New 6DOF Joystick from Sublight Dynamics

[Zaib]

Saw this on Reddit this morning and was absolutely blown away. The possibilities for this joystick to completely replace dual stick/HOTAS setups or to complement them considerably look to be awesome.

Sublight Dynamics plans to launch a Kickstarter to fund production of the device late this summer.

What does everyone think of this beauty?

 

Here's a video of the device in action in a number of games including SC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNSzqO93FN4

Here is the Reddit thread:

https://i.redd.it/ok83fxvynxt21.jpg

And here is the companies website where you can sign up for notification of the Kickstarter launch (on the FAQ page):

https://www.sublightdynamics.com

[Morgen Black]

That is one nice piece of gear.  Hopefully, before the Kickstarter launch they can iron out all the bugs and fine tune it so as to show a new video with the current SC build.

ZNC

[J. Coren]

Looks a little fragile, to be honest. As someone with big, heavy hands I would be scared of potentially breaking it with any rapid movements.

[Hammer173]

Another joystick hit the road. He didn't have to use any Hotas but I agree with J.Coren because I play very tense and not sure this would be for me. I do like the concept but watching him play in SC I focused on his wrists and there seemed to be the need for a lot of tension. Does look cool though.

[Boildown]

Going to track this and see about the kickstarter. Looks really cool.

[JohnWhiskey]

Holy $#!T, i was just looking up what joysticks there are because i plan to get one soon(ish) never thought i would see something like this, hope it works good

 

this may make the Khartu-al and other ships like it preform better with such a joystick, as well as spaceships in general

[Brightmist]

This device is interesting yet there's no feedback yet from beta testers.

Dual sticks seems to be the preferred choice of controls in the community for space sims.

[Boildown]

Some news via email:

Thanks for your interest in our 6DOF joystick! We're sending out this first email update to let you know that we've decided to do two separate Kickstarter campaigns. And the first one will be launching very soon, on October 29th! (It’s later notice than we’d like) This first campaign will be for a low-quantity run of largely hand-assembled beta unit joysticks, capped at 65 joysticks. Because of the low quantities and hand-built nature, the price of these beta units will be 1050 USD, with some early bird units available for 950 USD. This is much higher than we expect for our later, higher-quantity campaign. However, these beta units will be delivered in March of 2020, at least nine months sooner than the joysticks built for our higher-quantity Kickstarter campaign, which will launch about a month after beta unit delivery. The purpose of this beta unit campaign is to help fund our development, while giving us time to prepare for larger scale manufacturing, and providing us with feedback from our beta unit backers. We’re still getting our prototype photos ready, but here’s a CAD rendering of the current design in the meantime.

Base Dimensions: 135 mm wide x 160 mm deep (5.3 inches wide x 6.3 inches deep) Total Height: 255 mm (10 inches) Extra details about the units: Force sensitive, with settings customization software 32 digital controls (1 eight-way hat, 2 five-way hats, 2&1 action trigger, 1&1 action brake lever, bump trigger, 3 two-way index levers, 1 thumb rest button) 2 analog rotary dials All controls fully ambidextrous with both left and right handed thumb rest sets 8-10 mm of XYZ strafing motion from spring suspension 10-15 degrees of yaw/pitch/roll motion, with the center of rotation located in the center of the grip for intuitive control Included arm rest and slightly-below-desk-height mount for ergonomic use We’d also appreciate it if you could take a minute to answer a Google Form to tell us if you’re likely to be interested in backing the campaign, as well as any other feedback you’d like to offer, at: https://forms.gle/bb7dNELani7ZrRAH6 (It’s just two questions) If you have any questions for us, you can email us back at this address, or contact us on social media. We’ll send out another update when the beta unit campaign goes live. Thanks for following! Ben and Dan Stack Cofounders of Sublight Dynamics, Inc

[Booster Terrik]

Wow that is a lot of money for a prototype. Too rich for me and too risky but I will definitely keep an eye on this one

[Boildown]

Yeah I forgot to add my commentary on it. That's way too much, I hope the regular kickstarter is one third that price, but I'd probably do half if things look promising. I do hope they find their 65 rich kids though, I want them to fund it so that the second kickstarter can proceed.

[Boildown]

Got an email update again today. They're delaying the first kickstarter one week, everything else is the same about it.  But more importantly they revealed their price intent for the second kickstarter, which won't have delivery for an extra nine months: "the later units will cost between $350-$500 depending on final production costs".

Which is right in the area of how much I was willing to pay.  Looking good.

[Brightmist]

It looks cool yet I think separating axes instead of uniting them is a better way to go about things.

Sublight Dynamics now also have a %50 sale on second unit if you're buying a pair I think.

[Boildown]

On 10/27/2019 at 6:38 AM, Brightmist said:

It looks cool yet I think separating axes instead of uniting them is a better way to go about things.

Sublight Dynamics now also have a %50 sale on second unit if you're buying a pair I think.

It'll be interesting, I like the idea of having my second hand free for keyboard or mouse.  But how ambidextrously crazy can I really get?

The email I got delaying the kickstarter one week also said, "If any backers from the first Kickstarter decide to order an additional joystick from our future high-quantity Kickstarter campaign, you’ll get a 50% discount off of the regular price." If somehow this evolved to unlimited 50% off additional joysticks, then the original 65 people could make a lot of money selling these grey market.

[Boildown]

Limited release Kickstarter video:

 

Kickstarter for the limited release is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sublightdynamics/sublight-dynamics-6dof-joystick-early-access

For those of us unwilling to whale this, our 9 month wait begins.

[LowZone]

If successful, I'll undoubtedly will be getting one of these at some point as it is exactly what I imagined a purpose-built SC joystick was supposed to be. But launching its first kickstarter campaign in the same month as biggest SC sale of the year is just bad timing IMHO.

[Boildown]

They just added alternative pledges:

• A slightly lower-cost ($985) option that excludes the mounting clamp, for people who already have a compatible clamp
• A digital download of a 3D-printable joystick handle CAD file ($5), with fixed finger inputs, for anyone with access to a 3D printer and who wants to feel the ergonomics of the current grip
• A Sublight Dynamics T-shirt ($30), with our logo
• Prepayment ($145) on half of a joystick for our future larger-quantity campaign, shipping in 2021, at a discounted price (total price would then be $145 + 50% of the regular price of the joystick in the future campaign)

The pre-payment one seems particularly interesting.  It basically sets a lower-bound for the price of the larger quantity campaign at 2x $145 = $290, and you get a discount if you pledge now on however much more expensive than that it might get.  Of course the risk is that you have sunk money, so if it ends up being too expensive even with the discount to the point that you don't want it any more, you can't recover your $145.

But I think the risk is minimal, and I want to see this funded.  So I'm going to pledge the 50% pre-payment thing.

 

Edit: They didn't mention in the email that the Pre-Payment pledge was limited quantity.  They're only selling 65 of them, 50, now 49 left, after I pledged for it.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Boildown
Limited quantity on 50% Pre-Payment pledges

[Boildown]

16 days of 30 left, $35,356 pledged of $40,000 goal, only 16 pre-payment pledges left.  I'm guessing if word spreads at all at Citizencon then they'll make their goal and then some.  I was getting worried when they were stuck at about $20k, but looking like they'll make it now.

 

[Boildown]

They just passed their goal of $40,000, so it looks like this is going to get funded.  It was closer than I'd have liked:

$40,825 pledged of $40,000 goal
110 backers
8 days to go

 

Only 2 pre-payment pledges still available as of this posting.

[Boildown]

Less than 23 hours to go. They posted a video of someone using it in Pirate Swarm (just 9 minutes of it):

 

[LowZone]

If they had posted this on day 1 of the kickstarter campaign in spectrum, they would have hit their target in hours.

[Boildown]

Yeah, it seems they are ED players primarily, from the Kickstarter comments.

[Boildown]

Kickstarter closed, they made $44,415 of their $40,000 goal.  They were willing to make 65 sticks but only sold 32, less than half.  And they had 121 people pledge, so there's roughly 4 times as much interest as there were people willing to pay $1000 for a 6DoF stick of unknown quality.

I'm glad the Kickstarter succeeded but I'd rather they made it by a large margin.  Hopefully the goal they set was conservatively high to cover the unexpected.  Will see when the reviews for these 32 sticks come out.

 

[LowZone]

Having seen the cockpit of the Prowler in action for the first time, I couldn't help but think of this joystick being what the devs had in mind. Is a commercial tie-in with SD on the cards in the future? Looking forward to flying the Prowler as intended next year hopefully. 

[Boildown]

This guy has been posting videos of him using his early release model:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DeanHerbertMooCow/videos
 

Still no word on the 2nd kickstarter other than they still plan to do it "this year"... which there isn't a lot of time left in.

[Boildown]

Here we go:
 

I'm definitely getting one when they do the next kickstarter.