747 is broken, you can't steer it on the ground

In a real 747, or on a non-broken flight simulator, there would be a tiller axis, or something equivalent, to permit an analog control axis to steer the aircraft on the ground. It seems the MS 747 (included in some of the larger versions of MSFS) does not respond either to “rudder” axis to steer (as some kind of fallback) nor does it provide its own nosewheel steering axis.
Absent some AI pilot keeping the aircraft pointing down the runway, taking off is impossible.

YES I did all the usual things.

YES it works for all other aircraft.

NO it’s not a controller mapping issue because there is nothing to map to that is called “steering axis”.

There may be some KEYBOARD keys that might make it possible to adjust its on the ground behaviour, but there seems to be NO actual analog way to do so.

UPDATE: Found these Workarounds:
A. CH Rudders stop working randomly, usually pre-takeoff, but sometimes afterwards. Unplug them and plug them back in again. When that doesn’t help, restart MSFS, and then unplug them after restarting MSFS.
B. When it just won’t work with the CH Rudders, switch to using the twist axis on the Extreme Pro 3d stick to control rudders.

With the above two workarounds I am able to taxi the 747 to the runway, and accelerate and hold the center line, and take off.

I voted cause something is not working 100% well there, as in most cases the wheels drift when turning and the turning radius is too big in my opinion. Also the nosewheel does not turn higher than 45º, which makes things even worse. But the nose wheel turns and there are even key bindings availble in game for steering without using the rudder if you prefer so (but this is not an axis, just a pair of keys/buttons you can define). So this is implemented and works.

The problem behind this, compared to the A320 case, is that the separation between nose and rear wheels is much bigger, so the resulting turning radius is much bigger as well, as it should be. In addition to this you can´t really turn too much at medium speeds without supporting the turn with differential toe braking, resulting in very difficult ground handling for such a big aircraft as you lose speed very quickly when braking. Indeed the B787 has exactly the same problem in game as the B747. I think they should tune a bit better both.

See an example of a real short radius 90º turn in taxiway (almost impossible in game as the nose wheels would drift during turn, even at low speeds):

Cheers

1 Like

Starting from a stationary position, at JFK, the 747 lurches wildly to the right as you apply throttle.

Figuring out HOW MANY presses of the INCREASE STEERING keyboard key and then how many presses of DECREASE to turn left and right (INCREASE?DECREASE?) is nuts.

On other sims, you can force the rudder axis to control the tiller or fake a nosewheel steering button mapping which will map the rudder axis input to the tiller.

Absent that, and absent a dedicated tiller axis, this 747 is broken.

I have not even tried to land this bird, it won’t even take off without taking a lurch into the ditch.

Interesting, I’m not having that issue. It steers just fine on the ground for me and mine is mapped to Rudder Axis.

2 Likes

Also…

I do have a small issue at times with the steering on the 747.
It wants to go straight, rather than turn. A quick slight tap on the brake on the side I want to turn towards gets it going in the correct direction and steering control then returns.
I do not have any lurch to the right issues when applying throttle.
Are all your engines spooling up at the same rate?

Do you have this issue with your rudder pedals, or only keys/button presses?

I remember seeing this behavior on most aircraft when having the auto rudder assistance enabled, the steering turns only half of the axis when using the rudder but reaches 100% when combining full rudder with full aileron axis

So to make a tight turn the 2 buttons should be pressed, plus another for braking or thrust corrections if needed, a bit of a chaos

The issue is that the rudder pedals DO NOT STEER THIS AIRCRAFT,
which MAY BE BY DESIGN.
However, if the steering on ground axis was properly simulated, there would be an AXIS (meaning analog) steering control mapping POSSIBLE to configure.
THERE IS NO TILLER AXIS.
THus the problem is not with the pedals nor with key presses.
THE PROBLEM IS MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR DID NOT SIMULATE ABILITY TO STEER THE 747 WITH ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE KEYBOARD.

If I am reading you correctly you are saying that your rudder pedals DO steer the 747?

That makes no sense to me as I am using the same rudder pedals with all other aircraft and they all move where the rudder pedals tell them to.

What I wonder is if if there’s some combination of “assistance” options you have set differently.
Mine are set to ALL ASSISTANCE OFF.

What are your assistance level and difficulty settings?

All my flight assistance features are off.
Difficulty and realism maxed.

I am going to try mapping a different joystick’s yaw axis instead of my pedals next time.

Today’s main problem is worse than the 747 being broken. MSFS just stops listening to all my joysticks until I reboot my PC.
(Other apps that use thse peripherals work fine, including FS X and XPlane)

I suspect that FS 2020 uses the newest shiniest buggiest DirectInput layer in Windows 11 and that’s why it breaks completely until it is rebooted.

I fly the 747 (with and sometimes without the Salty mod) and have absolutely no problems controlling on taxi by using yaw axis, either via rudder pedals or a twist on a joystick.

I don’t know what is causing your issue, but it’s nothing to do with the implementation - you can even see the tiller handle animate when you apply yaw. And I think if was ‘broken’ for all users we would have heard a lot more in these forums about it. Not saying that you don’t have an issue, but it more likely to be a peripheral profile, or conflict or even perhaps the rudder recentering bug some have experienced.

1 Like

Ok. Interesting.
I pulled my CH Pedals out, and created a new fresh profile for my logitech stick, and now I can steer the 747 with the z twist axis on my Logitech.
Put the CH Products pedals back, and it won’t move the nose wheel but it does deflect the rudder.

If it’s the rudder recentering bug, that may explain it, OR it may simply be that there’s some jitter coming in from the CH pedals, and that jitter is triggering a bug.

I’ve seen some aircraft be VERY VERY hard to steer down the runway with these pedals.

It is too bad that we have to use the left or right break or engines to make the default Boeing 747 and 787 to turn. I have the same problem as you and I’m sure there is more out there that are also experiencing the same thing. I have tried to figure it out But have not and by the form I don’t think nobody has.

Yes, some aircraft will be hard to track centreline - and it isn’t necessarily a bug. A taildragger with a lot of torque in a stiff crosswind (like the PC-6) will be a challenge to keep straight. Partly this is poor ground physics implementation / over strength weathervaning. But also just how it is.

But should be much less so in a 747.

Did you try adding a larger dead zone in the rudder axis when you have the pedals in use?
If it is a “jitter”, that could help prove it.

Tried the deadzone. No change.

There’s a new weird input glitch with the 747-800 now, besides the CH Products Rudders not working to steer on the ground (but working in the air).

Now it’s pulling the yoke hard to one side and won’t release it.

It keeps doing this even after ALL usb peripherals are unplugged. Once it starts doing this, restarting MSFS is the only fix.

I think it’s safe to say there’s a lot of weird ■■■■ in this flight simulator’s input/joystick logic.

On your system it certainly seems to be the case. I’m not observing anything like you are getting.

Here is one idea I ran into a while back.
Several person mentioned they solved a similar issue by adjusting the reactivity setting for the rudder.
I have heard of settings between 20 and 65%I

If it was reactivity or sensitivity it would affect all aircraft equally.

I really can’t explain it.

I wonder if there is a mix of problems with MSFS itself and also with my own computer, losing USB peripheral connectivity or something.

This sim does some strange things though, for the trouble of moving a setting, it might be worth a try.
I’ll keep looking and see what else I can come up with.

Well, it seems youu may not be alone in this.
There are several other posts in here on this subject.
Here is a link to one of the threads. You will note that the last few replies in the thread are fairly current, and apparently Asobo is aware of the issue.