Do you need a hotas?

[Rune Scimmy]

Title,
Can this game be played on either kb+m or controller without any loss in ability?

Thanks

[reuben360]

I currently play kb+m. Been wanting to get a hotas for this game thou.

[Hotel Trivago]

You can and people will tell you that they prefer it but I'd say that a stick is essential; feels very half baked otherwise.

[IxianMace]

The game is perfectly playable with keyboard and mouse. If you're going to use keyboard and mouse to fly; however, I'd strongly suggest you use the game's inbuilt mouse-flight with the invert mouse flight pitch option enabled, as this will give you the most natural experience flying an aircraft with the mouse similar to how it would work if you were using a flightstick.

There is one aspect of flight control I'd like to point out, though. There doesn't seem to be a way to use the mouse to control the rudder, and using the keyboard to control the rudder can result in some awkward movement outside of flying rotary-wing aircraft.

[Volan]

I have hotas and rudder pedals. But I really just use a joystick and keyboard. I'd recommend getting a basic joystick, but you can totally use keyboard and mouse. It's fairly accessible that way.

[Seinekar]

Its perfectly playable with a controller. I put a tons of hours playing with controller (and using kb+mouse eventually to navigate the map screen or menus) Later I got a HOTAS. (A basic one, Thurstmaster X, works pretty fine)

Hotas is cool, but not needed. In fact at first it may feel stranger and somehow "less accurate" than gamepad when maneuvering, till you get used to it. Its fun but i don´t think its superior or have any advantage in terms of gameplay, aside immersion.

Some people play with kb+mouse, but aside knowing "it works for some people" i can´t say much more as didn´t tried myself.

[Namdaets]

I'd argue KB+M might be the strongest control scheme. It's clear the developers put a lot of effort into making the game feel really good to play without any additional hardware. Yaw sucks with KB+M (0% or 100% yaw, no in-between), but otherwise you get a lot of fine control with the virtual mouse joystick.

Controller also feels really good and gives you more fine control over yaw, and it's more ergonomic than KB+M. You have to disable the virtual mouse joystick in the settings to enable controller freelook, though.

I've never even bothered hooking up my Thrustmaster HOTAS for this game.

[Tiax]

HOTAS is probably overkill (and that's from someone who's an old-school space shooter joystick-only person), but gamepad is perfect.

[Belligerent_Herald]

I'm 300+ hours with the controller and am perfectly satisfied. You lose a bit of precision which hinders your ability to hit small targets with guns, but it's not a thing that comes up very often.

[jobless guy]

no

[Khaziir Everflight]

Nah, you don't need one. I play with KB+M and am definitely happy with it, despite having a thrustmaster warthog hotas... I choose to play with kb+m for now until the VR update (whenever that comes) since my hotas has no comfortable way of looking around, and trackIR and similar things are disorienting as hell for me.

[Hyper129]

I use a real simple Logitech stick which I love, but I don't think a HOTAS is necessary.

[Hotel Trivago]

just get a stick brah

[AAA Battery]

i play with xbox controller and it works perfectly fine with it, even prefer it over my VKB STECS and Gladiator NXT

[Rune Scimmy]

Thanks for the replies. I've been using controller and it seems perfectly playable while I decide on what stick to buy.

[Raubritter]

Playing with my xbox controller, it's perfectly fine. I'm probably gonna get a HOTAS and TrackIR eventually though (is TrackIR supported yet?).