Ah, the good old days - with the original Logitech Wingman Force, FF really took flying to a new level. (Caveat, I was playing another sim then).
At high speeds with the force effects set on high, it really did nearly lock the stick up, and you had to exert a significant amount of force to move control surfaces, and you were able to E-fight an aircraft like nobodies business. You never overcontrolled, because you a real sense of how hard you were pushing the plane - and at high speeds, you could really tell you were pushing. In fact, it was almost dangerously strong - I had to defeat the interlock that caused the stick to drop all forces if it thought you took your hand off the stick because if you shifted your hand, it would drop from about 30 pounds of force to 0 instantly - and you could just about break fingers.
Trim worked extremely well in that if you were out of trim, you were fighting the stick forces constantly to get the aircraft to go where you wanted. You got the same sense as that described by WWII vets - which was that they'd come back with blisters from running the trim wheels so much. You could tell just by feel whether you were in trim or not, based on the stick pressures.
Unfortunately, when that stick broke, I was essentially done with FF - Logitech was no longer producing the Wingman Force, and the Force 3D was the absolute epitome of suck, and even the MS stick felt like a toy in comparison - not too mention being a frame rate sucker.
IMO, If this new stick is even 1/2 the stick the original was, it will be pretty decent addition to the flying experience. But IMO it has to be at least 10 times better than the Force 3D, or it's gonna suck.
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