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If you haven't read the article, they also point to a few more folks building realistic commercial aircraft simulators around the world...

For example,
this one http://web.me.com/mattford1/Site/Matts_Boeing_737_Flight_Sim.html
or this one http://www.hyway.com.au/747/747.html

Although it sounds like Mr. Price's is the first one with an actual nose from a real 737 (the some of the other ones merely use some fraction of the real cockpit equipment in a shell).

I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who spends anything close to $140 for accessories. These types of numbers are just about worthless because they clump the console-centric with the PC gamer with the gizmo nut.

Actually, PC gamers can go significantly past that for accessories, particularly for flight simulators and air-combat games, without going to the 'gizmo nut' range. The Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar stick/throttle package runs about $300, to which can be added a number of different aftermarket modifications, such as replacing the gimbals and potentiometers with strain sensors so the stick works like the real F-16 stick (my upgrade was a custom-machined set of gimbal replacements and Hall sensors replacing the potentiometers, which ran about $500 total). A set of good rudder pedals alone can list for $150 (and for the truly gonzo flight-sim addict, you can get rudder pedals that duplicate F-16 rudder pedals -- at ten times the cost). If you want to get a more accurate simulation with multiengine aircraft, you can get throttle quadrants that let you control all four engines on a simulated 747 or B-17 individually, with a list price of $200. So you can easily run over $500 with just a stick, throttle, and rudder setup, without going into any of the various MFD-like button pads. And this doesn't even touch on the people who build cockpits for their flight simulator or air-combat software. The 'gizmo nuts' are the ones who go off and build complete jetliner cockpits for their flight sims, and their investment can run into tens of thousands of dollars in hardware and time.

Impressive, but I'm even more impressed with this homebuilt 747-400 simulator.

A 737 is a cute little plane... Remember when Slashdot covered this guy's 747 Simulator?

For the same reason that people build cockpits like this for flight simulators -- having a controller where all of the controls actually look and feel like they're part of a control panel for whatever it is that they're supposed to be operating in the simulation. There are companies that sell mockup cockpit shells or cockpit interiors to enhance the feeling of actually flying a plane. The extent to which people will go to replicate genuine controls for their computer can boggle the mind; some people spend literally thousands of dollars buying hardware. And it's not just flight simulations; there are cockpits for racing sims available, too.

No matter how flashy you make the graphics, the person playing the game still has to control their plane, character, car, mech, or whatever in the game. And using a two-button joystick and a keyboard to play the game doesn't help them feel as if they're really there in the game; that's why you see all of the steering-wheel and aircraft joysticks on the market. The controller for Steel Battalions is a special-purpose game controller; it's designed to work well with just that one game. There are other controllers, like the Thrustmaster Cougar, that take a more general approach -- a controller that is fantastically programmable to allow the user to customize their controller to suit whatever game they happen to be playing.