What, exactly, even is “General Controls” it isn’t like I have a sub-set of controls under a general category.
What is “Airplanes Controls”?
The specific controls seems self explanatory, but with any of these three controls, uh, controls, you can’t click it to be shown just a set of controls that are pertinent to that specific grouping.
How are these organized by these individual settings groups? How do you modify the settings that are within the “General controls” preset, or the “Airplanes controls” preset?
I can figure out a way to isolate them.
How do you even know what control grouping for the control you’ve just modified is going to be placed in?
The sim itself “knows” what a “General controls” and an “Airplanes controls” is. You do not assign a control to a category — it already exists in a category
For example, if you change a control that pauses the sim, that will be stored in a “General controls” profile. Likewise, if you change a control that affects the elevator it will be stored in an “Airplanes controls”
This number in a circle (1960’s racing car style graphics!) indicates how many unique control mappings a specific control is assigned to.
For example, Reset Cockpit View and Reset External View are two separate control mappings that I have assigned to the same button on my yoke, therefore the “meatball” has a “2” in it.
I do not see a means to create a new blank profile, but modifying the default will immediately prompt you to name and create a new profile.
Each peripheral will have a “General controls” and an “Airplanes controls” profile
Specific controls are not what I thought they were. My initial assumption was these are where you setup aircraft profiles that follow the aircraft. No, those are what you set under the “Airplanes controls”. The specific ones would be for specialized controls that only a specific aircraft would have. I can’t think of what these might be (as I haven’t tried configuring controls for specialty aircraft like search and rescue, etc.), but I’m sure they will be revealed in time. See: 2024 Controls Interface Discussion - #68 by NixonRedgrave
As of yet, I am still unsure how to configure an aircraft-specific set of controls.
Every time I alter an aircraft-related control it only seems to be save to “Airplanes controls”. I see no way to select the specific controls to be able to edit them, nor do I see a way to “send” controls to the specific profile.
Well I should not have departed 2024 to take lunch, and so now I can’t get back in. Have you played with those “gear” setting menus to the right of all those line items in the lower right quad? Are there any useful commands or tools there to create, edit, save as new?
My plan for after lunch was to see if this FAQ was complete enough for me to figure out how do get one or two profiles up and running. Reading through it outside of 2024, it appears a bit thin, but what are your thoughts? Anything missing or not as expected?
I’d say that it is explaining the most obvious aspects of the interface.
What it is not explaining is how you “get” controls into the three different category types in the lower left corner – General controls, Airplanes controls and Specific airplane name controls
I’ve outlined, above, how the first two work, but I still cannot figure out how the Specific works.
So something is missing in either documentation or they have a defect that we may be misinterpreting as an obtuse UX design? As opaque as it appears, perhaps it is either incomplete or defective somehow?
Could someone help me figure out why my MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick’s Control settings (see screenshot) do not “transfer” to the aircraft?
I must be missing something but without the controls I can not fly MSFS 2024.
I think the cognitive dissonance we’re all experiencing is because, superficially, the interface has layers and we are expecting to see inheritance from GENERAL to AIRPLANES to SPECIFIC. But actually these are just distinct groups of bindings with no common controls. Broadly GENERAL seems to be SIM related (e.g. PAUSE), AIRPLANES is common aircraft controls (e.g. Flight Control surfaces), but heaven knows what SPECIFIC is. It’s very strange that you can’t filter for the controls assigned to GENERAL, AIRPLANES or SPECIFIC, but you can at least see the category a control belongs to in the UI.
Precisely. You have come to the correct conclusion.
I’m thinking “specific” is really esoteric controls that are unique to a specific aircraft model. An example might be the Dornier Do 31 with its VTOL controls. How you set those up, though, I’m unsure about. Maybe as aircraft are released that are very 2024-specific, the control bindings list will have more bindings for specific functions unique to that aircraft that are going to show up and will be saved to that “specific” profile.
I feel like we need Mark from SimHanger to show us how it’s done
Many UI/UX elements in 2024 are very poorly done, and I’ve only just started looking around. I can’t understand why the controllers UI wants to me name a profile every time something is changed.
It doesn’t feel like a UI designer was involved. Pure speculation on my part, but it just doesn’t seem intuitive at all, and a good UI/UX designer will plan that out conceptually from the start.
Personally I was thinking you could create one “default” profile with all of your common controls mapped, apply those to “all” aircraft, then go individually into each plane and make any adjustments you want.
I didn’t get that, so I’m not sure where to start. Do I set everything up on the C172 page, save everything, then move to, say, the B747 and set up the differences like how I configure throttles and reversers? Then when it asks me to save it, what do I call it?
Ummm, yes to all of that. The whole structure is weird. It feels like they started with the idea of an inheritance model (as you have laid out), got cold feet half way through, and we ended up with an overcomplicated category model that allows us to define separate binding sets for Controls, split into three hard-coded parts, per Device and, in the case of SPECIFIC, per Aircraft.
Baiscally, the initial profiles cannot be modified, so the second you change something you are prompted to create/name a new profile. For my defaults I call them “Standard” (I used this name from 2020 when the sim already had a “default” for the, uh, default).
Most likely you will have one General controls profile that is used throughout the sim — at least initially. Click the gear and set that to all aircraft and as the default. Again, General will be controls that aren’t really about flying an airplane. These will be flashlight toggles, cameras, pause, taxi ribbon toggle, etc.
For the “Airplanes controls” name this first profile you’re setting up with the C172 as “Single engine fixed pitch” or something like that. Set the power controls for a single throttle and a single mixture. Use this profile for appropriate aircraft with single engine fixed pitch props.
Ok, switch to the Bonanza. Duplicate the “single engine fixed pitch” profile and rename it “single engine constant speed” now add a prop axis. Use this profile for similar single engine constant speed airplanes.
Go to a twin, duplicate the “single engine constant speed” profile and add a second throttle, mixture and prop axis.
Do the same for turbo props both singles and twins, etc.
Do the same for a single jet or a twin jet or a multi-jet for the 747, etc.
Let me add, too, that you will be doing this for every peripheral that you map controls to.
It’s okay to use the same profile name for individual peripherals. For example, I have two General controls named “Standard” — one for my yoke and one for my throttle quadrant.
Depending on how your peripherals are utilized and what controls are on them, you may end up with a “single engine fixed pitch” profile for your yoke and another with the same name for your throttle quadrant. That is okay.
