What happened to Force Feedback Flight Sticks?
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- Опубликовано: 31 окт 2022
- So, if you’ve spent any time in the niche simulation community, you’re probably well aware that, in the driving world, force feedback isn’t a novelty. It’s the bread and butter of control interfaces for driving sims. With products from fanatec being sold at F1 events to custom setups, like the motor used in Jimmy Broadbent’s setup, you don’t have to search far to find an electric motor if you’re into motorsport simulation. Unless… you’re into flying
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Force feedback in one of the most valuable features of a helicopter flight stick. I own 2 sidewinders, one modified and one not. The ability to feel and witness progressive trim, instantaneous trim, feel the vibrations of a stalling warbird, feel the resistance of a sticks elevator movements after taking off due to the wind hitting the ailerons is just amazing. Feeling the flight stick shake when you fire the machine guns in a Fokker DR.1 is really cool too. Force feedback that is in my opinion as valuable as head tracking and I will never understand why it's not a more common feature. It makes modern jets feel boring in comparison cause of their fly by wire design. There's not much purpose for it in modern jets except for maybe a stick shaker or vibration when shooting guns. After looking at the inside of the microsoft force feedback 2, it really shouldn't be as expensive of a feature as some believe it would be. Just a few reliable small motors and a few gears is enough to do the job.
What kind of modification did you do?
@@tommykarlberg Probably the current-boosting mod, that raises the motor force.
My old sidewinder had issues with only the A10C and the Su27 in DCS where I couldn’t trim it out ever. The joy stick would not calibrate normally and I would have a constant roll I couldn’t fix. Got annoying but every other sim game I had as a kid worked flawlessly
So there is an open-sim wheel project that somewhat stalled out because so many good cheap direct drive wheels came to market. Maybe we need an open sim stick project given the lack of commercial products available.
@@tommykarlberg I added some resistors to double the motor strength. I extended the length of the stick by adding a carbon tube and replaced the ugly grip with a old thrustmaster topgun grip since it has just as many buttons and tons of planes and helicopters use that type of ergonomic grip in real life such as the Huey helicopter. I have a video on my channel that shows the stick called "Ultimate home VR flight simulator with YawVR".
I still have an original Microsoft force feedback joystick from way back in the day. I remember playing combat flight simulator on a lan connection with my uncle. I remember playing flight simulator 2002 a lot as well. I wish I could remember which site I used for downloading models. I remember it had a $5 fee for a lifetime membership. All this was back before 2005/6 when I was a kid
Must have been the good times heh
Still got mine too. I used to play x-wing alliance with it. You could do stuff in an x-wing with it that you just couldn't do with a normal joystick., like hold a spin when hit with a concussion missile. I have no idea if it still works because I need a USB adapter for it.
Me too
And me, quality sticks..
And me. a MS FFB2. Put in 10 years flying online in IL2 Sturmovik and its expansions. Still works to this day. Just thinking on that, A Force feedback stick bought in 2001 still functioning in 2022..
FFB could make a massive comeback since a lot of flight sims are moving more and more into VR and small motion platforms. When you have hands on throttle and stick all the time, it's much more important that the tactile feel of whatever you're touching is on point, as you can't see if a stick is in the wrong position.
MSFS has woken up the civilian flight sim world again, and there's a lot of space sims coming out like Star Citizen which would also benefit from FFB. So I suspect demand is going to pick up.
MSFS I can understand, but how would space sims benefit from FFB? There's no aerodynamic forces to worry about.
@@kotori87gaming89 Star citizen has atmospheric flight too
@@goodall18 And Elite Dangerous will likely have it in the future as well. On top of that, feeling your controls go haywire in Elite when fighting an interdiction and literally having to fight the stick to get out of it would go a LONG way for immersion.
@@MitsukiTakeda I commend your faith in Elite😁
I hope you are right. I don't think this has been so much a demand problem as it has been a supply problem in recent years after some big titles that are best with joysticks got released.
It´s not only for flying sims. Force Feedback Flight Sticks were used for a ton of games.
Flying less sim games, Space Sims, Space arcade games. Other things like MechWarrior and much much more.
I used to love playing Mechwarrior with a stick. It felt like the way it was meant to be played.
MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries for life,@@ChaddicusRex. The controls were so natural on a joystick, wrist rotation for torso rotation, even with the hat control to look around. Truly the way it was meant to be played. 😉
I remember the late 90s with the _Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro_ being displayed in a shop and it was configured to run high-fi haptic demos with a gas-powered chainsaw and a truck engine revving and stuff. Mind blowing. Definitely left an impression.
Similar displays were for the first Logitech Wingman Force Joystick. It had much stronger force effects.
Being powered they really had some oomph too. People just got lazy and started using rumble controllers instead.
Still got mine but the sensor that detects is your hand is on the stick is broken so ffb is permanently on. Which is fine until you let go and you hit turbulence and it tries to throw itself off the desk.
I remember going into electronics boutique back in the late 90's and seeing a MS sidewinder 3d force feedback on an operating display and you could press buttons and feel what type of force you might expect in different situations or press a "helicopter" button that didn't feel like you where flying a helicopter, instead it just spun the stick around the world.
Wow I completely forgot EB!
Similar displays were for the first Logitech Wingman Force Joystick. It had much stronger force effects.
@@boostermcblast2197 happier times when technology was still full of wonder and more than just most gigs and most drawn polygons.
There was also a "magnet" button ^^
@@Psikeomega i thought about this recently, its cause we had no internet. you had to read reviews or go 'try' games to see if you liked them. like you said, a lot more wonder. now we just youtube gameplay or lookup reviews online and no more wonder. no mystery
I'm a bit surprised that, given the rarity of force-feedback controls, sim makers have actually modeled the forces you encounter. I can easily see some bean-counter saying "well, only 5% of our customers would ever use this, so it makes more sense if we spend our time coding a more accurate aero model" or some such.
I'm guessing that there's probably some base modeling of control stick forces required for things like control stiffening and mushiness at low airspeeds.
Perhaps it's also something of a marketing ploy where developers add features to seperate them from the competition. Kinda like the max graphics setting that only a very small percentage of users can achieve.
Games like DCS make most of their money from people who buy every single module there is. Among these groups of people the percentage rises considerably from 5%, so they implement it.
I would also argue that it's not really that difficult to implement if you already simulate the aerodynamic behavior of the control surfaces, and DCS does. At least not even close to as difficult as writing a whole aero model
That's because many of these sims are running on in-house code made a long time ago (DCS still has DNA from the Flanker series) and the force feedback is handled by DirectX as Microsoft was invested in this area.
Lots of these games are also designed to offer force feedback for controllers, which already have that built-in.
I bought 2 sidewinder forcefeedback 2s at a thrift shop for under 10$ each. I use it in IL-2 being cheap with a backup just incase the first one breaks and had no idea I was using something rare. What an eye opener, simple things like feeling when the wheels leave the ground is not shared with many of my peers and here I felt like my setup was a joke.
Had a MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2. It was amazing and would absolutely hold up today!
It is amazing, and is still the best flight stick I own.
Still got my MS FFB2 and I love it.
i have 2. have had them for well over a decade. but currently haven't been using them the past year due to them being far away been using a Logitech 3d pro really missing the force feedback.
I still use one and it serves me well.
i remember ours would slam the stick into a corner sometimes lol. fun device
I still got the Logitech Wingman Force (you forgot to mention in your list) with cable-drive technology. It's collecting dust for a looong time but I remember it was freaking awesome in Star Wars Episode 1 Racer.
I was going to say, I have my Logitech Wingman force feedback but it uses metal gears. Has a hand full of buttons on the base and the throttle. Uses it for pro-pilot ‘99, warbirds, and USAF Janes Combat flight simulations. I’ll never forget the calibration software having a different sensation for each button, one being a toilet flush that felt like holding a paint stick in the center of a swirling bowl. The car accident sensation was spot on.
I’d love to get it working even if it took an arduino or pi to do. It was amazing in 1999-2003 while on Win-98se to Win2000
I still got my Logitech wingman 3D all boxed up like new. Loved dog fighting in Combat Flight Simulator 2
@@sethrice9939 found this for you, It's the button test. I forgot about this until you mentioned it.
ruclips.net/video/LYF4qyJYcWg/видео.html
@@Hi_Doctor_Nick Omg, I also totally forgot about this! It was pretty scary actually. Haha, so good.
Ha! I remember having a Microsoft Sidewinder they were selling them to play Mech Warrior you could literally feel every stomp the mech would make in the Stick while trying to pivot the torso aim and maneuver it was neat!
I wish we had a modern twinstick solution for this! It would be so cool with VR mech games.
The issue with Force Feedback is that it was ultimately a gimmick which actually harmed your performance. It amounted to uncommanded control inputs which reduced your precision and amplified what the simulation was already doing; if your plane was shaking because it was stalling, the Force Feedback shake would cause inputs that made it even worse. That's the thing that almost nobody understands about Force Feedback: it's great for immersion but it's ultimately a bad thing because it amplifies things the game does onscreen. Games were never truly designed to take Force Feedback into account and use the controller's movement to _cause_ the onscreen shaking instead of it being sympathetic and amplifying it.
I understood this from the start and avoided these controllers for this reason. I was a holy terror in MechWarrior 3 with a Gravis Firebird 2 and CH Pedals. It was an old-school controller that predated Force Feedback, but it worked great for the game. Mapped jumpjet directional controls to the HAT switch. Torso Twist was on the pedals.
@@WardenWolf interesting point, but also seems a bit misguided. You feel more than the shakes -- stiffening of controls for one.
But even with the shakes - like with buffeting let's say - it's not like you will want to stay in that position feeding back the ffb into your controls. FFB will let you know that you're approaching a certain flight condition (closing on a stall?) and you can react before you cross that border.
Without that we have to rely on "just" sound and visual feedback, which works, but isn't ideal.
In short, I think you're making it out to be a problem where it's really not.
Or rather, maybe it would be in MechWarrior, but in flight sims? I'll take two, please.
I have kept my old Sidewinder 2 all these years, hoping that one day I would find out how to rebuild it. I used it for years flying in the old Aces High game. Even when it had seen better days, it still was so much better to use. Still hoping that someday, someone will make one that is readily available and you don't have to take out a second mortgage on your house to buy.
I had one back in the early 2000s. I am surprised force feedback isn’t in demand these days; people are happy with Honeycomb and Thrustmasters recent products but I never heard anyone asking where the force feedback is!
I am asking for it ALL THE TIME! :-)
I think some of the problem lies in the fact that most of the younger audience never actually experienced force feedback, aside from the usual 'rumble' in controllers.
If you don't know it exist, you'd not going to look for it to buy it. I used a force feedback stick back in the day, but i gave that away to an friend who didn't had any stick to use.
@@Icefumy People could know force feedback from steering wheels.
@@boostermcblast2197 Sure, I agree, but it could also be that people think it's JUST steering wheels, and nothing else.
In the lineup of old force feedback joysticks there was also the logitech wingman force (not 3D), which arguably was one of the best. It used a wire drive system instead of gears like all the later cheaper FFB joysticks. It made quite a difference in the quality of the feedback and was able to provide sensations that you couldn't get on gear driven systems.
I have the Logitech Wingman 3D force feedback joystick. A great product.
@@terrygray6697 Yes, ironically the predecessor (the one without the 3D in the name, and 2-3x heavier than the 3D) was a much higher quality stick. Don't quote me on this, since this stick came out in the late 90s, but I recall reading at the time that the steel-cable drive I-Force tech in that joystick was a consumer version commercial applications, which included things like training devices for surgeons.
The cog driven FF joysticks that came after were a big step down, but also WAY cheaper to make.
Btw, I paid $189 + tax for my Logitech Wingman in 1997 or 1998. Still have it in the garage and based on how that thing was built, I wouldn't be surprised if it still works. Now if only someone would hack together some 64bit windows drivers for it...
@@AntagonisticAltruist I still have the Logitech Wingman Force Joystick. Bought it once on a flea market for 5 Euros and had fun with it using Microsoft Flight simulator X, Windows 7 32 bit and self-built flight pedals. Very good force effect. Great joystick. But there are absolutely no 64 bit drivers available. So I cannot use it anymore. :-(
Yeah, so that's at the very least two FFB joysticks he missed (the old Wingman Force behemoth, and the cog driven Wingman Force 3D, not to be confused with the much later one shown in the video) and I'm almost certain there were a couple of other, pretty crappy ones.
The wingman really put the ‘force’ into force feedback. I used to wrestle with mine playing the first version of IL2
Awesome to learn haptic controls are coming back! I wonder if I could get this new stick working with Comanche…
If Comanche uses directX and it sends the proper data, yes. Otherwise you would have to default to spring/damper emulation.
@@Silverhks I guess you’re too young to get the joke. Comanche was a DOS sim; I think I ran it on a 486. 1992!!!
@@PetesGuide miss the joke? Definitely.
Too young no
Edit: I played it, I did forget it was that old though
@@Silverhks Awesome! I just read the wiki article and may try the newer versions!
Very interesting. Don't have the money for this kind of flight sim hardware but learning about it is great. Could you by any chance consider doing a video on the real flight sticks of modern or historical aircraft?
Wanna go back in time to an era where for some ailerons didn't exist and that elevator control was made through a separate wheel??
That's just what you imply he wrote, it's not what he wrote
I had no idea Airbus sticks were so advanced. I always thought they were just spring sticks and the smoothing was done in software.
You've reinvigorated my desire to repair and extend my G940. Have been prospecting other solutions but I think It'll be worth the time.
There's new firmware for it made by a guy called fred41 (?), I extended and use mine today!
I was the technical support manager Europe for Thrustmaster Europe from 96 to 00, then the project manager for the development of the Cougar / Warthog for Guillemot in 00 and finally project manager for Fanatec until 02.
1. Immersion is specialised on industry and healthcare products. FF for joystick and wheels ran on a backburner, it just wasn't lucrative for them. So their actual support was miniscule in the beginning, which made the development process very complicated.
2. Thrustmaster (TM) was the leading manufacturer for wheels in the 90s, until Microsoft (MS) entered the fray. MS had a yearly marketing budget for their products that was bigger than the total revenue TM had. So after they announced entering the controller market, we rushed our own FF wheel into the market. TBH, it never really worked. One of the reasons was the simple fact that TM was a really small company. We had just ONE engineer and I am not exactly sure that he knew what he was doing.
3. When TM was bought by Guillemot (GMT) for US$ 15 million in 99, I was the only guy who was willing to work for the new company, so I soon found myself in France leading the development of the Cougar and supplying GMT with knowledge about TM and the products. In comparison to TM, GMT had a real engineering team and would build much better products then TM. GMT also had a FF joystick based on the Afterburner line but after a few years they cut the software support so that it became unusable after XP ran out.
4. In 02 the controller market was basically dead. MS had stopped producing controllers, and Fanatec, where I had worked for two years was down to THREE people. It would take a decade for the market to get back on its feet.
I remember having one or two of the Microsoft Sidewinder series sticks back in the day. They were decent enough as joysticks, but extremely prone to failure - both specimens I had simply stopped working after a while - a few months at most (and no, I didn’t use them constantly, or abuse them - they just _quit_).
So, I’d guess that one of the bigger issues for manufacturers would be warranty costs. If the ones I had were any indication, the additional hardware bits used to provide feedback increased the number of potential failure modes, and that’s not good when these are expensive to make in the first place.
I'm curious how your joysticks failed. I have a FFB Pro and FFB 2. The FFB Pro was built using an imaging system instead of potentiometers, so it will never fail. The one problem it did have was the power port would get loose over time. Eventually I got tired of that issue and soldered in my own connector, haven't used it in years, but I'm confident I could plug it in and have it work. I did build the USB adaptor for the FFB Pro.
@@daThird313 I honestly don’t remember exactly what failed. That was quite some time ago, and the failures were basically “it worked one day, and didn’t work the next”. I vaguely recall fiddling about to see if the power connector was weak or not, but that’s about it.
Back-in-the-day of MS Combat Flight Simulator, this was one of the best sticks out there and force feedback was cutting edge. I think I still have one stuck back somewhere it the closet. I was a kid myself at 53 back then at the turn of a new century. Seems like it was just yesterday, lol. 👍👍
Being a simracer who followed simucube since the eary days... I feel you guys! And looking at what simucube and direct drive wheels are today i can only wish you flightsim guys get a similar ffb market over the next 10 years as we have in simracing today. Much love to the flightsim community - and if you have the funds: support projects like this!!! This can change the "standard" consumer market in a small community like ours!
I already ordered one a couple months ago. I hope to get it before next Christmas... Not this Christmas. Next Christmas.
I was the proud owner of a Logitech Wingman Force joystick. It had both USB and serial cables, and a separate power brick. I was only 14 or so when I got it and it worked with FS2k and also MS CFS1+2 and Crimson Skies. Happy days.
I still use a FFB 2 every day, I cant imagine flying without feed back. Sometimes it still surprises me the feed back you get from different planes and the controls going loose on the edge of a stall. Or when you can feel the stiffening when the elevators get enough airflow to fly. Still is a great poduct.
How did you get it working on Win 10? Mines force feedback stopped working with 7
@@uncannysnake it doesnt work on 10. I am still flying FSX cuz I built all my panels and mods and spent way too many years building FSX to start having to pay for every mod I want. FSX runs perfect on 7 and it still scratches my itch I have PPL with instrument rating. using 1060TI . Yes all the new stuff is wonderful but when do you finally say thats it I spent too much money? I need to eat more than I need fancy......
@@pilotusaero9383 FSX? Is that a software that enhances it?
@@joeytheghost4211 I dont know what to say to that. FSX came out in 2006 and was MS flagship simulator.
@@joeytheghost4211 Microsoft Flight Simulator X. FSX.
I think the thing that makes me most hopeful is that even when there was nothing new on the market for a decade when MSFS 2020 came out it had all the FFB paramters for all the base planes there in the game and ready to rumble if it was supported. MSFT themselves recognized that it's a thing that people may want and so they went in and did all the tweaking, even if less than one tenth of one percent of their userbase ever got to use it.
I'm personally holding out for Logitech to take the plunge again.
This has been a question and subject of interest to me for the past decade since the G940 and I just want to say THANKYOU for putting all this together, you have saved me days of research on the matter! Well done. It has always made me scratch my head as to why simmers have been happy to settle for non-force feedback on such a large scale when for myself its a no-brainer for immersion, for non-flybywire aircraft that is. With enough orders I hope the developer of the stick is able to go to investors for large scale production.
As a sim driving enthusiast, I wondered about this. You answered all my questions, and more, thanks !
Back in the day I used to play microsoft combat flight simulator, with a microsoft sidewinder force feedback racing wheel. it was epic.
As a 737 instructor, FFB on this aircraft is actually not that important as you might think, all 3 axis the control load on 737 when hydraulic works normally is provide by spring and the mechanism is almost identical to the one you show on 0:33 (they are not directly under the wheel but far back near the control surface). Only the elevator have a hydraulic driven unit that pushes the spring when airspeed is higher so artificially make it heavier.
As for trim, the moving stabilizer trim doesn't provide much feedback, there are some mechanism tweak a little movement and load change on elevator, but over all, it's standard procedure for trim is like if you holding yoke back for constant pitch and speed, trimming back, you'll need to release the yoke back to keep the aerodynamic force unchange and it should be back to the center position when you trimmed it up, exactly like using a spring loaded joystick (but aileron and rudder trim will change the center position), and it's the same all around from 707 to even then FBW 787. This will provide some headache to new trainees when they just came from small GA plane, but still relatively easy to get to used to.
But as A flight simmer, I still would like a nice FFB stick when flying helicopters, the force trim on helo with non-FFB stick is just nightmare....
Thx a lot for this video. I discussed this very question a few days ago with some of my DCS buddies. Now for me personally, it doesn't really matter as the main two airframes I fly are the F-16 that IRL has a very tiny movement in the FBW stick, and helicopters with hydraulics, that mostly don't give you any sort of force feedback, so my Pro Flight Trainer Puma set to a very low friction force is actually perfect.
But for ppl who really like to fly warbirds, I do fully understand that a Virpil stick or even worse Warthog simply doesn't cut it.
Have you checked out the Winwing gear for F-16? Flight stick & throttle & a force sensing kit for the stick will be out soon, it will have the small amount of movement that the IRL F-16 stick has too.
@@PiNKMuDSimGaming No I didn't, but I'm not going to replace my Virpil base + warthog throttle for a force sensing stick and single throttle lever bc I'm also flying other airframes and civilian jets where I really need 2 throttle levers plus the "friction" lever for prop/mixture/tiller/whatever, and a normal stick is simply better for those cases.
Ofc if I would ever only fly the F-16, that would be interesting.
@@Wolfhound_81 Fair call m8, if it works for you why change hey? But if you ever consider "upgrading" or if you need to replace your throttle, check out Winwings Orion2 F-18 throttle, it has dual throttle plus two of the levers like on the TM WH, you can also use the F-16 throttle handle on that base too, so one base fits F-18 throttle handle & F-16. Also if like the Virpil stick & fly with it center mount, you can leave the F-16 side mounted so not to mess with your current set up. Anyway have a great day m8, just saw you flew the F-16 & thought you might wanna check it out, cya.
@@PiNKMuDSimGaming Yeah thx, main thing for me are helos (who would've thought?) so I'm not gonna invest a lot into new stick + throttle for fixedwings as long as the current setup works.
I indeed did spend a while in the force feedback driving sim world, and it did indeed leave me wondering why flight sticks don't have force feedback anymore. I remembered having it as a kid and was so surprised that the tech is literally just gone.
Force feedback 2 here with microsoft combat flight simulator (2?).
Good ol’ days =P
In my youngest ages, working on 320 family with a national company, now, working on 777
Keep doing good content man =D
Oh man, that combat flight simulator was the best. I dreamed of having that Microsoft sidewinder force feedback joystick. Still have my non-force back model.
You work on Planes yet have a nickname ''Itwasme'' I would be really scared to fly on one lol :)
@@DEVILTAZ35 haha =)
Great video. Thanks for the information. Sounds like itis well worth the wait. NY favorite combo was back around 2000.. Thrustmaster's Top Gun Force Feedback Stick/separate throttle on EA/Jane's USAF. So much fun and good memories. I still haven't found as much fun on a PC since!
I played flight sims in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. I always used FF joysticks and to be honest, once you use a FF joystick, you can never go back to a spring-loaded joystick. I think it's very sad that they don't make them anymore. I loved playing many FF flight sims including the wonderful MS Combat Flight Simulator series as well as the Janes Combat Flight Simulator games. The rattle and vibration of the guns were incredibly satisfying, as were takeoffs, landings, dropping bombs, and much more. It's too bad that young people today can't experience that.
Awesome video. I am an avid FS user with and without VR. I also have a small 3d print company. For my personal use I was able to built a minimum viable product of a force feedback, I don't think selling it would ever be viable though. Maybe for a large company but the issue is just demand.
In my case... building the force feedback mechanism with 3d printing and also moderate programming skills was not too hard. The issue is a quality flight stick itself has to be used as a base which means the cost of a good base stick at retail and then modifications get made, that is the main concern.
Leaving those comments aside - the next issue is core programming. While the direct x data is available to drive the force feedback the specific hardware needs onboard firmware which has to make it work properly. I accomplished this with my skillset but there is a huge difference between writing code for a personal project and making it user friendly and shippable.
That is just my thought pattern. Also props (no pun intended) to the independent designer of the stick you mentioned. IMO well worth the price but for a large company to produce a product like this the price point would have to drop or it'd just be too niche.
I'd also argue that a FFB stick is quite a bit more complicated than an FFB Wheel.
AFAIK the first FFB Wheels used industrial servo motors with custom software, it's just one rotational axis, using hardware that already existed.
Glad to see the landscape is slowly changing though.
The first Force Feedback Wheel was used in the Hard Drivin' arcade cabinet in the 80s. I don't remember exactly but I think at the time Immersion Corp itself supplied it.
A lot of them now are technically two axis, as some have an additional motor to turn the wheel in the other direction instead of waiting for a single motor to reverse direction for faster response.
@@Eihort I was a bit inaccurate with my initial comment, my mind went directly to direct drive wheels, geared wheels are slightly more complicated, but I imagine nothing compared to a FFB gimbal.
@@kilianortmann9979 You'd think so, but not really. Remember you only need about 60 degrees of travel in each axis (30 each way), instead of 1080 degrees total for a wheel (1.5 revs each direction). I just tracked down a picture of the inside of a custom design and it's deceptively simple, and not much different from what you see at approx 5:48, just beefed way the hell up . What makes them so expensive is that the materials required need to be durable, and until somewhat recently, making small batches of parts in those materials was prohibitively expensive. Newer CAD/CAM technologies that can utilize metal now make it possible for a one person shop to make these devices. The software is the big ask, but I don't think any more complicated an ask than those of driving sims, considering the myriad of forces involved in both situations, which ultimately comes down to the developers of individual titles pushing out decent APIs/DirectX instructions, and the hardware being able to interpret them properly.
If you do some deep youtube dives on the mechanical engineering behind devices you think are complicated, it's amazing how simple some of them really are, and why people would want to employ others specifically trained to think in (or out) of those boxes. Some of it is even downright counterintuitive.
@@Eihort Id love links to these deep dives
I am so glad I got the Force Feedback 2 from Microsoft way back in the day and I still use it.
However, I do see a trend as to why they died off the market itself, until the new Microsoft Flight Simulator came out, the market have been in the gutter and declining.
Sure there were a few popups and limited run of various products, but nothing mainstream, but as there were no proper flight simulator games released, no buyers for the hardware, no hardware to be made, we got a rather interesting conundrum for it all.
With the new MSFS release, there was a massive uptick, and DCS have been riding part of that wave... Now you have to keep driving this with innovation and that is where this can all die out, if the flight sims die out again!
It's also a must have for proper helicopter simulation. With a helicopter there is no centre in the stick or pedals. The neutral input position changes depending on the flight condition and so the springs in your joystick/pedals get in the way. Only FFB can replicate this properly.
Thanks for the awesome videos, the effort is appreciated.
Very interesting video, thanks :)
As far as fact-checking goes, I believe you forgot at least two old Force Feedback sticks:
- the Logitech Wingman Force (which I believe was the first to use belts instead of just gears from motor to axis, like that new stick you're advocating for here?)
- the very first (IIRC) FFB stick: the CH Products Force FX
...but that does not take away from any of the points you make, so it really matters pretty little.
Saitek made the Cyborg 3D Force. I owned it and it was cool except that it tried to dynamically calibrate itself. To illustrate, say you are banking. If you held the stick uncentered for more than a second or two it would think that was the center. Part of the problem I think was that it had no conventional centering spring the motors provided all of the force.
Yes, that was a real pain when doing the Wotan Weave in the Star Wars flight sims! I thought it was just an issue with my setup.
I had one of those too, along with the non force feedback version.
The x52 was a huge upgrade over it (despite no ffb)
Thank you for the info. I still use one of those and did wonder about the calibration going out of center. Now i know the reason why.
Wow, your video made me go back 20 years in my head and wonder, what happend to my MS Sidewinder Force Feeback... maybe still somewhere in the basement of my parents....
I had a great time flying MS Fligh Sim 98 :-)
I was one happy owner of the original MS Force Feedback Pro. I still remember it... A 12V external power supply feedding into a circuit that had its own fan and could generate 4kg (8lbs.) of directional power. You had to really wrestle the controls when that Cessna went buffeting or the autopilot was on and you tried to turn it away.
It had a small infrared detector on the handle to cut the feedback off, otherwise if the software froze the stick would keep shaking itself or jammed into the corner of the direction the wind was blowing...
And it had no USB ports, it had a MIDI connector for soundblaster cards! And that's what was the problem for me when I lost that sound card... I never got a suitable replacement, then it never held calibration on directx, had crude potentiometers that couldn't hold a small deadzone, had no compatibility to old dos games, or it did, but then it got damaged... anyway it was mess, clunky, heavy, with at least 2 cables plugged into it. Practicality zero.
Then I got a Fox 2 Pro. A single usb cable. Then I got Ace Combat 7 that HAD NO SUPPORT FOR ANY DIRECTX WINDOWS JOYSTICK, except for half a dozen sponsored models ARE YOU INSANE BAMCO? Then I got so pissed I gave up on joysticks entirely.
Yeah, force feedback is great indeed, when it works, and stuff supports it. Thrustmaster, above everybody else, should have embraced it, since they build joysticks and sim wheels for a living! Their HOTAS is the most famous joystick under the sun and has no force feedback, it should have gotten the perk at this point...
Unless microsoft decides to refresh on the product with a version for xbox series X, with a nice tie-in for Ace Combat 8, with a VR set bundle, I don't see a chance of another force feedback anytime soon from any major player.
And yeah, no, chasing down the rabbit hole for a one-man operation from accross the planet for the perfect Force Feeback system for the average arcade gamer with and old copy of Flight simulator and a couple of games that run it from the box, nope, not gonna happen.
Remember, some FFB wheels don't necessarily simulate the exact feel through the wheels. As your rig is not moving etc, alot of FFB is more immersion based than just accurate. Flight sim could benefit from this alot too
not really. almost all ffb wheels, starting from g29 provide accurate enough feedback. There's a very big difference going from no ffb to ffb for finding the limit of the car. So it's not just immersion but better control. It's won't feel the same in real car because of no g forces, but the steering behaviour is still accurate
I used to have one. I preferred the Thrustmaster FF with throttle. Used it for flying the AH-64 Apache Gunship and Mechwarrior.
My neighbor had the Sidwinder Force Feedback stick when we were kids. It was very loud when it was running, and ran off of a huge "wall wart" type transformer that would take up an entire outlet no matter which one you used. I used it to have force feedback while playing stuff like Rainbow 6.
It was awesome but not very practical :) . Yeah it was loud. I used to have to switch it off at night back then lol
Bringing back some good memories of flying with the Sidewinder FFB on FlightSim 98 and Combat Flight Sim
I still use my G940 for EXACTLY this reason. Highly modified but I still use it.
Awesome video and definitely cleared some things up. The rhino looks sick!
The uboat captain himself
Thanks man! Glad to see you stopping by. Love your channel.
@@flightdojo Thanks man! Love your channel as well! Truly fantastic content!
@@flightdojo Could you repost the link to the Discord? The link expired
@@Red-Magic does this one work? discord.gg/XEXZmQHk3T
I still use a modified Microsoft Force Feedback 2 (With a CH Fighterstick Pro Handle on it), Some planes in DCS you can feel all the forces over the control surfaces like you described at the start, and all the choppers I have force trim which is awesome (Centre point of stick changes in real time using ffb) , I wouldn't be without it, I have 2 spares and one in bits for spares, I haven't broken my original yet tho !!
LGR Driected me here in his SideWinder force feedback stick review. Good video, never knew this stuff.
I had been flight simming for years before I got into sim racing. I always thought FFB in a flight stick would be kinda nice, but I wasn't sure how much of a difference it would make. Then, about a year ago, I got the chance to fly a c172P IRL, and I was blown away, not just from the experience of flying IRL, but also from how controlling the airplane was just so much more intuitive than with my basic HOTAS setup. Being able to feel the controls, to feel weight in the yoke, and adjust the trim accordingly, was HUGE. Really left me disappointed in regards to how it is in the sim.
Really interesting video. G940 user here, IL2, IL2 Great Battles, Rise of Flight, MSFS, Lock On Flaming Cliffs, DCS....... I've had it for over 10 years and always worry what I'd do if it broke beyond repair. I also have my pension to spend... hmm might just get in that queue!
I got G940 for cheap, it was broken, one of the ffb arms broke. I found that someone made 3D models of it. So i printed them, took some adjusting to fit tight, but it worked really well in the end. Also i applied the fan made updated firmware that reduced spikes. It was a good unit, but too bulky for my desk, so i gave it to a friend.
@@Bonkikavo handy to know that if mine ever breaks. And yes it is a bulky unit!!!
CH Products also had a FFB stick back in the 90's. I used it to fly Warbirds/Aces High, and it was a real advantage to feel the forces in the stick. I still miss it.
Thanks for this Video! I'm still using the MS FFB2 😁 Subscribed!
Starting with Air Warrior back in 1994, I flew WW2 air combat sims online for 18 years. The in-close knife fight / stall fight was my bread and butter... until I got a force feedback stick. Fighting that stick turned me from a knife fighter into a bomber pilot. It wouldn't let me get anywhere near the edge of a stall like I could before with a spring stick, and it would suddenly release all force if I pushed it too hard, so the stick would flop completely to one side. I have, however, dug it out again for helicopter flying in DCS.
I have 2 sidewinder 2's that i use in Il2, they certainly help when nearing a stall, or excessive dive speed.
I'm glad the game supports force feed back.
I think there is definitely a market out there, and the first people to come out with a decent, reasonably priced stick will do well....
Damn right! I cannot believe no companies realize how much immersion and help FF is to flight sims. I owned 3 Microsoft FF sticks at one time.
My main flight stick is a Microsoft FFB2. It kicks ass and there are mods for FS2020 and Xplane 11 to add good FFB. It makes flying so much better for exactly the reasons you mentioned. The amount of feel it gives is so important, flying is a pain without it.
I too have an MS FFB2. Can you point me to where those mods are that enable FFB for FS2020 and Xplane 11?
Does the force feedback work on all aircraft in FS2020? I thought each aircraft feedback had to be individually modeled and programmed
I have a FFB2 in excellent running order. When MSFS2020 came our for Xbox SeriesX, I was shocked that Xbox from MS doesn't support MD FFB2 joysticks, I was bummed. I now use a thrustmaster, but frankly, it sucks compared to a 20 year old Sidewinder FFB2. As a real world pilot, trimming using an FFB2 is "correct", vs most joysticks and yokes are simply missing the most important point, "feel".
I still have a Sidewinder Force 2 that I bought back in 2002 and it works to this day flawlessly. The only problem is that the rubber grip material has started to "melt", that is the plastic in it is decomposing and becoming a sticky mess. I've put some tennis racket handle tape around it and that works nicely for now. The motor is perfect. The force feedback is perfect. Heck it's even got those hall sensor things so there is no potentiometer drift or any other similar issues. It's just an absolute tank of a flight stick and I still enjoy playing all the old legacy simulators that support force feedback so well (Falcon 4, IL2, IL2 COD, Red Baron 3D, Rise of Flight, Comanche vs Hokum).
Trimming properly and being able to feel the force on cross controls, side slipping, the start of the stall etc. Man I would love to have a FFB joystick
I still have my MS Sidewinder FFB2 and it's in regular user with Elite Dangeous and MSFS 2020. Works flawlessly. Built to last.
i still have my sidewinder pro 1 and i remember back in the day playing MS Flight sim 98 and that first time i took off and i could feel the weight of the plane suddenly pull the stick when i got off the ground, so mind blowing. i have aspirations to get my flight stick tuned up and make a modular mame cab to allow for my force feedback flight and steering wheel accessories so i can enjoy them again
I still have a Sidewinder V2. One of the single coolest things is playing a WW2 mil sim and when getting shot at mid turn as soon as you get hit the stick will twitch and just go dead as your plane loses any control.
I'm glad I still have my MS FFB2 until this very day. According to my memories to the shop I bought this from, it's a good companion for around 15 years already.
The only point I'm a bit disappointed is, that MSFS doesn't really bring the control surface feedback of planes to this joystick. It basically always applies the same pressure towards the neutral position - no matter if taxiing, slow flying, fast flying or even stalling, it's always the same force. I was looking for other flight sticks during the past two years from time to time, but the FFB2 is still too good to be replaced.
my very first stick was a G940 back when they were still sold, and its really bothered me that nothing like it has really come around. it had huge issues. the throttle stick and pedals were all connected, and not easily removable. which made it a pain to set up. and it was fragile as hell. i went through 2 of them, and my second one was spiking within weeks.
whats worse, is that this likely won't even work for my current setup, as i now use a modified MiG-23 stick (since i mostly fly soviet)
still, its great that you're bringing attention to this, i feel like i've been ranting about this for years and nobody seems to care :( though, we're talking about the same community that often says "rudder pedals aren't important and you typically don't use them in flight so don't bother buying any"
I still have my original Force Feedback 2 Stick sitting right next to me as I write this. I've hunted for something more modern for a long time, and I'm always disappointed that I can't find anything. I honestly thought I was just out of touch and didn't know the new "go-to" FFB stick. I was out of the sim game for awhile, and I recently started trying DCS. I started researching new flight control sticks, and yeah.. nothing with FFB! What the heck?! Honestly though...I can't believe my old stick from literally 1998 still works. That's a real testament to the build design.
I'll never forget mine. It was my favorite stick of all time! I had the Sidewinder Force feedback 2!!
I hung onto my old MS Sidewinder 2 until 2015. I used it in a complete bodge-job lash up with the throttle from a Saitek HOTAS and the pedals from a cheapo Logitech steering wheel & pedal set. It was cheap and nasty and glorious! I used it the old IL-2 and it was superb. If I ever got back into flight sims it'd be with DCS or the new IL-2, but the lack of force feedback seems like a backward step.
I'm so glad I still own (and use!) my old Sidewinder FF 2 from back in the days. I only wish MSFS would get native support for it. For now I'm using the third party plugin XPForce which is doing a great job considering what it has to work with.
I can't imagine flying without force feedback. Simply feeling the weight and inertia of the control surfaces when making large input movements adds so much to the immersion of actually handling an airplane.
Hey, thanks for bringing this to light m8.
I have always assumed that, because we had force feedback joysticks in the late 90s, modern fly-by-wire aircraft would certainly have an even better version of it. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I discovered this wasn't the case. It still blows my mind that this, to me, very obvious functionality is missing from most FWB aircraft.
I can only say that covid killed a possible rising enterprise in this direction. Around 2019, a FFB equipment named Gauss was put into experimental production in Zhuhai, China. I know a sales dude of this company by coincidence. I also tried their products. This is a force feedback stick which uses foc controller to control multi-stage motor to directly drive X and Y axes, and supports DX drive natively. Smooth as butter under 1946 and BOS. Its torque force is about three-fifths that of Bunner. They are going to sell its all-metal version for less than $1,000. If you are ready to use it with your own Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog handle, maybe will be cheaper.
As you know, COVID has hit our supply chain hard, and their enterprise has cut this business direction. In the end, they may only try to sell hundreds of sets in the fan community.
I get the whole tactile feedback and trim forces, stall buffet, etc. as a career flight instructor myself. But I have filled a lot of that void and other forces like ground bumps, AAR boom contact, afterburner and speed brake activate, etc. with things like a Jetpad seat, bass shakers (like a Buttkicker), and even a 3rd Space Vest for Gs.
Also I believe there were a few more force feedback sticks, like the Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D that I owned at one point.
It's interesting to see that even you are questioning the point of force feedback... And you're the type of person I would consider to be the perfect target audience for this tech!
@@beanieteamie7435 Maybe if I flew more WW2/civilian aircraft sims I would be. But I sim with primarily BMS's F-16 and the other modern combat jets in DCS. Due to the hydraulic/fly by wire, I feel like that tactile feedback of what you would get from the seat matters more in those than the stick. I would really like to get a G Seat/seat belt tensioner someday but my current setup of does almost all that for noticeably cheaper. Also when I fly the viper in both of those sims, I'm still using the force sensitive X65F that doesn't move and senses pressure like the actual F-16's stick does.
@@mattedwards3648 That makes sense! Thank you for addressing my comment.
Playing Wing Commander on a sidewinder was bliss when I was a child! I remember the last time I used it was HAWX -- the demo had force feedback but the full game didn't and I put my sidewinder away for the last time and never played it :(
I love my Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 and even my Logitech Force 3D Pro. FreeSpace 1 & 2, Descent 3, StarLancer, Tachyon… great force feedback and lots of fun!
Yup still have a Microsoft sidewinder force-feed back. Parts of the rubber on the grip turned to chewing gum but it's still in good working order and highly appreciated now by my son playing with MSFS2020
Great video; Very encouraging for us flight Sim pilots. Thank you !
I have a video coming out in a few days that you’ll really enjoy!
AS a stumbler who did some very casual PC flying in the 90s thank you for this :)
the sidewinder was so great, with the FF and twisting the stick...
in 2020 nigh the beginning of the cannolivirus, i managed to find a sidewinder ffb2 on the side of the road, which i've been routinely using for all my sims. whether it be older sims like european air war, or newer ones like il-2 battle of stalingrad, playing with force feedback is simply unrivaled
In the 1990s I had an AVB Force Feedback joystick. It was a tank, and was great in the flight sim games I was using for several years and was great in the games I used it in (MS Combat Flight Simulator, Mechwarrior, Earthsiege, SW Pod Racer, Su-27 Flanker). The only reason I still don't have it is that driver support never made the leap from 32-bit to 64-bit operating systems.
Good vid. I still have an old Saitek Evo Force I used with IL-2 that worked great. I miss that feeling in MSFS. I feel more disconnected from what's going on and use other data to get the same info as just feeling used to. That Saitek was reasonably priced, though it had been on the market a while. IIRC X-Plane still supports it, not sure if XP12 will or not yet. There was a community plug in that supported FFB for some sticks in MSFS, but not with my Saitek when I tried it. Was happy enough I was able to get a refund with no hassle from the dev. I'd think it would be a consumer's market for FFB, but if a big player in the sim community doesn't support it like MS perhaps just best to wait and hope someone picks up the idea of making reasonably priced gear for FFB.
I own both Sidewinders and the Logitech Force 3d. This was the golden era of Force feedback as I also owned the logitech Wingman Formula Force. This wheel was way better in 1997 than the G29 wheel today..... I mean WAY better.
Why not count the original Logitech Wingman Force? (Not the successor Force 3d) that was an FFB Flight Stick that you have omitted.
I had a Sidewinder FF Pro in the 90s. It had pretty limited support, but I did use it for MS Flight Sim and it was pretty good for the time. But it had enough force that it felt like it wanted to walk across the desk.
I think the area where FFB sticks could really shine the most is helicopters. The trim in helicopters is already so tough to wrap your head around (I've always thought of it as an invisible set of hands holding the stick in place for me) when you're flying, but then when you factor in having spring bound sticks that bounce back to center when you've trimmed the stick to the rear/right, it gets a little tougher in your mind to keep track of it. It's certainly not impossible, as my time in DCS can attest, but even with my flight time, I still have plenty of moments where my trim just builds up out of whack and suddenly I'm realizing at the moment of landing that I've got to either just hold an uncomfortable position, or reset the trim and try to "catch" the helicopter before it tumbles out of control.
Having that realistic clutch-type response, where I push the stick forward and then click the trimmer and have the stick just stay there until I decide to move it would make flying so much less taxing and so much more intuitive. There's definitely some independent manufacturers coming out with their own versions, but even those could be around $900 or more just for the base, which you still need to strap a ~$150-300 joystick or cyclic onto to get use out of it.
I randomly stumbled into this video and am not an avid flight simmer, thanks for the cool video!
I absolutely loved playing space 'sims' like Descent: Freespace and X-Wing Alliance on my early 2000s PC and MS Sidewinder 3D Pro. To this day I miss that FFB, even for non-serious applications.
Man I loved my Force Feedback 2. The thing I really loved was how precise the stick was. I used to play IL2, CFS and World of Warplanes (yes I was one of the five people who loved that game) and I was so much more precise with that stick because the weight of the return was just perfect.
Thanks for the info. Glad to see there is still some interest in ffb.
I was one of the first beta testers of the Microsoft force feedback. It was like pulling teeth to change the original plug-in from the male-female plug that kept snapping off. My brother and I had to just DYI the force feedback 1 and we used a cable from an old VCR to rewire the original ms feedback 1 because the one we were testing broke. It wasn't until force feedback 2 that they corrected this problem. I have now been using the Logitech g940 for over 15 years. I currently have three of them and one of them is just worn out and I keep it for parts. The throttle and the rudder pedals were almost completely worthless and required everyone to DYI fix them. A lot of people just got a separate throttle and Rudder pedal set but just kept the stick. When I found out about this new force feedback stick even though it's $1,000 I have to admit I am saving up to get on that list
had a sidewinder as a kid, was awesome in motocross madness!!
Loved playing Mechwarrior and flight sims with my old Sidewinder FF stick, really miss that thing, even over my current TM HOTAS setup.
I didn't know this stick existed! PLEASE PLEASE upload more videos of it in action!
•WW2 aircraft when trimmed for high speed, when suddenly at low speed. Do the controls droop?
•Is there a way you can show the shaking from the stick during stalls?
•Does it shake when shooting guns?
•How well does it work when trimming helicopters?
•If you get an aircraft like a P-51 in a low-speed initiated flatspin, if you let go of the stick, what does it do? Do the elevators flap up, the stick moving aft, as the updraft hits the elevators?
here you go: ruclips.net/video/QDU5VHS-YzQ/видео.html
I always assumed the answer was "genre (audience) implosion (or collapse)". Being born in 1986, I'm just on the side of being old enough to very clearly remember the change from flight simulation a technology champion on the cutting edge of 3D graphics rendering (leading up to the Direct3D standard), following by the genre bottoming out, a number of franchises going by the wayside (particularly Anglophone-published ones, Janes' comes to mind. Even the extremely well-received (and nearly mainstream) MSFS2020 was announced unexpectedly out of a lull where the only games in town seemed to be a few relatively specialized Russophone developers gradually tweaking their existing properties. Flight simulation seemed to go from something roughly equivalent to low and high-realism auto simulation in the last decade, to almost completely vanishing from the wider audience, and I always presumed they took this particular aspect of hardware (which was never extremely popular) with them (along with Microsoft not just launching the Xbox, but after that doubling down on consumer peripherals--keyboards, mice, accessibility options, most of which are held in high regard, like the decades-old Intellimouse). Dark times. I took my MSFFB2 with me college when I started, plugging it into my excuse of a gaming laptop. Thank you for the informative video, it's much appreciated; I'm "slumming it" with a Logitech (ne Madkatz, ne Saitek) X56, which is comprehensive, has more buttons than I would ever need, but still leaves a lot to be desired obviously; it's interesting to hear where this sort of thing might be going with time.
I stopped using flight sims a long time ago because of the disconnect between game and stick with the loss of force feedback. This sounds good!
I had the Top Gun Thrustmaster FFB stick in about 2005, it was super cool to play Combat Flight Sim 2 and feel the stick shake when I fired the guns.
I figured that it was one of those things that all the cool kids now look down their nose at and say “ah how quaint”
I've used a sidewinder 2 with force feedback for probably 15 years now, I found it in a thift store for $5 and have never gone back. Other than keeping ahold of a set of drivers just in case I need them it's always worked and been the best stick ever. The force feedback is the reason I've never upgraded and I didn't know there was a sizable community of people with the same motivations.
My solution to this topic is to use haptic transducers mounted on my chair. Only cost me 60 bucks to put together. I get some of the tactile things you want (stall buffeting, tarmac bumps, etc.) however it obviously doesnt fill in all the things that a force feedback stick can do.
Where a ffb stick really shines is rotary wing aircraft. I feel like thats a really important point.
I think the ideal situation would be having both.