TL;DR, my short but informed experience with the Moza AY210:
- Good device overall, with two caveats: noticeable friction in pitch, and truly bad default profiles. Using a fine-tuned profile makes a great difference.
- Hardware Trim isn’t really usable, for relying on the spring effect which is nonsensical for a GA aircraft for various reasons.
- Software Trim (aka Trim Following) seems to work nicely, but requires editing the flight model (and, as far as I can tell, giving up on a properly working autopilot).
Hello everyone,
Following up on my previous post: I went ahead and bought the Moza AY210. After a few flights, here are my findings, hopefully useful to others considering it.
For context, I’m a real-life pilot and I previously built my own yoke from scratch (not real FFB but with proper trim handling). So trim behaviour is something I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about.
1. Trim
For most serious simmers, trim is the main reason to look at FFB in the first place. So let me start with some background:
a) In a real aircraft, if you hold the yoke in a fixed position (say, against pressure) and then trim, the elevator doesn’t move (because you’re holding it), but the pressure on the yoke goes away, since you’re reducing the aerodynamic load on the elevator. That’s the behaviour we want from an FFB device.
b) MSFS doesn’t work that way, because it only supports conventional devices whose centre position is fixed. When you trim, the sim emulates an effect on the elevator so that the yoke can return to centre as the trim is operated. Completely unrealistic, but it’s the only workable solution without FFB.
c) Now with an FFB device with MSFS, there are two ways to remove the pressure without moving the yoke:
- Leave the sim’s trim ratio untouched and handle everything in the hardware.
- Use the sim’s trim ratio as an input to the hardware — but in that case the workaround above has to be cancelled out, which can be done by altering
ELEVATOR_TRIM_LIMITin the flight model.
What Moza Cockpit does:
From my testing, both approaches are available:
- Hardware trim mode implements solution 1: it offsets the neutral point without touching the sim’s trim. The catch is that it requires the spring effect to be enabled, which is itself thoroughly unrealistic, that’s not how a light aircraft behaves. The “neutral point” depends on many parameters (trim, but also airflow and more). On the ground, for instance, the controls are completely free apart from the weight of the control surfaces. So to me this solution is not acceptable as it is: there’s no point using an FFB device to simulate a basic spring effect
- Software trim takes the sim’s trim position as an input and adapts the force on the yoke accordingly. This is exactly what we want.
However (and I haven’t seen documented anywhere for this device, unlike Brunner for example, see their trim page): you do need to cancel the sim’s trim effect, otherwise the result is nonsense — see the background above and ELEVATOR_TRIM_LIMIT. Also noticed that you have to apply a lot of trim to get the expected result in the yoke force, so without disabling MSFS internal trim effect you end up crashing before feeling anything (that’s maybe settable somewhere).
If only MSFS offered an option to enable that trim workaround without editing the flight model, this would be perfect. (@ Asobo if you’re reading this, that might be a cheap first step towards actual FFB support 
)
Anyway, let alone the hassle of altering the flight model, after a few tests I’m pretty happy with the MOZA using the second solution. To be further tested.
2. Other findings
Do not judge the device on the default profiles. The stock C172 profile is frankly dreadful and totally unrealistic. IMO its only merit is demonstrating how strong the motors are and turning your flight into a gym session. I was very disappointed at first (@ Moza if you’re reading this, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make that the first impression ).
Go to the Moza Discord for user-contributed profiles (flying-preset-sharing channel). I’d recommend “Cessna 172 GA - QFeel Dynamic Pressure - MSFS 20 and 24” by BrXP — very good.
Friction in pitch. The device is very smooth in roll, but there’s noticeable friction in pitch, at least on my device. Combined with a bad profile it’s close to unbearable, and I nearly sent the unit back. I’m still not entirely sure whether mine is faulty, but from what I’ve read many users report the same, and Moza Cockpit recently added a friction compensation mechanism for that reason (which is not really usable unfortunately, but that’s another story). Anyway, with a good profile it seems to become acceptable.
Answering my own question from the previous post: at first glance it does look possible to hide the base (buttons and all) behind a home-cockpit instrument panel without losing any travel.
Happy to answer questions if anyone is on the fence. And I would love to share some ideas / return of experience about this.