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Introduction

VRJoy Airstik Boxshot

I’ve known about VRJoy for a while now, mostly because I remember them when they first came out with a pair of 3d glasses for gamers. As with many company’s first releases, I soon associated VRjoy with 3d glasses and similar products, so I was not prepared when I was told that I would be taking a look at VRJoy’s Airstik 2000, their joystick with tilt sensitivity.

At first I was a little taken aback by the whole idea… A joystick is a precision device whose usefulness is partially related to its “feel” and responsiveness… to me, a tilt sensitive joystick sort of defeats the purpose because you lose that tactile feel to the whole flight experience. Having foreseen this dilemma, VRJoy cleverly designed the Airstick 2000 to be used as a free-floating stick, and also like a regular joystick with a base for use on a table surface.

I wasn’t about to judge the stick before I had a chance to use it, but my first impressions were both positive and negative. The stick has a gaudy sort of construction to it, with its translucent smoky grey plastic molding and oversized upper region, where all the buttons are splayed out. I found the plastic of the buttons to be a little basic, and as a result the responsiveness of these buttons suffered from a flimsy, cheap quality sort of feel.

Airstik frontview

The actual handle portion of the stick, where you grip, is well designed and ergonomically fit my hand perfectly. On the other hand, the upper portion, just above the grip, is bulbous and stretched out above and to either side like a serpent’s head. Other than the standard finger trigger, the joystick also has two buttons are on either side of its head, while a fifth button, a thumb sized throttle control, and the hat switch are aligned along the middle. Because of that design, I found it very tough to reach for the hat switch, which lay upper most on the joystick, and I also had some problems locating the far left and far right buttons, especially when going from left to right. This problem was compounded by the slight bulge in the middle of the button area, which essentially forces my thumb to dance around as it tries to coordinate between using the left buttons and the right buttons… a DEFINITE disadvantage during dog fights.

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