Virtual pilots who want to immerse themselves in the Microsoft Flight Simulator and don't yet have a flight stick will have to wait a bit. Flight sticks, yoke systems, rudders, and other peripherals designed for flying are sold out almost everywhere, with the exception of some overpriced items from marketplace sellers.

As The Verge discovered, Amazon's best-selling flight stick is out of stock; Thrustmaster has half of Amazon's 10 top-selling products, but none are available. The same goes for Logitech's G Pro Flight Throttle Quandrant and Flight X56 Rhino Hotas.

Amazon is not alone; several flight sticks are also sold out at Best Buy and Newegg, like Saitek's Pro Flight X52 Flight System.

At first glance, it appears that peripheral manufacturers and retailers were not able to handle the sudden rush of gamers to buy flight sticks in anticipation of the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator. No doubt this was a contributing factor, but complaints of shortages were seen on Twitter even before the game was released.

This also plays into a recent prediction by research firm Jon Peddie Researcher, which estimates that Microsoft Flight Simulator will generate a whopping $2.6 billion in PC gaming hardware sales over the next three years. This includes all PC hardware, from graphics cards and other components to flight sticks and various peripherals. [Flight simulators are] very demanding in terms of processing power and commensurate with the use of higher resolutions, larger displays, and VR," says Ted Pollack, senior analyst at JPR. When new flight simulators are released, the hardware to run them at maximum configuration and performance does not yet exist." This creates a situation where fans are chasing the best experience and constantly demanding hardware for the life of the title. A significant number of flight sim fans only play flight sims. We took this into account when calculating whether money would be spent specifically or partially for this game."

This is a high estimate, and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft's latest flight sim will really generate that much spending on PC hardware in a relatively short time. In any case, it seems clear that flight sticks are taking the biggest hit right now.

We have asked Thrustmaster for comment on this apparent shortage and will update this article when we hear back.