Might as well kick off my impressions with a brief history lesson:
Years ago, some people formed First-Person Gaming and devised a trackball mouse called the Assassin 3D. It's unlike most trackball mice in that it used a gameport interface, not PS/2 or USB, and was especially intended to be used in combination with an analog gameport joystick to handle movement while the trackball itself controls the view. It even digitally filters the analog joystick's axes to keep spiking and other irregularities to a minimum.
Later on, they sold the Assassin 3D's basic tech to Mad Catz, and the Panther line of products arose, one being a standalone trackball like the Assassin 3D, and the other notable one being the Panther XL, a huge flight stick with a trackball on its left side. Despite a stick that caters to flight simulation with its design, a thumb-operated throttle rotary, and an input for analog gameport rudder pedals, it was mostly advertised as a FPS controller and is primarily used as one by its diehard fans.
Yes, it has a cult following. That's part of why I had to buy it for a review the moment I saw one on eBay for cheap, just as I do with most exotic input devices.
The layout is distinctly left-handed compared to the norm, with the left hand to aim and the right hand to move (compared to similar setups like the arcade shooter The Grid, with a left-hand movement joystick and a right-hand aiming trackball), which can't be reversed like discrete components, but this has proven to be surprisingly adaptable for a right-hander like myself.
The trackball itself is decent. Mechanical encoders, steel ball bearings, and a ball with some weight to it. It glides smoothly enough, and I can't think of any immediate ergonomic complaints, except that some people may not like the main three buttons being above the trackball instead of flanking/below it like the Assassin 3D design.
The ball itself is translucent red with additional red LED backlighting underneath; there's a switch on the bottom to turn the backlighting on or off, as desired.
The joystick handle has good ergonomics, but the gimbals are cheap crap, with quite a bit of center play/slop. I'm guessing that the increase in centering force outside of the slop zone is primarily not from any gimbal springs, but from the rubber boot around the stick shaft. The Panther XL also has a reputation for unreliable joystick wiring harnesses due to the quality of wire used and a stick shaft that tends to put undue stress on the wires; fortunately, the one in this unit is fully functional.
Said stick has four easy-to-reach buttons and two 4-way hat switches, with the buttons kinda arranged like a B-8 grip (the one the Thrustmaster FCS is modeled after) with an extra hat switch. While no 8-way support on either hat switch is a bit of a disappointment, I'm quite glad it has an extra hat switch on the stick itself, something more flight sticks that aren't part of premium HOTAS setups could use. (Seriously, for ideal control in a modern combat flight sim, you need around six or seven hats if you don't want to resort to shift commands.) Even in FPSs as it was pitched for, it often helps with weapon and inventory management; the two hats combined give you ready access to 8 weapons and/or items.
The buttons do feel kind of cheap and don't have much throw to them, though. Also, the hat switches are short-throw with a noticable click in each direction, and they generally feel a lot like the ones CH Products uses. Finally, the buttons are coated with some sort of rubberized finish that hasn't aged well at all.
The throttle rotary on the base is small, but fairly easy to reach with the left thumb. Unfortunately, this one must be gummed up with the aforementioned rubberized stuff that isn't doing its job, because it feels viscous and difficult to move. I should open it up, clean it off, and see if that helps any.
DirectInput-wise, it presents itself as a 13-button, 6-axis device with a single hat switch (the middle one being the DI hat switch while the right hat serves as buttons 5 through 8 ). Some oddities of this arrangement are that button 2 is assigned to the thumb button on the stick's side while the top thumb button is DI button 3, as opposed to the TM FCS arrangement of button 2 on top and incrementing downwards; there is no way to remap this other than by physically rewiring the switches.
Another strange thing concerns the rudder axis; if you don't have rudder pedals connected, then the trackball emulates the rudder with its X-axis input, which works in a relative fashion since trackballs obviously aren't self-centering. Axes 5 and 6 are absolute inputs for the trackball motion, so they re-center when the trackball stops. (The standalone Assassin 3D/Panther apparently emulates the throttle axis like the rudder as well, if you only have a 2-axis stick connected.)
Driver-wise, the only official drivers are for Win9x; there's a beta 2000/XP driver that works on XP SP3, but installing it was a total pain and required a lot of manual directory navigation. It also seemed to have a "blinking button" problem with the first four buttons on my Turtle Beach Montego II's gameport for some reason, which doesn't happen on my SB AWE64 Gold's gameport. It's not an issue with the Win9x drivers, but it is with the 2000/XP drivers, and I don't know why. (It's also a problem if you try to use the Panther XL like a typical analog joystick instead; it must be something about how the digital gameport interface works.)
The Win9x drivers also come with a game profile control panel; since it was sold as an FPS controller, all the games that have profiles are naturally early DOS/Win9x-era FPSs. The really interesting thing is that Hexen had honest-to-goodness vertical mouselook with the Panther XL trackball, something I thought impossible without a modern Doom source port. Back then, you could just map forward/back on a typical serial or PS/2 mouse to movement, but not vertical look. That may have accounted for some of the Assassin 3D's cult following back in the day. Unfortunately, you can't invert the vertical pitch axis on the trackball on either end, so I hope you like pushing up to look downwards.
So why bother with a controller with an obsolete interface? Some of us like to play old games with period-appropriate peripherals, but the other reason is that there's one particular person who makes a side business of refurbishing and converting these Panther XL controllers to USB, turning the trackball into a USB mouse based on the Logitech G400 (so sensor quality won't be a complaint) and the joystick half into, well, a joystick that also has a keyboard emulation mode in the latest revisions, making for more plug-and-play FPS compatibility if you don't care about having true analog movement.
Last time I saw the prices for said USB conversion, however, they were above $200. I can understand due to the parts and labor involved, but if it's still that much, I'm gonna be frank and say that a CH Products Fighterstick and DT225 USB (if you can find the latter for sale anywhere) would be the better stick/trackball combo, in part because they're USB already, the Fighterstick is highly superior to the Panther XL's stick and they both have Control Manager support to integrate the two, which allows for some amazing control if you're willing to learn a scripting language.
If the original gameport interface were a requirement for any reason, I'd actually consider the original Assassin 3D paired with a full TM F-16 FLCS/F-22 Pro + F-16 TQS + RCS or Elite pedal setup. They use the analog gameport interface to begin with (unless the stick and throttle have the rare SWF22 digital upgrade chips installed) and might benefit from the Assassin 3D's digital filtering and extra axes, for all I know.
Now that I have my lengthy initial impressions out of the way, the rest of you may want to throw in your own two cents about the Panther XL and/or Assassin 3D. Geekhack's all about input devices with cult followings, right?
