Aapje

I'd like to hear whether it overheats, how soon it overheats and how it deals with overheating. So just start pulling those g's like László 'Szatyi' Szatmári. And some testing with a warbird to see if it does all the expected things (stiffening up as speed increases, buffeting near the stall, etc). And some screenshots of the software that you get with it.

Probably even more so with these large bases, if you want to put it between your legs. I would expect options to come available pretty soon, because lots of people want to increase the size of the thing between their legs.

I agree. The buyers of the current iteration are the guinea pigs for this tech and only once they are confident they got it right, will they go for the lower end. It's the same for the simracing stuff, the cheaper direct drive options only came later as well.

It's thanks to people like you who can't keep it in their pants* that we get the early customer reviews. * Their wallet

Already trying to find an edge over the upcoming Winwing FFB base.

@4romeodelta You can also consider waiting for the new gen, where you should get more performance for the same money. It should come late this year or very early next year.

The EU price is higher due to the requirement to post prices including tax.

Moza has opened preorders for $550, with a delivery date of 4-6 weeks. Sooner than I expected.

Then how do you explain that TM asks more for a worse stick than Winwing? Equating price with quality is a mistake. Key for a good lower-end product is to make the money go far. Spend it on things that matter for a large audience. For example, very many people slam the joystick on their desk or mount it to the side of their chair. In both cases, they don't need an extension. Building a product for an extension creates all kinds of issues that require more expensive solutions to solve. Similarly, being able to easily swap sticks is something very few people need, but creates a lot of additional costs in needing durable and relatively expensive connectors on both ends. Products like the Gladiator and the Ursa Minor excise those features to reduce costs a lot, but this doesn't actually reduce the quality for those that don't need those features. And there are also a lot of ways to reduce costs by optimizing the design for cheaper manufacture, while not hurting the quality too much. And there is also the Trustmaster Warthog way, where you make the product look expensive, without actually making a quality product. For example, by taking a plastic product and screwing metal plates to it. Premium appearance without premium quality. That's not really how it works. There are tariffs for some product categories, but also trade agreements that reduce tariffs. The low prices for the Ursa Minor sticks already show that you are simply wrong in what you think you know. This is not a very useful metric in isolation. For example, there is also less competition (and a lot of the old companies have stagnated and thereby offer up a great opportunity for them to be outcompeted), and a rapidly growing demand, which both provide good conditions for introducing new products at lower price points. And new entrants like Moza have an incentive to be very aggressive with the margins, because it is much wiser to grow market share first and then get good margins on higher sales volumes, then to remain small and then try to make good margins. Because in the latter situation, it is very hard to cover the fixed costs and then also make a strong profit on top of that. Again, gateway drug. They see the planes in War Thunder, they hear that flying is much better with a stick, they see that the price of a good basic stick is within their reach and give it a go. Now you have started a percentage of those people off on a journey to this: It is very obvious that we are in a significant upswing in demand right now. It can provide for a healthy profit for quite a few companies. As many/good as sim racing? No. But still quite good. By this logic no one would make new sim racing equipment either, because initial investments are going to be earned back much sooner if you sell Ferrari's. But the reality is that there is money to be made in many ways, and not much money to be made if everyone tries to sell the same thing. It's not like flight simmers are suddenly going to be buying steering wheels to use with their flight sims. The only way to get that money is to sell flight simming gear. I found a retail price of $109 and thus a little lower price after inflation. However, what you ignore is that technology has also improved and you could not buy a Ursa Minor-quality joystick for $110 back then, especially if you calculate back the inflation. You are stacking the deck in favor of your argument by only considering the negative (inflation) without considering the positive (improved technology). This is another one of your factual errors. Ferrari was spun off in 2016. And they are definitely a moneymaker. Doesn't matter. If sim racers start with a controller and then transition to a $400 set, and then go to a $800 set, etc, the drug dealer model works. Key is that the products need to exist to get people into the funnel (as many as possible), that these products give them a good enough taste to not be turned off en masse, and that there are products for them to upgrade to that provide strong and clear benefits, but are also not too expensive to make the jump up too much of a stretch. My point is that a relatively cheap FFB joystick could fit great in such a line-up and without it, the $700+ FFB options are probably going to limit their audience much more than with a more effective funnel. As I said, I think that you ignore technological improvements and only look at things negatively. Winwing now sells a joystick with twist, hall effect sensors and more buttons than joysticks of the past for just $110. This is way better value for money than joysticks of the past, which broke much sooner and had bad dead zones. But even a $300 price point is great compared to a $500 base, that requires a $200 stick and requires a $100+ mounting device. That's still half the price of the complete solution, and I can see quite a few people actually preferring the smaller all-in-one joystick that fits on top of their desk. You are completely ignoring my point that I think that it is possible to offer a much cheaper throttle that is way better than the TWCS, but is much less than $250. I feel that I'm looking at what it possible and what we should have, while you are the negative Nancy shouting "everything is always getting worse!"

32 GB is more than enough for nearly all games, but DCS is one of the few games than can benefit from more. So I would suggest going for 48 GB or 64 GB. 48 GB may be a nice compromise that saves you a little money, but should give DCS enough room. And there are some significant degradation issues with the 14700K and other high-end Intel processors. Intel has mandated more strict power limits for the motherboards, so if you get Intel, you need to make sure to upgrade your BIOS. However, it can degrade performance, so the processor may be a bit slower for you than earlier benchmarking suggests. And Intel hasn't actually figured out the (full) cause of the issues, so there is uncertainty still. They may need to do a software update for the processor that slows it down further (yes, there is software in there). I would personally avoid this mess and go for AMD, because right now I really only see benefits to go to them and no real downsides.

This headset is more for the people for whom this amount of money is not that significant, I would say.

Take your time with the install and double check whether you actually doing it right.

@Mr_sukebe Keep in mind that Moza only started selling gear at the end of 2021, so they are a very young company that has been growing very fast. Of course they had growing pains, but they've really been very responsive to criticism. They are not a top-tier brand, but more of a mid-end company that is expanding more towards the lower end (competing with Fanatec, who are in a similar position, but who messed up a lot recently). Virpil is a top-tier brand that is now apparently trying to expand into the mid-tier (with the Cadet vs Expert branding). But I've been trying to dampen expectations a little by making a few 'downer' comments, since I think that the FFB sticks are going to disappoint a bit early on anyway, at least from the software side. Moza is a little bit on the weak side with the software for their simracing (not hugely so, but just a little less), so I don't expect them to blast out of the gate with great software for the FFB base. And the game and module makers will also need time to adapt their code. Then again, it's not necessarily that hard to make the FFB sticks work as a high-end non-FFB stick (with very solid damping) even if the actual FFB effects are lacking/missing, so buying into FFB early is not necessarily a bad idea if you manage your expectations. I'd personally rather buy an early FFB base rather than a highend non-FFB base, if that choice was presented to me.

Again, I'm referring to price/performance, not just price. The quality is lacking in those cheap options. What I want is for there to be a solid options for as low a price point as possible. Of course there are always people who want products for even less than that, but they cannot reasonably complain when it is not possible to produce somewhat decent quality at their preferred price point. 'You get what you pay for' is just a cliché. The very fact that the Ursa Minor was able to offer much better quality for a similar price as the T.16000M shows that people didn't in fact get the quality they could get for that price point, and still, they don't get what they pay for from TM when it comes to joysticks. I believe that the same is true for the TWCS and that for a similar price point, better products can be sold. Keep in mind that the flight sim market was in decline for a while, causing a lack of investment in equipment. Things changed and flight simming is now a lot more popular again. Not sure why you are phrasing an agreement with what I said as if it were a disagreement. I was pointing out that propelor ignored the demand curve and merely referred to the supply curve (given his argument that only relative prices of products matter). The actual reason was an overal decline in demand, which made all flight sim equipment a less interesting market for companies. You can actually get a wheel and pedals for less than $100, but without FFB and you'll be better off with a controller. So this is a pretty useless comparison when you don't factor in price/performance. And price/performance at the low-end of the simracing market has actually improved a lot in the recent past, so why would the same not be possible for flight simming? It's called the Ursa Minor, not Major. And you completely fail to explain why those extra costs would push the price from $110 to $300. The entire FSSB2 was almost sold for that price difference, compensating for inflation. So why do you think that a new iteration would have to cost so much more? I don't think that your stab in the dark at the required price makes sense. Of course, at the low end there is less room for competition. But that doesn't mean that it can't be a solid earner for a company or two. You also completely ignore my point that the product would not just earn money directly, but would result in more sales for the more expensive products from the same brand. You are about a factor of two off, with the new R3 bundle being sold for $399 (and that does include pedals). This is rather illustrative for the extent to which I think you overestimate the required costs. Note that the R3 is designed for upselling and reuse of components, not the lowest price, with its detachable wheels. Cammus shows that you can make a direct drive systems even cheaper with an all-in-one design. Not needed for the category of simmers who care more about having fun than optimizing their times. The steering wheel FFB tends to produce the fun, the pedals are more about good lap times. Note that I've ignored pedals for flight simming completely, as a sufficiently fun experience can be had in flight simming with a twist stick as well. Of course, flight simming is not as good without rudder pedals and racing not as nice without a good set of pedals, but realistically, a low-end setup can do with poor racing pedals for sim racing and without rudder pedals for flight simming. It's a poor setup that doesn't provide value for money, in my opinion. I would advise people to instead get the Ursa Minor if they don't have to deal with excessive import taxes and then combine that with a (second-hand or discounted) TWCS or a new VKB STECS MiniPlus or a Virpil CDT-VMAX. But that would mean a bigger expenditure at first (although it should last longer and have better resale value). I hope that a new throttle will be released at the $100-$150 price point that is actually good at throttling, which ironically, is where the TWCS is weakest at. Note that I see the TWCS being sold for 85 euros in my country, which is with 21% taxes included, so a new low end competitor for $150 would actually allow for a decent amount of extra production costs. Well, your 'realistic' sim racing price are actually about twice the actually realistic prices, so I'm pretty confident that you overestimate the costs.

Yeah, right now it seems inadvisable to buy a higher-tier base without FFB. The benefits of choosing an AVA over a Gladiator/Ursa Minor seems rather minimal compared to going to a FFB joystick.

I strongly disagree. I see a ton of people clamoring for cheaper quality options on the HOTAS subreddit, but the only sensible advice for most was to skip the obsolete low end and go for the mid-end (VKB Gladiator). Only now with the Ursa Minor do we see a low-budget stick that actually has a good price/performance. The previous options were 15 year and older stuff with obsolete technology. And for throttles, the only half-decent option is the TWCS, which has rather shocking plastic on rails sliders. Only the number and the layout of the controls is somewhat decent. There is no real competition for the TWCS on the low end so far. I see an obvious opening for a one-engine throttle with no controls on the base, no detents, etc. I absolutely think that this can be less than $150 if it is designed for cheap manufacture. This is not really how pricing works. There's the supply/demand curve, which means that even without competitors, the optimal price is not infinite dollars/euros. You ignore quality, marketing, support, availability/logistics, etc. There are more ways to win/compete than just on price. No, they won't. Asking $1500 would be a big mistake and would kill their product. There are huge sales in the simracing market of Logitech belt-drive devices and the lower end DD setups. Sales are like a pyramid where the top-end gear sells way less than the cheaper gear. And if you follow the simracing crowd, you know that people rarely go directly for the high-end gear. They nearly always start at the lower end and only upgrade once they really get hooked and learn the huge benefits of FFB for a moderate price. The high-end stuff would sell way less if there wasn't the lower-end stuff acting as a gateway drug. Your view of the market gets distorted if you spend time in the enthusiast forums. The people you find there are not representative for the market. With only the most expensive hardware, you find that even the developers get priced out of the hardware and they just don't provide software support. 1. Copy the basic design of the FFB2, but replace the pots with hall sensors. 2. Put modern controls on the stick (which can be done just by reusing/copying the Ursa Minor or any other modern stick). 3. Go through the design and see if you can reduce costs/increase quality by using more modern production methods or better components 4. Sell for whatever the market can bear 5. Profit Yes, I'm looking ahead to what these companies should do to create that pipeline of people going from the cheaper to the expensive stuff, once they believe that FFB is viable for the mass market. Again, smart companies are like drug dealers. They get you hooked on the cheaper stuff and then entice you to spend the big bucks for diminishing returns. The simracing companies are masters at this. Moza will sell you bases from 3 to 21 Nm and steering wheels from $129 to $675. I think that your standards are too high. The mass market is not looking for serious devices. They want value for money. Winwing is now selling an $80 joystick with few buttons that is great for basic flying in MSFS. They sell a $110 stick that is perfectly viable for DCS and other flight sims. That is cheap and beats the pants off Trustmaster in price/performance. What I want is for people to be able to get into flight simming for cheap, so they give it a chance in the first place, and then get hooked. Then ideally then can upgrade to a low-end FFB stick later on. And then they can go down the rabbit hole and build a rig/simpit, or they can forever be weekend warriors slapping that joystick on their desk. All good...for all of us, as the more flight simmers there are, the more games/modules/addons/hardware we all get.

@propeler I started with the price of the Ursa Minor since that already includes all the basic costs for a joystick. And I don't think that you really get what I mean. My idea is that they make something similar to the FFB2, so with integrated joystick, which saves costs. It would also be much smaller than a Rhino-style device, which saves material, labor and needs less torque due to a smaller lever arm. And I'm pretty sure that Chinese factory labor is a lot cheaper than 'propellor labor'. Note that Winwing manages to sell the Ursa Minor for substantially less than the VKB gladiator, so prices can get really low if they really go for lower costs.

That is not exactly true. AM5 and the 7800X3D have been out long enough to no longer have early adopter teething issues, but it is still about as futureproof as you can get.

One of the issues is that Gen 5 only refers to the theoretical speed of the interface that the drive uses to communicate, but the Gen 5 drives being sold tend to not actually hit those speeds (in part because the drive controllers are not good enough yet). So the actual speed difference is not as impressive as you might think. But another issue is that gen 3/4/5 drives are all much faster than HDDs and thus are way less of a bottleneck than HDDs were, but they also are far too slow compared to RAM, for the game to be able to get something from disk fast enough to not have to worry about it. So games still use techniques like preloading things to RAM long before the game actually needs it. So a drive that is a little slower tends to most often result in a bit longer loading times, which is not really that important compared to having good frame rates, which are rarely impacted by drive speeds, once the speed is at a decent level. I've never seen anyone show an actual benchmark where FPS improved by moving to a gen 4 or 5 drive. Frankly, there are some people on this forum who give advice based on theoretical reasoning of how they think things work, but actual reality is very complicated and is almost impossible to reason through, which is why benchmarks are so important. Einstein recognized the human inability to actually reason in a reliable way, when he said: “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

What TM really needs soon is an improved entry-level stick, since the new Winwing Ursa Minor editions are absolutely spanking the T.16000M. I think that it would be pretty easy for Winwing to come out with a stripped down throttle that costs no more than the standard price for the TWCS. At that point, they can offer a HOTAS set with a combo discount that will absolutely spank TM in the low budget category. I would be surprised if Winwing is not working on that right now. Right now there is no evidence that a low budget FFB option is in the works and it may not be needed for a few years when the FFB infrastructure has been laid out and more casual simmers really want FFB. The FFB2 cost $109 in 1998, which is about $212 in 2024 dollars. I can see them sell a modern, basic FFB entry level stick (no separate stick and base) for something similar. For example, instead of the 57BLF03 that the Rhino uses, they can use the 57BLF01 that is a third as strong. You can get those for $30 on ebay from China, so getting them in large volume directly from the factory should cost no more than half that, so $30 for a set. Then you take the Ursa Minor that they can sell for $110 and add the $30 to it. You are only at $140. So you have a large gap of $72 before you get to that $212 price point. That leaves a lot of room for some extra electronics, a basic power supply, some extra plastic for the housing, extra shipping costs and extra profit margin. And I would personally suggest they sell it for $249 or so, so that would leave another $37. Of course, as I said before, investing in this only makes sense once the higher-priced FFB offerings have been proven to sell well and it is clear that a low-budget FFB stick would sell in large numbers.

I strongly suggest you take a look at the VPForce/Rhino manual, where there is an extensive list of the things that the software (can) simulate for DCS and other sims. Some of these are effects that you may not be interested in, but there are also more basic force that are not implemented in some/all of the sims. And the software also has the ability to mimic some FFB forces for modules that do not support FFB. Of course, the big sim, MSFS, which is crucial to make FFB hardware sell in sufficient volume, does not currently support FFB natively, although I've been told that it is on the roadmap for MSFS 2024. Indeed. It opens up a whole dimension of 'feeling' the plane, which makes planes much less similar to each other, and much improves important factors to airplane control like preserving energy (you feel when you are inducing drag) and preventing a stall (you feel the buffeting). On the civilian side of things, it also allows replicating the safety systems build in certain airliners, which are fly by wire, but the actual airplane uses FFB to sent information to the pilot.

The person wanted to futureproof somewhat, which your suggestion for a dead-end platform and old RAM is not going to achieve. His existing DDR4 is almost certainly not up to snuff when it is 9600k-era RAM, so he would need to buy new RAM anyway, and then it is better to go for DDR5 at this time, IMO.

Sorry, but this is just nonsense. Simming games pretty much universally love the X3D-cache and DCS definitely does. With the 14700k you also have to deal with the CPU degradation issues and the fixes for this making the CPU slower. With the 14700k, you have no options for real CPU upgrades in the future and you also have more heat output.

Let me take a stab at guessing/predicting the future. The actual release of the Moza/WW FFB bases will take longer than we hope, as the software seems to effectively be non-existent at this point. The expo reports are that the one base that people could actually use had no more than damping/resistance. No actual FFB effects. And it was demonstrated with War Thunder, which is a weird choice for an expo where the more hardcore flight simmers attend, that suggests that even the most rudimentary software support didn't yet exist for MSFS, DCS, etc. So neither seem that close to a releasable state, let alone catching up to where the Rhino is. So once these bases are released, I predict a lot of disappointment, people saying that they are happy that they didn't cancel their Rhino reservation, etc. Actually catching up to the Rhino software can easily take a year or so. Then there is still the issue that some DCS modules don't support FFB well, all of MSFS doesn't support it natively, etc. So it will probably take another year for these products to support FFB more extensively. Of course the ultra-enthusiasts either already have the Rhino or would be willing to buy something that works sometimes and still requires a lot of tinkering, but for it to really take off in the mass market, can easily take a bunch of years. For Moza this is a chance to enter the market with something special, and for Winwing this is the chance to change their reputation as just copying Virpil/VKB/etc. But for both of them it is a gamble. It seems too early to gamble on the lower-end, but If I was these companies, I would already do R&D on a cheaper version, but only release it once the higher-end FFB market proves to be solid enough.

With their sales channel and brand name, TM don't have to be ahead. Just not too far behind. And I expect these new FFB bases to remain a niche, with plenty of sales in the non-FFB bases. In general, most of the sales tend to be for the cheaper stuff. The bigger deficiency than not having a FFB base is that Trustmaster still has very crappy low-end options, much inferior to the Wingwing Ursa Minor. Wingwing is clearly aiming at the people who currently buy the T.16000M with their $84 Ursa Minor Airline edition that they just announced. If Winwing or another competitor comes out with a half-decent $120 throttle and $120 rudder pedals, and releases an XBox-version, then the TM-line has been made fully obsolete. Note that I also see a large gap for a lower budget FFB option. Basically an upgraded MS FFB2. The first company to fill that gap could make a lot of money.