Controls issues

[namosca]

Hi, all.

I am new to flight gear and I am having some issues regarding my joystick. I will start with the most important issues first

1) The controls for aileron and rudder are too sensitive, so its very hard for me to control the plane. I have a Thrustmaster Hotas X and I don't have the same issue on XPlane 9 and 10. In XPlane the joystick sensitivities are non-linear and allow me to put lower sensitivity around the center of the joystick and greater sensitivities on its edge. I believe thats why I feel it more stable, as I often am using the joystick around its center.

Question: How can I do the same on Flight Gear?

2) When I turn the airplane, the camera somehow moves automatically in order for me to see where I am going. This is a nice feature, but the swinging movement that its generating is making me dizzy... After I quit FlightGear and walk around my home or streets I feel very disoriented.

Question: What is the name of this feature and how can I disable it?

3) When I leave FlightGear, I find that my joystick settings are different from when I left it: Some axis which were reverted on the previous session now are un-reverted, so I often crash my plane
Question: How to be sure that my joystick settings are preserved among different starts of flight gear?

Im using Linux

IF you cannot answer all the questions, answering the first of them would be most helpful.

I searched the forum before for "joystick" keyword to avoid making duplicated question, but the search engine didnt show any results, as this is a too common keyword.

Thanks for your support and sorry if I'm making a repeated question...

[TheEagle]

On number three I'm a little stumped, so I'm not going to say anything on that.
Number two is easy: That's called Dynamic view movement, and you can disable it in Menu -> View -> Cockpit view.
Number one: Lower sensitivity in the center and higher at the edges would be very complicated to do AFAIK - but it would be possible to make the joystick less sensitive in it's complete range. For that, find the config file of your joystick in $FGDATA/Input/Joystick, open it in a text editor and decrease the <factor> tags numbers - they should all be reading 1 (or -1), so for half the sensitivity replace them by 0.5 (or -0.5) each.

[namosca]

On number three I'm a little stumped, so I'm not going to say anything on that.
Number two is easy: That's called Dynamic view movement, and you can disable it in Menu -> View -> Cockpit view.
Number one: Lower sensitivity in the center and higher at the edges would be very complicated to do AFAIK - but it would be possible to make the joystick less sensitive in it's complete range. For that, find the config file of your joystick in $FGDATA/Input/Joystick, open it in a text editor and decrease the <factor> tags numbers - they should all be reading 1 (or -1), so for half the sensitivity replace them by 0.5 (or -0.5) each.

Hello there !

Thanks for your ideas!! The dynamic view movement solved my problem, thanks!

Regarding the joystick: After some trials, I found out that playing with sensitivity made things worse. I went back to XPlane and saw on their graphical interface that any small joystick movement becomes an immediate reaction on the aircraft model, but in flight gear a small movement made nothing, and only after a big movement it became a real movement in the yoke, but then the reaction was too exaggerated.

I found other post in which they insert the tag <dead-band> and I set it to zero and it solved my problem perfectly , like you see below

<axis n="3">
<desc type="string">Rudder</desc>
<dead-band type="double">0</dead-band>
<binding>
<command type="string">property-scale</command>
<property type="string">/controls/flight/rudder</property>
<factor type="double">1</factor>
<offset type="double">0</offset>
<power type="double">1</power>
</binding>
</axis>

Weird thing is that I assumed it would be zero by default, but with my experience now I am convinced that it is not.. funny.

[Ysop]

Linux likes to introduce its own deadband, which means calibrating at least on Ubuntu 20.04 https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=39958&p=395351&hilit=linux+deadband#p395351.

[pb321]

I had an overly sensitive yoke until I found this information:

If you just want to change rudder sensitivity you can use "sensitivity reduction" which you find in the joystick axis configuration in the joystick configuration menu. Might be easier. Adapt to your liking.

The sensitivity reduction setting is not prominent, so it can be easily overlooked. It might be of help to you, too.

[ludomotico]

If you are already satisfied with the setup of your joystick, go for it. But if you are still looking for a way "to put lower sensitivity around the center of the joystick and greater sensitivities on its edge", I believe this is exactly what the power setting in your XML does.

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Bindings#property-scale

Documentation suggest that you can use a decimal number for power (for example, 1.5), but there is a thread warning that only integer numbers seem to be accepted. Try 2 for a start.

Regarding your third issue, FlightGear identifies the XML it has to load by matching the name of the joystick as reported by the operating system with the names of the available XML files. Could it be that there are two different drivers in your Linux fighting each other, and your joystick changes name every time?

[MariuszXC]

Just note, that using x^2 (or any even power) will result in missing the sign.