Microsoft SideWinder - 3D Pro

3D Pro

As Microsoft's first SideWinder joystick, the 3D Pro was responsible for setting the overall design as seen in all of Microsoft's future joysticks. Designed as a gaming-neutral joystick, rather than a specialized joystick for use with realistic combat flight simulators, the 3D Pro was built with a functional, but low-key geometric design. Intended to rival the other sticks from the time, the 3D Pro included 8 buttons - 4 on the base, 4 on the stick - an 8-way hat switch, a slider-based throttle, and the stick itself was twist able for Z/rudder/spin control. By going with a geometric design however, it meant the 3D Pro lacked an effective adherence ergonomic principles, making it unsuitable for long gaming sessions for some users.

Electronically, the 3D Pro used a digital/analog hybrid design, that was intended to correct the outstanding flaws in traditional analog joysticks, such as drift and CPU overhead by using a digital/optical tracking mechanism to keep perfect track of the joystick, and a digital communication method over the analog gameport. However, this digital mode required software support, and could not be used with many DOS games at the time (MechWarrior 2 being the only major exception), as most software and gameports were built completely around an analog design.

Additionally, some soundcard gameports, and so-called accelerated game-ports - which attempted to resolve CPU overhead issues presented by polling the gameport directly themselves - such as those produced by Gravis, wouldn't always be able to handle the stick in digital mode.

Fortunately, the 3D Pro had a unique feature in that it could fall-back to an 'analog emulation' mode, where it could emulate either a CH Flightstick Pro or a Thrustmaster FCS (Selectable by a switch on the base), in environments where the digital mode wouldn't work. In this mode, manual calibration was required, the four base-buttons no longer function and, the joystick would function essentially like a CH Flightstick Pro or Thrustmaster FCS depending on the mode selector switch.

However, on later operating systems the digital mode would be less and less reliable, and on modern PCs most 3D Pro owners can only run in analog mode. Fortunately, the 3D Pro was popular enough to spawn a successor, the Precision Pro, which was a USB device and, while it didn't work in DOS at all, was far more reliable under Windows despite quality issues.

The joystick was widely praised in its inception and was one of the few joysticks with multiple buttons that didn't require a keyboard pass-through. The stick was especially popular with MechWarrior and Descent players as it was one of the few multi-button joysticks supported by the games natively.

The joystick's popularity has created a small die-hard following, with many people still holding onto them despite their age. This resulted in the creation of a USB adapter for the 3D Pro.

The 3D Pro features as a character (Ã) in the Webdings dingbat font.