This is probably a stupid request, but is it possible to combine left/right brake pedals to actuate both wheel brakes at the same time? This would be a big help in keeping A/C in a straight line when taxiing, since it’s almost impossible to apply brakes evenly while taxiing. So, in review, I press left brake pedal both wheel brakes engage, and the same if I press right brake pedal, both brakes engage.
Thanks in advance
Hello @Gamer441352,
If you would like to have something added to MSFS, there is a wishlist subcategory for community voting.
Before posting in the wishlist, do a search of that subcategory to see if there is an existing topic. If so, vote and contribute to that topic. Duplicate wishes will be deleted.
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I too, often struggle to keep the ac straight whilst taxiing but I believe it is due to my inability to apply brake pressure evenly on both pedals. This is probably due to the lack of feedback through my Logitech G Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals and just pure lack of skill.
I have no issues as a real world and sim driver when using pedals but what you are suggesting is a basic dumbing down of the flight controls which would also prevent turning the plane using braking and I can’t vote for that.
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If you are not talking about parking brakes, whats the point of having rudder pedals with individual toe breaks? If you wont use them?
Is this X Box or PC?
I suppose you could deactivate toe brakes in PC Sim, and use say perhaps your joystick trigger as one brake? Not having used X Box version I dont know? If thats what you use?
I think it will be difficult because MSFS controls works by receiving all hardware inputs simultaneously. That means, while it is possible to bind both pedals axis to both left/right brake axis. They won’t work the way you want it to due to the reason above. when you press the Left brake for example, it can apply the brake on both wheels as is configured. But since your right brake is not pressed, the sim is also receiving that command that the brake is not being applied. So the sim is receiving conflicting inputs at the same time. Is the brake being applied as instructed by the left pedal, or is the brake being released as instructed by the right pedals.
But it probably isn’t as serious as it may seem. For example, if you are still applying both brake pedals but not accurately (ie. Left brake is applying 45% pressure while the right brake is applying 47% pressure). You would only get a 2% discrepancy. Meaning the brake will jitter between 45% and 47% only, so your net braking pressure is basically 46%.
However, the less synchronised between your left and right brake pressure, the greater the discrepancy between the two thus increasing the amount of jitter that you’ll experience.
So again, it’s up to you. Technically you can bind all brake pedals axis to all left and right brake axis commands. But you need to still be aware that you have to press both pedals simultaneously with the same amount of pressure to minimise the jitters coming from both pedals input levels.
I’d still prefer you to bind the brake axis separately, it would help you learn and get used to the brake pressure that you need to apply in order to control your taxiing speed without turning.
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Hi @Gamer441352
First of all. We steer on the runway mostly with our rudder, and not with the brakes. We apply brakes only when the rudder doesn’t keep the plane on the center line, so as an extra input, or when we turn in a confined space.
Steering with the brakes and power on is called ‘riding the brakes’, and should be avoided because you’ll overheat your brakes and damage them.
Secondly, this is a sim, so everything is modeled to reality as much as possible. When you take off, a single piston plane will want to move to the left, which you’ll have to compensate with some right rudder. This is also true for the climb to cruise altitude. When your rudder is too sensitive you could try to tune that down a notch in the control settings. F.ex. -20%.
Finally there’s a setting under Assistance options called auto rudder. If you don’t bother about realism and rather want to take off and fly (no offense) that could be your toggle.
Cheers and enjoy your flights!
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Not sure what the problem is. You seem to have pedal brakes so just press them and look straight ahead. There is no other feedback than that in a real plane either, braking a Cessna after landing requires your eyes at the end of the runway and a pedal play. At slower speeds there is no g force feedback or wind noice etc anymore that might give you feedback. You brake and then taxi with your eyes and feet.
Some older taildraggers steer on the brakes (where there is a castoring tail wheel or skid) so having independent braking inputs is important.
The other option is to assign the “brakes” to a button (or trigger if you have a stick) so that when you don’t want to use pedal brakes you can use the button. This will uniformly apply left and right brakes.
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Would you ask to do that in a real aircraft training scenario? More fun to learn to control the plane as if you were doing it for real dont you think.
It’s possible on PC at least:
Download and install appropriate version of vJoy from Github.
Download Joystick Gremlin from Github and extract somewhere.
Launch Joystick Gremlin and use the merge axis function from the top menu to merge your toe brake axes into a single axis on the virtual joystick (virtual joystick should be automatically created). In this case you’d want to use the maximum method, which means the virtual axis is monitoring both your toe brakes but automatically drops the input from the one that is being depressed less. Save and activate profile.
Launch MSFS, go to controller options, unbind the brakes from your pedals and then go bind the appropriate axis on the virtual joystick to both of your brakes.
Tada, uniform braking on toe brakes with no software input conflict.
If you still want to use differential braking, you could use Joystick Gremlin to split your stick’s twist axis so that twisting it left reads as one virtual axis and twisting right as another, and then go bind those to your left and right toe brakes.
Alternatively you could try to set automatic proportional reduction of the brake on the opposite side while you are applying your rudder. This is actually how real life planes with unified brake lever (usually on the flight stick) tend to work. That being said while I have a set of pedals without toe brakes I have been using OEM’s software to this effect and haven’t tested it, but it might be possible with just Joystick Gremlin too.
Assign brake to both axis, simple as that, (not left and right brake)
Easiest if you want to keep diff braking is to just assign brake to a button on your joystick or yoke.
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I have a joystick with a trigger and the brakes are assigned to the trigger.
Some aircraft really are tricky to brake. General Aviation type aircraft are normally ok, but even the A320 IRL is tricky to brake straight whilst steering with the rudder pedals (once the autobrake has been taken out).
there is already a setting for this by default, its the Del key (on pc, no idea if its a default key for controllers) you can map that to a button but i dont know if it will map to an axis like rudder pedals (buttons and axis’ act differently) since ive never tried it
i have ‘Brakes’ mapped to my trigger button (hotas) by default and then i have my differential brakes on my pedals, its Totally possible to use both, in fact i would think that the differential brakes are secondarly since not everyone would even have that kind of controller
looking it up the brakes are set to the Del key by default, that will apply both brakes 100% is the only issue (you learn to ‘bump’ them to slow gradually - or use the pedals :P)
But the A320 IRL doesn’t steer using the rudder, they steer using the nose wheel tiller at the side of the sidestick. Unless you’re referring to during landing, but I would think when you land and disengage the Autobrake to apply manual brake, it would already be slow enough that the rudder will not have enough airspeed to actually turn the aircraft, and that you have to switch to the nose wheel tiller as soon as you disengage Autobrake and apply manual braking.
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The A320 does also steer the nosewheel with the rudder pedals. They can give you up to 7% of nosewheel steering travel. The tiller then is algebraically added, but its effect is reduced above 80kts to zero at 130kts, as it’s designed for taxi only.
You don’t use the tiller at all until you’re at taxi speed, generally below 30-40kts.
Ohh okay… I thought when you turn using the rudder pedals at high airspeed is because the nosewheel tiller is not strong enough to turn the nose at that speed. So you use the tail rudder to use the wind from the high airspeed to turn the aircraft.
It’s that the tiller becomes far too powerful at speed that it gets removed. I don’t touch the tiller once I’m lined up, until I’m back at taxi speed.
The rudder acts like any other aircraft’s rudder, no you’re not wrong.
I tried this before on an XBox controller by mapping Left and Right brakes to LS+LT/RT respectively. Mashing the stick down and pulling both triggers for dual braking, easing off a trigger for differential braking. The rudder, of course, did not engage when the stick was depressed as the only command being read were the brakes.
The problem was some strange rudder/nosewheel effects if you released the stick before letting off the triggers, as the rudder would suddenly come into play. The rudder/nosewheel would ‘stick’ at full deflection until you hit the thumbstick again. I guess one could work around this using LS+LB/RB instead of the triggers.