Sporran asked me to translate my review of the Logitech G940, so here it is!
I hope you’ll like it and find it useful, because I already know it will take me a loooong time to write it in English…:rolleyes:
Premise: if you have always used spring-centering, non-FF sticks, I don’t see any good reason, except the dual-throttle, for which you should prefer the G940 instead of, for instance, the X-52 Pro (which I had for 6 months before switching to the Logitech).
If, instead, you are fanatics of ForceFeedback joysticks like me;), but your MS Sidewinder FF2 still works fine, keep it for bit longer and wait some months before buying the G940!
I’m not saying that I don’t like the new Logitech HOTAS (in the end I’m quite satisfied with it;)), but it still suffers from some “theething troubles”, both in the hardware and software, that will be probably - and hopefully - solved in the near future.
You can find some examples in Logitech’s Support Forum, for instance here or here. As you can see, users look happy about the product itself but everybody’s asking for improvements of the drivers and the profiler software, which anyway benefit of Logitech’s attentive support and have already been updated twice in the last month only.
Below there’s a list of what I like and what I don’t about the G940.
DON’T LIKE
1) The joystick has a “micro-jerky” movement. I don’t know how to properly describe it in English (some one said it’s like “moving the stick over a washboard”), but when you move the stick around you can clearly feel (and hear) that it’s movement is not continuous: instead, there are like small intervalls which correspond to the different positions. It’s not a big issue and you get quickly used to it, but nevertheless it’s a strange step backward respect to the Sidewinder FF", which provide a mush smoother feeling. Moreover, according to Logitech the G940 uses helical gears instead of straight ones, which should result in a smoother and quiter functioning, so I really can’t understand this behaviour.
2) Most of the times, when you take your hand away from the stick, it starts to emit a “crackling sound”, similar to that of a failing hard-disk. Again, it’s not a big deal since you just have to touch the stick, slightly pushing it on one side, to stop it, but it’s really annoying!:mad
Logitech explained it saying that it “comes from the small micro-responses of the motors centering the stick when it isn’t being held”. In practise, unlike the SW FF2, which deactivates the motors and becomes limp when you’re not holding it, the G940 keeps the stick centered even if you’re not using it: but since in that condition there’s no load applied on it, the motors shift back and forth rapidly and this generates the “crackling noise”. When you move the stick slightly (just a shred) off-center, I presume the very small load generated by the weight and the inclination of the stick itself becomes already enough to force the motors to push in one direction only, stopping the noise.
However, while self-centering can be nice because it mimic the behaviour of a spring-centered joystick (neutral stick whenever there’s no load applied to it), I hope Logitech will introduce an option in the profiler to deactivate this feature (I asked for that in the forum, together with other users), which otherwise can be overridden by covering the deadman switch with some tape.
3) My left throttle makes a bad noise when pushed forward from idle position, a “squawk” like if there is too much friction between the moving part of the throttle and its base. The funny thing is that I managed to reduce it to the minimum increasing the strength of the spring acting on the throttles, which doesn’t make much sense, but anyway this is a really stupid problem and I haven’t found anyone else reporting about it in the support forum.
4) The rudder pedals are very precise and sensitive, but although their movement feels great and its resistance depends on how the spring is set, the static friction (the one you experience before you actually start moving it) is a bit too high: this means that, when the pedals begin to move, the force you’re applying is too big and you’ll have a very hard time trying to get out of it just the small movement you wanted. (at least that’s my feeling, and I don’t remember to have had it with the Saitek Rudder Pedals, but it could be that I haven’t found the best settings yet…).
5) The 5 wheels (3 especially thought for trimming, on the base of the stick, plus 3 more on the right throttle) lack a “small stop/resistance” indicating the center, which means that you have to look the mark painted on the wheels to know whether they’re centered or not - not the easiest thing to do, if you fly in a completely dark room like I do to make best use of TrackIR…
6) The 2 buttons at the top of the stick are a bit too far away, thus a slight change in the position of the hand is required to push them (and my hands are not that small…;)).
7) The upper hat-switch works as a mini-stick (it has analogic axes) and everybody says it’s great for radar operation in F4:AF or LOMAC, but at this stage it can’t be used as a mini-mouse (like the one in the X-52) so it’s almost useless for IL-2 and in fact it’s the only part of the G940 I’m absolutely not using…
8) The color of the 8 buttons on the throttles’ base can be changed (green, red, amber, or off), but not only at the moment there are no scripts to make them interact with the sims, which is normal due to the recent release of the product; the bad point is that the is just a “demo” program to set the colors, which does its work but doesn’t allow to save the settings! The results is that all the buttons go back to default green every time that the pc is rebooted…:mad: Again, I asked in the forum for the implementation of an appropriate control panel in the profiler, similar to the one of the X-52: it seems to me such an easy thing to do that I can’t understand why it’s not already there, but incredibly Logitech doesn’t seem to be keen to add this option, since they say the buttons are thought to be controlled interactively and thus they’re supporting the various software houses to implement the scripts in their sims (as if Oleg would re-work on IL-2 to add this feature…:mad:)
9) It’s not easy to reach the buttons to couple/uncouple the throttles, since they are under the grips.
10) There are 4 cables departing from the joystick’s base (1 for the throttles, 1 for the pedals, 1 for the power supply plus the USB one), and if you don’t wrap them together your desk becomes like a spider web…
After passing from the Sidewinder FF2 to the X-52 Pro I can easily say that FF is mandatory for IL-2, but also the convenience of having a separate throttle (2, in this case;)) and a plethora of buttons and hat-switches is a great advantage: the G940 has them both, and this will remain its exclusive feature in the near future. That’s the main reason why I spent 300€ more after buying the X-52 Pro (and its pedals) just 6 moths ago…
