A top gun for your virtual cockpit

Joysticks have long been considered an enthusiast peripheral, but Turtle Beach’s latest device should be front of mind for any gamer.

A scene from Microsoft’s Flight Simulator which can benefit from the use of a joystick.

Joysticks for PCs have long been considered at the periphery, largely the province of flight simulator enthusiasts or arcade gamers looking for something straightforward for action-focused adventure.

The Turtle Beach VelocityOne FlightStick sits perfectly between those camps, offering an excellent and accessible flight simulator/combat flying controller with plenty of control options, without crossing over into a full hands-on throttle and stick (HOTAS) system and its associated complexity and price tag.

There are 27 buttons, including a touchpad surface, as well as two hat switches and two throttle-style controls, along with a scroll wheel, and an OLED screen display providing useful configuration data – in other words, plenty of features to justify its $250 price tag.

What really makes this appealing is that it works equally well with both PC and Xbox, and only takes a few seconds to reconfigure.

The long cable easily reached across the lounge from my TV to the couch, and the base fit perfectly in the space between my PC keyboard and the edge of my desk.

Turtle Beach VelocityOne FlightStick.

Out of the box, the FlightStick is configured for Microsoft Flight Simulator and it works perfectly – the controls all function as you’d expect and are nicely intuitive.

For other games, some control remapping is required, but it didn’t take long for me to get the FlightStick working without issues in Star Wars: Squadrons, and Elite: Dangerous on PC – which also proved the controller is just as effective for piloting spaceships as it is for conventional aircraft.

On older PC games you lose functionality, especially in games where you can’t remap the controls, but I was still able to fly sorties – complete with shooting down enemy aircraft – in the 1998 MicroProse PC game European Air War and the 2003 Xbox game Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge with the FlightStick. There will likely be modification available for some older flight simulators on PC to make them work with newer controls.

While the joystick controls are responsive, there’s quite a bit of resistance there and as far as I can tell it’s not adjustable, which is one of the few issues I’ve encountered with the FlightStick.

It’s more of an issue for civilian flight work than combat or space flight – generally when I’m in a dogfight with an Me-109 or trying to shoot down an enemy spacefighter I’m not too worried about precision and tend to be pulling or pushing or turning the control stick at maximum anyway.

Some of the controls on the VelocityOne FlightStick.

The FlightStick sits well in the hand and the wrist-rest can be adjusted via a screw-knob. All the controls are well sized and easy to reach, and despite the large number of controls, I didn’t find the set-up cluttered or difficult to use.

As part of the VelocityOne series of peripherals, it’s also possible to connect the FlightStick to the VelocityOne rudder pedal system. These are quite pricey (nearly twice as much as the FlightStick) so very much for hardcore enthusiasts, but the option is there all the same.

The FlightStick is not an entry-level product but it’s well made, packed with features, and does everything I’ve wanted from a joystick control set-up.

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to get a decent but not ostentatious joystick for flight simulation or air combat games, the Turtle Beach VelocityOne FlightStick should definitely be one of the top guns on the list for your virtual cockpit.