Flight Sim Fanatics - here's a new toy for you...
Written: Jan 31 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 8-way HAT, comfortable grip (unless you have small hands!)
Cons: Quite bulky, not quite as responsive as it should be
The Bottom Line: If you mainly play flight sims, this is an excellent choice. Not the best choice for all-round gaming, however.
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| captaind's Full Review: SpectraVideo Logic 3 Phantom Joystick |
My old joystick was the Phantom, and I have to say that, while not perfect, it served me well for over a year.
It’s rather on the bulky size and takes up quite a bit of room on your desk, and is fitted with the dreaded suction pads. These are in fact rather better than usual, but still have a horrible habit of loosing adhesion as exactly the wrong moment. It’s moulded handle is quite comfortable, though I think people with small hands might have a bit of trouble with it. There are 4 fire buttons, which are positioned well – though again if you have small hands they may be a little too far apart for comfort. The fire buttons are not really as responsive as they should be, with the result that you sometimes have to “stab” them rather than press them, which is inconvenient in many games.
The Phantom was definitely designed with flight sims in mind – it looks like it’s come straight out of a fighter plane and has a throttle on the left, which is a nice feature. There is a little LED display next to the throttle to show how much power is being applied – not really useful, but it looks kind of cool. The best feature of this joystick is definitely the 8-way HAT – which is brilliant for both flight sims and FPS, which is the other type of game this joystick is ideal for. The HAT can of course be reprogrammed for games where more than 4 fire buttons is necessary / helpful.
I have played driving and sports sims with this joystick and it works fine with these, though not as well as the Logitech Attack3, which I’ve recently purchased. In comparison to that joystick, it’s about the same price, probably slightly better for flight sims and possibly FPS, though not as responsive and definitely not as good an all-round joystick. A lot comes down to whether or not you want a HAT. There are also compensators on both the X and Y axes too, which allow you to make sure that centralising the joystick really doesn’t send any signals to the computer – a good feature, but it’s fairly easy to accidentally move one of those when playing if you’re holding down the joystick (as I have a habit of doing).
The Phantom 3 comes with a gameport interface as standard, but also has a USB adaptor, which is a very nice touch. It installs nice and quickly (if I remember rightly, the default Windows driver for this is the Proflight 4-button joystick). There’s no force feedback or other such malarkey, if that’s a problem for you then all you have to do is quadruple the price and get one that has it…
All in all, if you mainly play flight sims and FPS games, this is a good choice although it’s not perfect. If you have small hands I wouldn’t really recommend it as I think you’d find it uncomfortable. For a better all-round joystick, I suggest the Logitech Attack3.
Thanks for reading,
Dave
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 24
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