Aapje

Yeah, it looks like a perfect storm of immense hubris, failure to execute and AMD closing the gap (FSR 4 mainly). If one of these things wouldn't have been true, customers would probably not think of switching en mass.

In the past AMD took a long time to fix VR, so if they fix it so soon, that is a good sign. In a way it seems that AMD and Nvidia switched places when it comes to driver development.

Yeah, the Virpil sale and the racing car shifting feature were tempting me, but I see so many issues, including full bricking of the device, that I'll pass for now. Still hard for me to look past Moza, given the desktop mounting options and racing sim possibilities, but they seem to need at least 6 more months to get the software in order.

You do realize that this is just a lobby report? The EU has not done anything about this.

My main suggestion is to wait a month or two, since we already see indications that things are improving (dropping prices and more availability). Other than that, I agree with @LucShep suggestion, and especially to look at your local prices, since it can very much differ per country what the prices are.

Is that a collective or are you happy to see me?

Yeah, the review I saw didn't make me regret getting a STECS. @SharpeXB I also prefer 'fantasy' controllers that are made to be jacks of all trade, masters of none, so it works well for many games and types of airplanes.

Magnetic detents too. And the metal throttle body will probably appeal to many.

Moza just announced new products. A throttle and panel for flight simming. And a new force feedback yoke. They also introduced a shifter-mode for the AB9 base, so that adds a lot of value to those who do both flight and race simming. Then you can use the same base for both. @NineLine @BIGNEWY Please made a separate section for Moza. We already see a lot of Moza-topics littering the hardware-forum, and it will only get worse with the new hardware.

From how they presented it, this seems like an early prototype that may not be released on 2025. So even if you figure out the dimensions of this version, there is a good chance that it'll change before release.

@Dragon1-1 I think that it was a combination of things, with the biggest factor being the general decline in flight simming, which caused a huge drop in demand for controllers. All these big and small companies that used to release new joysticks and such, either left the market or stopped innovating and kept selling products that became more and more obsolescent. We saw only some niche companies that kept innovating, and these companies clearly didn't aim for a mass market. We can see this by them avoiding the regular retail channel and selling direct to customer, which is a good move for niche products with a small but motivated consumer base, that will find the products even if they are not in local stores. And this way they kept costs relatively low, despite not manufacturing in very large numbers. But these niche companies like Virpil and VKB couldn't afford to make big gambles. A small company like VKB clearly has their hands full simply to develop relatively traditional products like the STECS, which has some very nice innovative features, but which is not really a revolutionary design. I think that sim racing actually saw a big decline in customers too (although less than flight simming), but the benefit of FFB is so enormous on the racing side (or rather, non-FFB racing wheels are so bad) that customers simply wouldn't accept anything less, while many flight simmers were happy with decent mechanical bases. But even there we saw that the big companies stagnated, suggesting that demand went down so much that they didn't want to invest in R&D anymore, and we saw innovation by small companies that no longer exist like LeoBodnar and OSW, and then a mid-sized company (Fanatec) pushing that innovation more into the mainstream with direct drive steering wheels. Note that these patents, which were not actually owned by MS, but by Immersion Corp, never held back FFB on the racing sim side. In general, patents only have value if you either can stop people from competing with your product, or have them pay licensing fees. There is no benefit to doing nothing with the patents. So companies probably just thought there was too little interest in FFB sticks anymore to even keep selling the same FFB sticks, let alone innovate. However, one of the biggest downsides of patents is that they can stifle very small innovators that never sell in large numbers. It's generally not worth the effort by patent holders to license their patent to these people, but it can be a risk to their patent to not send a cease and desist. A possibility is that the VPForce and FFBeast guys, who are basically just a guy in a shed, felt hindered by the patents, and only really got going once the patents expired. And it's often very passionate people like that, who take gambles that established companies won't make, and then prove the viability of those innovations. Then bigger companies notice that and copy it. And often not the biggest companies, but the mid-sized companies that are looking for a way to take down the leader(s). This is why we see Moza and Winwing adopt FFB for flight simming, and not Thrustmaster and Logitech. And we see the same on the racing sim side, where Fanatec/Simagic/Moza/etc adopted direct drive way before Thrustmaster and Turtle Beach. And because the established companies jumped in so late, their products are often underwhelming. You actually see the same with the Thrustmaster AVA, which is also quite meh. It simply takes time to built up expertise, and you also need passionate people who actually want to push for quality. It seems to me that Thrustmaster and Logitech have too many bean counters in charge, and those people never have to passion to push for anything more than 'barely good enough'*. * This is why a proven technique to innovate in large companies that sell lots of products that require little innovation, and where bean counters do good work for those product lines, is to create a start-up-like structure. Then the people who work there need to be the innovative types, and the bean counters and their rules have to be kept far away.

For now, yes, unless you buy a second-hand MS FFB2. Big motors take a lot of space, and everything else has to be beefy too, to cope with the forces. But it would be possible to make a much weaker desktop version, although it would also not be as nice as the bigger bases. In theory you could make a low desktop version with lots of power by more or less putting the Winwing base on its side, or even by switching to pneumatic motors with an external air supply, but it's doubtful that these would sell. And you would need to clamp it down very well. A big draw of desktop devices is that you can just plonk it on a desk and go fly.

The issue is that they stopped making them for a long time, so most of the expertise disappeared, and the products did not evolve along with new technology. So things mostly have to be build up from scratch (both hardware and drivers). There are only some benefits to the older FFB sticks, like there being a market of older dudes who remember it fondly and who are eager to buy them and who advocate for it, and directFFB support in some games, although that was made for the crappy sticks of the past, and is not really up to snuff for the much better hardware of today. It makes little sense to make a lower-end option, until the drivers are worked out and people figure out what hardware solutions are best, and software like MSFS and DCS add/improve support for FFB. Lower-end customers are often more demanding than the higher end customers, when it comes to having a perfected experience, and there is also less room to experiment on the low-end, since it needs high volumes to make a lower-end offering work out financially.

We are still early in the life cycle of these products. Only one proper company has made one and they are still doing a lot of development on it. Others don't have their hardware out yet, let alone have a mature solution. Only once the expensive bases start to mature, can you expect a move towards lower end solutions.

@propeler As we can see elsewhere on this forum, they very much cheap out on such things as support and following consumer law. And they are also undercutting the competition quite a bit when it comes to their other products, like the Ursa Minor, and their panels. So I think that it is safe to say that they are indeed fighting a price war with the competition. So in the case of Winwing, I would definitely suggest: caveat emptor. However, the big upside is that their products seem to generally be fairly solidly designed and the assembly is not too bad. So that puts them far ahead of Logitech/Saitek and the cheaper Trustmaster stuff in my opinion. But I would demand better price/performance to choose a Winwing product over one of the more reputable brands. But when it comes to FFB, we only have Moza, which has a rather mediocre reputation, at least to me, and the Rhino/Beast, which are rather costly, as they don't seem to benefit from optimized factory methods. As I think I said before to you, I think that your lack of experience with higher-volume factory methods (and cheap Chinese labor), leads you to consistently overestimate how expensive things have to be. But ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, so we'll have to see how the Cyber Taurus performs in practice. I do think that with my comment above, I have figured out at least in part why the 20 Nm version is so cheap and why the 16 Nm version is much more expensive, but we need customer testimony to see whether we pay a price for the gearing solution in terms of quality and if so, how much so. Especially since @Dogmanbird correctly remarks that Chinese marketing is not the most honest (then again, US marketing often isn't either).

The 9800X3D is the best gaming processor at the moment. You don't need a 14900K or 9900X3D/9950X3D, unless you want your PC to be very quick for non-gaming use cases where lots of cores help. There is no reason to go for Intel based on speculation that AMD is going to move to a different, incompatible motherboard, because for Intel there is no upgrade path for sure. Also, I don't think that the speculation is correct and that we will see at least one more generation for AM5. Going for 128 GB means that you will have to use all 4 slots, which tends to create a less stable system. I would just stick with 64 GB. If you really want more, then I would go for a a 2 stick 96 GB kit, but I don't see the point at this moment in time. As for the video card, everything is overpriced right now, especially the 5090. You pay almost 4 times as much for twice the performance (and even then, only when the GPU is the bottleneck). Ridiculous. Most likely you'll be much better off financially by getting the 5070 Ti now and upgrading the card later on when prices normalize, even if you have to pay a guy to do the upgrade for you. By that time new video cards may be out anyway. But purely for flat screen on 2K, the 5070 Ti is plenty powerful and the 5090 would definitely not give you twice the quality. It only makes sense if you move to VR. So my suggestion is to not get a 5090 until you move to VR, and even then to start out in VR with the 5070 Ti, and only upgrade if you are unhappy with the quality.

My desk is very, very strong, much more so than normal. And I have no idea how much the Monstertech clamp can handle. @propeler That's a false comparison, since the 60 Nm version is geared and belt-driven, not direct drive. I think that the motors have at most 16 Nm of force, because that is the force of the direct drive version and for the 60 Nm version they use gearing to increase the force. Perhaps the cheaper model has even weaker motors. Hard to say without knowing the gearing ratio. It seems a bit strange to built an entire gearing system just to change 16 Nm to 20 Nm. But I agree that it does seem very cheap. The cheapest 15 Nm racing direct drive wheel from Cammus is $500, and this one would have two motors and extra gearing. Then again, if the 60 Nm version actually has 16 Nm motors, that would mean a 3.75 gearing ratio. If the 20 Nm version has the same gearing ratio, they could get away with 5 1/3 Nm motors. So then the motors are actually weaker than in the Moza. And Cammus sells a full 5 Nm direct drive racing system with integrated wheel for $250, so then the Winwing pricing doesn't seem out of line anymore. The big question is whether this gearing system has downsides. The quality of belt-driven racing wheels is lower than direct drive systems, so we may end up disappointed with the quality of the FFB in the 20 Nm and 60 Nm Winwing bases. But we will have to see.

@Dragon1-1 Due to the lever of the mounting arm, any realistic force on the base should transform into a rotating motion where the arm is mounted to the table. So a rubber or other soft coating of the table mounting plate should help to make the plate 'dig in'. @Panzerlang Have you mounted the base to the wood with bolts or with a metal strip or such to spread out the forces? And how thick is the wood?

With the announced pricing, you would get a cheaper base with more Nm. Why would I pay more for less? Then if the situation changes in the future, I might be able to take advantage. Of course, this assumes that there are no other caveats... Monstertech uses aluminium profiles and solid looking clamps: https://www.monster.tech/en/product/joystick-hotas-table-mount/ But they are not cheap. And we have to see whether they will offer a mounting solution for the Cyber Taurus. Although they have made a special solution for front-mounting the AB9, so it's not out of the question.

I think that this is a very premature claim. Monstertech sells long desk mounts for the AB9, so that means that there is a big lever effect. So you should be able to use a stronger base on a shorter mount, that puts way less torque on the desk than such a long desk mount. And you can always turn down the strength. Once you turn it down to the same strength as the Moza base, there is no reason why it should be harder to mount. But as always, I'll wait for the early adopters who still have their cojones to take the risks and figure things out.

A small step for man, a giant leap by a testicle.

I tend to match my responses to the tone of the comments. If people make very bold claims, then I think that they should be able to cope with a bold response. @Dragon1-1 Yeah, and I also wonder what the options are for people without a cockpit. I guess that mounting it to a big piece of wood on the ground with holes for the wheels of an office chair would work. But is it possible to centermount or sidemount it to a desktop? And a stronger motor tends to have more mass and thus doesn't get as hot if you run it with the same forces as a weaker motor, so a bigger motor has benefits even if you turn the power down. Of course, the 60 Nm version probably requires more extreme mounting solutions. I also wonder if there is a cost to it in the quality of the force feedback.

Please don't misquote me. I said 'less important.' From what I can tell by the reviews, the Moza grip is rather low quality and thus seems unacceptable to many more people than the Winwing grip, which seems decent, based on the reviews. But of course they will lose sales if they don't support other grips, by people who don't want to change grip for reasons of comfort, unwillingness to change, cost or so the two companies can't blame each other and leave the customer hanging. Lots of people want to buy both from a single vendor and we've seen a decent number of people who have indeed bought that grip, so it is silly to argue that the Moza grip doesn't matter.

The devil is in the details. We need to know: The quality of the software For what sims they will have or are going to add telemetry support Support for third party grips (although this is less important, since the Winwing grips seem a lot better than the Moza grip) Mounting options But from a hardware perspective I really like the look of the thing, in particular the insides.