Hello and welcome to the Flightgear forum,
I've tried various joysticks and a couple of yokes for Flightgear, with feedback from a multi-engine commercial pilot who's also an advanced sim user and we actually cycled together the same hardware, for a consumer level yoke there's only a couple of options, the CH Products and Saitek,
While the Saitek is a more polished product with some bells and whistles, it was surprisingly the CH Products that offers the most precision and control, unlike the Saitek which has a known issue with sensor reading near the center[1][2][3], with the CH Products the elevator movement through the center is predictable, throttle, prop, and mixture levers all within finger reach and have really nice tactile feedback from small inputs, it's that simple there's no need for additional pieces of expensive hardware on your desk for those.
With yokes you have to buy additional rudder pedals, But I can't really suggest on the rudder pedals purchase as I've only had Saitek pedals, two of them eventually suffer from toe-brakes spring failure after heavy use where the pedals will eventually start to decompress and tip over actuating the brakes in their resting position, I won't buy any more hardware from that brand.
For joysticks I've had several, from entry-level to enthusiast, in my mind there are two paths, if you prefer to have a joystick with a twist rudder, the most bang for your buck all-rounder would be Thrustmaster's T.16000, these use the same sensors found on their more expensive 200$(stick-only price) Warthog joystick but with a much more reasonable spring for civilian aircraft use, these also can come bundled from Thrustmaster in an "FCS" package with some HOTAS throttles for $99.99, plug-and-play with Flightgear, although they have mushy buttons and control is nothing to write home about, it has very little to complain about at that price range,
On the other hand if you want to actually have fun in sim, I would recommend VKB-Sim, forget about fixed-wing aircraft, these are precise enough you'd actually start hovering helicopters with little practice, although these are not plug-and-play, and you have to do some assembly on arrival and try out a few included springs, they also won't come with a hand twist rudder which i haven't found to be sufficient anyway, if you want to de-crab and land on your marks without picking bad habbits for your flying in real life, you'll want rudder pedals.
-Hamza
[1]
Saitek Pro Flight Yoke Dead Zone Fix[2]
Are Saitek yoke problems are solved?[3]
Saitek Pro Flight Yoke Uneven Deadzones