Aapje

Properly reviewing hardware requires an obsession with hardware that causes the reviewer to want to sacrifice their performance in game and the time they have to actually fly, to actually review a lot of different things. After all, switching to different hardware just to test it, is going to take away time from flying, and is going to detract from working towards an optimal setup. Instead, the reviewer will be fighting with the hardware (and the settings). And it is very hard to properly review hardware without doing that a lot, gaining experience at reviewing, which is different from getting experience at just playing the game. A good reviewer needs to look beyond their own specific setup and desires, so the review is valuable to way more people than just those who have the exact same setup and desires. If I look at Spudknocker's video's, then I spot a mere 3 hardware review videos, which suggests that he had a very stable setup and doesn't have broad experience with hardware, and doesn't have the required obsession with hardware to be a good reviewer. After all, if he had that obsession, he would have made more than 3 hardware videos. He also reviewed just mainstream stuff of one brand (Trustmaster). I don't trust reviewers whose standard is Trustmaster and who have so little interest in hardware that they just always buy from one brand. And there is also something in Spudknocker's past that puts doubt in my mind over the kind of person he is (lying about being a real pilot). Anyway, I'd like to see a review by G-LOC Media or Antti Ilomäki (note that I have no information to suggest that they got a review unit). Unfortunately, I do not know of any other channels that I can trust to do a good job. I think that Get Your Game On, VR Flight Sim Guy or SimHanger Flight Simulation could do a review that is at least partly informative. Most likely it will actually have cogging when the unit is off, since the anti-cogging in the Rhino and FFBeast only works when the unit is on. So I expect the same here.

I don't see any such videos on his channel, just the reaction in the community tab. Can you provide links to these mysterious videos that no one has of yet linked to, here?

He has a local guy building it for him, so presumably he is free to select the parts that he wants. And I see no need to spend lots more just because one is willing to spend. Perhaps if we save him some money, he can upgrade again sooner. Or he might want to upgrade his controls (FFB?). Note that the 4090 is not just a big financial spend, but going from a 150 Watt TDP to 450 for the video card also has quality of life downsides. The 4080 Super heat output will be less of a shock and it can be brought down a lot more, to levels that many people consider more comfortable, with a nice undervolt. And I disagree with a 1500 W power supply. That is just way overkill and is going to put him further from the peak of the efficiency curve. Max 1000 Watt is fine, especially with a 7800X3D.

Yeah, Noctua is very good, but not value for money. The Peerless Assassin is. And there is no need for an AIO with a 7800X3D. As for water cooling, it has a lot of downsides, including more risks and less durability.

@Nightdare A stick on the side doesn't have to be on the chair. Plenty of people have a stick on the side, but mount it to the desk: In such a configuration, you can rest your arm on the arm rests of the chair and it is much less of an issue to mount the stick higher up. Spudknocker never addressed this option. You claimed that Spudknocker either was using the exact setup that Moza gave to him or that they told him that this is THE way to use this base. However, I'm not sure how you know this, since Spudknocker never wrote this, so it seems likely that you just made this up. It also seems unlikely to me, since Moza is making their own stick, and it seems unlikely that they would ship or suggest a competitor's stick. If this is not in fact the only or the most common stick that people would use with the base, then the issue that Spudknocker had, might be completely absent for most buyers, who use a different stick. So in that case, I consider it unreasonable to call this a blocking issue, but more of a caveat. Now you are just putting words in my mouth. There is no real way for me to respond to this, since it is really just a nonsensical set of sentences. Again, just putting words in my mouth. I never said this, what I said is that it is unfair to claim a product is unfit in general, when someone didn't in fact test use cases where it may work perfectly well. It's not up to me to prove this. You defended the claim that there are no valid uses for the product in the current state, so it is in fact up to you to show the evidence for this claim. My claim is merely that the pictures and arguments presented by Spudknocker, don't address all possible use cases for the product. It's like someone arguing that you should not buy a certain car because golf clubs don't fit in the trunk/boot. It ignores that not all people play golf. Similarly, not all people would use a joystick in the way that Spudknocker tried to use it. Except that you are not defending the customer's POV, but you are taking the issues that one specific person had with one specific setup, and are generalizing it in a way that is not fact-based or reasonable. Mind you, I already said that I don't advise people to buy this yet, but that is based on factual arguments.

@Lee1 I wouldn't suggest waiting for the next AMD CPUs. You can get a very good deal on the 7800X3D right now and the new CPUs will almost certainly start with inflated prices. The difference is not going to be that big. There are major issues with the Intel processors, so steer clear of those. I'd sooner wait for the new GPUs, although they don't seem to be around the corner and might take until early 2025 to arrive. But I wouldn't suggest getting a 4090 right now, since you are almost certainly going to experience huge deprecation once the 5090s hit the market. And without VR, I don't see the huge need anyway. A 4080 Super is a very strong card and is much better value for money. I'd also suggest getting 64 GB of RAM and lots of storage.

Please stick to one topic: I'm sure that we'll see proper reviews in a bit, but I've not seen any so far.

I have my doubts that Moza presented him with the Trustmaster FA/18 stick that he uses, rather than Moza's own stick or no stick. I also don't know what Moza actually said vs what Spudknocker assumed. Like I said, the desktop mount may be intended for a side mount, which would mitigate a bunch of his concerns. And if I look at the website, then they show this mounting solution with the base mounted higher, which would mean that the stick could go fully forward. Potentially, all his issues are either with one specific mounting solution or his choice of stick. The very fact that Spudknocker doesn't seem to realize this, and seems to treat his specific use case as the end all and be all, doesn't fill me with confidence that his statements are all that valuable.

@Nightdare I've not seen anyone use the Rhino with a desktop mount, so it was always going to be unknown how well such a setup works with FFB. I fully expect Moza to have a rapid learning curve and for third parties to come in and solve some issues (like Monstertech). It's a bit silly to argue that a company entering a new market has to be perfect right away. Just let the early adopters run into the issues and then decide based on their findings.

All the released and announced bases do not include a stick, which is standard for high end bases.

I don't agree with a blanket 'don't buy this' warning when the issue is only with a specific use case. It's like arguing that people should not buy a Ferrari because it couldn't get over the speed bump close to your house or because your weekly groceries don't fit inside. A good reviewer looks at the different (reasonable) use cases and points how well it works for each, or if they can't test other use cases, they at least point out that the criticism is only for one specific use case. So in this case, it is a fair warning that the base doesn't seem well suited for a central mounting with the provided mount. But was that mount even intended for central mounting, or for side mounting, where you rest your arm on the arm rest, which tends to be higher than your legs? I recall that at FSExpo, Moza demo'd the base with a side mounting. That said, I'm personally of the opinion that nobody should pre-order this base if they expect any guarantees and are not willing to take a big gamble, since the information provided by Moza is utterly insufficient to be confident that it works well enough to be value for money compared to the Rhino for any use case.

The Aero was a lot better than the XR3 for simming. Their professional line is not targeted at this use case.

He got it for free to do a review, because he has 70k subscribers and Moza uses this as cheap marketing. We will get bunch of early reviews by people with no clue, and hopefully also a few by people with half or even a full clue.

More recent reviews I've seen were not much better and these kind of problems have been reported for their older headsets too. So it seems to be an issue that they don't really ever fix.

Because it is only good on paper?

That's good news. It's great to have different options, rather than just copies of mostly the same thing. According to the machine translation, it is not just bigger motors, but significantly bigger. So perhaps close to the FBBeast?

I don't think that this topic belongs here, really, as it has very little to do with the Q3, but is really just about USB extension cables. That said, get an active extension cable. But then you might still need to get lucky. These things are finicky and cables are not always of the best quality.

It can be preordered from a UK shop as well: https://abruzzi-official.co.uk/shop/?filter_brand=moza-flight

You can't buy the Winwing base yet anyway, and no release date is known. And the early reviews of the Moza at the expo are poor: https://stormbirds.blog/2024/07/01/fsexpo-retrospective-hardware/ So I would suggest just waiting a month or two at the least for the Moza bases to get into the hands of customers, to see how much progress they've made on the software by then, unless you desperately need a new (high-end) base (as then you might want to take the gamble). And by then we hopefully get more information about the Moza hardware, and possibly about the other options as well. Why rush to get something that potentially doesn't work very well (yet) anyway and could potentially be fairly poor value for money compared to the other options?

That looks like a mounting plate design drawing, but it should be possible to at least get the length and width by using a ruler to check how many mm on the screen makes for 60 mm in reality. Then you divide 60 by the number of mm's to get the real distance per mm of screen distance. Then you measure the length and width on the screen in mm's and then multiply that with the previously calculated number. That should be quite close to the real number. I'd do it, but I'm traveling and am ruler-less. But I'm sure that one of you can do it, otherwise I'll do it next week.

This could be caused by sitting in front of a big computer monitor and having the inside out tracking latch onto the picture on the monitor. You can try taping a piece of paper with a random QR code on it to the top of your screen, so it hangs in front of your monitor. Then the inside-out tracking can latch onto the QR code. If that works, you can try other solutions, like minimizing the game screen as much as possible or putting more stuff in your environment for the inside out tracking to latch onto.

I'll bet that they will keep offering the adapter if the base sells well, since I think that a lot of people will want to use it with a Warthog stick or a Virpil one.

I figured it out, those dimensions are from their sequential shifter. They almost certainly copied that page as a starting point and then didn't update the specs. Right now the specs are hidden from view, but they are in the HTML (including a mention of that sequential shifter). So those dimensions are not accurate in any way.

A 5700X3D or 5800X3D for sure. You might want to get a 7800XT or 4070 (super) as well for a solid GPU upgrade.

The Rhino works with Virpil grips and this one might too. We don't know anything about it yet.