List of all important/essential keybinds for HOTAS?

[beo]

Hi,
I must say i am totally overwhelmed by the amount of plane functions but also i know it can be enjoyed very easily on a gamepad. I bought a joystick and have throttle coming soon and was thinking of what all needs to be bound so i dont have to use my mouse or keyboard and can use all of aircraft's functions with ease.
Is there a list of all essentials that need to be bound?
What do you have and what do you ignore on control panel/throttle + stick?
Thank you

[Twelvefield]

Everyone has their preferences, and each setup has its own priorities, so it's hard to pin down an exact list.

However, the main stick will have elevators and ailerons. Twist for rudder. Throttle for throttle. All of these are axes.

I like having a couple of buttons for flaps extend/retract by increments, a toggle for landing gear, a couple of buttons for electric trim up & down by increments. Many people like using the hat for looking around, I use it to change views +/- dashboard positions. I like the thumb button to toggle ATC off and on, and since there are no weapons I use the trigger to accept ATC Command #1 since that's the one you will take 90% of the time.

[beo]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Everyone has their preferences, and each setup has its own priorities, so it's hard to pin down an exact list.

However, the main stick will have elevators and ailerons. Twist for rudder. Throttle for throttle. All of these are axes.

I like having a couple of buttons for flaps extend/retract by increments, a toggle for landing gear, a couple of buttons for electric trim up & down by increments. Many people like using the hat for looking around, I use it to change views +/- dashboard positions. I like the thumb button to toggle ATC off and on, and since there are no weapons I use the trigger to accept ATC Command #1 since that's the one you will take 90% of the time.

Thanks for making time to typing this, appreciate it.
Now the basic controls to fly I have set up, such as pitch, yaw and roll, also i use rudder on twist, have zoom, point of interest, change cameras etc.
The only other binds i have set up and use are:
landing gear
flaps
parking brake
wheel brake
trim up/down
and thats about it, I am sure theres plenty more that should be used, I will go through the ATC settings as I have never used these and i know i should so thanks for that
There are a lot of confusing binds that I got no idea if i should use or when, such as air brake, spoilers, mixture, reverse thrust, disarm XXX etc.
Any idea on these?

[Twelvefield]

Not knowing your controller limits what I can tell you, as every controller has a different button layout. However, apart from ATC, you have the basics. From there on, it mostly comes down to flying for a while and realizing, dang, I really should use a button to do this. Then you go in and search out in MSFS the function that you want a button for and map it.

Spoilers are as good an example as any. Not all aircraft have spoilers, so depending on what you fly will dictate which controls you map. I have a button for dumping water ballast, partly because I like gliders and partly because I think it's funny to drop stale water on people from the sky. Only the the tiniest minority of flight simmers would slave an entire button to that control.

Mixture is a bit different. It's very important for prop aircraft but not important for jets. It's best mapped to an axis rather than buttons, but people make do with whatever they have.

That leads me to another thought, and this goes in two parts: either you start scrounging things that have a USB connection and experimenting to see if they can be a controller in MSFS (examples include racing wheels, wah-wah pedals for guitars, and even a stenographer pad, all of which do work!), or else you start buying dedicated controllers like a Honeycomb Bravo that has six levers you can map plus a bunch of switches and knobs. Or, you can find cheap controllers for sale at Goodwill and kitbash them into making your own controllers. Or, you can adapt tablets and smartphones into touchscreen MFDs, the choices are limited only by your creativity, patience, and budget.

[beo]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Not knowing your controller limits what I can tell you, as every controller has a different button layout. However, apart from ATC, you have the basics. From there on, it mostly comes down to flying for a while and realizing, dang, I really should use a button to do this. Then you go in and search out in MSFS the function that you want a button for and map it.

Spoilers are as good an example as any. Not all aircraft have spoilers, so depending on what you fly will dictate which controls you map. I have a button for dumping water ballast, partly because I like gliders and partly because I think it's funny to drop stale water on people from the sky. Only the the tiniest minority of flight simmers would slave an entire button to that control.

Mixture is a bit different. It's very important for prop aircraft but not important for jets. It's best mapped to an axis rather than buttons, but people make do with whatever they have.

That leads me to another thought, and this goes in two parts: either you start scrounging things that have a USB connection and experimenting to see if they can be a controller in MSFS (examples include racing wheels, wah-wah pedals for guitars, and even a stenographer pad, all of which do work!), or else you start buying dedicated controllers like a Honeycomb Bravo that has six levers you can map plus a bunch of switches and knobs. Or, you can find cheap controllers for sale at Goodwill and kitbash them into making your own controllers. Or, you can adapt tablets and smartphones into touchscreen MFDs, the choices are limited only by your creativity, patience, and budget.

Thank you that makes sense totally, well I was hoping i would have more than enough with the 2 flight pieces i have bought which is VKB gladiator NXT premium & Virpil Mongoose CM3 Throttle. On top of that I have 2 mice, 1 xbox gamepad, keyboard, webcam, T-LCM racing pedals, H pattern shifter and Handbrake :D But i ll try to stick to the dedicated throttle + stick and maybe keyboard when needed

[Twelvefield]

Those are very nice controllers, you should be able to map most of your functions to those, and certainly all of the important ones. The XBOX controller works really well with the drone controls, I have a setup for that although I personally am not a drone flyer much. The drill is you fly with the plane using your HOTAS and then pop out the drone and kit around with it using the XBOX.

You could program the shifter as a switchbox, since that's all it's doing. I did that for a while with a TH8A shifter.