I’m looking to hear from anyone that has had a TH Warthog base and changed over to use the Virpil base (warBRD), and still using TH Stick.
Is it night and day in favour of Virpil, or is it just smother!
When you changed what was your first thoughts; worth the money, could have stuck with TH base ?
Regards
Dave
@DaveG587 The warthog base is just about the worst designed peripheral I’ve ever dealt with, haha. I’ve had one for about 15 years, two actually. I bricked the first one with a tiny static discharge from my finger in the first week of use.
I haven’t tried a Virpil but absolutely anything is better than a warthog base.
I did a ton of research before replacing it, and I picked up a Winwing Orion 2, and it has been such a breath of fresh air. It’s just incredibly smooth, with no play anywhere in its gimbal, and no mechanical clicks, squeaks, or mistakes anywhere. It’s a very well made bit of kit, and I couldn’t be happier with it. From everything I have read the Virpil is of very similar quality.
The major difference you’ll notice is the breakout force, or complete lack thereof.
The warthog pretty much requires a hammer to get it to pull off center, then you have to get past the lovely ‘sticktion’ and then it immediately loses some tension, so every manoeuvre is like boxing with the thing. The winwing (and Virpils and VKBs) have virtually no breakout force at all, and very smooth and progressive building of force with deflection (which you can customize on all of them). Formation flying with it is a joy. If you have the option of a “no center detent” cam for the Virpil definitely give that a try. The springs should do the centering work. Given the weight of the warthog stick you may want to go with springs on the heavier end.
I will say the actual stick part of the warthog is very good though, has lasted 15 years of hard use without any button or switch failures, same for the throttle. No complaints at all with those. I could use the warthog stick on my orion base, but the Orion stick is almost an exact copy of the warthog, and just as high quality (with a nicer finish) so I went with that.
The Warthog is going to my toddler when he’s ready to learn to fly. Will be simming and arm workouts at once for him. 
I haven’t swapped my Warthog for a Virpil base as such, but I recently got a CM3 base, extension and alpha constellation grip for flying helicopters. I still have my Warthog for other aircraft.
I have never had any issues with the Warthog, but the Virpil gear is a step up in quality, certainly the base and design/engineering of is very good.
Note, if you want sometime a stick-extension, the Warbrd is too soft for the TM Metal grip. Than you need the mongoos T50 with the stronger feathers
What is certain, however, is that VKB and Virpil bases are far better than TM. I prefer VKB myself, but the current Gunfighter (mk2/3) is no longer compatible with the TM grip.
I changed the Warthog base to Virpil and still use the tm stick on it.
The virpil base is lightyears away in my opinion. Never regret the change even it was expensive.
The cam and spring type gimbals as used by VKB, Virpil and WinWing are night-and-day better than the cup and socket type gimbals found in Thrustmaster and Logitech sticks.
The feel, precision of control, ease of use, everything is just noticeably much better. The use of proper bearings, adjustable spring force, contactless sensors and adjustable damping all help the improvements you can feel in these bases.
Yes, it can be a large initial outlay, but the build quality and serviceability is such that you can expect these devices to last much longer. I had a Thrustmaster stick when I started using MSFS, and after less than 200 flying hours it had been disassembled and reassembled several times to fix or adjust various issues and to re-grease it, and it was basically at the end of it’s life. I replaced it with a VKB stick, which has flown 4 times the number of hours and feels exactly as good today as it did on the first day I got it.
Thanks all, have taken the plunge and ordered the Virpil Base wardBRD-D and will start using the TN Stick with it and the TM Warthog throttle, at least for now.
I’ve taken the large spring out the TM Base and moved the 4 lower spring up, and that has worked wonders for my helicopter controls, much better, but no good for fixed wing, so hoping the Virpil will use of both without too much tweaking.
Sorry quick follow up…
If using the Virpil base and TH Joystick, does MSFS pick the joystick up okay and can you within game programme all the option on the stick still, without needing TM Software ?
No, can’t use the TM software but you can use all buttons with the normal sim binding.
There is no intelligence in the TM stick it all comes from the base so it would be on the Virpil side anyhow.
Thanks both, much prefer not to use the TM software, so that sound good.
For helicopters, I just add a 20cm extension, between the stick and base, and that effectively reduces the strength of the centring springs, almost to zero.
I’ve not needed to adjust the curves, but a purist might want to, as the extended stick will be much closer to the length of the real cyclic.