"Bought it, returned it 3 days later" I purchased the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and immediately experienced the same difficulties others had with turning my aircraft to starboard. While searching the Internet for a patch, I found this website and then returned the joystick to Best Buy. Checking Amazon.com I found a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 and ordered it. From Matt Danison, February 24, 2005
"DO NOT BUY" Logitech has been crappy since the beginning...
My first Logitech stick was one of those old blue Wingman Extreme sticks. That was back in 1999 and it was used a lot playing Flight Sim 98. After that, my dad went with the idea that anything made by Logitech was a terrible product.
Finally after so long, in Oct. 2003 my dad bought me a Saitek stick for IL-2. It went out in a week thanks to a bad trigger... seriously pissed, I returned it the next day and now I thought nothing could be worse than Saitek.
Now.. fast fowarding to Christmas 2003... I got two 'awesome' new Logitech Extreme 3D Pros for my dad's computer and mine. (He had a change in faith in Logitech.. since there was only that or Saitek available in the town we lived in.) Now, we had to ability to smoke everyone in IL-2 Forgotten Battles. Within a month, one of the sticks had a problem with drifting to the right. Thinking it was just a lousy 1 in a 100 defect, I exchanged it for another one.
Happy with two good sticks.. I was content, until problems showed up about 8 months later in August. That stick has completely gone out. When you plug it in to the USB port... without ANY movement, it jumps around all over the place.
The remaining stick has also gone bad. It is still flyable, but it is very weak on the right and it caused me to crash a jet in Flight Sim 2004 today when it refused to bank right.
THE SUMMARY: LOGITECH SUCKS!
I suggest a boycott of all Logitech products.. maybe those money-loving losers up at HQ will realize that they sell pieces of crap at $35 a pop. From John E., February 17, 2005
"A Suggestion..." John here again with a suggestion...
Since one of my sticks is completely out, I'm gonna test if dipping it in alcohol will clean out the sensors.. if that doesn't work.. I'm gonna try the baseball bat approach.... :)
EDIT TO THE POST BELOW:
My first stick I talked about which I played FS98 with all the time failed as well.
So for me.. over a period of four years.. Logitech's record is 0-4. That's pretty pathetic to anyone's standard.
My recommendation.. screw any sort of budget you have with hardware.. buy a $120 CH Product stick. From John E., February 17, 2005
"The fix works for me." Okay, this is Dave from 2 comments down. I don't know how it became a double post. Here's what I did as a "fix".
I tried the decalibration utility and it didn't help. What finally worked was holding down CTRL (or was it ALT?) when opening up the windows joystick control panel (Win98). This was in a post I found somewhere on a PC help site. Doing that gives you the normal windows calibration window that we all love. Once you calibrate in that window click OK and don't open the profiler or the calibration window again. Your calibration will stay if you only had my problem with an axis "spiking" over it's normal bounds. With the calibration saved and not updating itelf, it can spike for a millisecond but it won't effect the game your playing.
Well, I'm glad it works again but you should defenately NOT install Logitech profiler. I think I still need it for my racing wheel, wich I love to death, but if my joystick messes up again I will uninstall profiler.
Everyone should try what I mentioned above about holding down CTRL or ALT (I forget which one) when opening the WINDOWS control panel for your joystick. Keep it held down until you bring the properties up since I don't remember if you need to hold it down for the other menus too.
Good luck whatever you decide to do.
Dave
BeechJet Niner Lima Gulf From Dave, February 10, 2005
"On my 3rd one" Yes I gave it a thumbs up even though I have to buy a new one every few months or so. Never has it lasted more than 6 months before it starts rolling to the right in Fighter Ace. I have tried everything I know and but the fact is when it goes...it goes bad period.
I simply love the stick when its working correctly. Feels great, outstanding button placment and always stable sitting there using it. So for $20 I will keep replacing them untill (Hopefully) Logitech puts some quality circuts in them and then it will be a great stick. From Arctic, February 01, 2005
"Yes it happened to me too." I am very dissapointed in Logitech. I know they have a long standing, stellar reputation in input devices, that's why I bought it! I asked for it for my birthday and recieved it in February '04. I played my X-Plane and MSFS2000 and a few months ago MSFS2004 (not worth it if you have 2000), and I used it in MechWarrior4 tournaments. I have been very happy with it, until today.
I decided to reinstall my fav FS, Flight Unlimited 3 last night and it allways uses device 1 which was my Driving Force wheel (which I love and have no problems with). So last night I used the keyboard and today I decided to unplug my wheel on startup so that my joystick would be #1. After loading up FU3 and seeing the stick was working I was happy and I taxied, talked to ground control, got my clearance (FU3 is great!) and took off. After some crusing I noticed I couldn't pull up. I just figured I needed to calibrate the stick... but what's this? I can't calibrate it. It calibrates itself? I saw that when unplugging/replugging it was fine until the pitch axis spiked and I couldn't pull up because the spike went beyond the normal limits. I still have the box, so maybye WalMart will let me exchange it. Very dissapointed, as are the rest of you.
Dave From Dave, January 29, 2005
"Yes it happened to me too." I am very dissapointed in Logitech. I know they have a long standing, stellar reputation in input devices, that's why I bought it! I asked for it for my birthday and recieved it in February '04. I played my X-Plane and MSFS2000 and a few months ago MSFS2004 (not worth it if you have 2000), and I used it in MechWarrior4 tournaments. I have been very happy with it, until today.
I decided to reinstall my fav FS, Flight Unlimited 3 last night and it allways uses device 1 which was my Driving Force wheel (which I love and have no problems with). So last night I used the keyboard and today I decided to unplug my wheel on startup so that my joystick would be #1. After loading up FU3 and seeing the stick was working I was happy and I taxied, talked to ground control, got my clearance (FU3 is great!) and took off. After some crusing I noticed I couldn't pull up. I just figured I needed to calibrate the stick... but what's this? I can't calibrate it. It calibrates itself? I saw that when unplugging/replugging it was fine until the pitch axis spiked and I couldn't pull up because the spike went beyond the normal limits. I still have the box, so maybye WalMart will let me exchange it. Very dissapointed, as are the rest of you.
Dave From Dave, January 28, 2005
"Poor Reliability, Worse Service" This was an excellent joystick for the first couple months. Then, mid game, it dumped it's z-axis settings. Trying all the suggestions on the site did not fix it. You cannot e-mail for approval to send it back, you must pay the long distance charges to call during thier business hours. I did this and had the pleasure of talking to a machine for 2 minutes, then over 10 minutes of hold music as my phone bill climbed.
I quit. I hung up to send an e-mail and there are none on their site for anyone at customer service.
They won't see another dime of mine. From Rob J, January 04, 2005
"Lemon POS" Same thing as everyone else. Awesome stick when i first bought it, 3 monthes later my chopper was rolling and ruddering to the right. No way of calibrating, I used to cleaner, the profiler. Ditto. Software sucks, hardware sucks, Logitech Extreme 3d Pro sucks. Go spend your money elsewhere. From JJ, December 24, 2004
"when it's good its good/when bad it's bad" I bought mine a year ago based on ads and magazine ratings. It is a beautiful stick. Mine worked flawlessly for about six months until the roll axis got buggy. I stopped using it for flying but it still works with auto racing sims. The good part is when I notified Logitech, they told me not to return the joystick. They said they would send me a new one. It took a while but a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro was at my door when I got home today,Santa? Logitech went to the expense of replacement without question or argument,and I feel any Logitech purchase comes with excellent support,and in this case just in time for Christmas. I'm Logitech for life!!! From rockit, December 21, 2004
"I'm Not Impressed" I thought it was just me. So I went on line to see if there was a "fix" for the Logitech Extreme 3D PRO joystick. Seems this joystick of mine has a bad history, specifically z-axis or y-axis control. No question it drifts badly. I will try the WD-40 fix and try it again. From Mark Greenbaum, November 28, 2004
"Feels Great! Plays horrible!" First the good:
1: This stick feels amazing in your hand, hours of gameplay won't hurt your palm and your fingers never cramp.
2: Button placement on the stick is superb, you always know what your reaching for and the raised buttons allow you to "see" which button it is without looking.
3: The HAT is in a good placement and is easily usable during gameplay.
4: The thumb fire button never gets in your way, you never "accidently" fire it.
5: The base NEVER tips no matter how "jerky" you play.
6: Best feature of the whole stick is the left-hand placement for the buttons and the throttle.. it just feels right. First time I've seen a joystick setup like this and I love it.
The bad:
1: The software stinks... hard to customize and useless for most non-popular games.
2: It has no adjustability what so ever, so if your a lefty or your hands are a little small, your out of luck.
3: No support for this product at all.
4: The reviews from other sites say that 99% of the time this product dies in the first couple months of use.. MAJOR warning sign!
The ugly:
The thing is completely unusable for exact aiming!
The "dead zone" of the stick is too large and you have to fight the thing just to make a minor adjustment.
I got into one dogfight against a simple enemy I've killed a hundred times with the keyboard.. 30 seconds later I was dead and my wrist was in a cramp.
This thing is unusuable. Don't buy it unless you have one heck of a strong wrist. From Dreen Barnel, November 19, 2004
"A Lemon of a stick" I'm just about to get my third 3D Extreme.
This could have been a killer stick. The feel and button placement are just right and it has a solid feel unlike the flimsy feel of the Saitek sticks.
I used to use a now out of production Wingman stick which was damn good. By the time i went for a new one all that could be found were the 3D Extremes. At the average i figure about a month of use before the problems begin to show, Once you begin losing calibration you can forget about reliable service. The unplug/plug routine is pretty much a futile gesture after the first attempt.
Thankfully, i have a paid return insurance plan from the store where i purchased the second stick. I actually informed them that i would be returning sticks about every two months or so seeing as poor in reliablity the Extreme 3D Pro is.
They took it without batting an eye, obviously they are familiar with the sticks; various faults also.
Too bad, because this stick really could have been a winner. From Cater, October 18, 2004
"is a flawed design" The mini-stick on top makes it to use that and the thumb button on the side at the same time with my thumb I thought it was for my index fingure but than how would I be able to use the buttons around the mini-joystick with out lettting it go. Using it has caused my wrist to hurt. The mini-joystick on top should be moved down a bit and change its angle. The thumb button should be got rid of completely and replaced with finger buttons at lower part of the joystick and it sould be designed to fit the contor of your hand to decrease discomfort. And I guess that's all I have to say about it. THE END From , October 04, 2004
"4 months shaky, 10 months a mess" Save your penny for something better. Just confirming that the x axis and twist control starts to fade steadily until control in aircraft games is impossible, unless you like to sim damage in a new aircraft. The other types of Logitech joy have the same problems so the company must be buying cheap axis circuits. Cannot find any software that will recentre the creep so there must be a physical problem with it. So what product to get??? From Pauly, September 19, 2004
We're currently upgrading our user review system; so we won't be accepting new reviews for now. Extreme 3D Pro Specs
Interface(s)
Original USB
Released date
September 2003
Platforms
Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, MacOS 9.0, MacOS X
