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Comment by bradgranath | Hacker News Reader

Everyone plays with thumbsticks. The only people dumb enough to try to control a real vehicle with humans in it with dual thumbsticks were disintegrated somewhere in the vicinity of the Titanic wreck last year.

XBox and Playstation killed the joystick, and now flight mechanics in all games suck.

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We are in an absolute golden age of PC flight sims, especially with the immersion that we can get from VR, so when you say "all games" you mean "console games"

I feel there is still a lack of "realistic casual" flight Sims like "strike commander", TFX and "US Navy fighters" that fit the spot between the extremes of Ace Combat (not even a flight Sim) and DCS (too hard core, sorry) though.

It's VR-only but VTOL VR is incredible and I think matches what you're talking about here? I haven't played those older ones you mentioned though

Not to mention you can't play X-Wing without using the keyboard. Since gamepads usually require two hands, it gets really awkward to do things like re-balance your shields, power allocation, etc. while trying to steer the fighter.

When I was a kid and this game and Tie Fighter were around I got a joystick with 100 buttons/controls on it.

I got a Microsoft force feedback joystick to play them... Sadly I got rid of it before I got more interested in electronics.

Didn't even know such a thing existed. We could only afford a pretty basic model (3-axis, 2 button) when I was a kid.

100 was an exaggeration, I'm pretty sure it was one of these https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i75k_i_-240 Gravis phoenix with 46 programmable buttons.

46 is still a crazy large number to me, so your exaggeration is still fine :)

No one sells these anymore cries in wants to play old Sims from gig

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