Waxer

I recently had a problem with a WarBRD grip. Virpil customer services did not respond to me immediately, but they did respond after about two days. They asked some basic questions (inc. serial number, date of purchase) and then send me free of charge the part needed to fix the problem. So my experience of Virpil customer service has been positive.

Thanks.

If you are going to use the GF3 with extension on a Monstertech base plate, do you still need the VKB base plate as well?

[Edit] gone.

I can answer for him: left hand side console... roll damper ON... switch to OFF. Makes the aircraft more twitchy but pays off with greater roll rate.

I bought TrackIR 5 and Rift S. The TrackIR 5 got sold. The resolution limitations you mention with VR is absolutely true. But for me, I can live with that. And I am hopeful that giant strides will be made with VR in the near and medium term futures. Exciting times. I find cockpit interaction okay with a mouse and not being able to see a keyboard. Most HOTAS have plenty of functions. But again emerging technologies with finger sensing and iris scanning will no doubt improve this part of the VR experience too. I can understand why someone would go TrackIR given VR's current limitations, but not for me.

Friend sent me a promotion advertised on toxic Facebook. A "team buy" for potential customers in the EU. What is the deal with this? Advert says "Free ship. Include clearance" "Train or ship to Czekh. Then deliver from Czekh by express to EU countries". Specific questions: 1) Why don't you mention this on the DCS forums? I mean... near 100% of your user base is on the DCS forums, but a far lower % on toxic Facebook. 2) How does it get from your warehouse in the Czech Republic to customers houses in the EU? Who pays for shipping within the EU and who arranges that? 3) Who pays the import duty? Advert suggests that you do. 4) Who pays the European VAT? Advert totally vague on this. This is interesting as - despite adding 1-2 months to the delivery time and a lot of complexity - it might make something that is currently very expensive in a forced bundle, more affordable. But it depends on what additional costs consumers that are faced with.

Rift S is a well balanced first gen product. I've been very happy it, but I am likely to upgrade to G2. (I also loathe facebook... so yeah... had to hold my nose getting the Rift S. Opted out of everything in software!).

I charge A LOT for investment advice. However - free advice - the Hornet grip is superb. Great feel, great buttons, great functionality and great immersion for AV-8B and F/A-18C. If you can afford it, get one. (As OP said, used prices are high, so you can always sell it on for modest loss after having experienced and enjoyed it for a while). Thrustmaster grips really are excellent value for money especially considering what others mfg charge for plastic grips with surface mount buttons. The difference is that the other mfg offer additional choice (like the F-14 grip, B-8 grip, Russian Modern Mig grips so on) that is a gap in the market. So it's plastic and cheap buttons or nothing for those jets.

Vullcan: all fair comments from you. I have a somewhat different opinion. Firstly I completely understand the concept of a bundle. It is the art of upsell. Countless companies try to do it: telecoms triple play became quad play with telephone, tv, internet and mobile. Insurance companies are not happy to stop with car insurance... they want your house, holiday, pet and life insurance too so they offer you bundles. Winwing's situation with their bundle is that there was a lot of hype ahead of launch. Reviewers expecting finished products meeting the hype were instead faced with HOTAS systems that failed to meet expectations. There were quality issues, functionality issues and design issues. For this reason many reviewers pulled their full on reviews and just posted unboxing videos and then did no further updates. Jabbers and Noobifier being two particularly high profile guys with good reputations for honesty. Most of the concern centred on the joystick base which came from the factory poorly adjusted and required lots of setup that reviewers found confusing. But there were more fundamental design concerns also. Plus the market for upmarket joystick bases is already well served by 3-4 other companies. And T/M came out with an arguably better F/A-18C grip before Winwing. So pretty unsurprising that Winwing was forced to offer the throttle separate to joystick and joystick base. And subsequently offer deep discounts on the joystick components which is what we are seeing. The strategy of bundling with a button box might force an upsell on customers desperate to get their hands on the throttle. That is a value call each of us have to make. I was close to a purchase of the throttle, but with all the associated extra costs (shipping and taxes) I will sit this out. Hopefully Virpil, VKB or Thrustmaster come up with something... another F-16 throttle for example from one of these would be excellent. If Winwing were smart they would lock as many customers into their throttle ecosystem before one of these other competitors comes out with a full travel throttle box or an alternative to the A-10 / F-15 grip of the Warthog. Finally I'd actually say that Thrustmaster comes out with some very good products at very competitive prices: although the Warthog base is pretty underwhelming by today's standards (which have moved on past the Warthog base) their A-10 / F-16 and F/A-18C grips are excellent. Also the Warthog throttle is decent with the exception of the horrible slew sensor the many of us upgrade anyways. But I appreciate all the points you made.

Yeah, I think the throttle alone is lighter than the Warthog throttle (which uses ballast). However it is longer and with the side button box moves the centre of gravity further away from your desk edge. So to avoid any damage to your desk you need a good quality mount. I know for sure that Monstertech is working on a good quality mount. The Winwing one looks trash, and as you have pointed out does not have a fast release... quite the opposite... you have to screw around with little plastic blocks while supporting the throttle in place by your desk... major faff. There have been a couple of guys on here that have build very nice, sturdy wooden side console boxes to house their throttles. That looks like a good solution to me if you are up for some fairly simple woodwork / DIY. And such a box could easily be moved from near your desk. Also there is the issue you mentioned of the software which reports from end users on this forum suggest opens an always on link from your PC to a Chinese server. And stories of cranky USB connections. I also don't like the side button box being bundled with the throttle. I've asked Alex at Winwing about selling the throttle separate to the side panel and he is unwilling. Apparently all their packing boxes are set up for the bundle so they would need to arrange new packing materials to offer separately... hmm... It doesn't sound that complicated to come up with a new smaller box? I am going to pass. But if they reconsider selling the throttle from the button box then I will probably give it a try. I hope the software is fixed to users satisfaction by then.

That is always the safe way and $600 is nothing to be sneezed at if it is disappointing. But the price is fine for most of us if it lives up to expectations.

You can take apart an iMac to do repairs or upgrades. (But they are designed for the work to be done in an authorised repair shop). I am pretty confident that with some basic skills and some appropriate tools could take one of these apart to replace the cable. The sort of thing that is not a 2 min job, but if determined and spending a bit of money on a new cable, you could get it done. Or a repair shop could do it for you if you don't have the skills. Certainly would not bin it.

It is in some and indeed gets to c.80% scaling in some games. It is - for example - supported by Il-2.

Yup good post. HP / Microsoft / Valve made the right decision NOT to push harder on # of pixels right at this time. Doing so would have "cost" in terms of GPU resources which as it stands now we are hitting RTX 2080 Ti limits (and yes I know about rumoured 40% faster 3080 Ti) and cost in terms of affordability to the consumer. Instead there are negligible cost, zero GPU overhead wins to be had in these other areas that affect optical quality besides the resolution. This is actually something Oculus got very, very right with the Rift S and what that headset punched well above its £400 price point. Like you I also could not give a fig about the hand controllers. The damn Rift S won't let you use it unless you have the hand controllers - with batteries active - near the headset. It is a damn nuisance. Yeah, give us finger sensors instead... I am sure that will come. And some interesting information regarding WiFi6... but I still doubt that has the bandwidth we will need for 2k2k if cables are struggling! A few years ago I was totally uninterested in VR. But we are at the point that it is getting good and getting very interesting. Hmm. I wish SLI were a solution... It would seem easy in concept for left and right eye images to be split between SLIed GPUs. But I imagine that there is much more to do with it in the coding. Anyway, it is irrelevant to us... DCS is single GPU. (IL-2 another matter however).

I am using the Rift S. And I don't like Facebook, but they got one hell of a lot right: the price for a start was attractive... pretty low risk way of trying VR. And the mix of stats... none outstanding, but the sum of the parts was better than the individual parts. It's main limitation is resolution however. This HP / MS / Index G2 looks like being another well integrated "best of" collection of technologies, some pushed ahead a little bit, and at a sensible price. For DCS it really looks compelling. And the resolution combined with all the other systems integration looks like this could be the new winner, winner, chicken dinner. Fingers crossed that it will live up to high expectations.

Well, just a simple button box is a few SPST and various switches (not Mil Spec or anything fancy, just consumer grade), a few runs of wire and heat shrink, a PCB, control logic and I/O). All of this is not particularly expensive to manufacturer. Then there is a box / casing: metal and plastic. Bit of an expense to custom tool, but not if you are doing in volume. BUT... But... The "but" is if you are doing custom tooling to produce replica buttons like the ones shown in the prototype photos: that is value added. LEDs inside and the correct script to be a replica of the F/A-18C. So that is something that turns this from just another button box into something worth paying more for. I do wish Winwing would pay greater attention to details like the screw fittings: the square top screws fitted to the throttle box stick out the top surface of the button box instead of being recessed / flush with the top surface. Looks ridiculous. Yeah, I know, I am a perfectionist and details like that bug me. But if you are going to the trouble of making custom buttons, why not produce a box top that recesses the fittings properly into the panel? Surely that is an easy win?

Mitres: okay. The other two corners would be 2x40º and 2xº50 in that case. Thank you. To the other guy suggesting Kreg rigs. Thank you for the suggestion.

Mark: I was planning to build a frame for the switch box & and throttle base to sit on top of, with the electronics forming a lid. It will be easy enough to cut some MDF sheet to the appropriate lengths. However, I've taken a look at the profile of the Winwing side switch box that mounts around the throttle. I see that while two corners are 90° to each other the other two corners are at 80° and 100° respectively. So it looks like I will not be able to use a router with a finger joint jig. Is there a woodworking joint that you would recommend to join things at are not a 90° to each other? How did you fix these two corners? Thanks.

There is another thread started today with photos of prototype work on exactly this.

Ahh! I am impressed by those custom buttons: very nice. These details make a big difference.

Ahh, that explains it! I was thinking to myself that you'd done a very professional job on that throttle mount... and it turns out you are a professional carpenter! I had recently done an aluminium extrusion mount in Fusion360 and was going to get the bars cut, but having seen your simple solution - which is far more elegant and also easy to move when you don't want your office to be an F/A-18 cockpit - I can see that I was overthinking it. That say imitations is the best form of flattery... I think I will copy you Mark! Good job.

From memory I had the appearance of a double payment request as well. I queried it (back last year) and Alex reassured me that it would only be triggered the once. Sure enough the payment was triggered just once. The refund I got was because I decided to cancel my order after the various release delays and the introduction of the Thrustmaster grip which was compatible with my VPL base at a much lower price. Conclusion: worth checking, but I think you can relax. I very much doubt it will trigger an overdrawn limit on your card.

Yeah, email them. Alex is very responsive and when I had a refund request he was fast sorting it out for me.

Hey Lynx, I've been lurking on this thread and checking things from time to time. Very impressed with the work that you have done. It is a shame that Alex from Winwing has not replied. He has been very helpful each time I have asked him something. But I imagine that he might see you as a competitor to Winwing's own button boxes. I don't see it that was as you are producing replicas whereas Winwing are producing interpretive gaming button boxes, but not replicas. Anyways, you will find the dimensions that you are looking for in these CAD files: https://www.winwing.cn/en/download Specifically: https://www.winwing.cn/static/file/WINWING_HOTAS_INSTALL_3D_DRAW_V1.1.zip Hope this helps.