Aapje

Power supplies tend to be most inefficient at low load, so getting a bigger power supply to gain efficiency at high load may just cause you to have more wasted energy while you use the PC for browsing. And power supplies are not all equal, so I would personally suggest looking at reviews and not be overly focused on the wattage. The official wattage they put on the box is in many cases just a marketing choice anyway, and quality brands tend to underspec their power supply's, so a power supply rated at 750 from a poor brand can actually be worse than a power supply rated at 650 Watt from a quality brand. Also keep in mind that the more wattage the PSU supports, the bigger it tends to be. So make sure that whatever you get, fits in the case.

Only modern jets or also warbirds? And do you ever get it to go into lower force mode? And did you have to do any maintenance?

I think that ray tracing should play very little role in the decision, also not to be 'future proof'. Nvidia has touted ray tracing since 2018 and in the 6 years since we've seen rather few games where ray tracing was really good and none of those were simming games. The people who got a 2000-series card with the idea that they are future proof due to their ray tracing ability, now have cards that are too slow to run newer games with ray tracing. What is marketed as ray tracing is actually a very simplified version with so many limitations that it is very hard to make it look much better than a rasterized game. The actual proper ray tracing is marketed as path tracing, but this is so demanding that even a 4090 is too slow for current games that you want to play at a decent FPS and future games will just be even more demanding, so no future proofing there. And I think that a 1000 watt power supply is plenty now and very unlikely to become too little in the foreseeable future. The total system consumption of a basic 4090 system is less than 600 watts and if you look at what technology they are working on like backside power delivery, then it seems that a lot of focus will be put on efficiency. I can only see them selling hugely power-hungry GPUs if they ever figure out how to combine multiple GPUs in one package using chiplets, without getting all the stuttering and instability issues that you had in the past with SLI. That is a very hard problem to solve. But even then, would you really want to buy a video card that makes your system use close to 1000 watts of power? It will require a complicated cooling setup and will pump so much heat into your room that it's going to be very uncomfortable..

The Varjo XR-4, but last I heard, the software is a mess. The upcoming Somnium VR1 may be a good one. But right now, it is hard to look past the Quest 3.

@Waxer The Rhino does have overheating protection and there is a Finnish guy who has done a bunch of stress testing: From what I've seen from reviews/experiences that others had, the temperature of the device (which is measured with a sensor) stabilizes once it gets into the protection regime. The issue that people have is that the overprotection cuts the force feedback strength, so the experience is not consistent between the max power and limited power state. So you can suddenly get a different experience during an intense dogfight, which seems very undesirable. The Beast should not have this issue, which seems like a solid benefit, unless you want to run the Rhino with low power anyway, so it never gets into the protection regime, or you only fly planes with proper trimming, which seems to reduce the overheating issue to some or a large extent. It took Walmis and Propelor quite some time to work things out to get where they are now and they didn't do the work to get their designs ready for mass production, which itself can be a very long process. I do think that with the big waiting list and the quality of the product so far, it would make a lot of sense for someone to start a company and get mass production going in China, which should cut costs quite a bit and which means that enough units get produced to serve the demand, which Walmis and Propelor seem unlikely to be able to achieve with their current way of working. It's a shame if many people miss out on a FFB stick due to lack of supply or because the price is too high. I would prefer if Walmis and/or Propelor either start a company themselves (if they have the skills or can find people with the needed skills to run a company) or go work with/for one of the big companies to get mass production going. But please no Trustmaster, who are not the right company for this, for a bunch of reasons. It could be a very good financial decision by Walmis and/or Propelor, with relatively little downside, because there are ways to avoid major financial risks, while potentially getting rich if the product sells well enough.

What are you referrring to? I'm missing the context here.

Winwing is releasing a new joystick, which seems to be the new budget king, basically copying the mechanism of the VKB NXT, but for a cheaper price. Review: https://t3chtronics.wordpress.com/2024/05/15/winwing-ursa-minor-closed-beta-now-public-review/

See the USB test in the bottom right of the second picture? Use that to determine what speed you are actually getting.

If you do upgrade, it would be great if you would give us a nice comparison review from a consumer's perspective.

Even if it is expensive, it is a big win for consumers in places where importing things yourself is cost-prohibitive. They now finally will get an option in their local stores, which is (most likely) an actually good product. And it's also a win for less savvy consumers who get the most expensive thing in the store. They would get a Warthog set before, so now they get something actually good.

It's a little one-sided when you don't name any downsides.

Does the FFBeast software simulate the same extra effects that are not natively passed on as the Rhino? For DCS and the other two sims? For example, the Rhino manual mentions a special 'Low Hydraulic Pressure Effect' effect for some DCS planes. Is this implemented for the FFBeast? The manual also mentions that it implements extra effects for IL-2. Are those also implemented in the FFBeast software? I personally don't look for maximum fidelity, but to have fun. Perhaps it is helpful to have more power, but this is also something that is hard to judge without having some proper reviews of the products.

Given that this is the DCS forum, I thought that it was obvious that it's about the joystick. Very interesting, although it's a lot to read. So would you say that cogging is unnoticable on both the FFBeast and the Rhino, in normal use cases? I wasn't really giving feedback to you, since I'm not a user of either product, but I was more interested in hearing from you what things you see as lacking and whether you plan to improve things. Note that forming an opinion based on the opinions of people who already have a product is how many people decide whether to buy a product. This is especially true for buying from you or Walmis, since I doubt that either of you provide an easy return policy or even allow returns. I understand that you are probably much more of an engineer than a sales person, but from the perspective of someone who still has to decide which one to get (or whether to get one at all), it's very helpful to understand the pros and cons of the available options. Good to hear. Frankly, this is a lot better response than the one you gave earlier.

This is not really the kind of response that I would like to see from a company. Ultimately, everyone who makes a product is going to have a bias towards their own product*, if only because they are more experienced with it and have more knowledge. So I'm sure that you are happy with the user friendliness of your software, but you know it inside and out. That doesn't mean that people who don't start off that knowledge or any bias, won't have more difficulty with it than you. This is why the better companies seek out external reviewers to give feedback, as they don't have the the bias and blind spots as those that involved with making the company. It's a bit unfortunate that there don't seem to be any people who tried out both the Rhino and the FFBeast, who can truly compare it. Anyway, I've never seen anyone who used the FFBeast mention cogging, but Rhino users mention it, so I don't know what to think. Do you believe that there is any cogging in your product? * That includes me, as I also make products for others.

The users with experience are saying that the software for that device is better when it comes to cogging and ease of use.

Apparently, the Rhino code is freely available under the GPL, so FFBeast could adapt it to their needs: https://github.com/walmis/VPforce-TelemFFB/blob/wip/aircrafts_msfs_xp.py

That doesn't mimic sustained G-forces and many people with VR set their motion rig up to make fairly small movements, giving more of a suggestion to the human body than truly trying to mimic G-forces. This is very different to a FFB stick where you do want to mimic sustained forces.

Hoggit has a discussion about this right now and apparently the software of the Rhino is a lot better:

Motion platforms don't simulate G, so that's not really a proper comparison. In general, it is a true apples to oranges comparison that makes little sense. The price difference seems just 100 euros, which is not really that significant compared to the price of the thing. I like the metal construction a lot better and if it is way more powerful, then it's hard to fault the price.

Smoothtrack is pretty good as a free TrackIR app.

It might be for those worried about uncontrolled equipment swinging around between their legs. Then again, I have lived with that all my life and I survived so far.

@Buzzer1977 AMD seems to have a driver team that is too small, so what we've seen for a long time now is that Nvidia is close to max performance right away, while AMD gets gradually better as the card gets older. It typically takes at least half a year. And it's not just performance, but they also don't optimize VR until later on, so it tends to be really bad at first, but later in the life cycle people tend to be quite happy with the VR performance. More recent experiences on this forum seem to suggest that AMD works fine now: You are right that DCS is a VRAM hog of course, so it makes sense to buy a 7900 XTX now, since there won't be a new 24 GB card from AMD, nor a 24 GB 5080. Another option can be to wait for the 5090 release and then buy a second-hand 4090, since a lot of the money-no-object people will surely upgrade from the 4090 to the 5090. You may even be able to get a good deal from another DCS player on this forum. Of course, that second option means waiting and there is no guarantee that those 2nd hand cards will have good prices, especially if the AI people keep snapping them up.

@Buzzer1977 I don't get your list of choices since the 7900 XTX is closer to a 4080 Super than a 4090. You probably feel the desire to stay with the top end because you have a 3090 now, but it makes much more sense to look at what actual performance (improvement) you get, as well as performance per dollar. For high end VR simming I would pay the premium for Nvidia, unless it is a big gap. Nvidia is better at driver support for VR and it's much easier to find advice, support and such in the simming community with Nvidia. Since you have a 3090, I would certainly wait for next gen, especially since there are pretty solid rumors that the next gen from AMD will improve on the fairly mediocre current gen quite a bit and will be a strong value play, where you will get a bit over 7900 XT performance for probably around $550, rather than the current $900. Even though AMD won't come out with a truly high end product, this should still put big price pressure on Nvidia's mid-range and to make their line-up work, they probably need to give us a significant bump for the same price across the line-up, except for the 5090, which I expect will be very expensive, hard to get, etc. Nvidia clearly learned this generation that the x090 buyers will pay a lot, but they have to provide proper value to the x080 buyers and below. Hence the price drop for the 4080 Super, while the 4090 remains very expensive. So unless you are willing to pretty much get ripped off to get the best of the best at the time with the 5090, I would loosely plan to get a 5080, although we'll only know the actual price, performance, value, etc when it is announced and reviewed. But of course that is just my reasoning and you have to make up your own mind.

He may have given up on us anyway.

@kksnowbear The issue is more that your screenshot shows only one drive, so if he has a classic setup of a SSD for Windows plus a HDD for gaming, or has another config with multiple drives, it would be hard to get him to make screenshots that show the info for all drives. He would have to know what he is looking at or would need extra instructions. My suggestion would require downloading a standalone exe, running it and making a screenshot. Easy and relatively foolproof.