MOZA AY90: Did MOZA Just Change Force-Feedback Yokes?

Force feedback has always had one huge problem. It costs too much. But, Moser has fixed that by making the world's cheapest force feedback yoke. And somehow, it's better than the AY-210. Watch this. That's elevator droop. The surface sagging under its own weight with no airflow over them. This is just a tiny thing scratching the surface of force feedback. But it's the exact thing that separates real force feedback yokes from just spring yokes. So quickly, this is the AY-90. It's smaller, it's lighter, it's cheaper, and on paper, it should feel like a downgrade. Here's the question I actually care about. What did you lose? Because that's usually the catch with a cheaper version. And I'll be honest and upfront with you. There are a couple of things that I don't love. But the AY-90 is Moser's new entry-level force feedback base. Same idea as the big AY-210, just shrunk down for people flying at a desk. And the first thing I'll say, and honestly, the best for consumers, is it actually comes with desk clamps in the box, finally. Because in the past with the 210, you had to buy this separately. But sadly, just like the AY-210, the yoke isn't included. You'll need to grab that separately or look for a bundle deal. Moser also sent over the brand new MFY Pro. Now, both the AY-90 and AY-210 share the exact same hotswap mount. So this handle will work on both. And it's pretty much identical to the standard handle, except for one thing, the touchscreen display, which lets you pull up engine performance, your artificial horizon, checklist. You can even see what the force feedback data is doing in real time. And the MFY Pro is expected to sell for around 299 US dollars, or around 549 Australian dollars. It's super cool, but it's not the main focus of today's video. Now, the yoke itself has a brand new front panel. It's the same design language, but kind of mimics a Cessna 172. We've got two battery switches, two avionic switches, a magneto, and instead of that landing gear lever, we have two sliders, which is a very strange choice, but I'll come back to that. And it has full RGB, if that's your thing. Now, the numbers. This has 95 millimeters of pitch travel, which against the 210, that's 150. So that's just under half the travel distance. And in terms of peak torque, that's 90 newton meters against 210, then rolls about 4.2 against nine. So in theory, this makes it a much weaker yoke, which is exactly why what happened next confused me, because this is supposed to have half the power of the AY-210. And I've flown both back to back, and I could not feel the gap. And I honestly thought I'd notice the pitch travel a bit more, but it somehow feels natural. Now, don't get me wrong. It is a noticeable difference, because going from 150 mil of travel down to 95 is noticeable. But is it enough to stop me from using it? Definitely not, because in the MOSA software, you can actually configure the axis, so you can have different curves to it, which means you can have this as sensitive as you want, or make it as numb as you want. But let's touch on the effects and what you can actually do with this yoke, because if you've never seen false feedback before, you don't understand what you're missing out. Now, false feedback in Flight Simulator is a little funny, because it's not natively supported. So MOSA uses something called telemetry, which essentially means it's reading all the data from Flight Sim and making its own false feedback for you, at least until we can get native false feedback support. But what does false feedback actually look like other than elevator droop? MOSA's false feedback simulates everything from ground rumble, wind simulation, turbulence, stalls, engine vibrations, everything you can imagine. So as an example, let's take this Cessna off-roading and see what happens to the yoke. As you can see, it starts reacting to the ground, and it's not subtle, it's noticeable. But the good thing is all of these effects are completely customizable in the MOSA app. And when I say customizable, you can change literally everything about them. You can change the intensity, when they come on, how much of a difference there has to be for it to come on. There's so much to change here. But it's not just about vibrations or ground effects, because MOSA magic happens up in the air. One of the first things you'll notice is you can actually feel wind. With a traditional yoke, this is something you could never feel. You could never get a grasp for it. But now you've got false feedback, you can actually feel the wind gusting and pushing the aircraft around. Not only that, but the control surfaces will dynamically change based on the wind conditions and what the aircraft is doing. So if you're flying into a lot of wind, the controls will become very heavy because there's a lot of resistance. But if you stall the aircraft, the controls will go completely limp because there is no airflow. You can pull the yoke back and it will stay there, at least until you get airflow again. And then we've got some really cool features like the autopilot following. You would have seen this plenty of times in flight sim. But when you turn on the autopilot, you'll notice in some aircraft, your yoke will actually turn to follow what the autopilot is doing. And this yoke will do the exact same. It will turn and follow the exact same way that it does in a simulator. And yes, it's gimmicky, but it's really cool. On top of that, it also has hardware trim. And trimming's one of the biggest things for force feedback because with a normal traditional yoke, again, you can't feel resistance. But now with force feedback, you can trim an aircraft out perfectly because now you can dynamically feel how much resistance and pressure is on the yoke. And those two sliders I flagged on the front of the panel earlier, worth a quick mention here. In use, they're fine as programmable accesses, but it's also a rather strange design choice because of the placement of it. It's quite awkward and weird to actually use while flying. On top of that, I feel like most people that are buying a force feedback yoke would likely also have a throttle. Now, don't get me wrong. I like what they've done here because it's the same philosophy as a joystick. Most will have a built-in throttle, even though most people also have a throttle. But a joystick is slightly different to a yoke. But I can understand it because they've gone for more of the Cessna style and they don't have a landing gear lever. Personally, I would have much rather than just seeing a programmable button or even just a more refined landing gear handle. It's a minor gripe. It won't stop you from flying and it's probably pretty useful to some people. And that brings us to the price. At the time of recording, the AY-90 base is priced at $399 US dollars. That's for the base unit, not including the yoke. That's obviously not a small investment, but when you compare it to what's actually on the market, it's priced pretty well. Just to put it into context, that's around $699 Australian dollars. And for around a similar price, you can get the Boeing Thrustmaster yoke and that isn't force feedback. Now let's talk about the build. Coming from the AY-210, which is basically machined out of a solid block of aluminum, this is plastic. And I wanna be upfront about that. Don't get me wrong. The quality is high, but it's a matte black plastic and it feels pretty solid. However, it will scuff a mark over time, but that's the reality of a matte finish. On top of that, you can also notice some very minor flexing when pressing down from the top of the unit. Now I have to be pressing pretty hard to get this kind of a flex and it's only very minor. And again, it makes sense because what saves it is the weight. This thing is noticeably lighter than the 210. And when you're living with a yoke mounted to your desk every single day, that makes a bigger difference than you'd think. And it's a pretty fair trade in my opinion. But here's the thing that really shocked me, the roll axis. On the AY-210, when it's powered off, there's a very subtle cogging sensation. A slightly mechanical notching feeling when you're moving through the rolling axis. It's only very minor. It's not dramatic, but once you feel it, you kind of notice it's there. My point being, the AY-90 doesn't have this at all. The roll axis is completely smooth, glass smooth from end to end. So ironically, the smaller and more affordable yoke actually feels a lot better to me. The only thing I'd like to see improved is the MFY Pro. And that's purely just adding community support. Let people make their own widgets and apps for this display. That would increase the value of this thing tenfold. But at the moment, all the features that it has, you don't particularly need, at least in my opinion. So is the AY-90 actually worth it then? Yes, without a doubt. The fact that you can get a force feedback yoke that's more compact, easier to use, and easier to live with, and get the exact same experience as a more expensive, more powerful AY-210 is just mind blowing to me. The real question in my mind is, why would you buy the AY-210 over this? Now sure, if you have a home cockpit and you need that raw peak torque power, then yeah, it makes sense. But if you're looking for a force feedback yoke that can do a bit of everything, then this is the one. But a huge thanks again to Moser for sending this out. And I just want to quickly clarify something. This video is not sponsored by anyone, nor is anyone paying me, and I'm allowed to speak freely. But more importantly, thank you for watching. If you enjoyed the video, make sure to hit like, get subscribed, and until next time, I'll catch you then.