiving good quality HOTAS anymore.
Of course anything can change. Saitek announced release of X56 which should compete with Warthog better than X55. I will surely test this new system from Saitek to tell you if there is any chance to take first place in HOTAS ranking from Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. What we know for now — X56 will remain plastic to maintain competitive price.
I feel that actually if we are talking about HOTAS, only competition should include quality. This can be still hard to beat with Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog.
And another question is what is going to be the next move from Thrustmaster? Perhaps a full metal replica of another legendary flying systems? Or maybe something for space gamers? Perhaps something to compete with announced by MadCatz HOTAS system for Star Citizen?
CodeRM11 will surely keep an eye on Thrustmaster’s next move.
Originally published at www.coderm11.com on April 24, 2016.
