Why force feedback is about much more than just vibration
Moin!
For anyone who does not know me yet: I am Michael, better known in the flight simulation community as Atarium. Most of the time I work on liveries, textures and visual design for flight simulators and outside Flightsim. As part of a marketing and design partnership with MOZA, I recently had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with their flight simulation hardware as well.
For this article, MOZA provided me with the AB9 Force Feedback Base, the Flight Base Table Clamp and the Airbus-inspired MA3X Side Stick. Rather than judging hardware from a specification sheet, I prefer to use it in the simulator and see what it actually changes in day-to-day flying.
My own sim flying is fairly mixed. I fly airliners, general aviation aircraft, helicopters and whatever else catches my interest. Through my previous professional background I have also had the opportunity to spend time in Level-D simulators, while private flying has given me plenty of experience with conventional control sticks in light aircraft. That combination made the AB9 particularly interesting to me: what can an actively controlled force-feedback base add when you constantly switch between very different aircraft types?
On paper the idea sounds simple: mount a grip, connect USB, and let electric motors replace the usual springs. In practice, there is much more going on.
Transparency
The hardware featured in this article was provided by MOZA as part of the marketing and design partnership mentioned above.
First things first: the package arrives
Before talking about torque, force-feedback profiles and Airbus-style controls, everything has to come out of the box first and MOZA made a very good first impression here.
The hardware arrived securely packed, with the base, grip and accessories each in their own box. The product packaging is noticeably more polished than it strictly needs to be. It reminded me a little of opening a PlayStation 5 or another piece of premium consumer electronics: clean presentation, solid materials and everything placed exactly where you expect it to be.
There is no chaotic pile of cables, plastic bags and foam waiting for you. Everything is neatly separated and protected. Packaging obviously does not change how the hardware performs, but when you spend several hundred euros on a setup, I do think the first impression matters.
It is also the kind of packaging that immediately makes you think: this would be perfect for an unboxing video. Peel the protective films, lift each component out slowly, open the lid just right ideal unboxing-ASMR material.
The first impression: this thing is substantial
The moment the AB9 comes out of its box, the impression quickly changes from premium consumer electronics to serious simulation hardware. Anyone moving over from a conventional desktop joystick should expect a bit of a size and weight.
This is not a small base that simply sits on a desk with a pair of suction cups. The AB9 is large, heavy and immediately makes it clear that it follows a very different concept from a traditional spring-centred joystick.
Inside are two servo motors capable of producing up to 12 Nm of torque. The headline number is impressive, but what matters more to me is that this force can be controlled dynamically and shaped by the active profile. The aluminium housing feels extremely solid, nothing creaks or feels cheap, and even under stronger loads the base behaves much more like a piece of simulation hardware than a lightweight gaming peripheral.
And yes… it also looks like it could probably win an argument with the desk if necessary.
Do not underestimate the table clamp
A base with powerful servo motors needs a correspondingly stable mount. MOZA offers the Flight Base Table Clamp for exactly that purpose. It is not a delicate piece of hardware and in this case that is a good thing.
With the clamp installed, the AB9 sits very firmly on the desk and does not move around when the motors build up stronger counterforces. With a conventional joystick you might be able to ignore a slightly flexible mount. With force feedback, movement in the mounting system becomes noticeable immediately because the motors are actively working against your hand.
The clamp therefore does its job in a very straightforward way: it gives the base the stable foundation it needs. For a fixed simulator position or a desk where the controls can stay mounted for longer periods, the combination works very well. In an Airbus-style setup, positioning is important anyway, the sidestick belongs next to the pilot rather than in the middle of the desk.
The MA3X: a natural match for an Airbus-style setup
For this test I used the MA3X Side Stick on the AB9. The shape, colour scheme, red button and overall silhouette fit very naturally into a modern Airbus-style desktop setup.
The grip itself is pleasantly light and feels well matched to a force-feedback base. The buttons and hat switches operate cleanly and provide enough inputs to place the most important functions directly on the stick. In a more complete cockpit setup, many actions will of course be handled through dedicated panels or virtual cockpit controls, but for desktop use the available inputs are practical and easy to reach.
Together with the AB9, the MA3X creates a compact control system that visually fits the aircraft type while still allowing the force characteristics themselves to be defined by software.
Force feedback is about much more than shaking
The most interesting part begins when the AB9 is powered on. When people hear 'force feedback', they often think of effects first: turbulence, bumps while taxiing, stall buffet or a short kick on touchdown. The AB9 can reproduce those kinds of effects, but for me they are not the main attraction.
The bigger difference is that the basic control feel is no longer fixed by a spring, cam or passive damper. The AB9 actively generates the centring force, damping and resistance. That means the profile can define how strongly the stick recentres, how much force is required in pitch and roll, how quickly it returns, how heavily fast movements are damped and how the control feel changes from one aircraft type to another.
That distinction is particularly important when talking about Airbus aircraft. The real Airbus sidestick is not an aerodynamic force-feedback control in the conventional sense; its feel is created mechanically through springs and damping. With the AB9, the useful goal is therefore not to invent aerodynamic loads that are not present on the real sidestick, but to reproduce the force gradient, damping and centring behaviour of that mechanical system as closely as the chosen profile allows.
For other aircraft categories, the active nature of the base opens up additional possibilities. A particularly useful one is trim. The AB9 can shift the physical neutral position of the stick as trim changes. MOZA confirmed this behaviour is already implemented and configurable: in the Bell and CTSL profiles, for example, the neutral position moves with trim (Tested as well). That is especially interesting for general aviation and helicopter flying, where trim can meaningfully change where the pilot wants the control to rest.
That is the point where force feedback stops being a collection of vibration effects and becomes a way to model the control system itself.
One click and the aircraft feels different
The software behind the system is MOZA Cockpit. The basic approach is immediately easy to understand: there are profiles for different aircraft categories, including Airbus, Boeing 737, Boeing 777, general aviation and fighter aircraft.
The important part is not simply that each profile contains different numbers. The base genuinely feels different when you change profiles. That is exactly what I want from a universal force-feedback system. I might fly an Airbus one evening, a 737 the next day, and then switch to a warbird, helicopter or light aircraft. With a conventional joystick, the spring and basic mechanical character always stay the same. With the AB9, a profile change can give the same physical hardware a completely different personality.
The process only takes a few clicks. If you simply want to fly, you can load an existing profile. If you want to go deeper, you can adjust the individual parameters and create your own. Profiles can also be exported, shared and imported, which is particularly valuable in a community where some users have access to reference data and simulator experience that others do not.
A great example: Project MOZA Sidestick
A very good example of that community potential is Project MOZA Sidestick by VisualsByPascal, available free of charge on flightsim.to.
What makes the project interesting is that the values were not simply adjusted by feel. The creator spent a significant amount of time studying the behaviour of a real Airbus sidestick, measuring the forces required at different deflections, tuning pitch and roll separately and paying close attention to the behaviour around the neutral position.
The profile was also compared and refined using a Level-D simulator and real sidestick assemblies as references. The download includes detailed documentation explaining the measurement and development process.
For me, projects like this show where a system such as the AB9 can become especially powerful. You can of course tune a profile until it feels good to you personally, but you can also benefit from work done by people who have spent weeks comparing values against real-world references.
Project MOZA Sidestick: https://flightsim.to/addon/107356/project-moza-sidestick-visuals-by-pascal
That was my real “aha” moment
The moment when the AB9 really clicked for me was not when it pushed as hard as possible against my hand. It was in the small differences.
How the centre feels. How much force is required for a given deflection. The fact that pitch and roll do not need to feel identical. How quickly the stick returns. How damping changes small corrections. How trim can move the neutral point in aircraft where that behaviour belongs.
Those differences are difficult to explain fully in text because you really need to feel them in your hand. After a few flights, however, a conventional spring-centred joystick can start to feel comparatively one-dimensional not bad, just fundamentally fixed in the way it behaves.
You do not have to start from zero every time
I am generally not a fan of hardware that only becomes enjoyable after three evenings in forums and ten different submenus. The AB9 offers a lot of depth, but you do not need to use all of it immediately.
If you simply want to fly, choose a ready-made profile. If you want a specific aspect to feel different, adjust the relevant parameters. And if the community has already created a carefully developed profile for the aircraft you fly, import it and use that as your starting point.
That balance is one of the things I like most about the system. The hardware can work as a straightforward setup for someone who wants a strong out-of-the-box experience, while still offering enough depth for users who want to question and fine-tune every force curve.
My takeaway so far
After spending time with the setup, the AB9 is clearly the component that changes the experience the most. The MA3X fits the Airbus-style use case very well and the table clamp gives the base the solid foundation it needs, but the real difference comes from the fact that the control feel itself is no longer mechanically fixed.
It is not really about the headline 12 Nm figure, and it is not mainly about dramatic vibration effects. The interesting part is that a profile decides how the controls should behave. The same hardware can therefore take on a very different character within seconds.
For someone like me who flies many different aircraft types, that is one of the most compelling aspects of the system. In an Airbus profile, the focus can be on reproducing the mechanical force and damping characteristics of the sidestick. Switch to general aviation or helicopters and features such as trim-driven neutral-position changes become relevant. Move to another aircraft again and the entire force curve, damping and environmental effects can change with it.
Community projects such as Project MOZA Sidestick add another layer to that concept by turning real measurements, Level-D references and careful testing into profiles that other users can simply import.
Does the AB9 suddenly turn a desktop setup into a real cockpit control system? Of course not. But it moves us away from one fixed spring defining every aircraft and closer to a much more interesting question: how should this particular aircraft actually feel in the pilot's hand?
And for me, that is where force feedback becomes genuinely exciting.
Written by Atarium / Michael
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