New F-16 grip from Realsimulator

June and July looks really promising for flight sims gear and a PITA for wife's

By Tapatalk + Samsung S9

New F-16 grip from Realsimulator

The build quality looks phenomenal (barely any visible seams) plus loads of extra buttons (4-way/push). Since I already have an FSSB R3L base this would be a perfect grip for it. I wonder how they’re going to support extra switches on the Warthog base though?

In the software photo, there are both LH and RH grips, as well as F/A-18 grips!!!

This is going to be a very expensive summer for me. I don’t expect this grip to be cheap coming from Realsim.

I wonder how they’re going to support extra switches on the Warthog base though?

They're not. It has its own driver and connects to the PC separately either via USB or Bluetooth.

But, without the TM Target compatibility, it's of no use to me, unfortunately.

So, 3 axes (pitch, roll, yaw), 36 buttons with 8 possible layers. Bluetooth capable, and a physical base isn't required since the axes are integrated into the grip itself. That's a pretty radical approach, and it seems they're trying to do away with their existing FSSB devices.

They're not. It has its own driver and connects to the PC separately either via USB or Bluetooth.

 

But, without the TM Target compatibility, it's of no use to me, unfortunately.

Did they say there's no Target compat?

With my Warthog board installed FSSB, DCS recognizes both FSSB and Warthog sides in the settings. This means I can still program Target as is, but the extra/leftover buttons would go to the FSSB binding column in DCS (or Joystick Gremlin, or whatever I want to use).

I find the Bluetooth connectivity particularly interesting. This gives it the ability to mount to any Warthog-compatible base without also being restricted to the button count limit of the Warthog, and could be superior to running 2 different cables out of the joystick (one for the stick, one for the base). It remains to be seen how stable the BT connection is though.

There's no description of what the rotary surrounding the trim hat does. Chances are it's either a rotary encoder or hard-coded to switch profiles. I would've preferred a physical axis as it would make an excellent zoom/antenna elevation rotary, but oh well.

The built-in axis detection is also very interesting. Most likely it's using an accelerometer, but I wonder how they've solved the drift issue and how it detects movement when directly mounted to a base vs. on an extension.

There's more info about the new grip on Realsim's forum, unfortunately access is somewhat restricted to paid customers. According to Dragon, it appears that this way it can be mounted on just about anything including extension tube, USB charger, Powerbank, etc. so they would rely on sophisticated software to interpret movement inputs. But the ideal mount would still be the FSSB base since it would take the force input data from it.

There're still a lot of unanswered questions such as what happens when you mount it on a regular Warthog base with gimbal movement, etc.

The Z or twist axis is also dependent on the base or whatever it's mounted to, if it has no twisting motion then you lose this function. Then there are 64 DX input buttons, I'm not sure how it can go up that high without chaining devices--but may be that's what it's for.

The new software appears to have some keyboard binding functions too, which is neat. We also have no idea how they would fully utilize the bluetooth function.

Dragon said they're coming out with the F16 RH grip first then the LH version, then they will release F18 RH and LH versions afterward. Overall, it seems to be a fairly high tech device. If people think the new TM F-18 grip is expensive, this thing will definitely top it.

Jeez at what point do you just buy it straight from the F-16 supplier

My guess is that the stick uses its own USB or Bluetooth connection, and only mounts, but does not electrically connect to the base it's mounted on (aside from getting power for Bluetooth). The axes movements can be disabled in the software, so you'd treat the base and stick as two separate devices: one only for the X/Y movement, and the stick for the buttons.

The USB HID protocol for game controllers supports up to 128 buttons, so 64 is not an issue, at least on the driver support side. The built-in control panel in Windows will only show up to 32 buttons, but using another program like VKB Joystick Tester or DIView will show you all 128 buttons. Some games though only support up to 32 buttons, so it's likely that they'll offer the option to split it up into multiple virtual devices. This is already doable on the FSSB R3 base, so most likely they'll just use the same thing.

Are they saying the grip is a complete control stick system itself...?? interesting.

Sent from my KFSUWI using Tapatalk

Is there a throttle coming too? The stick looks awesome.

Are they saying the grip is a complete control stick system itself...??

Yes, the stick has axes sensors in it to allow it to be used independent of a base.

I'm afraid they could possibly overengineered this grip.

It will be very expensive and from customer point of view - why should i buy their expensive grip and mount it on top of their FSSB instead of mounting warthog grip on FSSB?

I doubt i will ever need the fancy funtions of this grip like additional axles or additional movement of buttons.

I prefer simplicity and easy configuration. (build in tilt of the grip without 60€ adapter for Warthog is nice though)

I may be wrong because i'm not sure i understood 100% of thei grip functionalities.

RealSimulator makes products for commercial and military flight simulators, and their home use products are dumbed down versions of those products. The product page states:

This price is only available for home user customers. For commercial use, price is higher and product is different, commercial customers must take contact with sales department for quotation

If you don't need the additional buttons or features, then there's no reason to pick this up over the Warthog stick. But the new features open up doors that weren't possible before. It allows you to mount the stick to any base and still get full functionality out of it, which is very helpful when you're mounting it to a base that either doesn't support all the buttons, or a base that doesn't have any electronics in it (like a home-made gimbal). It also allows it to be used in non-standard configurations, for example as a collective head when attached to a rod.

More video on this grip, also shown was their F/A-18 grip. The hardware looks ready, I believe they’re still tweaking the software.

Day 1 purchase for me!

Something to watch for sure!

More video on this grip, also shown was their F/A-18 grip. The hardware looks ready, I believe they’re still tweaking the software.

 

I thought they said it was an F-15 grip on their site?

I can just imagine what the price will be. If my base was 450 euro, I'm guessing this will be in the 600+ range. Gonna be painful regardless

K, new video from Realsim which showed test flight and some config options.

It looks really good in action. I don't think it was attached to any base in that video, he probably used the built-in gyro sensing which is wild and completely different in concept from mechanical gimbal.

Well that looks terrible. Interesting concept but the motion looks imprecise and choppy.

Say what you will from that one video. The way I see it is that this is a versatile grip. Plug it into Warthog/Virpil base and it will utilize spring-based mechanism that will return to center. Plug it into FSSB base, then it will utilize force sense mechanism. Plug it into your own customized tube/base via USB adapter then it uses its own gyro sensor which is completely electronic and can be fine-tuned and would be great for flying helicopters.

From that demo video it seems to have pretty massive input/processing lag for its internal IMU based axis control. If they sort that out then it could be interesting.

And....the F-16SGRH grip from Realsimulator is now available for preorder. July for Europe, Sept for USA, Nov for the rest of the world. 450 Euro :)