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 has already hit about 2/3rds of their goal and they have 26 days left in their Kickstarter campaign.

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.


7 responses to “VIRPIL begins Advanced Flight Yoke kickstarter and is off to a great start”

  1. Can’t blame them for looking at this market within the Flight Sim world – its not something that I would ever consider buying but I do like their products (I have a couple of WarBird bases).

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      It’s a bigger side of the market and with Honeycomb having some difficulties and an uncertain future this makes some sense to jump in at what seems like it will probably a similar price point. Plus VIRPIL has their own factory so they don’t have some of the risks that others do.

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  2. The main complaint I saw is that the replaceable control units on the base are keyed for one side, so you can’t just put them where you want.

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    1. Didn’t realise that – maybe something they should think about (I guess I always think the landing gear level should be on the left but if it was an airliner then it should be on the right so its accessible by both pilots)

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      I’m guessing that’d be a fair bit of extra engineering or duplicate products for a left and right option. None of the competitors offer anything like this to my knowledge so as critiques go, it’s not too bad!

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      1. The main issue is that the corners of the device are angled and that this is is reflected in the control units. One option would be to angle the top of the control units of both sides (with a filler on the base to not have a hole), but that would cost a bit of space on the control units. This could be mitigated by reducing the size on the angled corners.

        Another obvious solution is to turn the base into a square box or something more like the Brunner, which has the angle from front to back, rather than at the side. That makes it prettier than just a square box, but would present a square front profile.

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      2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        You’re absolutely right, its the shape that causes the issue. But the corners may help keep the size of the unit down a fair bit too. Perhaps a squared panel approach as you suggest would be better. I am not an engineer 😉

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