Speedlink Black Widow Flightstick - Joystick - 8 Taste(n)

Did not know you could buy this on amazon. I bought this stick 2x when i was overseas in europe. hands down better than the logitech wingman 3d pro extreme - however the reason i bought it 2x is because with wear and tear use everyday the controller only lasted me 6-8 months each time. however if you are considering this stick - i would tell you to go for it. its so nice being able to control the stick in one hand and the throttle rudder in the other

Hands down, the best stick for the money in every way but one - it's just too sensitive, and that’s a shame.It's a USB controller with eight programmable buttons and a hat switch, plus a rubberized layer on the controls for a great grip feel. It's lightweight for its size (9 1/2” across), yet with two hands on the controls, there's no need for the optional suction cups. The stick itself is a bit too thick for all but the largest hands, but all physical motions feel smooth and loaded with just the right resistance with no input delay. It's like they put everything on my wish list into this wonderful case design… but then they allowed one serious flaw; small stick movements have an exaggerated effect on flight controls and no dead zone adjustment could fix the problem. At least for IL-2 and FSX, the in-game settings must have their inputs set to virtually zero to make the aircraft controllable. I’ve owned four flight sticks in the past and never ran into this problem before.The stick has a 3 1/2" throw in each direction from center, yet after reducing the game inputs, a mere 3/4" pitch movement still makes the elevators travel almost 40-50%. Even the wonderfully creative rudder "rocker" mounted in the front edge of the throttle grip has the same problem, causing unintentional yaw swings and inducing spins if you're not really careful with your input. Only the throttle lever produces a perfect 0-to-100% match on the screen.So just calibrate it you say? You can’t. Speedlink's software doesn't include a calibration program. In fact, it actually blocks access to use the control panel’s calibration program. So just uninstall it and use the Windows 7 calibration program? Did that. No improvement. Even after a couple of chat sessions with the Speedlink customer service folks, they could offer no workaround for this issue. I can only conclude it’s just made that way.Grudgingly, I guess I’ll keep this controller in hopes that a downloadable calibration program will eventually be made available. In the meantime, I will continue to make fine adjustments to see if the problem can be minimized a bit more, but until then, I’ll be cursing more than the Red Baron.

Short Version: Longer shipping time, Good quality and feel, terrible driver, OK support.I would highly recommend making a restore point for your computer before installing the drivers just in case you have the same issues.Long Version:This product ships from the UK, so it will take awhile to ship to the US. Amazon estimated that it would take over a month to arrive, but it only took 15 days.The overall quality of the joystick is very good, it has little to no dead zones and does not seem to be made of cheap materials like many of the other joysticks in this price range. That being said, it is quite sensitive, and there is no software to change this other than in game settings. There aren't as many buttons as many of the other joysticks, but you will have to use the keyboard with most joysticks anyways unless you spend a couple hundred dollars. The vibration is interesting, but doesn't work in the games that I play (war thunder, arma 2, BF4) due to a bad driver.When I received the joystick, I downloaded the latest driver from the SPEEDLINK website and installed it. I tested that it functioned properly in the windows game controller settings and everything seemed to be operating just fine. I opened war thunder, logged in, and started up a test flight and the game immediately started to lag really bad. The game has a frame rate display that was showing 1 fps. It was actually only updating every few seconds, but that was as low as the fps counter can go. I have a fairly high end gaming rig and have never had issues with frame rates like this. I was having issues exiting the test flight because the keyboard wouldn't register because my whole computer was locked up. I was able to get back to the menu, but when I tried to exit the game, it froze and I had to alt tab out and terminate it in the task manager. I set all settings in war thunder as low as I could and attempted again. Same result, if not worse. I tried playing arma 2, but it wouldn't even load and kept crashing before the splash screen even showed up. I tried playing BF4 to see if Steam was the issue, and was able to get in game without terrible frame rate drops, but when I tried to configure the buttons, they were not mapping properly so the trigger did not fire and the rudders did not turn. I looked up possible solutions online, but there isn't much info out there, and none of the other peoples solutions worked for me.I contacted SPEEDLINK support. and they asked me to try a few things that I had already done when searching the internet for an answer. They responded quickly and kindly, but they were not able to find a good solution. In the end, the only thing that worked was uninstalling the drivers and using the default Microsoft joystick driver. All of the buttons and axis work, but there is no vibration. Uninstalling the drivers was also difficult because the install file did not have an uninstall option and the driver did not show up in the device manager or programs and features. The solution to that was to install the driver from the disk, which resulted in the same fps drops, but allowed the driver to show up in programs and features. If SPEEDLINK would fix the driver issue then I would give this at least 4 stars.If anyone else has had these issues and found a better solution, a comment would be greatly appreciated.

The Price drop to $42.95 for a Combo flight stick sold me. I wanted a larger grip handle on the stick which this offers. Have a Logitech 3 D Pro and stick is a bit skinny to grip and twist for the rudder control. Speedlink has a fat handle. As far as the Vibration I can take it or leave it, won`t know till I receive it and try it out. Vibration must be self contained as see No Power cord in the Photos for Speedlink. Just the rear USB cord. So therefore the three star rating is bogus as yet. Gave it a three start rating as it convinced me to buy it. Time will tell whether or not I`ve bought another White Elephant. Cheers Gaming Name Crash163

windows.10で主にil-2シリーズを楽しんでいます。全く問題なく機能しています。ハットスイッチを含むスイッチ類も過不足なし。USBでの接続だけで電源コードも不要なので、ＰＣ周りがスッキリします。ＰＣのフライトシミュレーターが少なくなる中、force feedback機能を有する数少ない商品。同機能により、繊細な操作ができなくなるとの声も散見されますが、やはりコンバットシミュレーターは機銃を撃った際の振動などがなければ遊んだ気がしません。星一つ減は、外国人の手の大きな人用に設計されたためか、スティックが太く若干操作しづらく、調整もきかないため。値段もやや高め。

The Speedlink Black Widow is one of the best value Joysticks I have used and I believe it is excellent value for money.I have recently owned the “Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Joystick (PC/PS3)” and the “Saitek Pro Flight X-55 Rhino” and though I think the X-55 is ultimately a more capable joystick, the Black Widow is excellent in the “Just works” category.My joystick use goes back to the days of the Microsoft Sidewinder Pro. Sadly I had the early version that did not have the USB connector or I would probably still be using it (Check out the prices for a second hand USB Sidewinder Pro).All that said, the Black Widow is as good as the Sidewinder Pro. In my humble opinion it is better than the T-Flight Hotas X which seemed to have a large dead zone in the centre.In construction terms it seem well built with just the caveat that it does feel a bit light and I wonder how well it would stand up to a lot of abuse but it will not get that from me. It has a centring system that controls the bank and pitch separately, rather than the single spring arrangement that is even used on the X-55. The buttons have a nice feel and are well spaced out. There are also plenty of them and it has a full “hotas” stick setup but with only a single stage trigger (again, even the X-55 only has a single stage trigger). I really like the “rudder” controls on the throttle, their implementation seems a lot better than those on the T-Flight Hotas X. Considering it has a separate control for the throttle it is a nice compact unit, the smallest I currently own and excellent for putting to one side when not in use and then quickly picking up when needed, in game.In use the Black Widow is excellent. There seems to be a direct relationship to use of the controls and what happens in game. I have mainly used it with ArmA 3 to allow me to fly helicopters and it is pretty much the only Joystick I have really been happy with in ArmA. Here the rudder controls are excellent for allowing you to swing the tail round at low speed. The only issue I have is there is no centre “notch” on the throttle control so you know when you are going from no lift to lift and to generally give some feedback about throttle position. Despite being light it is very stable and does not slide on my desk.Issues: I do miss the notch on the centre point on the throttle control. I am unable to switch off the “Vibration” function in the Flightstick properties (I tick the “No vibration” check-box but it has no effect and does not seem to remember the setting); that said it does not seem to interfere with me flying helicopters in ArmA 3 and I'm getting to enjoy the feedback it gives me about when the engines are up to speed. There is the obvious issue that it is a right hand only like most joysticks. However I don't believe these issues are worth the Black Widow losing a single rating star.In conclusion I find it hard to believe there is a joystick that will give better performance at this price. It could be argued the X-55 would be more capable but it needs working on and I am sure if I went back to playing Flight Simulator X I would spend the effort setting up the X-55 (with its many controls, and twin throttles, ultra programmability). However in simple joystick terms the Black Widow is just as good and undoubtedly better value.I have thought of buying this joystick for many years and now regret not having taken the plunge earlier. S

J'avais lu des commentaires positifs sur cette manette mais j'avoue que pour le prix j'étais un peu sceptique. Eh bien non, elle est très bien pour un amateur, même si les pros du simulateur de vol s'orienteront vers des modèles plus chers. La dead zone est quasi inexistante, le toucher agréable, il y a pas mal de boutons, et en prime la manette des gaz, très agréable, dispose d'un palonnier à l'arrière, super pratique! Bien entendu, la fonction vibration est anecdotique, à ce prix ça ne peut pas être un retour de force, mais gadget éventuellement amusant dans certains jeux. Je recommande ce joystick à tous les amateurs de simulation ne voulant pas mettre un fortune dans un stick mais sans sacrifier la qualité.

Es facil de configurar, facil de manejar, tiene muy buen precio, y con x-plane y el plugin para activar el force feedback v a de lujo

adatta a pilotare i simulatori di volo, nel mio caso in particolare, va molto bene nei voli di guerra on line e riesce ad accedere velocemente ai comandi che vengono impartiti sia di sparo che di manovra alettoni, pedaliera ,rotazione della testa tramite l'utilissimo pomellino sopra la cloche, che permette di guardare fuori l'abitacolo in tutte le direzioni.Ottimo raporto qualità prezzo