Aapje

No clear information about this on the Discord.

@Rechs You can get the FFBeast as a full build, and from what I can tell, the support doesn't seem any worse than the Moza and probably also the Brunner. With Brunner the issue seems to be that they focus primarily on civilian airline professionals who tend to fly other sims, and as a result their DCS support seems to be lacking and there is no guarantee that they'll improve. The designer of the FFBeast is from Poland, so I don't see what the issue is with the place of origin. We also have another person building these devices who is Ukrainian (GVL224), but I think that he lives in Germany at the moment. AFAIK there is a higher tariff for Switzerland (Brunner) than for the EU, and the shipping should not be any more expensive. For Americans, getting stuff from Europe should be easier than getting it from China. Note that both of these builders are active on the DCS forum.

It's going to be hard to compare, given the custom facial gasket. The FOV is going to be even more dependent on your facial features.

The old force feedback systems were very weak and the instructions from the game to the FFB joysticks were rather poor. The new systems have way more power and use telemetry-based FFB, for much better quality. However, it is still an immature field. But a big advantage is that you can also use it for regular planes if you tire of helicopters or want to fly airplanes as well. Aside from acting as a cyclic, they can mimic both traditional sticks, but also the more modern force sensing sticks. The most mature options right now are the VPForce or the FFBeast (more power) bases. Both provide DIY kits if you prefer to build them yourself. Those are both top tier 'man in shed' operations. If you want to mount them to the right of you, replacing your current stick, running without an extension, you shouldn't need a huge amount of power though. The regular 9 Nm one by VPForce should be fine. There is also Moza who make one as a 'real company,' but they are struggling a bit with getting the software right. In the future companies like Winwing and Virpil will release one too, but better not wait for that.

Doesn't that cost at least $10k? I wonder why you didn't give the FFBeast a shot first? They go up to 45 Nm or perhaps even higher for about 1K in euros.

Not that I know.

You need to keep in mind that the marketing from these companies tends to be aimed at unknowledgeable people, in part to cut down on support costs. It's not actually there to give you the best advice. An unknowledgeable person might use a cheap air cooler and then it would indeed not do well. Any liquid cooler is better than the cheapest air coolers. But explaining the difference between a good and a bad air cooler is much harder than just telling people to get liquid cooling. So that means the support call can end much quicker, which saves them money. Furthermore, it prevents support calls in the first place, when people get a liquid cooler instead of a bad air cooler. Again, that saves them money. Not you, them. However, the quality air coolers are actually very good, and are perfectly sufficient for efficient processors like the 9800X3D. And they have many advantages: Durability Reliability Safety of your system in case of failure (an air cooler with a broken fan still works decently well, while a pump failure on liquid will cause overheating fast) Ability to fix/maintain it Price A lot of people have suffered from issues when water cooling and have gone back to air. And if you don't have a super-hungry CPU (like the 14900), then you typically don't need liquid. Basically, the top three air coolers in this list are awesome products for an amazing price: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu-cooler/#W=0 PS. These big air coolers do tend to overhang the RAM, and I always get low-profile, non-RGB RAM to prevent clearance issues.

The 9950X3D has two compute chiplets, with 3D-cache on one of them. The game should entirely run on the chiplet with 3D-cache, because otherwise things actually get slower/more stutter, since sending data between the chiplets is very slow. That is why the 9800X3D and 9950X3D perform almost equally, even though the 9800X3D has only one compute-chiplet. For gaming, only one chiplet tends to matter. The 9900X3D has two chiplets of 6 cores, again with one chiplet having the 3D-cache. So when running games, that would run on the chiplet with 3D-cache with only 6 cores. If you get a 9800X3D, then you actually run on a 8-core chiplet, and 8 is more than 6. So we don't talk about the 9900X3D because it's a CPU with a very limited use case: a person that runs both games, and productivity software that can take advantage of many cores and benefits little from the 3D-cache, but can't afford the 9950X3D which is good at both, so they get the 9900X3D, which is worse at both. I strongly suspect that most buyers of the 9900X3D lack technical knowledge and buy the wrong product for their use case.

We had forum members report a much improved situation with regard to stuttering, after going to the 9800X3D.

Nice to hear that you fixed it.

I don't see how this is possible with the 4090 pricing. Also, the 5800X3D is only available 2nd hand at inflated prices. I would suggest: get the 5700X3D + 64 GB of DDR4-3200 C16 + 5080 (or 2nd hand 4080 if you can get a good local deal).

With digital signals, it doesn't necessarily work like that. What you are describing is more what you expect with analog signals.

Sounds more like a cut cable, that sometimes makes contact.

It's a bit strange that you act as if you disagree with me, but what you state does not go against what I said at all. I never said that militaries wouldn't use consumer games, but that they wouldn't use them without an organized training structure, which would make it impossible for them to go: "these pilots just play the game in their own time on their own PC, nothing to do with us, we didn't violate any EULAs" Operation Flashpoint/ArmA is another example next to DCS of a game with a military variant. In general, the military has a limited budget and scope that often cannot compete with mass market software and hardware, and it's not uncommon for the military to lean into that, or to simply have individual solders replace their official kit with mass market products.

Governments are going to have carefully organized training programs, not going to tell their pilots to play a bit of DCS on their home system.

Perhaps get a piece of wood and use a bit like this to make shallow holes in the bottom so the wood doesn't slide on the carpet as easily? https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006877486507.html And then fix the TPR to the wood.

The person I responded to, suggested that it was impossible for Razbam to sell a module for use in a commercial simulator, because the EULA forbids it. So I think that it is a perfectly reasonable response to then suggest that it is in fact possible to ignore a EULA. Just because this is obvious to you, doesn't mean that it is obvious to them. Not everything is about you, and it is in fact not necessary to get offended when things are said that seem like a waste of words to you, but may not be so to others. It's also not evidently true that ED would be able to enforce their EULA in the jurisdiction of Ecuador, also because picking a fight with a government organization can result in the judiciary of that country protecting their own government. Your claim that this is a random non-sequiturs is thus wrong and your attempt to police what I write is also quite rude.

All of that is true, but it is also a bad way for ED to approach this situation. Let me explain. Transactions between companies and consumers, and among companies, are actually only partly governed by law. I would argue that assumptions, implied promises, feelings of entitlement, feelings of obligations, reputation, and such play a major role. In fact, very few customers read the end-user agreements, so the idea that consumers willingly enter into a contract that is defined by the end-user license, is actually quite hard to defend. I think that a much stronger case can be made that the actual expectations of consumers are more defined by things such as how the product is marketed and what is considered a fair deal for that kind of product, than what the lawyers write in the document that almost no one reads. In practice, we also see that consumers rarely go to court to demand remedial action, but more often choose to boycott that company, or to try to cause reputational damage by leaving bad reviews or complaint posts (which we regularly see on this forum). And conversely, we also see that companies very often change their behavior when lots of people get angry at them, even if the company is legally fully in the right according to their EULA. And my experience with business to business sales is that this is actually very prevalent there as well. Lots of companies have expectations beyond what they are actually entitled to according to the contract, but they also rarely go to court if the contract is violated to some extent. So I think that it is a trap for companies to get too invested in their contracts/EULAs. It's more of a tool to prevent them from getting taken advantage of in the most egregious ways, but in most cases, what matters more is to retain trust. With regard to ED and the consumer, I notice that a lot of people express a loss of trust in ED due to the Razbam situation. And I think that ED should concern themselves more with regaining that trust, than adhering to the law in a way that best serves ED's interest. And the best way to do, is to keep the Razbam modules in DCS, with proper support/development. So in that sense, the cases are very much linked, since ED cannot meet the expectations of many of its customers without a good resolution in that conflict.

According to the leaked legal document, Razbam was going to deliver a simulator, so hardware with a DCS install with certain modules installed, including the A-29. And the document claims that another, unnamed company was also part of supplying this simulator. Ultimately, it is perfectly possible to ignore an end-user license agreement. The document claims that ED had to make concessions and expend big effort to 'save the situation.' The document strongly suggests that ED was instead intending to deliver that simulator to the Ecuadorian air force in a way that earned them way less money than if they would have done so in the normal way, and that the withholding of revenue was (in part) to make up for this. However, note that this document has not been authenticated (although I think that is unlikely to be faked, for a few reasons), and that the document describes the accusation of one party against the other, so it is inherently a biased document.

And none of that conflicts with what I wrote. In fact, that is exactly why I am against the kind of kind of reasoning where everything that harms consumers, is blamed on Razbam. Even if Razbam is completely at fault in all respects of the conflict between the two, then ED can still have legal and/or moral obligations to their customers, and you can have an opinion on whether they are meeting those obligations. This brings me to: I intentionally try to talk about general principles, rather than get very specific, since we lack a lot of details. But I can give an example, with the caveat that this is merely a possibility and I don't have the facts to know whether the assumptions in the example are true. But it can illustrate the general principle: Lets imagine that the contract between ED and Razbam contains a huge fine for whatever Razbam did. At that point, ED can feel entitled to collect this fine. However, collecting that fine may bankrupt Razbam, or make the prospect of further collaboration with ED a non-starter. In that case, ED could decide to reduce their claim to a figure that is sufficiently punitive to Razbam so they would never do it again. They could even look to criminal law for inspiration, and sign a probationary contract with Razbam, where part of the fine is not collected unless Razbam offends again. And then in turn, Razbam would return to work on the consumer modules. In such a scenario, ED would lose out on part of the fine, but they would do the right thing for the customers of DCS. But again, what they can do depends on details that we do not know. However, the way things went does suggest to me that ED didn't do as much as they probably could.

@cfrag That entire comment has nothing to do with the statement that you are responding to. That the dealings of ED with consumers was impacted by the dispute between Razbam and ED is a fact, and the matter of guilt is quite irrelevant to that specific issue. So I don't understand why you bring that up, in this context. All that is needed for my statement to be true is a certain impact to consumers (like a lack of updates and the removal of modules from the store) and evidence that this is caused by the conflict between ED and Razbam. Again, everyone agrees on this, including ED and Razbam. In fact, this is on of the few things that ED has made a statement about.

It is a fact that the dealings between ED and Razbam resulted in an end to the maintenance and further development of these modules by Razbam, and later on their removal from the store, which impacts consumers. This has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing anything about legal matters. The above sentence consists of facts that all sides agree on.

Allegedly. We still don't know the extent to which Ron actually breached the contract and such. Even if he did, there could have been options on the part of ED to prevent this from spilling over into the public. For example, did they communicate with Razbam in an escalating or de-escalating way? Did they give room for negotiation or did they present a take-it-or-leave-it choice (the latter greatly increases the chance that the other party will 'leave it'). Did they back Razbam into a wall, or give them a decent way out? Etc. There is really a lot more possible nuance to this than a black/white view where all the blame gets put on one side. But even in that case, you can also blame that in part on ED, because ED has the power to decide who can develop for DCS and what standards they demand from the subcontractors. And you can even take a further step back, and blame ED for the decision to work with subcontractors in this manner in the first place, where they don't have the kind of control compared to doing it in house, and as a result, you can have these big quality differences, as well as the subcontractors making decisions that ED doesn't like. My opinion is that the buck ultimately stops with ED, given their position of power and given that they are the ones actually selling the products to customers. So up to a point, I think that ED should be willing to eat a loss even if it is not really fair, when that is in the best interest of their consumers and their reputation.

With leaks, the general principle is 'Cui Bono': who benefits? Most of the leaks so far have been painting ED in a bad light, so presumably those came from the Razbam side. This video puts all the blame on Razbam, not mentioning the questionable choices that ED has made, or holes in this narratives that paints ED in the best light. For example, the narrative from the video that Razbam merely had to sign a contract to fix everything and that there is no reason not to sign it, is obviously a one-sided narrative. Surely Ron had a reason not to sign, and the video shows its bias by not even addressing it. If the video had a statement that: 'Ron objected due to clause X,' then the viewer could decide for themselves whether that objection could have any merit. And 'sources' of course have bias and they can be wrong too, so from a journalistic point of view, this seems like a poor video, based on a single source without verification of the claims, while a good journalist would only publish if they either had multiple sources, or would have done a lot of fact-checking on whether their source is reliable. Neither seems to be the case for the video. So for me it is no different from the other leaked stuff: a perspective, with an agenda, that has to be taken with a lot of salt.

@Lenux I'd look for a phone holder for in a car, that you can attach to the back of the monitor and that can stick up over it, and has a ball joint on the phone holder (most do). That way, you can make a 180 degree bend and you can twist the holder to the perfect angle. For example: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007327130092.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004233938917.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006457745382.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005008704418122.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006849857200.html Etc. There are about a gazillion options for this. Key is to find a flat or moderately curved surface on the back on the monitor where you can attach it to, and then figure out what length of holder you need to make it go over the monitor.