Heres my take on Saitek. And I have the X-52 and rudders, which I bought separate.
Hat#1 is my views. Now On my throttle I have "down and "UP" mapped in SST to two buttons. I can use left/up by moving my hat #1 left while depressing the throttle button I have mapped in SST to up.
Generally you can only map in Aces High the buttons that light up in the E6B when you press them. For instance the 3 little buttons on my throttle "function" "start/stop" "reset" activate in AH controller so I can map them in AH. All the other buttons, beside Hat#1 and those 3, dont activate in AH controller so I have to map them separate in Saiteks SST software.
Which can be problematic, "many others report no problems". Some 2 keystroke commands wont map in SST so I had to do a lot of re-arranging, unmapping commands, and then re-mapping them to a 1 stroke command, "in AH keyboard/controller". Then I would map the command into my SST. All this is a reason I dont give others my SST profiles, which is, of course, I have such a hybrid, personalized SST profile/AH key controller that nobody else could make sense out of it anyways. Let alone map it. In the end your going to have to make your own personalized profile.
Of course others reports zero problems. The big reason I like the SST software is because you can use the pinkie switch/Latch so that every button and switch, and the X-52 has a lot, can have 2 separate commands mapped to it. Anyway the end result is I can play the game, in any plane or vehicle, and never have to touch the keyboard. Everything is mapped on my X-52 and throttle
I had a lot of aggravation when I first started since I never game before and knew nothing of any of this. I will "probably" stay with Saitek and "probably" buy another X-52 Pro flight. We'll see.