Thrustmaster Cougar MFDs
One of the things I love is to add realism to my flight simulation and driving games. I am a huge fan of Elite Dangerous, but I find that if I have to hunt for keys on my keyboard, that takes away from some of the realism of the game, and its not as immersive. The whole point of playing a flight simulation game or even a driving simulation game, is to actually feel like you're flying or driving, right?
I recently purchased the Thrustmaster Cougar MFDs from Amazon, and since I've had them for a while, I thought I would give you a bit of a review on this product. It retails for $79.99 currently. The first part of this review is the unboxing. The packaging was fairly straightforward, and it didn't take long to extract the contents of the package and get my new mfds set up to plug into my computer.
There are two mfds in the box, and they each connect to a separate USB port on your computer. You can use them both, or you can use just one of them, it's your choice. Thrustmaster also includes several card stock inserts and a couple of plastic film sheets to protect them while you are playing. A couple of them are pre-configured to work with popular flight simulation games, and there's even cards with blank spaces where you can label each control yourself. I found the lamination of the cards made it difficult to write on with a ball-point pen, so I recommend using a fine felt tip pen like a sharpie for this. You can of course print your own card inserts, and there are plenty of user made PDF files online you can print on quality card stock as well.
I found the installation process to be simple and straightforward. When I plugged them in, Windows 10 recognized them right away and automatically installed the drivers for me. I can also use Thrustmaster's Target software to configure my controls. This is great if you have multiple Thrustmaster products like I do. I am currently rocking the Thrustmaster T.16000M FCS HOTAS Controller and with everything plugged in, it works great with Elite Dangerous. I haven't tried my setup with other flight sims yet, but I have it on good authority that these work just fine in other popular flight simulation games.
The biggest obstacle for me was taking the time to configure all of the buttons. There are 20 push-buttons and 4 rocker switches on each mfd giving you a total of 52 separate commands. This combined with the buttons on the joystick and throttle, you will be hard pressed to find a need to use the keyboard other than when you are text chatting with your friends and other CMDRs in game.
In conclusion, if you are like me, and are seriously into the flight simulation genre, and want to get as much realism in your game, and squeeze out as much immersion from your experience as humanly possible, then I highly recommend these controllers. Simply click the links in this article and it will take you directly to amazon.com. Be sure to click like, and share this article. Leave me a comment below, and don't forget to connect with me on facebook for updates on future articles.
