Now I know that there are thousands of game controllers out there. Maybe even tens of thousands. But only a select few provide a very detail and realistic feel when compared to real life situations. For example, many steering wheels are made out of cheap plastic. When was the last time you've driven a car with a plastic steering wheel? Or the all so known joystick for controlling flight simulators. It has been around for a dozen years, yet again close replicas of real life aircraft flight sticks are extremely rare.



Saitek is one of the companies that has been developing high quality game controllers for some time now. It has a few good products like the Cyborg X, that are quite well-known among gamers.



The Pro Flight Switch Panel is no exception. It is designed to imitate a real aircraft cockpit and to give users a more immersive experiencel when playing flight simulators. The device provides realistic landing gear control simulation, with LEDs indicating the actual gear status of the plane.



Users can start their aircraft and access various cockpit functions using the panel switches, which are mapped to work problem free with Microsoft Flight Simulator X.



If you are into realistic flight simulators and already own the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System, you can further improve your experience by attaching the Flight Panel to the Yoke and simulate for a more realistic cockpit. Judging from the size of the device some could even try to outfit their computer case with such an item. Combined with the Saitek Pro Flight Headset (a set of headphones that replicate a real aircraft headset), such a trio could prove to be unique.



The device uses USB 2.0 connectivity (backwards compatibility with USB 1.1 is included) and supports Windows XP/Vista based systems. The price point is set at around 99$.