Adjusting and calibrating joysticks for Microsoft Flight Simulator has never been that easy as it sometimes presented some rather tricky problems to get them work properly. In many emails I have often been asked for advice of how to fix a particular joystick problem, but I am afraid that in some cases or other I could not give a solution and I became exhausted and fed up with trying to fix something that just wasn't meant to be. I want to spend my time flying and not fiddling. If your joystick has grown older, it is always a good idea to download the latest updated drivers from the producers' web sites. In many cases this has helped out perfectly. It goes without saying that the OS you use plays an important role as well. At the time being the range of OS varies from Win95, Win98, WinME, Win2000, and WinXP, so the reasons for joystick problems cannot be traced back to Flight Simulator only. Since the release of FS2000 I myself use a Sidewinder Precision Pro under WinME (v4.90 build 3000) and I have not met any serious problems that basically affect flight in FS2000 or FS2002. Yet there is one nagging issue that I think needs to be fixed in FS2002 at best.

As you can see from this shot I run the German version of the sim. The entries for the Sidewinder devices are clearly visible, though. It is here that MS should implement a way to deactivate the device(s) not needed for FS.

So what is it about? If you are like me, with children in the household who take possession of your machine as well, then you know that they have their own special games which they want to play, and it is not always Flight Simulator that they have chosen as their favorite game, is it?

Needless to say that to get the most out of their games they have connected their own joystick or, in most cases, gamepad to the PC. After some attempts to meet both the children's and my needs and to get things to work all right, I found out that it was best to connect my daughter's Sidewinder Freestyle Pro to the gameport of the soundcard and to plug my own Sidewinder Precision Pro to one of the USB ports (doing it vice versa unfortunately presented a negative side-effect which, however, needn't be discussed right here).

The point now is that when you open the Options menu in FS2000 or FS2002 and go to the joystick dialogue window, you will always find the gameport device listed up at number one position, then followed by devices connected to USB ports. In my case it is the Sw Freestyle Pro that covers the initial position whereas my Sw Precision Pro, which is needed for FS2002, appears in second position. The basic problem now is that both devices are constantly active in Flight Simulator because there is no way to deactivate the Sw Freestyle Pro in the menu simply by mouse-click. Unimportant? Let's see.

We are at default Meigs runway 36, starting position, the C182S engine is running, with the evening sun almost approaching the horizon and thus enhancing the whole scenery in a fantastic air of color, light and shade. Making a cross check of the panel instruments I realize that the pitch trim indicator is all right, that means it is near neutral in a slightly downward position so that the aircraft should take off in time all by itself after throttling up. While the airport buildings are rushing by more and more quickly, I am about to think what to do next. When I notice that the runway is rapidly nearing its end with the aircraft still firmly stuck to the ground, it is too late: we just end up splashing into the water, doomed to founder.

The lighting of the Cessna 182S, its new landing lights, and the external views with all the details and the fancy shadowing are just fantastic, almost photographic in appearance. Together with the red Cessna Skyhawk C172SP they are by far among the nicest looking Cessnas I've ever seen in FSland. If I press an outside view, the S-key yields a liquid-smooth, soaring spot plane view moving into position behind my Cessna. But note that the elevators are in downward position, which is not displayed anywhere in the main cockpit window, of course.

What has happened? Well, to cut a long story short I finally found out that the elevators had been in max downward position during takeoff. Reviewing the last minute in instant replay I went into spot plane view mode but unfortunately elevator, aileron and rudder positions are not recorded during flight. Finally I spotted the absolutely wrong position of the elevators in normal flight mode. A little movement with my joystick brought them back to neutral position. Wow, I thought, I've got it right again, but a few seconds later the elevators toggled back into max position again. Time for frustration again? Not this time.

A more detailed shot displaying the wrong pitch setting of the elevators that forced the plane to stick to the ground, which was caused by the signals that came from the sensor electronics of Freestyle Pro.

The Cessna C182S cockpit: with its renewed night lighting it is a huge improvement on anything we had before. The pitch trim indicator shows the correct setting, which would enable the plane to takeoff just by itself once enough speed is given, but surprisingly the plane fully splashes into the bay instead.

The reason for this odd behaviour of the elevators was easy to find: as usual the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro was lying on top of the computer when it is not needed. This gamepad has a sensor control unit for steering which can be switched off but which is always active at first after starting or rebooting the computer. The way it lies on the computer then makes it constantly send downward-position signals, and as both devices are active in FS2002 (see above), the elevators of the aircraft are at once forced into a max downward position when FS2002 is started at Meigs default 36 or any other flight situation is loaded later on. The actual setting of the pitch trim control display (Cessna!Pitch_Trim.gau) is correct as can be seen in the screen shot.

That's what it should have looked like: an amazing scene with the sun nearing the horizon and just minutes before the lights went on in Chicago's towering skyscrapers. A De Havilland Dash 8-100 taxiing on the ground in the darkness.

What makes things even worse is the fact that under these circumstances (i.e. while two steering devices are active simultaneously) it sometimes happens that during flight the elevators have the nasty habit of suddenly switching into downward max position, thus dooming the aircraft if you are in the early stages of takeoff or anywhere near the ground.

Going down in a whirl of sparkling water: with its elevators in max down position, the Cessna C182S had no chance of evading the disaster. Watch the reflection of the cockpit night lighting inside the pilot's cabin. Nicely done indeed.

I could avoid all this, of course, by deactivating the Sw Freestyle Pro under Windows or by unplugging it from the computer altogether. However, it would be pretty nagging to do so each time I want to start Flight Simulator, which would force the other users in my household to get it to work again when they have their sessions later. This is the point where we need a fix from Microsoft.

The instant video playback feature is a BIG improvement over FS2000. Thanks to this ace piece of programming in FS2002 many more control settings of the plane are now recorded during the flight, except elevator positions though. So I had to capture this shot in normal flight mode, showing the moment when all of a sudden the elevators toggle into their max downward position.

Opening the calibration dialogue under Windows reveals what is going on here: with the sensor electronic control of the Sw Freestyle Pro being active, the gamepad device constantly sends non-neutral signals to Flight Simulator.

Rightly addressing our friends at Microsoft who have created for us a simulator to render us almost speechless this time: Why don't you just settle this problem too and implement a possibility in the joystick menu to deselect those (gamepad) devices not needed for FS2002?!

The "How To..." question in the header is a rhetorical one this time and remains unanswered, at least for a while, I suppose. Today I just wanted to focus your and MS's attention to this particular problem, being well aware that they do read the web sites and forums to find out how to improve their product for us. That they are willing to do so, well, they have just proved that with their latest sequel to the world's most popular flight simulation software. Needless to say that primarily it is not FS2002 that is the culprit here, and we had it in FS2000 as well. The issue is basically due to the Windows Operating system allowing for two steering devices to be active at the same time, but with a little bit of innovative thinking this could easily be blocked within Flight Simulator. I don't see why this should be so difficult to do, and I hopefully wished they could get this sorted out, too, in the oncoming patch for FS2002.

Till then happy fiddling!
...and happy flying as well, of course!

Ulrich Klein
huki.klein@t-online.de