interesting stuff; I think I remember this guy from ED forums
P-47
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I had wondered what he had gotten up to, years ago he was working on a Hornet stick (before TM had announced theirs) but it got stuck in scope creep and development hellā¦
I dunno, reading through the thread, Iām taking a ābelieve it when I see itā approach.
Iām not an engineer, so what do I know, but from years of seeing promising starts like this fall flat, it seems like designing the hardware and making bold claims is the relatively easy part; actually producing and selling the product is the hard part.
Especially when heās questioned on āhow can you possibly deliver on all this?ā, the defense is ā10 years ago who thought there would be an all metal hotas, but then thrustmaster did it with the warthog!ā The implication seeming to be that ātechnology has advanced and someone has found a better way. He further points to Virpils high quality controls as an example.
He forgot about the TM cougar, but casually dismisses correction as āmissing the pointā. Thatās no small detail, itās actually a critical counter point to his argument. In many ways, the warthog took a step back from the Cougar, with itās plastic, non gimbaled internals. Illustrating itās not like there was some technological limitation 20,30, or even 40 years ago in the controls market. TM and itās competitors could have been making replica, high quality metal controls for years if they wanted to.
They didnāt want to, because they assumed, right or wrong, the majority of the flight sim market didnāt want to buy a $500+ hotas, or that they could deliver what the market wanted at the price the market would pay for and make a profit.
Itās all about scale, efficiency, and market forces, not technological breakthroughs.
Itās not like Virpils engineers are running laps around Thrustmaster, and thatās why Virpil is offering higher end products. Virpil set out to make a great, high quality product, and they succeeded. ā¦But, they are making expensive, bespoke products at a much smaller scale than TM, which has accounted for larger scale manufacturing in itās designs.
Right now, it seems heās still in the honeymoon phase of development, building one-off prototypes to whatever spec he wants, without concern for brining things to market.
None of this is to say that Iād not be in line to buy the products if he offers them, but until I see a link to a webstore, itās all just a ācheck out this awesome thing I made!ā Post.
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