Consdiering Purchase CLS-E

[craigread]

Hi,

I have been reading about the Brunner yokes for some time. I’m currently a Saitek user, using a Cessna Pro yoke with aditional saitek throttles for pretty much my entire ‘sim’ experience of the past 15 years or so… I also use MFG pedals. I’ll start with what I mainly do with my sim and what my sim is as I believe this will heavily influence advice provided:

– P3DV5 exclusively right now, I do plan in the future to migrate to MS2020 when it’s released.
– Mainly airliner flying, very little GA really, specific addons;
– PMDG 747 QOTS II with the 747-8 extension.
– PMDG 777 (all extensions), waiting on update for P3Dv5.
– PMDG 737 NGXu, waiting on update for P3Dv5.
– FSL A32X (all variants), waiting on update for P3Dv5.
– MaddogX (all variants).
– Majestic Q400, waiting on update for P3Dv5.

My sim flights range from familiarisation flying to long / medium / short haul. I often do ‘training’ runs i.e. short circuits etc even in the larger jets with a fair amount of hand flying involved. I also do practice landings in a range of weathers using applications such as FSIPanel (although not yet updated for P3Dv5).

I’ve been reading about the Brunner products and I’m definitley interested. My yoke isn’t particularly brilliant and now is starting to show its age so I have a few options. I either replace like with like, go for something like a ‘yoko’ or make a bigger jump to Brunner. The features of interest are;

– Force feedback.
– Much improved feel, and travel.
– Higher build quality, i.e. less ‘noisy’ than my Saitek making for a more robust sim experience.
– Autopilot motion.
– Trim motion.
– Flexibility in applying force feedback based on aircraft in use.

On top of that, online I’ve seen many reviews and disussions praise extensively the support offered to users as well, which is also a major ‘pull’ for me to the brunner option.

I am aware that some of these features are probably not available in my ‘normal’ scenarios e.g. I am unlikely to get autopilot motion, the trim essentially ‘trims the yoke’ but does not interact with the aircraft so the two are not “sync’d” as it were. Is this correct? If it is, is it something that is planned for implementation?

I’d really like some advice and opinions. Finding detail about the yokes online is ok, but it’s hard to find real users of these products on other public forums, probably due to the high end nature of the products not being as widely accessible as other lower / medium end products, hence not as ‘mainstream’.

I’ve gleaned this from watching many youtube videos and reading what I could find, I may well have things wrong and would like to be corrected if that were the case… I’d also really like to hear from the community, the users and makers before making the plunge to check it’s right for me. I would spend the money if I thought it was the right move for me.

I apprecaite this is a bit of an open ended exploratory post, and not really a support request, sorry about that.. If you think I’ve not included information that would help the discussion.. let me know and I’ll provide it.. would like to be as thorough as possible.

Thanks for your time in advance..

Craig

[webmaximus]

Hello there Craig,

I might not be the best person to provide feedback since our situations are a bit different.

These days, I’m only in X-Plane 11 and I rarely fly any other aircraft than the Zibo mod (737-800). I do fly other aircraft occasionally though with no issues. Thanks to all the options found in CLS2Sim, the software used to configure a Brunner yoke, I can’t imagine there would be an aircraft out there you couldn’t fly with the Brunner yoke using all the different options in CLS2Sim at your disposal.

When it comes to build quality and the overall “feel” compared to cheaper yokes such as those from CH Products and Saitek, the Brunner yoke IMO is in a totally different league. Which makes sense looking at the difference in price. Very much worth it though when you’re someone who really enjoy and spend lots of your time simulating flying aircraft. I’ve had my CLS-E yoke for a couple of years now and I would never go back using a cheap and plastic yoke. And my Brunner yoke is still as brand new. Can’t feel or see any wear and tear what so ever.

Hope this helps!

[crugno99]

Hi Craig, i have the CLS E-NG yoke since some months now and i can tell you, for the people that can afford it this is a must have in flight simulation, it will litterally change the way you fly, but keep in mind that if you mostly fly commercial ifr airplanes you will not be cable of enjoying it fully, i would suggest it if you fly any GA, especially A2A aircraft like the 172 or 182, only then you will be able to enjoy the product in it’s full capabilities.
Other than that i don’t think there’s much to say, the built quality is outstanding, you can tell this is a product built to last, forces are well replicated, this is probably the best thing if you want to get as much close to real life flying as possible.

Marco

[craigread]

Thank you to you both. Really appreciate you taking the time to respond to me and give me your views.

So far I’ve not been one bit surprised by aspects of what you’re saying. With respect to build quality I’ve heard many times on many reviews that this is exceptional and that the difference will be dramatic for me. But I have some more questions for you if I may;

webmaximus, are you able to give me a bit more of an apprecaition of the limitations in terms of ‘integration’ you get with the Zibo? For example, stick shaker, trim, taxi rumble, autopilot movement, etc… that would be really useful. I am typically just on P3D with the PMDG / FSL / Majestic planes.. I think the answer is the integration is limited, but are you saying you can deal with this through functionality within the software package that comes with the brunner?

Marco, you seem to imply that tehre are capabilities I will miss out on, I suspect these are those I’ve just ask webmaximus about, are you able to shed more light on what those might be and if there is anything I can do to ‘simulate’ these effects?

A question for both of you, you both have different versions, the CLS-E and CLS E-NG. They both have different travel and forcefeedback capabilities. How do you both find them? Do you miss extra travel, would you prefer less? Do you want more force feedback etc?

Thanks again.

Craig

[crugno99]

That’s correct if you fly planes like PMDG you’ll miss some features like autopilot motion, stick shaker, trim motion, taxi vibrations, ecc.. but what i was refferring to was the fact that if you fly commercial airliners i’m sure you know that those have hydraulic systems/flybywire to control surfaces so you wont be able to feel the plane flying trough the air like you would do on a small GA plane, so the difference between an economic yoke like the Saitek and the Brunner one will be smaller.

In terms of travel i don’t feel like i need more than it does, surely airlines do have huge travel on the pitch axis but having all that travel on a “home yoke” attached to a desk is not very practical in my opinion, plus in normal operations pilots don’t even use that much travel because they don’t need it.

The Feedback is spot on, i’m not a pilot but you can definitely tell when you are flying trough some turbulence, even on airliners like the 737.

The actual Force on the yoke varies depending on the profile selected, unless you want to simulate an hydraulic loss on an airliner i don’t think that you need more that it does.

Regards.

Marco

[webmaximus]

Hello Craig,

As for integration with the Zibo mod using the Brunner CLS-E yoke, I’d say it’s really good. Haven’t actually tried the stick shaker but I’m quite confident it would work just fine. As for trim, autopilot etc, it’s all working fine. It was some trial and error when first creating the profile for the Zibo mod but now, I don’t see any current limitations. I even had a Ryanair pilot with 10.000+ hours over trying it out in different scenarios and he was quite impressed! He also helped me fine-tune the forces to be as close to the real thing as possible.

Another thing I’m very happy about is how Diego (the Brunner developer of CLS2Sim) implemented integration with the hydraulic system in the Zibo mod after I suggested this to him. Meaning, you’ll now just like in the real aircraft have a yoke which requires lots of force to be moved when you don’t have hydraulic pressure available in the aircraft. Then once you switch the HYD PUMPS ON, the force required to move the yoke will be back to normal. Hopefully nothing you’ll ever have to experience in-flight unless you have a HYD failure. Nevertheless, really cool how it’s now modeled correctly!

As for other effects such as taxi rumble, vibrations from the engines etc, I’ve learned that is nothing you would ever feel in the real aircraft unless something is wrong or you’re taxiing somewhere where you’re not supposed to be taxiing in a 737… So I’ve disabled any such effects. My main goal with my simming has always been to get as close to operating a real 737 as I can possibly get in front of my desk in my home. And I feel I’ve come quite close. Where my Brunner CLS-E yoke is part of that mix. Together with a motorized CockpitForYou throttle quadrant, an Opencockpits CDU, a pair of Thrustmaster Pendular rudder pedals (sorry Brunner) and all this online on Vatsim in a pair of HP Reverb Pro VR glasses making you feel you’re in the real aircraft.

Doing all my flying in VR is also one of the main reasons I wanted to have both a motorized yoke and throttle quadrant. Being able to physically feel what I see when sitting in the VR cockpit. Being able to feel the yoke move left/right, forward/backwards etc with the AP. In the same way I feel the thrust levers moving to t/o thrust after I pressed TOGA. While seeing the same thing happening in the Zibo cockpit.

Edited to add what I forgot to comment on, the forces and the travel. Like Marco already said, I guess it all depends on what aircraft you’re flying and how much extra you’re willing to spend to go that extra mile for realism. In my case with the CLS-E, it was an easy decision since the NG wasn’t available back when I bought my CLS-E yoke. However, for the type of flying I’m doing and based on what I said above how I always strive for maximum realism, I’m pretty sure I would still have picked the CLS-E today if I bought a new yoke. Because of the extra force helping to simulate HYD pressure loss as mentioned above. But also to be as close to the same travel as in the real 737.

All this combined is what really makes me smile these days when I’m flying 🙂

Wishing you all a great weekend!

[craigread]

Thanks once again. Please bear with me in terms of my questions etc…

So if I am to be using PMDG mainly, and I’ve since looked at their SDK and it doesn’t provide data such as control surface position It doesn’t look like integration is possible. I know the p3d sdk provides the data though so perhaps it can be done. Can anyone at Brunner comment on if they’ve been in touch with PMDG to ask if they’d add some variables to make it more integrated? Or if there is a work around using P3D variables? On the website it states others on request so how do I go about doing that?

Is there a detailed manual of the software I can access so I can see how I can customise it, only the brochure is available on the site for me to get to and the manual seems to be for ‘logged in users’ only. Only I can’t find out how to register, in fairness it might be for actual users only..

Thanks again.. You’ve been great!

Craig

[crugno99]

As far as i know Brunner tried to get in touch with PMDG on the matter but they didn’t respond, so Brunner can’t really do anything about it at the moment.

[webmaximus]

Quite surprising how PMDG apparently isn’t interested in assuring Rolls-Royce hardware work with their products.

However, I’m sad to say that reflects the PMDG I’ve learned to know throughout the years. One of the reasons I’m so happy being on the X-Plane platform these days.

[webmaximus]

https://youtu.be/hM4HgYQWiNQ

Not related to Brunner but since we’ve discussed both the Zibo and the PMDG 737s, watch the clip above from 1:16:20 to 1:17:00 to hear what a 737 captain has to say about the Zibo 737 and X-Plane vs the PMDG 737 and FSX/P3D.

[maximb]

Hi Craig.

I also own the CLS-E-NG yoke (and the CLS E Joystick with A320 Grip…Yes I know I love Brunner products ! :D)

I had the Yoke Ch Products before and I can affirm that you can’t compare both… Brunner yoke is absolutely wonderful you will really appreciate manual flying with your liners, and, if you’re like me, you will also enjoy flying GA aircraft as well. Before I rarely flew planes like Cessnas, but now it feels so realistic ! .

If you have the money for this product, don’t hesitate 🙂

When I purchased my Brunner Yoke, I flew Boeing aircraft with it of course, and Airbus with the joystick from CH products, but when I discovered the A320 profile for the yoke, I’ve never flown with the CH joystick anymore.
Forces and feeling of the yoke are fantastic

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