Playing without a joystick

[Wahooka]

I am trying to control the airplane without using a joystick, and having a lot of trouble getting past the first tutorial.

There doesn't seem to be any keyboard equivalent for pulling back on the stick and holding at a certain pitch, or returning the stick to neutral.

Holding the back arrow will send the plane into an endless climb, and tapping the back arrow will just course correct itself after a few seconds, and you have to keep tapping it continously to stay at that pitch.

Also, hitting NUM LOCK will turn the arrow keys into keys that view out the window. The problem is the same, you can't hold down the view key, it will send the view into an endless 360 degree pan. Tapping it won't hold the view.

Not to mention the inconvenience of toggling NUM LOCK continously to switch from flying to viewing.

Any tips of how overcome this?

[JWNoctis]

Use mouse yoke. Keyboard control in FSX is not self-centering. The key is Shift+Y or Ctrl+Y by default, I forgot which.

Or grab a proper flight stick, if possible.

EDIT: Did a bit of writeup on choosing a useful flight stick a while back on bottom post of this thread http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160/discussions/1/1843493219420971134/

That should be enough to keep hands off the mouse and the keyboard most of the time.

[Wahooka]

I tried Mouse Yoke, its a bit akward.

Is there no way to fly with the keyboard more effectively?

Perhaps tapping 3 times in one direction, and then you can center the stick by tapping 3 times in the opposite direction?

[JWNoctis]

Reduce repeat value to minimum, but that...won't be effective as you'd be basically flying with trim, and not handy ones at that.

[APUtech]

Originally posted by Wahooka:

I tried Mouse Yoke, its a bit akward.

Is there no way to fly with the keyboard more effectively?

Perhaps tapping 3 times in one direction, and then you can center the stick by tapping 3 times in the opposite direction?

Hi.

Practice is the only way to get good at flying via keyboard. I've spent the last 1600 hours flying with the keyboard because I moved a few months ago and packed all of my flying hardware in a storage unit, but didn't have the foresight to pack it close to the storage unit's door.

So, when I couldn't stand not having flown for a few months I broke down and started flying via keyboard. It isn't easy, as you know, but with a lot of practice you can get to be pretty good at it, but not with the sped and fluidity of a joystick or yoke.

The keypad 5 key centers the ailerons,and on some airplanes the rudder, if you fly with auto-coordination off. When the NumLock key is off you have flying controls on the keypad and when it is on (as you probably know) you have views; yes, it takes awhile to get used to toggling the NumLock key on and off while flying, but after a few turns at flying you'll get better.

For takeoffs I just press the F4 key to get the engine(s) to full power and press the F2 key to lower the power as needed; if you're flying a jet you'll have to rapidly press the F2 key to keep for overstressing your engines past 100% power dring the takeoff roll. You get the hang of it.

The elevators, as mentioned above do not center themselves, so yes, you have to tap in the opposite direction to counter the input, and sometimes such as when rotating for takeoff you can press and hold the keypad 2 key until you're almost to the desired angle of rotation and tap-tap-tap to finely adjust your rate of climb up or down -- you *never* want to rotate past 10 degrees when flying via keyboard for smaller GA planes, or 20 degrees for jets and turboprops, because unless you've got really fast fingers you may end up stalling and crashing back to the runway.

When landing, using they keyboard may require you to use longer approaches, i.e. from further out because of the typical keyboard's slower response time. On final approach (and during climbout as well) use the trim keys to help you stabilize your descent so that you won't be frantically making last-second adjustments to pitch right before you're about to touch down.

That's all for now and I hope this small primer will be of use to you. If you have any further questions send me a friend request and we can chat about them.

Good luck and happy flying,

APUtech

[Wahooka]

Do you think Mouse Yoke is easier then the above keyboard recommendations?

[APUtech]

Originally posted by Wahooka:

Do you think Mouse Yoke is easier then the above keyboard recommendations?

It really depends on the user. I've tried mouse yoke and it doesn't work well enough for me to favor it over the keyboard, except when landing--the pitch-up/down is smoother and responds faster to your input.

I have found that younger users favor the mouse yoke over the keyboard in FSX. Interesting.

APUtech