I had issues initially as well. Make sure the devices are calibrated in windows so that zero to the absolute full deflection of the controls is available. Secondly go through the flight simulator control configuration carefully to make sure that there are not conflicting multiple axes assigned to the same control etc. Make sure that flight simulator is also showing full deflection when the control is moved to the physical limit.
Once you have this working, I would suggest adjusting the sensitivity to match the range of movement in your hardware control.
For example: Most of the time with a aircraft with a yoke control the control movements for the ailerons are only going to be within say 10 or 20 degrees of neutral. My suggestion would be to adjust the sensitivity (in the simulator) of your control axis so that the graphic yoke in the cockpit approximates over a similar range of movement. Similar adjusted for the other controls. (In my case for say the C152: aileron ~ -30%, elevator ~ -19%, rudder ~30%. Dead zone zero for all.). I have set up a control profile for each control device per aircraft type so I can adjust individually if required.
If you do this the controls should hopefully be reasonably realistic for normal operations, but you still have access to the full control deflection if required. Of course once you have a reasonable control setup configured, it can be refined to personal preference as required. Note that normal operation of an aircraft (apart from certain abnormal situations and aerobatics etc) do not normally require anywhere near full control deflections.
With the sensitivity adjusted down like this, obviously the control deflection is not linear. Once you go beyond the normal range the control deflection will increase dramatically. This is a compromise with control hardware or joysticks that just don’t have the same range of movement that a real aircraft controls have. For normal flying I think it still produces a realistic feel to flying the aircraft.
Note that in a real aircraft, large control deflections are often accompanied by significant aerodynamic forces through the controls and also potentially large g forces acting on the pilot as well. None of these are present in the simulator.