The Hardware Review: MFG Crosswind Flight Pedals

This review is of a pair of MFG Crosswinds, available from: http://mfg.simundza.com/products

Simulation (sim-yuh-ley-shuh n). According to the Shorter OED, it means: “The action or an act of simulating something.”

I’m a bit of a sim fan myself. There are all kinds of sim games out there these days, racing, people, cities, there even used to be an earth simulator (Sim Earth, by Maxis back in the day, anyone remember that??).

For me though, many of these other forms of sim took a back seat to one of my true loves, that of flying. Much of my youth was taken up by Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon 3, Falcon 4, Flight Unlimited, Fleet Defender, Gunship 2000, TFX, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, all of the Wing Commander games among others.

Back then, the internet was obviously not what it is today. People with hobbies that were slightly obscure were reliant on sometime reliable, sometime not magazines, bulletin boards (along with dial-up fees) and the random opinions of friends. Needless to say, all of this resulted in some, shall we say… less than optimal experiences and purchases.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and it’s a different world. The power of the web along with cheap and fast access in many parts of the world has created a haven for communities of hobbyists. Whether you’re in a facebook group, subreddit or one of however many specialist sites dedicated to the subject of your choice, it’s never been easier to get the information you need to help you figure out what to buy.

What this means is that you’re less likely to end up with something like my old QuickShot flight yoke and more likely to end up with a Saitek or Thrustmaster HOTAS or the like. And that’s a good thing!

In many ways, my love of sims is kind of what brought me back to PC gaming with the advent of Star Citizen in late 2012. Since then, I’ve tried several different control methods, including joystick, controllers and a few different HOTAS setups.

The main problem as I see it is always a question of axes. At the prosumer end of the market, where people get relatively high end gear without going completely crazy, there are a couple of decent joystick/throttle combinations out there, notably the Saitek X-55/56 Rhinos and the Thrustmaster Warthog.

Ignoring some of the more obscure setups out there (twin stick, HOMAS etc), the HOTAS has been a mainstay of flight sims for a long time and therein lies the problem. It’s a logical setup, but chasing a decently intuitive control mechanism for 6 degrees of freedom based flight has always proven problematic for me, particularly given the relatively straightforward control layout of a typical joystick/HOTAS. In the old days of programmed in yaw/roll/pitch rates, this wasn’t a problem of course, today with the physically modelled flight systems of Star Citizen and others, things get a bit more complicated and this is where additional controllers attempt to fill the gap.

So for the past year and half, I’ve been getting by with a Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS trying to figure out what my ultimate setup is going to be. The Warthog is an excellent piece of kit, well put together, solid, reliable and responsive, but assigning the various digital hats to some of the other degrees of freedom just left me with an itch I couldn’t quite reach. I tried out a Saitek X-55 a friend has as I often wondered if I’d made a wrong decision in going with the warthog over it since it has a twist grip but was left underwhelmed by the experience.

Pedals? Why not!

Pedals are something I’d been thinking about for a while. It’s a logical progression from what I can tell, real pilots use pedals, why shouldn’t I? That of course is a slippery slope that ends with buying a plane or some kind of ridiculous simpit type thing which my wife would absolutely not approve of, so I need to be careful. I’ve tried controllers but again of course, the complexity of flight (whether atmospheric or in a vacuum) is simply too vast to be able to reasonably capture using such a limited input device as a controller (check out my frustrated experiences with Elite Dangerous on an Xbox One here).

Mouse and keyboard while being great for FPS etc, again don’t capture the intuitive requirements of directional movement in 6 degrees for me. Ultimately I want something that provides a feel of balance.

But before we get into the MFG Crosswind itself, let's get a primer in 6 degrees of freedom flight.

I’m sure most people reading a review of flight pedals have some idea of what I’m on about, but for those wanting to know more, let’s cover off some basics here.

The six degrees of freedom refer to the fundamental movements which a physical object (and particularly a plane/spaceship) work within and can move around given some typical thruster placement and ailerons in atmospheric flight. Think of each degree as a “type” which has two directions in itself. So if you look at your traditional joystick, it will only have two actual degrees of freedom as opposed to the four “movements” that people tend to associate with it (left, right, up and down).

This is because each axis has two directions. Thinking about something simpler like a car, you have two degrees with four directions, these being reverse/forward and left/right. Some may consider you have a third degree which suspension allowing the car to move up or down.

So as shown in the diagram below, there are six separate degrees of freedom we’re concerned with. Each axis has two directions for a total of twelve different directions of movement. You can also complicate this further with some degree of arrested movement in a given direction (for example forward thrust) acting as a brake which is separate to “reverse”.

Twist grip joysticks like the X-55/56 have an additional degree of freedom bringing the total to 3. If we assume that the throttle takes care of forward and reverse that gives you a “typical setup” of 3 to 4 depending on if your joystick has a twist or not. Then you can start assigning hats etc to the other degrees but the trouble is they just feel wrong, at least to me.

Even twist grip doesn’t seem right to me. Accidental activation while manoeuvring rapidly, finger reach while activated to the maximum twist for the other buttons, there are a host of reasons why I don’t like twist, but even if I did, there are still some additional degrees of freedom missing.

So I decided to look into pedals. A quick google reveals that Thrustmaster, Saitek and CH all make some, they strike me as somewhat mediocre for the price and some reviews around the kit leave me thinking I’d best look elsewhere. Rollers which need regular cleaning, not enough granularity in the sensors, worries over the adjustability of width and sizing (I’m a UK size 12) mean I’m disappointed with the initial options available.

I’m in a few forums, facebook groups and subreddits for various games, and over a fair period of time, two things jump out at me. Some of the best pedals that people seem to be raving about are not put together by a big company that makes gamer gear. I regularly hear about the MFG Crosswind along with Slaw Device. One man bands that put out some awesome looking kit. Awesome looking is all well and good but I’m not about to drop several hundred pounds on a guy that sells his hardware through a facebook page or CNC machines pedals from a workshop in the Czech Republic. I decide to wait and watch whether these guys disappear and start googling driver problems (as I’m sure there will be) with this kind of setup.

But you know what? As I wait, still they keep going. More people I know get them and love them. This is too much, so I decide to bite the bullet and get a pair of the Crosswinds.

I get in touch with Milan Simundza, the chap behind the MFG Crosswind (Milan Flight Gear) and sort a pair out. I’ve asked him some questions too about how he got into this business and the answers are telling:

WCCFtech: Hey Milan, what gave you the idea to start the Crosswinds? Are you a big PC flight sim gamer yourself?

MS: Well the thing is, I’d actually consider myself an actual real life pilot first and a flight sim guy second. I fly in a club, mostly tugging gliders and fly for fun as a hobby. Where I live (the Dalmatian region of Croatia) has pretty bad weather in the winter months and sport flying drops massively at this time. Flying is in my blood though, so I have to get my fix somehow, that’s where flight sims come in. It’s a beautiful hobby with a small but excellent community around it and of course has the added bonus that the cost per hour of flying time is next to nothing compared to actually flying in real life.

The story of the MFG Crosswind themselves started around the “Rise of Flight” release. I absolutely loved flying the Fokker DR1 but as many flight buffs will know, it’s a plane that is fairly dependant on good rudder control. Nothing on the market at the time seemed to offer a good enough mix of precision, quality or force to me, the stuff available was either a cheap toy which didn’t have the best build quality or professional gear which was ridiculously priced for a hobby.

So I took the plunge and decided to try building my own device. The first unit wasn’t bad, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Lots of prototypes followed until I was really happy with what I’d built, then the potentiometer wore out, so I started studying hall effect sensors. My best mate being an electronic engineer helped so we started perfecting that side of things until we got to where we wanted them to be. I was happy just using them but then another friend who is also a pilot tried my home setup and said the pedals are too good not to make and sell to other people. Initially I was only selling them to other pilots and flight sim people in Croatia by word of mouth. We further refined the design based on their feedback and that’s what got us to where we are today.

WCCFtech: Engineering something like this must be pretty time consuming. How long did it take to get initially setup and do the design?

Milan Simundza: The Crosswinds weren’t started as a business project to make money, so it wasn’t like a traditional startup where we’re aiming to get to market as quickly as possible. The MFG Crosswind people can buy today were born from two years of countless hours of passionate design, prototyping, testing, redesigning (aka enjoying!) loops. The idea to actually make it a product people could buy came after and then took another year to figure out modifications, ease of use, packaging, assembly, trying to ensure it’s a high quality, high endurance and maintenance free product which will last for a long time. It helped that I’ve been working with CNC machining technology for about 15 years in making furniture. I still program CNC equipment today, optimising and automating toolpaths, fixture designs etc.

People may think that my background being in furniture, the Crosswinds have a lot of crossover with woodworking but the truth is pretty far from that as CNC machining for furniture is pretty different from mechanical machining. The Crosswinds are a labour of love and I view them as a work of art. It’s only really possible to produce them at this low a price point because I’ve combined some of the practices I learnt from CNC furniture side of the business and applied a lot of this to the mechanical engineering side. I think it’s pretty fair to say that if you were familiar with CNC machining, a lot of what we’re doing with the Crosswinds is pretty innovative and I’m proud of where we’ve come to.

W: What is your main job now then? Any plans for other peripherals in the future?

MS: My main job these days is leading the MFG team. I recently hired an assistant so that I have more time to work on the development of new products and we have some exciting plans here but nothing I can publish right now. We’re also working on some combat style footrests for the MFG Crosswind which existing owners can purchase as a separate kit if they wish. Customers keep asking us to develop new devices all the time, throttle quadrants, joysticks, yokes, force feedback stuff and even full cockpits! People of course want to purchase stuff as soon as possible but developing new products takes time, particularly to our quality levels.

Flight simulation as an industry is pretty small and those who have been around it a while have seen a lot of good companies come and go. That’s the reason that I push things forward at a slower pace than people would probably expect so that I can be sure that we keep quality high and make smart decisions as a company and ensure that we’re around for the long haul. So we’re definitely working on new products, but products which we feel we can produce better and cheaper than other companies. In addition to this, we still make internal prototypes for fun.

Milan Flight Gear started as a side project out of passion, but it’s grown into a full blown department in the company. We produce most of the parts in house and we’re now 8 people for production, sales and support. I don’t classify it as a primary or secondary source of income, MFG is a small department in the furniture business and growing to become an equal sized department with an innovative and hopefully bright future.

W: What’s would you say is the one thing you are particularly proud of in the MFG Crosswind?

MS: Someone who got a pair told me: “These are transformers among rudder pedals”. We set the bar high and I think we’ve engineered a great design which allows for amazing adjustability options with a single allen key (which we supply in the box!). Same with the software, we try to keep things simple but elegant and useful. So many customers have told me about this or that critical feature that they love for their particular flying style.

To cap it all off, I think they look pretty nice too!

I think it’s a pretty telling, the humble beginnings, the years of design and the end product. Milan is a guy that is clearly passionate, pays attention to detail and knows his craft. Being an actual pilot rather than a video game accessory maker is probably also a big help in making a product that “feels” right, but let’s take a look at the pedals themselves and see how they hold up.

The MFG Crosswind

A set of rudder pedals are never going to be viewed as a particularly glorious control input. They’ll sit out of sight under your desk, never being cooed over by friends who come to try your rig/setup. But damn it, I wish I had a second set of feet coming out of my torso. These things are so beautiful I want them on the desk where I can see them. Alas, it isn’t so, but the truth is that these are a very nice looking pair of pedals. Probably the nicest I’ve seen. They are now available in two colours, a white and a graphite option. I’ve gone with the graphite and it’s obviously a subjective opinion, but I think they look awesome.

Inspecting the pedals close up, I’m impressed. I’ve had a few CNC machined things I’ve bought over the years from various kickstarters etc. Generally they come out reasonably, but they often have a bit of a knocked up home product feel/look to the edges. Not so with the MFG Crosswind. You can tell it’s not injection moulded or metal and there are a couple of small laminate coating chips on one or two of the drilled holes, but the feel is solid and good and the edges are generally high quality.

One of the key reasons I went with the Crosswinds was due to the adjustability. I’m a bit bigger than an average guy, UK 12 (US 13, EU 47.5) shoe size and the largish looking footpads along with the width adjustment and centre interchangeable cam profiles of the Crosswinds appealed to me a lot.

Out of the box, it’s pretty quick to put them together and everything is easily adjustable. The weight of the pedals is good and they feel solid. There are some spacers at the back for giving you some distance to the wall.

First (and only) problem though, I don’t have lockable wheels on my chair and like my pedals fairly stiff to prevent accidental activation while resting my feet on them. Time to order some locking wheels for the chair.

I experiment with the width adjusters and various centre cam profiles which I got with the Crosswinds and am pretty surprised to find that I don’t need any of the non-standard stuff! Your mileage may vary of course, but for the sake of completeness, dimensions below.

The footpads are 29cm long and the centre of the footpads are 39cm apart with the default configuration in its wide stance.

Resistance is adjusted by tightening/loosening the main spring which is easily accomplished without any tools thanks to a nut with a grip cover.

A few quick blasts with the Crosswinds and the feel is amazing. I need to fine tune the spring strength a few times and try out some different centre cam profiles. The configuration options for the MFG Crosswind are great and include:

• Pedal angle can be shifted to “toe out” from vertical.
• Pedal angle can be shifted so that they can be made more upright and facing you or flatter.
• Width of pedals can be adjusted.
• 3 different centre cam profiles are available (current models are 4, 5 and 6).
• Spring strength (resistance to movement).

CAMs

Let’s talk about the cams for a moment. For me, the CAM option is what elevates the Crosswinds from being very good pedals to be excellent.

As you would expect, the pedals have a bearing of some sort which rolls along a curved surface to provide varying degrees of resistance throughout the movement profile. Thankfully this bearing is mounted so that it rolls horizontally to the floor and as such is unlikely to accumulate as much dirt/dust as if it was rolling along the floor. The cam profiles are different shaped sections which the bearing rolls against and as such provide different feels to the pedals in use.

For me, I ended up using cam 6, mainly because my use of the pedals is going to be for dogfighting type games where I want a relatively concentration free experience with them and as such want the pedals to naturally return to the centre and have a bump to them when they get there. With the spring tightened somewhat I can rest my feet on the pedals and set the dead zone so they don’t accidentally activate and I don’t particularly need to focus on what my feet are doing unless I want to activate them.

Additionally, there are CAMs 4 and 5 available. Apparently Cam 4 is voted by testers and early customers as the best all round cam, but both 4 and 5 have a much lesser centre bump section and as such I wasn’t too keen on these. CAM 5 is similar to 4 but with resistance that builds more progressively as you further engage the pedals whereas with 4 there is more resistance initially but it tails off towards the extremes.

CAMs 4 and 6 come with the Crosswinds as standard, 5 is an optional extra, as are the additional width adjustment plates. Unsurprisingly, they basically do what they say on the tin and allow for additional width adjustments of the pedals, but they also allow for a bit more than this as they have multiple screw positions to attach the pedals meaning you can shift them up or down while facing you too.

CAMs are not symmetrical given the rolling resistance profiles so be warned if you decided to try your own hand at making different profiles!

The Software is a surprisingly decent part of the experience. Something I’ve learnt over time with hardware makers, their software tends to be lacking. Older versions of Corsair’s Utility Engine and Razer’s Synapse were awful. Terribly unintuitive pieces of software which worked, on the odd occasion that you happened to have been doing the right combination of dancing the funky chicken, performing the secret Stonecutter handshake, while doing a one armed handstand and simultaneously juggling fire-breathing yaks, or some other odd combination of things. Here we have simplicity in the MFG Crosswinds’ software and that suits me fine. Pedals are simple things, the software shouldn’t be overly complicated and it isn’t.

Calibration is easy and take a couple of minutes. Do note that changing the angle of the pedals requires a recalibration to set the shifted range of motion, but otherwise it’s pretty easy to get to grips with and a mostly logical software interface for calibration.

Wrapping Up

I’ve been using the pedals now for a couple of months. Probably the single greatest compliment I can give them is that they are an excellent combination of setup and forget. Microsoft Flight Simulator X Steam Edition recognises them with zero setup needed for basic yaw. Star Citizen needed rebinding for roll to them which was also a relatively easy setup. I considered having a blast with them in DCS World but once I downloaded the manual and saw that the basic startup procedure was a bajagazillion pages long and having asked a friend who flies who told me that in general, if you can fly in DCS, you can probably do an ok job of flying in real life, I decided that was a sim too far for me.

It took me a few hours to get used to using them instead of using a mapped hat which I’d been using for roll/yaw in some games (I tend to use the joystick for roll in atmospheric flight games and yaw in space flight games for some reason, don’t ask me why, it’s just how my brain is wired!), but it didn’t take long and once I was into it, I was using the pedals without thinking in short order.

I’ll still occasionally hit a hat button from muscle memory, but as I play more with the MFG Crosswind, that is becoming a less frequent occurrence.

Ultimately, this is an amazing set of pedals which anyone would do well to consider. I’m smitten and will definitely be keeping them. The MFG Crosswinds for me hit that perfect point of excellent build quality, configurability and usability, combined with not costing the earth like some other models that are out there. As such, they easily bag themselves an Editors' Choice award.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.