Aapje

This entire post, as well as your previous ones, tells me that this is almost certainly not the case, since at every turn you give one side the maximum benefit of the doubt and the other side the minimum. No amount of evidence is going to convince a person that will look for any reason to distrust evidence that points one way, and every reason to trust evidence that points the other way. Anyway, obviously I'm not going to post evidence here, since it is offtopic to the Razbam situation and would likely result in moderator intervention. But it's not that hard to find, and someone might even message you the evidence. So let me get this straight. You believe that Razbam agreed to make a plane for a third party in breach of contract, and that they are deceptive for leaving that out of their statement. But when ED left that same information out of their statement, you don't believe that it was deceptive. It's only deceptive when Razbam does it...why? And is it really 'naive bothsideism' when I recognize that Razbam tries to frame the issue in their favor by telling a half-truth, but ED is doing the exact same by leaving out their non-payment, which is not a framing that is to their benefit, even though it pretty clearly seems to be true and a highly relevant part of the conflict? And you believe that Razbam is using paying customers as hostages for refusing to yield to ED's demands, which to be clear, are secret, so we have no way to judge how reasonable those are, but when ED refuses to yield to Razbam's demands, which are also secret, they are not using customers as hostages. To me, this is all obvious tunnel vision and bias, where your bias just reinforces itself. You only consider the statements by Razbam to be 'obviously manipulative,' but not the statements by ED, because of this bias, but instead of treating it as results of your bias, you let the bias deceive you into thinking that your biased conclusions are objective, and a good basis for your bias. So you may think that your bias is based on evidence, but I see bias based on bias.

So your 'facts' are that you believe vague statements by the employee of one party in the conflict with no actual proof being supplied, rather than the vague statements by the other party in the conflict (or accept that both may be wrong)... This is just a textbook case of bias. In fact, you even admit that you do not judge this case based on the facts of this case, but that: "All I'm assuming about Ron comes from how he handled other issues before." Even if there is a basis for that prejudice, it doesn't change that such prejudice is not the same as having actual facts about this case. And again, it is not true that one side has to be fully wrong and the other side fully right when there is a conflict. Note that there are also allegations, allegedly supported with evidence, that ED itself has broken contracts. So why are you not assuming negative things about ED based on their alleged behavior? PS. NineLine's statement is actually quite weird, since on the one hand they claim that their legal contract(s) have been violated, but also that they don't entertain legal claims. With the knowledge that ED has apparently been withholding all payments for a very long time now, this can just as easily be interpreted as them having more confidence in their ability to strong-arm Razbam into doing what ED considers reasonable, than in their ability to prevail in court, which raises questions whether ED's belief of what is reasonable, would be considered reasonably by an independent judge. Of course, I can't speak to the exact internal deliberations by ED. But this is an example of how things can be a lot less one-sided than you make it seem.

Except that you are not actually just basing your opinion merely on facts, but on the speculation that the accusation is true, and are actually going further than that, by claiming that the alleged breach of contract was deliberate, which I don't think was even the accusation by ED, nor do we have any evidence for this. If I assumed the worst about you, like you seem to assume the worst about Ron, I could accuse you of misrepresenting the facts deliberately. But that would be irresponsible and unjust, just like your assumptions about Ron are irresponsible and unjust. We lack a lot of information and there could be a lot of facts that are unknown to us, that could lead to a conclusion of greater and lesser fault, and greater or lesser malicious intent, both on the part of Ron and ED.

There is a big difference between making a full simulator and making a module for an existing simulator, and it is not a good sign that you conflate the two. The allegedly leaked information suggests that the latter is the case and that RAZBAM signed an agreement not to develop such modules without a contract with ED. So then it is not so much an IP case, but rather a contract case, which can be very complicated, since all kinds of factors can play a role, like whether contract clauses are legal in the first place, whether the clause is actually violated, whether there was an attempt to obey the letter of the contract while violating the spirit, whether the courts would allow that, etc, etc. Note that according to the allegedly leaked document, the actual company who was to create the simulator setup was a third party, neither ED nor RAZBAM, so that makes it even more complicated, given that this third party would presumably not be bound by the same contracts as RAZBAM. From what I can tell, the attempt to paint this as a mere IP violation appear to be deceptive PR by one side of the conflict, probably because they don't want to divulge the contents of the contracts, and Spud's video rather one-sidedly presents the claims of that side. If they provide the 'context' you want them to give, they would probably be lying, given your misconceptions about the situation. Furthermore, you are assuming that they are even at liberty to disclose certain information. Your entire post strongly suggests that you don't understand IP law. You don't even seem to understand that there are different forms of IP, with different rules. For example, copyright is strongly protected and doesn't require any work to establish that right, but is only about the exact expression. It doesn't protect solution mechanisms, for which there are patents, which are far more restricted in a variety of ways (requiring registration, them being novel solutions and having a relatively short time limit). Also, the courts have established that APIs are not subject to copyright protection in the context of their use, so making software that calls an API doesn't violate copyright, even if the API calls use the same expressions as the API (which of course is needed for the calls to work). If you want to seriously talk about IP violations, you need to establish what kind of IP violation you are talking about, because they are very different; and how the IP was violated exactly. In general, it's absolutely not the case that once you have worked with a specific product, you cannot make a competing product. You talk about the question whether a third party module maker can make their own simulator, but this statement again seems to confuse things and is very vague about what you mean. Are you talking about the alleged module for a military that RAZBAM would make, because this is not a full simulator in itself, and would need to be bundled with DCS (or its military version). So that is not at all the same as developing a full simulator. That distinction matters a lot, but you completely ignore this due to how sloppy you are with your words. Your assertion that any company that makes either competing simulator (again, it is unclear whether you actually mean a module for DCS or completely separate software) would need to obey some vague cooldown period, suggests that you are projecting your experiences as an employee on this situation (and even then without understanding employee law). Cooldown periods can be part of employee contracts, but Ron Zambrano is and was not a DCS employee. With copyright and patents, there are defined expiry dates, which have nothing to do with how recently one worked with, or on a product. And if the actual issue is a violation of a contract, not a violation of IP law, then what matters is what is in that contract, so then all your talk about how IP laws works is not relevant to that. PS. Not sure why you made most of your comment bold.

This is almost always the case, whether it is human error by the pilots, maintenance or designers.

50 PPD is lower clarity and more FOV. 57 PPD is the opposite. Ultrawide is more FOV, high clarity, but less depth perception due to a smaller binocular overlap: https://www.roadtovr.com/understanding-binocular-overlap-and-why-its-important-for-vr-headsets/ The difficulty with all of these things is that what matters most to you is very personal. In fact, everyone has a different FOV, PPD and binocular overlap depending on their face shape. So to a large extent, it is a gamble. I would probably pick the ultrawide if I were to get one:

That is only about the original Crystal. Pimax has a bad habit of copying other companies, even when it doesn't make sense. For the original Crystal, they tried to copy the Quest, creating a headset that can be used standalone, with a mobile chip and battery inside. However, no one buys a Pimax for standalone, so they just made a headset that is more heavy than needed and requires charging (even when using it wired). For the Crystal Light and Crystal Super, they fixed this, by getting rid of the mobile chip and battery. The Super partially compensates for that due to the eye tracking, which allows proper foveated rendering (using a lower resolution for the area in your peripheral vision). With a 4090, you can definitely benefit from the Super's extra resolution, especially since there is also the option to use DLSS 4.

The Constellation Alpha Prime is also metal.

That is a very biased way to frame things, where it is assumed that ED is completely in the right, and it is purely in the court of Razbam to solve things. We lack a lot of relevant information to judge things for ourselves, so putting the sole blame on any party cannot be more than prejudice, mixed with at best a few scattered facts.

Yeah, and the people who buy early access modules, rather than wait for the module to be finished, are encouraging this behavior.

They are working on a dynamic campaign: And there already is a third party thing if you want something right now:

With Pimax it is a very bad idea to assume that they will achieve their roadmap.

In The Netherlands, you can now get it for 497 euro, which is $585, but keep in mind that is with 21% tax. It's 410 euro without tax, which is $482. And in my opinion, you are better off skipping the grip and getting a Virpil, certainly for what the MH16 costs. The Constellation Alpha is only slightly more expensive, but it is more featureful and better built. The big question mark with the MHG-grip is whether they improve the issues with the original grip. If they do, it can be a very appealing package at the right price.

I thought that they were out of production already

Yes, lets totally ignore Thrustmaster. Or is that not what the TM stands for?

A possibility is that Ron wants to prevent getting claims from his (former) staff. Especially if ED applies a huge fine to Razbam, then Ron might be unwilling to do certain payouts. Especially if for example, the contracts with his staff contains payments that scale with the number of sold modules, under the assumption that Razbam would get a certain cut. So in that case, a co-agreement by the staff might be necessary before Ron would be willing to sign the settlement agreement. Of course, the above is just a possible explanation of why the staff might have to sign something. I have no evidence in this regard.

I have not actually been talking about how good cheaper options are (more that they could be), but other than that you have a good point. I was holding off due to the Virpil ghost button clicks issue and other software issues, and the plan was to re-evaluate around Black Friday, once there are more options. However, realistically, the Moza seems the best option, also due to the shifter-feature. And I just saw that a local shop has a big discount on the base, so I should probably take advantage of that.

I don't really agree on sticking with the Q2. I found the Quest 3 to be a huge step up in quality.

There are two basic schools of thought, one is that you want to mimic the plane you fly the best, the other is that you get an ergonomic setup with as many useful buttons/switches/etc. The issue with the former idea, is that you aren't going to mimic the plane properly unless you build yourself a full cockpit anyway. So I agree with @speed-of-heat to get the controllers with good ergonomics and lots of buttons.

On 4K on a flat screen, you should be a bit less impacted by the CPU than on a lower resolution or in VR, but flight sims are notoriously CPU-heavy. And you have only 32 GB of RAM, while people are reporting that 64 GB has a decent benefit, so upgrading would allow you to sort that out too. If you want to upgrade, then the most economical way is to get a B650 motherboard, 64 GB of DDR5 6000 CL30 and then for the processor, one of these: - 7800X3D (top tier performance right away) - 7600X3D (2 fewer cores that should not impact gaming meaningfully, so if you can actually get it and there is a decent discount, it can be very economical. This CPU has just dropped to 274 euros in NL/DE) - 7500F from Aliexpress (China-only CPU that performs almost the same as the 7600X, but should save a bit of money) The last option in particular can be done as part of a long-term plan, where you plan to do one more CPU-upgrade, after AMD introduces AM6. During the previous transition from AM4 to AM5, they sold a lot of fairly cheap X3D-cpu's to those still on AM4, so I expect them to do that again. With this strategy, you would get a big gain with the 7500F and then another big gain once you migrate to the final X3D-cpu for the AM5 platform. Also, the final X3D-cpu for the AM5 platform should retain it's value extremely well on the 2nd market, just like is now the case for the 5800X3D, so the latter strategy could see you recoup much of the costs of that final CPU-upgrade if you later move on to AM6.

Pretty sad, really. Their most recent product that brings anything to the flight sim market are the TPR pedals, and those are 7 years old. Other than that, the only edge they have is that in certain countries, importing stuff yourself is taxed way more than when shops do it, so things that are sold in local shops like the T.16000M and/or Warthog set then have way less of a markup than products that are not available in their local shops. Anyway, the AB9 seems to weigh 7 kg and the AB6 only 3 kg, so less than half the weight. Interestingly, the weight of the AB9 is not actually visible on the Moza product page. I had to view the source code of the page to find the information hidden there. Why, Moza, why?

Not yet, I'm still not entirely happy with the available products. But my interest means that I keep an eye on things, and I maintain a post with data for the available FFB bases on the IL-2 forum, mainly because it is helpful as reference material, when new things get released, or I want to verify some details.

They just did, see:

This link hasn't been posted yet: https://mozaracing.com/blog/2025/06/27/moza-releases-at-flightsimexpo-2025/