I just had to bin my Logitech Flight Stick as it seemed to have a fault that was starting to interfere or conflict with the mouse. The main fire button hadn’t worked for ages anyway. Before I try and sweet talk the missus into letting me get a new one, was wondering if anyone has managed MSFS2020 and to some extent FSX just using a pad rather than a stick? Personally I can see the biggest issue being fine control particularly when manoeuvring the big jets. Interested to hear what people’s experiences are.
Thanks, I will give it a try. TBH having a gamepad and flightstick both plugged in is a bit of a recipe for conflict anyway. In this case the joystick was stopping the mouse working in BIOS and causing the camera to spin continually in Mass Effect LE.
I tried using the keyboard to fly at one point. It's rather awkward! I've got a joystick and prefer using the controller. Msfs is setup for use with the controller, the left thumb stick works well for controlling the planes, the yoke or whateverits called, pretty much like a joystick. And the top buttons control the rudder. The right thumb stick you can use for moving the camera. There's no real need to use the mouse, unless you want to move the camera around quickly.
I use an Xbox controller for flight sim and don't have any issues, but I'm also more of a casual player and expect an 'arcade' experience to ooh and ahh at the scenery. It works, but you're not going to have as much precision control (especially with the rudder) as you would a dedicated flight rig. I've also tried playing the old X-Wing Alliance and TIE Fighter games with a controller, and again, it works but just doesn't have the same feel as a stick.
Never tried a console controller in any earnest capacity (though I did actually briefly experiment with a GameCube controller in FSX just to verify everything worked was working on it when I was adding PC drivers at one point). I did however use the mouse yoke option in my early days on FSX, and honestly worked very well, to the point I actually had zero intentions of asking or getting joystick even though I was aware they existed. But I received one as a surprise gift probably a few months after getting it, and obviously didn't go back. Nonetheless though, would actually say it's still a perfectly good option for beginners, or as a backup, have a easy time imagining a controller being just as good, if not better given the wider variety of inputs available. If nothing else it's gonna at least 100 times better than piloting the aircraft with the numpad. I for the life of me can't comprehend how anyone could control a aircraft in MSFS well with just the keyboard back in the day.
