I’ve been spending hours trying to figure out the key bindings in MSFS 2024, and I’m completely frustrated. There are several key assignments that either don’t work as expected, don’t work at all, or seem to vary wildly between aircraft.
For example:
The “Headphone Simulation” bindings (Toggle, On, Off) don’t seem to have any effect, no matter which key or button I assign them to.
The Avionics Master bindings work in some aircraft but not in others.
The Autopilot VS Speed Increase/Decrease binding works in some planes, while in others, it’s the PFD Nose Up/Nose Down binding that performs the same function.
I’ve even found instances where:
Key binding labels are duplicated in the options menu with the same name (and I don’t mean the “general aircraft” vs. “specific aircraft” duplication). Some of these work across multiple aircraft, others have different effects depending on the plane, and others do nothing at all.
There are features where you must assign keys labeled for entirely different functions. For example, to control the VTOL LHI/RHI (rotors), you need to assign flap keys, which I only discovered after Googling and finding an obscure reference on the MSFS website. And even then, such mapping translations are incomplete for many aircraft.
My main questions are:
Is there any documentation available for each aircraft that clearly explains which key bindings in the options menu map to which functions in the cockpit?
Is it a known issue that some key bindings, like “Headphone Simulation,” simply have no in-game effect regardless of what you assign them to?
It feels like the current system is incredibly inconsistent and unintuitive. I’d appreciate any advice or insights from the community—or even better, official guidance.
Yep it’s incredibly frustrating. Every aircraft developer seems to do their own thing and make it up as they go along, I’m even tempted to think that some of them believe that their aircraft is the only one people are flying. The good developers, and there are a few, keep as much stuff standard as they can and thoroughly document any non-standard bindings. Some of the freeware aircraft devs are shining examples in this respect.
IMO the root cause is that to my knowledge, Asobo never published (and enforced) a standard for implementing and documenting a control scheme. Also IMO the documentation for a control scheme should be designed into the aircraft configuration and visible in the control binding UI.
Some kind of documentation for the mappings would be great. There are too many items that are similar, so it makes it harder to map buttons, keys, etc. Trial and error is time consuming.
If I understand you correctly, these aircraft were all developed by different developers? Do you have a source for this? I would include it in one of my Rant videos ^^ Because it would actually explain a lot (ok, I found several sources myself. Thanks for pointing it out)