Remember the Honeycomb Aeronautical Echo Aviation Controller, the intense PC flight sim gamepad that came out last year? Well, the company has announced a new one, the Echo Aviation Controller XPC, coming to “wannabe pilots” who own Xbox Series X|S consoles later this year.
It looks like the same controller that the company released last year, just with a big Xbox button at the top of the pad. It’s still lousy (complimentary) with buttons, rear rudder sliders, throttle sliders, switches, and knobs inspired by actual flight controls. It’s apparently everything required for “pitch, roll, yaw, throttle, trim, and core aircraft systems.”
The Echo Aviation Controller XPC shares little in common with any of the Xbox controllers you’ve come to know and love. It does have a TMR analog stick, but instead of rear buttons, it features sliding, hall effects rudder sliders that move in opposition to each other – when one goes up, the other goes down – to simulate actual aircraft rudder pedals. Its face buttons sport the usual Xbox-style ABXY layout, except they’re on the left side of the controller, just above the analog stick, rather than on the right. (You probably won’t be playing any FromSoftware games with it, although I’d be delighted to try. Can’t make me any worse at Elden Ring than I already am, right?)
This new flight pad will have some customizability, like the original. You’ll be able to swap out the caps on the sliders, for instance. It appears as though this one will work wirelessly or wired, based on the promo images Honeycomb shared with IGN. (The previous model uses a USB dongle for wireless connectivity, rather than Bluetooth.) And although it’s designed for the Xbox, it will still work on a PC, making it potentially an even better choice.
To see the controller in action, check out Honeycomb’s YouTube video for the original, which does a pretty good job showing the customizable throttle sliders and how each of its numerous controls work. The original costs $150, but the press release didn’t say how much the Echo Aviation Controller XPC will cost when it’s released in the fall.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
