I have the moza ab9 for helicopter flying (and the cls 60 for airplane flying). I had never heard of the vpforce rhino until now. What are the main differences between the ab9 and the rhino?
and yes, proper native ffb support from msfs 2024 would be super-mega awesome.
The software! and to some extent, the hardware.
On the hardware side, mozaās a big company and has the resources to make a pretty solid, well designed box. Many people have bought it based on their popularity in racing sims. But i dont think they know anything about flight.
The VPforce āTelemFFBā software is open source (of which i am a heavy contributor). It drives all the effects and forces using simconnect telemetry from msfs. (it also reads xplane, il2, dcs, and bms)
For msfs, it acts as the axis controller. So you unbind in the sim and TelemFFB sends the axis position. It also reads the trim position, and offsets the center point so that you trim to ārelieve pressureā.
The software has gone though a lot of rapid changes recently. 2 years ago it was little more than a command line program with a .ini you had to edit, now itās a pretty GUI with sliders that you can manipulate real-time. Moza took an earlier version of this, called it their own and has rarely updated it. (did they figure out trim yet?) Meanwhile, on the VPForce discord, people ask for new features and itās delivered in a short time.
The Rhino itself is the turnkey stick base- but, for the DIY types you can order just the motors & usb board, and make them into whatever you like. Get larger, more powerful motors and build a āMonster Rhinoā. Make a completely custom cyclic. Adapt to your pedals. Even a collective and motorized trim wheel, which can be either moved by hand or with the simās up/down trim buttons.
Perhaps the most impressive is with HPGās H145 and H160 - (we had their help in development) with cyclic, collective, and pedals all in vpforce, when you activate the upper modes, all the controls literally jump out of your hand and fly the heli. itās really wild.
Recently we pushed out a big 2.0 upgrade to TelemFFB which makes it easier to manage the hundreds ( ! yes hundreds, not a typo) of settings available.
At this point, I donāt really want MSFS to get native FFB. I donāt think theyāll get it right.
thats a wild take. not getting it exactly right > literally nothing
True, maybe thatās a bit extreme.
At the minimum, I wish for a device setting checkbox that says āThis axis is FFB, decouple the trims from controlā. This would probably make things easier to implement for any ffb supplier.
If theyre going to do native FFB forces, i think it would be like the CFD rollout. Each plane would need to be updated by devs for scaling of the forces. Some may get it right, some may not. Some might be designed with curves for weaker hardware than you have, so that itās felt with a Sidewinder, but rips your arm off on a device with strong motors.
Another issue is many advanced planes use custom control vars. (A2A, COWS, PMDG) so either the FFB hardware has to accept input/output to those vars or they have to write to a common set of standard simvars/directinput ffb events.
And the Heli AFCS autopilots.. lots of things there like hands-on detection and i dont even know what else.
So with them being completely silent on the topic, (other than controller rumble found in some config files) I have no idea what they are considering. Will they do a complete implementation? I doubt it. Will they do some basic output, which has to be overridden anyway? Likely. Will they make something proprietary instead of using their own old directinput? who knows.
Maybe what i meant is iād rather keep what i have vs fight with what they might make. But i hope they do try something!
not sure if youāve tried DCS World but theyāre FFB implementation for most of their modules is fantastic and the hope I hold out for for MSFS. especially when it comes to helos and force trim
I havenāt, but yes if msfs goes the same route that will be nice
Please Asobo implement native Force Feedback into MSFS 2020 and 2024 as quickly as possible to support the many force feedback devices out there.
Mmmmā¦. Perhaps Iām late to the party and surely not a PS5 ownerā¦could it be? Hidden FFB vars after all?
āMicrosoft has masterfully used both the adaptive triggers and the gyroscopic controls of PlayStationās DualSense controller. The triggers are primarily used to operate your rudder controls. When youāre battling strong winds or rolling down the runway, these triggers become harder to press, as though the wind or motion of the plane is fighting you. It is my favourite feature of the controller in general and MSFS 2024 uses it to great effectā¦ā
Do you plan to make it compatible with Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 in the near future? I just finished a yoke on the VR Flightsim mod, and I only have XP Force to use it with; Iād like to compareā¦
no, it only works with vpforce hardware, you could get the diy motor kit and adapt to your yoke
iāve no money !!! XP force and sidewinder force feedback itās 100 ā¬ā¦ no 1000 !!!
Unfortunately thatās only a small part of true force feedback. What you are talking about are some force feedback effects that add to the immersion but the most important aspect of force feedback would be the implementatiom of a proper trim force simulation.
In a real airplane, a forward or backward stick deflection always corresponds to the same elevator deflection. E.g. stick halfway back always gives you half of the full elevator up deflection. The trim is a separate control surface (or a spring system) used to remove the control forces on the stick for a deflection.
Example: You want to hold altitude while decelerating. For that, you reduce thrust and gradually move the stick back until itās between centre and the backward stop which in turn moves the elevator half way up and threrby pushing the tail of the aircraft down, which will in turn increase the angle of attack to compensate for the loss of lift due to the reduced airflow around the wing. Because the aircaft is still trimmed for the old angle of attack, you need to apply constant back pressure on the stick - or it would move forward to its original position, thereby dropping the nose and initiating a descent. To remove that force, you would apply nose up elevator trim until the control forces for the new stick position are gone and it stays there on its own. The aircraft is now in trim for the new attitude.
Same example as above but this time how it works in a simulator designed for spring centred sticks/yokes: You slow down and as in real life have to apply back pressure on the stick to raise the nose. So far, itās exactly the same. But when you want to trim away the back pressure, the simulator has no way of removing the spring force of your joystick as the only position where a spring centred devicejoystick will stay on its own is - you guessed it - at its centre. To allow you to trim your aircraft nonetheless, the simulator has to manipulate you and somehow make you move the stick to the centre position when you trim the aircraft. It does this by shifting the output range of your joystick against the elevator position. So the trim actually makes the elevator move without you moving the stick. This is quite the opposite of how it works in real life. While in real life, the position of the stick directly tells you what elevator deflection you have and the control forces tell you how much out of trim you are, in a simulator without FFB, the only information you can gather from the stickās position is how much out of trim you are but not where in the elevator output range you are. Thatās why trim forces are so important. They contain valuable information for a pilot that will otherwise be lost. Iām not saying that the cheating is a bad thing. It works quite well actually. But once you experienced how it is to fly with trim forces, you never want to go back anymore, I think 
PS: Sorry for writing half a book and probably making things sound like rocket science - even though, itās probably still a bit simplified
Thanks, Iām well aware of that and surely wonāt harm to keep the explanation here. For me itās well known matter, Iām a kinda long time simmer (FS1) , developer and PPL IRL. After reading the PS5 review I was wondering whether behind the scenes they finally added some true forces derived variables to the sim that could be used via the APIās, at least in the near futureā¦a wish probably.
Any news on this? I have both the Moza AB9 and the Brunner Yoke and itās quite frustrating to not be able to trim the aircraft propperly. If xPlane can do it, when will Asobo?
I wish FFB would go mainstream again, it used to be normal to have FFB and my old MSFFB2 stick still works as long as the software supports it. Shame that you have to spend top dollar to get the FFB experience today.
Agreed - I would instabuy a desktop based FFB stick along the same lines as the MSFFB2. I just donāt have space for anything bigger than that.
Go for it! I can just say that itās totally worth it. Like night and day. Even if right now you have to resort to imperfect stop gap solutions like XPforceā¦
