Aapje

At some point a few tech sites seem to have decided that Kepler_L2 has secret information, even though his real talent is making stuff up and then presenting it as fact. He was caught doing so on the AnandTech forums. Note that this is a general failing of the media, they often get enamored by 'experts' without actually properly vetting those people for actual expertise, and then it is very hard or impossible to get them to change their mind, even if their 'expert' is wrong a lot of the time.

I think that it also matters what competition they have. For example, if you want an F-16 ICP panel, then it seems that they don't have any competition anywhere near their price level for a finished product.

One of the complicating factors is that people have different reference points. If pieces of crap like the X-55 are your reference point, then it's not that hard to be impressed. Ultimately, Winwing's hardware quality is decent for the most part, aside from the Ursa Minor issues. You better hope that you don't have a defect or billing issue though, because their customer support is horrid.

LOL. Too late for that. It is a known issue that the quality of the controls on the Ursa Minor is subpar and worse, that they will just blame the user for abusing the joystick, even when this is not the case. My advice is to do whatever will result in a refund through Paypal the fastest. Don't concern yourself with their reputation, but simply set out your case clearly to them, dispute it when they blame you, and set a strict deadline for them to come up with a resolution. And then file a full refund claim with Paypal when they fail to resolve it within that deadline. Then get a VKB Gladiator NXT.

Nothing wrong with this kind of repair. These battery packs are just generic Chinesium parts that can be replaced with other generic Chinesium parts. Just make sure that the voltage matches. The mAh is the capacity of the battery and that merely determines how long it lasts, but is not a compatibility concern. You only need to make sure that there is no risk of shorts.

I can only see this being useful if you have additional software running that is either fairly demanding on the GPU or extremely demanding on the CPU. It's very unlikely that this is the case for a normal DCS setup. Generally, for gaming you can't just combine a lot of slow computers together to speed things up, since latency is such a big deal.

@draconus Almost without exception, games don't scale very well with overall processing power. What you need is enough processing power to handle all the tasks that have to be done. Then in addition to that, there is the code that is the bottleneck, and that is generally relatively little code that benefits greatly from a high clock speed. Furthermore, the code needs data to process. Code does not only become a bottleneck due to a lack of processing power, but it can also bottleneck because it doesn't have the data available in the local cache and needs to wait for the comparatively slow RAM. The X3D-cache really helps to ensure that the data that is needed for the crucial code is available. Being bottlenecked on waiting for the RAM tends to be much worse than waiting because the CPU is a little slow, because you get a huge disparity in wait times between the situation where the data is available and when it is not. It's much worse for the gaming experience to have stutters (fast then slow then fast then slow) than a consistently slower experience.

It doesn't feel like a suicide to me. In the famous case the pilot locked the other one out of the cockpit and downed the plane. But here it would require the nerve to do it with the other pilot present, and then doing it at the right moment, so there is no time to restart the engines, but also no time to abort. You would think that it would be hard to hold things together and execute a plan like that with the stress of having someone present and having to get the timing right.

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.

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?

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.