HOW TO GUIDE | MSFS | Setting Up Peripherals

[Music] so hey welcome to the sim hangar my name is mark the sim hanger for all things flight sim related and welcome also to the second in my how to guide series of videos designed to help you navigate and find your way around the recently released microsoft flight simulator if you missed part one click on the link above or there'll also be a link at the end of this video today we're going to be looking at how do we calibrate setup and configure controllers for use in microsoft flight simulator i'm going to be using a joystick as an example but the process and principles apply to any peripheral being a yolk rudder and so on the joystick that i'm using for demonstration purposes is the speed link phantom hawk and the reason i've chosen this although microsoft flight simulator recognizes it as a peripheral it's not pre-configured or pre-set up in any way so we're starting from scratch it also comes with all the normal array of features such as multiple buttons it has a throttle access as well as all the normal movements one would expect from a joystick including a twist rotation axis that we can use for the rudder well we got quite a lot to get through so let's get started [Music] as microsoft flight simulator is a windows-based program when connecting a peripheral for the first time it's always best to check that windows recognizes that there is a peripheral connected in addition and surprisingly microsoft flight simulator does not have access to calibration within the program it needs to be done within windows so before jumping into the simulator let's see how we do this from your desktop click on the magnifying glass to bring up the search bar and in the search box type in control panel the control panel app will appear click on that once in the control panel we're looking for devices and printers click on that once in devices and printers along the top will be the peripherals attached in windows i have connected my joystick through the usb port but no joystick is showing but it is recognizing a pc game controller is attached using the right mouse button click on that and it'll bring up a sub menu click on game controller settings it'll show a list of peripherals attached choose pc game controller and then properties windows will then display the properties for that game controller we can test out the buttons and the various axes available it's important at this point that we recognize how many axes we've got available on our controller because we'll need this info for setup in microsoft flight simulator so in this instance we can see we've got the x y axis which is the general movement forward backwards and side to side for the joystick we've also got the z-axis which is the throttle control and the z-rotation which is the twist function available on this joystick if you want to calibrate click settings and then calibrate this will bring up the calibration wizard click next and follow the on-screen prompts to calibrate your joystick as you move from axis to axis make sure that the movement is exercised three or four times to ensure it catches the full range of each access this will ensure that your access is as calibrated as possible once you've completed press a button and it will take you on to the next axis this one is for the throttle a common mistake made by those simmers not too familiar with the difference between buttons and axes often causes confusion and difficulties with setup and i'll be demonstrating the difference in the sim a little later on now we've completed the calibration we can click finish and this will take us back to our test tab here we can check that everything is working as expected this is also a great place to check if you got any faulty buttons once you're finished click on apply and we're done well now that we've got that covered let's fire up microsoft flight simulator and i'll see you in sim [Music] during configuration we need to check that the joystick is functioning as intended so let's get into the zoom and in a suitable aircraft on the startup welcome tab let's choose world map and from the top left hand corner let's click on aircraft which aircraft you choose will depend on what type of aircraft you want to fly i would suggest something simple and straightforward if you're configuring for a yoke something like this cessna 152 as i've got a joystick i'm going to choose something that's stick controlled and i think the robin dr 400 will do just nicely aircraft chosen back to the world map let's select an airport nothing too busy as we'll be jumping in and out of the sim i've chosen kilo papa alpha golf penguich let's zoom in to see the details i'm going to choose runway 36 as my departure point as i want good visibility i'm going to click on the flight conditions multiplayer and air traffic control off weather is preset i'm going to set it to about midday and i'm also going to choose clear skies as we want good visibility to check the aircraft once that's done we can close and let's go fly on the runway at panguitch with the engines running because of the altitude just over 7000 feet i'm just going to push the throttle in a little bit a little bit more power about 14 there we go just so the engine doesn't foul and stop on us i want to keep the engines running so that once we've set up our joystick we can go for a test flight i've chosen panguitch airport simply because there's not a lot around we can jump in and out fairly quickly with no delay whilst enjoying some nice scenery at the same time panguitch airport or kilo papa alpha golf of course is in utah in the states and my subscribers will recall this was my departure point on a recent video small airports i'm now going to turn off the sound so it's not a distraction and to ensure you can hear me if you're following along this step by step of course you won't need to do this escape and then to the general tab sound i'm just going to the master turn that all the way down apply and save and then resume and we're back at panguitch but this time with no sound we're ready to go now so let's hit that escape key to bring up the menus the simulator will present us with three options general assistance and controls click on controls we're now in the main control sub-menus here we can see what controllers are attached what configuration profile we're using default or one we've made ourselves and of course this is where we can configure and set up any or all of our controllers the top bar shows a list of peripherals attached it's currently showing the mouse if we click on another one keyboard it'll bring up that one below the name of the peripheral is the profile being used default is the microsoft flight simulator standard profile other profiles or ones i've set up myself the filter is set to assigned by default this is our joystick and we can see nothing set up whereas on the flight rudder pedals we can see the brake and rudder access have been configured turning to the left hand menus there is an expand and collapse tab to make navigation easier this allows you to look at just the main heading categories or each individual possible configuration likewise you can change the filter changing from assigned to wall will show all possible configurations available in the simulator you also have the option to change the filter to essentials essentials are what the simulator think you are most likely wanting to configure this is for the xbox controller for example which i use for camera control and by scrolling through it shows which items are already configured so in summary we can look at expanded or collapsed menus as well as filter by assigned all or essentials let's now have a quick look at the preset manager this allows you to create multiple profiles for individual controllers maybe one for ga and one for airline flying etc you can add duplicate edit delete reset and bin any of the profiles by the default one good thing is the default menus can't be overwritten you can change profiles in sim the flight rudder pedals there's my setup and now here's the default just remember to hit apply and save before going back into your sim a good example of a pre-configured item is the honeycomb alpha flight control yoke all the switches and buttons are pre-numbered and using the search by select an input you can ascertain what that configuration setting is this of course can be changed here's another example using my xbox controller if i select the y button it will show me all configurations that contain the y button for the gamepad let's choose another key the b key and there again are all the different configurations containing the b key i can also search by input if i highlight the search bar and press a key the a key for example it shows everything pre-configured for the a key and lastly and perhaps most usefully the top search bar you can just type in what you're looking for for example let's type in throttle we're using the oil filter so show everything to do with throttle if we now change that to essentials it shows a more condensed view and if we changed it to a signed it would only show those that have been pre-configured we're back to our joystick tab and let's start configuring and setting this up quick check to make sure we're on the pc game controller tab we are now in the search bar i'm gonna type in elevator the elevator controls the pitch of the aircraft or the nose up or down attitude which in effect is pushing forward on the joystick column or pulling back on the column the filter has automatically switched to all and it's showing the elevator in two categories trimming and primary we want primary under primary control surfaces there is elevator access elevator down and elevator up we're not going to choose elevator up or elevated down as these are designed for button control not an axis so choosing elevator access we're gonna click in the box the top box there says start scanning we're going to click on that and push the joystick forward and it picks up that as joystick axis y then to confirm we need to click validate once we're validated the simulator picks up that this is a different profile and as mentioned before the default profile cannot be overwritten and we get a chance to rename it something else for easy identification i've chosen simhanger and that profile name is now reflected under the pc game controller we can now move our joystick column forward and backwards and yes we can see there's a response there after each change remember to click apply and save let's now jump back into the aircraft and see whether or not it's worked that's our control column and let's now try and move it yes it's moving forwards and backwards exactly as it should do i've got nose up and nose down pitch that's working just fine we can carry on with our configuration let's hit escape back to controls and back to our sub menu we can now see under the pc game controller sim hanger profile there's something configured and there it is elevators if you find your controls are working in reverse you can always click the reverse access box let's now configure the roll or bank of the aircraft this will be with the joystick column moving side to side let's type in aileron into the search bar once again we're presented with both primary and secondary flight controls the bank or roll is a primary flight control so we're gonna be looking for the aileron access and not the aileron left or right option once again we're gonna click in the box and we're gonna move the joystick column side to side and there it's picked up axis x so once again we validate it's under the pc game controller sim hanger profile so that's all okay the axis seems to be working fine apply and save let's jump back into the cockpit and make sure it's working as expected we had the forward and back motion and now we should have the side to side and yes we've got the side to side in fact we can move the column almost in a circle that's perfect just what we wanted hitting escape takes us back to our control section and we'll click on that and we're back to our sub menu we can do a quick check we'll click on flight control surfaces primary control surfaces and there's the aileron and the elevator that's great let's carry on and configure the rudder so let's type in rudder the rudder options come up and there is the rudder access so once again clicking the box start scanning and i'm going to twist the joystick column to record the movement validate now exercise the z-axis and yes we can see that it's moving fine that's what we want you know the drill now apply and save let's go back and see if the rudder is working back to the cockpit and we can twist the joystick and the brake pedal should be moving side to side creating the yaw yes that's working fine let's go to the external view and make sure it's all working that's the rudder looking good those are the elevators and now the ailerons on the wings as we move one control we're getting a little bit of chatter elsewhere on other control surfaces that's sensitivity and we'll sort that out just now once we've finished configuring our joystick back to our configuration window and we've still got one access to configure and that is the throttle access so let's type in throttle and the throttle options are now shown i now want to take a moment to demonstrate a common problem where an axis is configured incorrectly and we know it should be configured to throttle one axis as indicated it's easy for those not too familiar with configuring controllers and in this case configure it to throttle one increase clicking on the box i'm now going to push that slider forward and it picks up that movement i'm going to validate and now i'm going to go to throttle decrease i'm going to move the slider backwards validate and let's see what happens apply and save and let's go back into the cockpit and see what the impact is my throttle is currently at zero now at halfway three quarters and now fully in and suddenly the throttle jumps in now pulling back all the way and it jumps all the way out so i am controlling my throttles but i've either got no throttle throttle zero or i've got throttle at a hundred percent and i can't control anything in between so in a nutshell that's how not to configure an access so let's correct that i'm going to clear the current input validate and that's now gone and we're going to clear the other one exactly the same process clear current input that takes it away and we're back to where we started once again let's type in throttle and let's choose the throttle one axis now moving the throttle and it's picked up that as an axis validate we can now move the slider to check that it is working correctly which it is that all looks great no problems there let's apply and save and go back into the cockpit and see if we have better control now moving the throttle slowly forward and i've got graduated control in and out that's perfect full throttle gradually tap off yep we've got full control on our throttles we've now completed the configuration of all four axes of our joystick ailerons elevator rudder and throttle let's now set up some buttons or switches let's start off with something simple and straightforward the parking brake some of the ga aircraft the parking brakes are hard to get at so it is recommended in the search by name let's type in parking brake and we're presented with two options toggle parking brakes and set parking brakes as this is a button control we want toggle parking brake so click in the box i'm going to press a button on my joystick number three validate as always apply and save and then let's go and see if it's worked let's go back to the cockpit let's now check we've configured it correctly that's the parking brake and now let's press the button parking brake off parking brake on seems to be working fine so i can now toggle my parking brake on and off back to the configuration panel let's set up a few more useful options and the next one i'm going to set up is flaps and unlike the break option we see we're presented with a whole range of different options we want to increase or decrease our flaps in stages on each button press so we're not going to choose retract flaps or extend flaps as that will put the flaps all the way up or all the way down we're going to choose increase flaps and decrease flap so let's start with increase flaps and i'm going to select a button on my joystick and it's scanning i'll now press it number 10 validate and now i'm going to go to decrease flaps and choose another button so now i have one button i can use to progressively increase and another button to decrease flaps to allow for a more controlled flight another recommended setting for the joystick or yoke is your trim settings so once again to the search bar and let's type in trim and we're going to set the trim for our elevators so that we can keep a straight and level flight without having to constantly pull back or push forward on the joystick for elevator trim we see a number of different options come up and this is to accommodate different controllers this one for example would be used for the satech trim wheel it's a wheel control as found in an aircraft and is an axis but we're not configuring that today the elevate access could also be configured to this control if it was a standard slider type control but that's not what we're after we're configuring two buttons nose up and nose down is exactly what we want and as you can see i've already configured two buttons four nose up and nose down multiple presses of the buttons will gradually increase the nose down or nose up effect we're not done quite yet there's one more important action i need to configure and that's breaks so in the search bar let's type in breaks with the filter set to all we've already set the parking brakes but i'm going to need some wheel brakes for slowing down when i land let's have a quick look if we press a key that has already been allocated to another function we don't want one key doing two different things and the sim comes up and lets you know it's already allocated you can clear the current output or in my case select a different key validate and we're good to go back to the cockpit then let's check our button presses for flap control flaps increasing and flaps decreasing that's working just fine let's have a quick look at the wings and check the flaps again going down progressively that's it and coming up in stages that's perfect just what we wanted now let's check our all important wheel brakes are working let's take off the parking brake and now we'll advance the throttles a little bit so we can get moving and then we can check the key press make sure that we stop now starting to move pressing the key and yes we're stopping excellent it's actually a trigger button on the joystick that i'm using for the brakes nice and easy to get at and finally let's check our trim that's the trim wheel there and that's the trim indicator now pressing nose up and the indicator is moving and nose down and the indicator is moving that's all good i'm just pressing the key and holding it before taking her up on a test flight there's one more thing i want to do views i want to be able to look out of the window so i've typed views in the search bar and in microsoft flight simulator there's a massive often confusing array of different views available as we're in the cockpit we obviously want cockpit views i'm going to use my polvor hat switch and i want quick view left and right for the right now press the pov to the right that looks right validate and now again for the left exactly the same process but pressing the pov key to the left and the arrow indicates correctly once again back to the cockpit so we can see whether or not our views are functioning as expected looking left perfect and now looking right that's working just fine and before going up for a test flight there's one last thing that we need to consider [Music] and that is the sensitivity of the controls we've set them up all the sensitivities are currently at default sensitivity settings only apply to access controlled functions if a small movement in your controller causes a rapid and quick movement in the actual control in the aircraft as is the case here you can see that the controls are snapping to the left and right at times this is going to make flying very difficult as the aircraft movements will be exaggerated it'll be hard to keep us straight on the runway and the aircraft could bank aggressively left or right each controller is different and may need different sensitivity settings let's go up to the sensitivity bar and let's click on that default settings show no dead zone and sensitivity at zero so all the axes are set to linear by that i mean it's a straight line the x and y axis is the joystick movement the z-axis is the throttle and the r axis is the twist you'll also note that this controller is moving slightly we call this chatter this is caused by the potentiometer or other feedback device receiving a signal even though the joystick's not moving depending on the degree of chatter or movement will depend whether or not the sim gets feedback even though you're not touching the joystick my joysticks had quite a bit of wear and tear and i'm not surprised to see it's got a bit of chatter we'll look how to reduce chatter in a minute but first turning to the sensitivity settings the sensitivity settings move from 0 to plus 100 and to -100 the x-axis sensitivity has been moved to 94. and you can see the line is no longer linear what this means is a small amount of movement will be a big input into the control in the aircraft let's experiment now with the y-axis and again we can adjust the sensitivity we can turn the sensitivity all the way up very sensitive controls and all the way down low sensitivity means a fairly large movement in the joystick for a small input into the simulator turning the sensitivity into the plus range is exactly the opposite a small amount of movement of the joystick a large impact in the aircraft we don't really want either of those extremes so let's adjust the y-axis for something more realistic i'm turning the sensitivity down to give me more finer control to allow for just small movements that looks more realistic that's worth a try now i've got a little bit of chatter on this axis so i need to just adjust the dead zone slightly you see it flattens the line out so no input is recorded nearly all controllers need a little bit of dead zone to stop crossfeed dead zones are typically between two and five percent mine are slightly larger because bear in mind i'm using an old well used joystick and it's certainly not top of the range a bigger dead zone for the x-axis because we had a lot of chatter there and now adjusting the sensitivity once again i'm reducing the sensitivity of that axis the z-axis is my throttle i'm going to leave that linear but i am going to adjust the twist excess for my rudder i've got a bit of chatter again on that axis so i'm going to turn that down make the dead zone fairly large again remember this is because the joystick's old i'm also going to turn the sensitivity quite a way down i want fine control and small inputs for the rudder there we go that looks okay it's about time to jump in the aircraft let's go fly flaps one notch down for takeoff there we go let's now take off the parking brake there we are using my button control for that as i did for my flaps now adjusting my trim for takeoff now using my slide axis let's slowly push in the throttle let the revs build up we're now starting to move i'm just testing out my rudder with slight input left and right to make sure i've got fine enough control that feels quite good throttle all the way in and let's go speed is building nicely i'm now going to pull back gently on the joystick raise the nose we're up i might need to adjust that sensitivity just a little bit and now i'm going to gently bank over to the left avoiding the high ground on the right nice gentle bank good control i'm happy with that one eye of course on my airspeed at all times and now time to raise the flaps and the flaps are up and we can now start to build speed because we're at such high altitude i just want to have a gentle climb something between two and 400 feet per minute i'm not going to be climbing very high today anyway taking my hands off the control you see the nose dipped down and now adjusting the trim giving it a bit of nose up there we go perhaps i was a little too much a little bit of nose down yes that's working nicely nose up again i'm happy i've got good control of the trim we're just going to do a quick pattern here so we're just going to climb a few hundred feet beautiful default scenery in utah we can now test the look control that we configured that's all working just nicely i wonder what the fishing's like down there i've now adjusted the trim control to give me a very shallow climb and the aircraft is flying itself i want to configure the controls so that we have just little inputs onto the joystick or yoke rather than continually having back pressure or forward pressure let's test out some of the other settings let's do a rudder turn very nice and let's bank hard over to the right and that's reacting as it should let's just test those rudders again we can see the pedals moving up and down there very nice i'm able to control the roll or bank of the aircraft with small inputs into the ailerons on base flaps fully down and on final approach for runway 36 at panguitch airport coming back on the throttle airspeed now starting to wash off small inputs into my controls to align with the runway i'm a little bit low but no problem i can just ease the throttle forward slightly just to give me a little bit more power to take me over the threshold we're down and now pressing the wheel brakes just to slow us down that's working nicely and we're gonna turn around and taxi back and park up an opportunity to test the controls again that's the rudder which is my steering there's the elevators they're working fine and now the ailerons all looking good well today we've just covered the basics there's a wide range of other controls switches and functions that can be configured to your controller in microsoft flight simulator and most of all have fun well that concludes our calibration setup and configuration of peripherals in the simulator if there's something that you would like to see covered in my how to series please drop the details in the comments below i'll take a look and include it if i can i hope you found this useful and informative don't forget to hit the like button if you enjoyed the video it does help me as well as subscribe if you want to see more of this type of thing thank you very much for joining me see you all again very soon and bye for now [Music] you

Channel: SimHanger Flight Simulation

Views: 36,309

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Id: iIpMeVYxkdk

Length: 35min 16sec (2116 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020