Having said that, it still all represents great value and complaining of too many switches that don’t operate like a device three times its cost seems churlish. In some ways this may be the real down-side with this HOTAS, in that sometimes it feels like it is meant to be looking more impressive than actually work impressively. The stick’s CMS toggle looks like a CMS toggle, but is actually a big grey dumb click button. The coolie hat (the lower 4-way grey blob next to the red button on the throttle) is a wee bit too small, and with large hands the chances of hitting ‘left’ rather than ‘up’ are about 5/4 outside odds. The mouse nipple is loose (the jokes are writing themselves) which can make slewing feel awkward and inaccurate sometimes. The switches on the throttle nestle right under your hand, and it feels like a rabid card trick gone right when you toggle one without looking at your hands.

There are plenty of stick and throttle buttons, switches, rotaries and nipples to make you feel inadequate in a times of stress, although some of them are not exactly easy to reach in a rush. It has a convenient twist rudder control (many of its purchasers will be moving up from cheap sticks and not have pedals), interchangeable springs for tensions (you will get pinged in the face the first time you change one) and feels ‘substantial’ – not ‘Forever substantial’ but certainly ‘get through this calendar year substantial’. I quite like it, always keeping the cost in mind. It’s a compromise between chicken-pecking around on a keyboard while you plummet into the ground and getting a second mortgage and/or ‘trial separation’ for something more chunkier and beefy, like the Thrustmaster Warthog. To quickly lurch into a car analogy, (dammit Frog, third paragraph and the car analogy already? Mudspike Editor) it’s not the Ford Pinto of the stick word, nor is it the twitchy or costly Mustang GT 500, but it’s still better than one of those pretend SUVs that just suck gas and explode on roads with anything more than ‘large gravel’.

Star citizen hotas mapping