Simulator controls discussion

I'm new to FS software so I have no FSX or whatever experience. So now that after a month's experience I've gotten some grasp of how I want my flight controls to be laid out I'm putting things together.

First off, I use an xbox controller for all my camera stuff and have deleted all those commands from the keyboard.

Next thing to mention, is that I bought a remote usb keypad where I'm placing all the autopilot stuff (although I haven't yet found where the Garmin 1000 VS and FLC buttons are so that I can program them into the keypad).

($11.00 keypad --> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E8TTWZ2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

I learned to fly in a Citabrea so I prefer a stick, so I'm using a Thrustmaster T16000M stick and it works great for me, I have the left six base buttons set to control flaps, spoilers and speed brakes (as soon as the sim supports speed brakes) and as yet the right six buttons are unassigned. Pitch trim is on the two buttons left and right at the top, cockpit and external view are on the top front and rear buttons.

I have moved the drone select key to the tilde key (left of #1) and cleared most of the keyboard keys so they are available for new functions as I come to need them. (IMO the Asbo settings are counter intuitive and mostly useless)

But as I do all this, it occurs to me that I'm reinventing the wheel. Do any of the veterans of past generations of flight simulators have any advice for those of us who are new to the game?

Almost 400 views and no comments.

That's what I get for posting in the "after the update my system crashed" forum.

Almost 400 views and no comments.

 

That's what I get for posting in the "after the update my system crashed" forum.

Or perhaps not many folks have that stick or have ideas for setup. And as to keypads and such, that's beyond my ken. And I certainly don't know what a "drone select key" is, though I don't have the new sim, either.

I learned to fly in a Citabrea so I prefer a stick, so I'm using a Thrustmaster T16000M stick and it works great for me

I learned to fly in an Aeronca Chief (has a yoke), but I also have a lot of time in Citabrias and many others with a stick and I definitely MUCH prefer a stick (it's more natural to fly with), so I'm using a Thrustmaster Warthog stick/throttle and it works great for me, but my setup probably won't help you much. In any case, it's set up for FSX and P3D.

Maybe someone will chime in yet...

You probably have a hat for moving the view around in cockpit view (up down left right and 'shift' up for IN and 'shift' down for Out.

What is neat is the the drone view commands only work when you are in drone view (a.k.a. showcase view on the overhead menu). So you can put all the drone's flying MOVEMENTS on the same hat as the cockpit eyepoint view directions.

In other words your hat goes up down left right and your eyepoint view moves those directions in cockpit view.

The very same hat can go up down left right and your drone's flying movements move in those directions in drone view.

One 4 way hat does 8 commands automatically.

The drone and cockpit eyepoint movement commands are translate right translate left, increase height, and decrease height. or something like that.

For move view IN and OUT , just use a shift key and the same up and down hat movements. The 'shift' key is just two keys pressed at once. For instance Control Spacebar is a shifted command with the Control key being the 'shift' key on a keyboard and the spacebar is the command key.

You can have a 'shift' key on a flight stick too. Just make one of the buttons on the stick your special dedicated 'shift' key. Then for instance if that shift key is button 1, then button 1 and hat up at the same time can send a move IN command, whereas a hat up by itself sends a move UP command instead of IN.

So that one four way hat plus the dedicated shift button can easily do 12 commands: up, down, right, left, in, out for eye movement in cockpit.

And fly up, down, right, left, in, out in drone (showcase) view.

Nothing hard to remember move hat up is UP and shift move hat up is IN and so forth.

See, my 4 button on my flightstick is my shift key (its a so called pinkie flipper button).

And my four way hat is buttons...11

..............................................14.....12

...................................................13

So this one hat plus the one shift button does all 12 of these commands which are dirt simple to remember.

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I don't have a "pinkie switch", all I use the hat switch for is the external view, but I just made a profound discovery about how I want to use the hat switch.

I now have set the switch in the front on top which resembles a trigger, to switch between cockpit and external views (there is such a command available). Next, I program the forward / backward positions of the hat switch to "load custom camera view"; one of those puts me in the cockpit with a full view out the windshield and the other gives me a view of the instruments. The custom camera views will remain assigned to numbers 1-9 (and control 1-9 to set them). Once in the cockpit via the trigger switch, I can get any exact view I want by using the game controller. Then just a click on the trigger switch and I'm back on the external view. The right and left hat switch positions look right and left (but I have reversed the commands to make it intuitive).

Game controller settings:

Right hand four position control the views: (look up, down. right, left).

Middle four position controls camera position: (up, down, right, left).

The left four position switch I only use to control forward and backward camera position.

The drone settings on the game controller are similar but there I also use the front flippers to control yaw and rotation. I use the game controller Y and A buttons for landing gear; the button labeled "select" I use for the pause toggle.

As I said above, I use a separate num pad for autopilot stuff; one discovery I made while digging into this is that the altitude and heading bugs can be set this way so that I no longer need to use the mouse to get the pointer exactly in the right place of those knobs. This is a great help.