ATLAS Base

The ATLAS can provide unparalleled FFB immersion via its unique cord drive axis system , developed from years of research and development; it represents a unique deviation from typical gear, belt or direct driven systems which has a patent applied from VIRPIL Controls.

This mechanism avoids the usual drawbacks of gear and belt driven setups by completely eliminating backlash, stepping and other parasitic tactile effects by utilising a smooth, ultra high strength Dyneema® cord to transmit forces from the motors to the axis gimbal. These cords are rated for forces orders of magnitude higher than what the base will experience ensuring long term reliability. For pilot peace of mind, these cords are user replaceable as well as the base featuring built in monitoring of cord tension and adjustment points allowing pilots to adjust the tension via the gimbal with ease ensuring peak performance.

Direct drive FFB is also now a common FFB setup, often found in sim racing wheels, but unlike sim racing wheels flightsticks differ in some key areas; the force lever is much larger on a flightstick and the axis travel is heavily restricted on a flightstick compared to the 1080 degrees+ found on sim racing wheels. The VPC ATLAS system addresses both of these by applying a force multiplication for higher output forces to be transmitted from the motors to the flightstick with the longer lever, as well as allowing for the motors to rotate much more than a direct drive system would allow for with the restricted axis travel found on a flightstick. This is important as it gives the motors more rotational resolution to produce force feedback effects with greater detail and nuance.

With our decades of experience building high precision gimbals for spring joysticks which have become rated as some of the best flight sim control experiences available, we’ve brought this same attention to detail to the VPC ATLAS. The motors transmit the output forces through our heavy duty precision CNC machine gimbal, machined from thick billet aluminium and riding on premium bearings for an ultra smooth, ultra precise input just as you would find on our other flightsticks.

We’ve designed the gimbal with an axis range of 18 degrees to provide a great experience with or without the use of extensions, up from the commonly found 15 degrees in other FFB flightsticks which can be restrictive but not too large that extensions create unergonomic flightstick travel.

Instead of reading the flightstick position from the motors, the ATLAS implements our VPC Contactless Digital Sensors to read the position from the gimbal itself as on our typical spring based joysticks. While this is a more complex approach, it guarantees precise positional reading of the flightstick.

While it has become customary for manufacturers to simply present the "best case scenario" numbers - we want to change that! We want to provide as much information as possible so that the VIRPIL Community can fully understand the VPC ATLAS performance in a number of different setups with clear indication of the performance.