Customer Ratings & Reviews

Avoid. One button was upside down on the joystick. The software wouldn’t update or load at all so the PC never recognized the unit. This should be out of the box compatible with the most popular flight sims. Only support was submitting a ticket which went unanswered for days over Christmas. Doesn’t matter how cool it looks if it doesn’t work.

Wasn't expecting much due to bad reviews, but man, I was expecting more than 2 or 3 days before it broke. Hat switch buttons just stopped completely. Out in a report to customer service will see what happens and update. But if the buttons weren't so cheap it would actually be fairly decent. It's heavy, great response, the magnetic throttle makes it a bit slow to move, but actually feels like your moving something. Some of the buttons don't work period, many of the hats press down center but don't do anything at all. Decent enough mid range entry if you're looking to upgrade, but beware it is marred with problems.

Like the headline says, this is a beautiful, meticulously crafted brick. This brick requires an extraordinary amount of effort to set up, and only works with a handful of games. This brick is optimized for MSFS40, X-Plane 12, and can handle DCS with some effort. Despite my best efforts, I cannot program this to work with IL2-Sturmovik, X4, or Elite: Dangerous. I am disappointed, because I primarily purchased this for IL-2, but I will keep this for when I feel like flying something modern.

Was easy to order… Received quickly…. Works great…

good stick solid construction. Very responsive lots of customization

The flight stick worked well for about 5 hours, then the stick itself died. The stick base still works, but the stick itself is completely dead. Tried to refresh the firmware on it, and it doesn't see the stick at all. (Tells me to seat the stick to the base.) Opened a ticket with support, still waiting on a response. Based on a few reddit threads, this appears to not be an isolated incident. Probably a design flaw? I'll update the review accordingly after support responds. as for right now, I have a $400 paper weight.

I had the x52 for years. I got this one and wow what a different experience i had between the two. The flightdeck is far superior. I would recommend this to anyone that plays sims.

The lack of preconfigured controls for games anf flight sims is why i gave a 3 star

No issues great product would buy again. Works for many games

I don't know what's worse the actual product or the customer service. In 4 weeks I've had three units the first two were shipped directly to me with hardware missing the collar screw that attaches the stick to the base The third unit is completely break down the box. I don't even understand why they advertise customer service because it doesn't exist.

Smooth control and lots of functions makes for immersion

This item was not compatible with either MSFS 20 or X-Plane 12, top of the line simulators today. It is not Full Control Compatible as your add explained. A representative from Turtle Beach answered my concern by saying that this product will be Plug & Play with MSFS 2020 sometime in May 2024. And I have spent over 10 hours troubleshooting the incompatible issue without success and after 2 days of receiving it.

this hotas is smooth and responsive then others i have had. the button custom on the throttle great. Virpil and thrust-master better step up there A game on this.

Fresh out of the box, the scroll pad on the fire button for the stick was popped off hanging by its little ribbon to the board inside. Then there is the throttle which did not control the throttle. Instead of the throttle axis it seemed to randomly switch to other buttons.

Outstanding HOTAS great in DCS and MSFS!! Recommended to a buddy already and they are excited to grab one!

Realistic flight controls what a change from game pad

Turtle Beach, long a maker of gaming headsets and other hardware, has entered into the simulation business with the Velocity One line. The latest entry is a fully featured HOTAS control set with a separate throttle and stick. Opening the box is the well packed throttle, the Flight Stick Base, and the stick itself. Assembly consists of just lining up the stick to its spot on the base, with a simple spin of a hand nut on the base and the stick is securely mounted. Also included are two braided USB A to C cables, one for each device, a set of screws to mount the throttle and flight deck to a permanent simulator rig, The usual warranty and regulatory paper work with simple setup instructions, and a simple guide to the myriad of buttons and axes. There is little other documentation about this thing, so it’s kind of an adventure to figure it all out. Overall build quality is excellent. The switches really feel great, several of them are metallic finish and all of them have a great tactile feel. The only spot that was weird were the three toggles on the base. The caps all move a bit, and only the center one locks up or down, the other two are momentary. It’s fine, but it’s hard to tell initially if that was intentional or if there are issues with the switches as nothing in the documentation describes their function. The main axes all have a great feel, and hall sensors for the main axes on the stick and throttle are excellent. Highly accurate, and there is a rudder axes on the stick if you don’t have pedals or want another axis. The rudder axis can be locked in software if you don’t want it actuating accidentally. There is no mechanical lock to secure that axes though. With a total of 15 axis and 139 buttons, the level of customization possibility here is incredible. The throttle can also be split into discrete right and left throttle controls, which is awesome for simulation use. The stick also has an OLED display for a few control functions, including setting the audio preset for the headphone out jack on the Flight Stick base, which is a cool feature. Another highlight is the main thumb button on the top of the stick also functions a mouse trackpad. A simple flip of a small switch next to the button changes modes. This is amazing for navigating menus. It’s not the most accurate but it works well for getting through a menu and on to the next flight or mission. One little thing here, on my copy, the labels for the throttle axes are not lined up, and there was a piece of debris stuck under the window of the right throttle position indicator. As this is a higher end simulator product marketed to perfectionists, this kind of manufacturing error is not awesome. Fortunately, it is 100% cosmetic and the axis themselves are aligned properly in software, but it’s still something that was a little disappointing, and if you are bothered by things like that check your copy and exchange it if there is an alignment problem. In order to effectively use the Flight Deck, downloading the Velocity One Flight Hanger software is required. This allows for testing all of the buttons and axes, loading control configurations, setting RGB, and customizing the most cool part of the throttle, which is the customizable touch screen. This is a neat feature that allows you to set up different switch types and panel styles. One thing that is really odd though is that you can’t customize the keyboard button binds each spot on each panel, they are fixed as of the time of this review. I sincerely hope that Turtle Beach allows for every spot on the touch screen panel to have custom keybinds. A similar improvement could also be made to the throttle and stick buttons as well – you cannot rebind a button to a keyboard command, they all just report as DirectInput buttons, so you’ll need to have a game that fully supports essentially unlimited buttons or other software to map an input press to a key. This really limits usefulness in legacy games that don’t support tons of buttons natively. The other improvement could be to make some of the buttons, like the brake selector, flaps, and gear buttons momentary instead of always on. I do like that some of the axes, such as the scroll wheel on the stick, can be changed from an axis to a button input when the wheel is scrolled up or down. This was super useful for setting shield direction or rebalance when clicked in Star Wars Squadrons. Using a beta build of MS Flight Simulator, native support for the throttle and flight stick is present. Full support should be coming with Update 15 when it goes into general release. The preset covers most of the basic flight controls, but still has many buttons available for customization. Strangely, the parking brake dial was not compatible with the game, and the parking brake release is currently mapped to a base button. If you map the parking brake release to the dial button it just doesn’t work, despite the game reporting the button as actuated. Hopefully that is fixed in a future update. Other games are great fun, Star Wars Squadrons being one that I tested. Having a ton of the functions mapped to the throttle and stick really drives up the immersion. With multiple analog directional axis sticks, both on the stick and throttle, you can also control ships in true 3D space simulators across all axes of movement, which is really cool. Overall, this is a very well built and feature rich HOTAS that offers several features that are completely unique in the space. With a few software improvements to allow for more customization it would be truly great.

First day and the ball gimbal on the stick popped out and i barely pushed it and broke the stick the quality is terrible not even 3 hours of light use on DCS.

First off, anyone will be impressed by the sight of the VelocityOne FlightDeck on your desk or simulator cockpit. The sheer number of customizable buttons is overwhelming and the RGB (also customizable) is serious eye candy. I’ve never owned a HOTAS with this much functionality at my literal fingertips. Both the stick and throttle are built very well. They have a decent amount of heft to them and with large rubber feet they do not slide around on my desk as I’m playing. The joystick can be removed making it easier to store and its height is adjustable. The stick has a small heads-up OLED display that can show things like a stopwatch or axis values. The throttle has a much bigger touch LCD screen, called the “Flight Touch Display”, that can display additional virtual buttons, more on that in a bit. Both screens allow you to perform some configuration on the fly, without using the app. Speaking of the app, it’s called “Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flight Hangar” for Windows and can be installed from the Microsoft store. You’ll want to make sure to download this one because the stick and throttle will have firmware updates and it comes with the ability to configure and test the hardware configuration. I needed to use the app just so I could understand where all the buttons were and how they worked before I could start mapping them in my games. That said, the app could be better as it’s not the most intuitive but I’m sure Turtle Beach can improve over time. Games I played with this setup include MS Flight Simulator, Star Wars: Squadrons, and War Thunder. I typically only play MSFS and Squadrons, it was the first-time playing War Thunder. All three of these games are listed on the Turtle Beach website as being compatible. However, I found MSFS to be the only one that truly worked “out of the box”. Even then I needed MSFS Sim Update 15 which isn't even out yet, so I installed the beta for it. Without touching the controller settings, I was able to take-off, fly where I wanted to go, and land an Airbus jet safely with the default mappings. Star Wars Squadrons did have some things mapped but it needed some corrections and to bind some new ones to make it playable. I encountered some difficulty binding the throttle as its axis control was not showing up, only the throttle buttons that are at the min, max, and midpoint. However, I discovered that if I stay away from the middle of the throttle and move it very slowly up or down then Squadrons would eventually recognize it and register it as my throttle control. War Thunder had nothing mapped whatsoever. This was disappointing because it offers so many out of the box configurations for joysticks and throttles but nothing from Turtle Beach. I had to set everything up as custom which as a new player took quite a bit of trial and error to get right. However, it is a very fun and interesting game, I plan on playing it a bit more. You may also have difficulty mapping the dual trigger as most games (like Squadrons) will consider the first button pushed as the button you want to use which in this case is the first stage of the trigger. The only way I could get the second stage of the trigger to register was to hold it at the point right before it would engage the second, then click the button to do the mapping, and finally push the trigger all the way. Quite honestly this extensive setup may be overkill for gamers who are looking for a more casual experience or are playing simpler games. All the buttons and time needed to experiment and map them can be frustrating. What would really take this product to the next level would be if Turtle Beach worked with game developers to make more out of the box and default mappings available. I’d like to at least see this for the games they listed on the website as a start. Regarding the Flight Touch Display panel, I can see how having it can be beneficial for things like controlling the radio or navigation. However, I haven’t really found it to be that useful for me for two reasons: One, I typically play Flight Simulator in VR mode so it would become completely irrelevant when I can’t see it. Secondly, each “space” on the virtual panel is bound to a specific keyboard key and cannot be changed. For example, space 1 on the first panel is tied to the ‘Q’ key, space 2 to the ‘W’ key, and so on. I don’t want to remap all my keyboard controls for every simulation game I have. It’s completely backwards in my opinion. I should be able to customize each virtual input whether it’s a button, toggle switch, or dial to a specific key within each game and the Turtle Beach app should switch the profile of my Flight Touch Display depending on what game I’m playing. This is something I’m hopeful Turtle Beach can fix this with a firmware and app update. Finally, there is a small touchpad on the Fire (B1) button. However, it is mostly useless as it’s just not accurate. You can turn down the sensitivity to a 2-3 which helps but I found it’s best to just leave it off. Luckily it can be disabled with the small orange switch to the left of it Pros: - Solid Build Quality - Dizzying Number of Customizable Buttons - Lots of Customizable RGB - Adjustable Height Stick - Can be Mounted - OLED Heads Up Display - Hall-effect Non-Contact Sensors - Stick is removable for easier storage - Customizable Throttle Haptics and Dead Zones Cons: - Button Mapping Exercise Can Be Overwhelming - Flight Touch Display has Limited Uses – Cannot bind specific keys to it - Requires 2 USB Ports Overall – We have a beautiful and very solid HOTAS from Turtle Beach. It makes my existing joysticks and yokes look flimsy and inadequate for the job by comparison. If they could address the limitations of the Flight Touch Display via a software update and make it true plug and play with more games, it would easily be a five-star product.

I really wanted to love this HOTAS unit from Turtle Beach. While there is no shortage of customization available, where I think this unit falls short is in the predefined profiles that were (finally) made available for the popular flight games. As a simulation fan, I first tried this with Microsoft Flight Simulator. The default profile was very lacking and didn't quite work for me. Because there are so many possible buttons, I ended up spending a couple of hours going through all of the flight controls and setting up my own profile, something I'm continuing to refine as time goes on. The biggest issue sometimes is just remembering what all of the buttons do, because there are a lot of them. The controls themselves are of good built quality and the stick feels tight without requiring too much effort to move it. The HAL sensors also provide much greater precision. The flight touch display on the throttle is a neat feature that I was very excited for. Unfortunately, the way this works is by simply mapping keyboard buttons to their intended inputs. In effect, it turns this into a sort of button box. What I found, in practice, is that sometimes the button doesn't register in properly or the intended control is toggled the wrong direction. This means that toggling a switch to "on", while it might reflect that on the screen as being in the on position, actually has the in-game functionality toggled "off", since there is no feedback to the panel from a simple keyboard mapping. Still, the ability to customize the screen and tailor the experience the way you want is a very cool addition that I'm hopeful will continue to expand with future updates. Overall, I'm happy with this HOTAS setup. Although there is quite a learning curve and will most likely require some time to setup and configure everything the way that you want, the experience and immersion is worth the time.