Hardware manufacturer VIRPIL is off to a great start with its Kickstarter project to off what they are calling the Advanced Flight Simulation Yoke. VIRPIL decided to offer a Kickstarter campaign up to gauge interest in the civil aviation sim market and by all respects it looks like the effort has been a success so far. Let’s have a look at what they are proposing!
VIRPIL’s kick starter is off to a great start
VIRPIL have taken a slightly unusual step of offering up a Kickstarter for their latest hardware project. As this is the company’s first foray into the civil market, they seem to be testing the waters among civil aviation fans though it appears that the campaign is going well. With the challenges faced by Honeycomb in the same market space, now may be a good time for VIRPIL who own their own factory in Lithuania, to get into this side of the market.
While VIRPIL might be new to yokes, they are well known in in the combat flight sim and space combat market offering a series of grips, bases, throttles, collectives and other controls that are styled more after the combat flight controls of military craft. Here on Stormbirds, I’ve reviewed a few of their products over the years including the popular WarBRD and MongoosT-50 CM3 HOTAS.
The project plan has been laid out in detail on their Kickstarter page. In short, they are offering a yoke system with a base unit that offers up customizable faceplates and handles letting you choose the configuration that most appeals to you.
One is clearly inspired by the Boeing style of yoke control while another takes after the Embraer handlebar style and a third option blends the two together with their Constellation series and is aimed at space sim users who may be flying larger spacecraft (Star Citizen offer quite a few of those now).
The conceptual and prototype phases are now complete and the company, presumably on the successful completion of the Kickstarter (which does look to be almost assured), will move to the final design phase early next year with the aim to produce and ship the product in May or June of 2025.
If you’re interested and back the project, you will receive a discount coupon to use on VIRPIL’s webstores. Learn more about the VIPRIL Advanced Flight Simulator Yoke kickstarter here.
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