Flight Sim Hardware is More Affordable Than Ever!

I’m truly excited about how affordable it is to build a home flight simulator. If you are in the market for flight sim hardware like a joystick, yoke, rudder pedals, throttle quadrant, etc. now could be your time to buy. For example, the Logitech G X52 Pro HOTAS joystick and throttle is just $199 now on Amazon. Don’t forget to modify your X52 throttle to get rid of that pesky detent with this handy DIY Flight Sims tutorial (free) https://youtu.be/3TrDCO-FMBI

Not to mention the many choices we have today for flight simulator controls. I remember trying to hack and modify the old CH Products rudder pedals simply because they were the only ones on the market. I eventually ended up buying better rudder pedals from an obscure German manufacturer.

Eye-Popping Displays

Your display is an important part of your flight sim hardware. The options we have for displays today are a thousand times better than what was available when I built my first home flight simulator in 2004. Back then, to get any sort of immersion your only choice was to use a big projected screen. A LCD projector cost about $1000 in 2004, and that’s the equivalent of $1600 today. However, the projectors of the time were only 640×480 resolution! Today, you can get a 75″ 4K TV for $550 at Best Buy.

In addition, all graphics cards now support multiple displays, but that was unheard of back in 2004. Back then, you had to have a special external video card and adapters to run a triple display.

Lighting Fast Computers

And what about computers? The long-awaited crypto crash finally came last year, and soon after the prices for graphics cards finally came down to reasonable levels. I was so happy about the price of my new computer I added something extra… an extended warranty from Microcenter.