What is the difference between a joystick’s deadzone and null zone? From reading, they seem to be about the same thing. What are the recommended settings for MSFS? How does sensitivity play into this too?
Deadzone is where the joystick doesn’t receive input, nullzone is where the joystick registers it’s center point
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Deadzone is to determine the margin of where any inputs coming from your hardware is not registered as a valid input in the sim. This is due to the fact that not all hardware can be exactly idle and center when left alone.
Take my Logitech X-56 for example. If I leave it alone, sure it’s stays in the middle and not doing anything. But as soon as I start walking around, the vibrations made by my steps travel through the floor onto my desk and to my joystick. This vibration wobbles the joystick just a tiny bit, but since my deadzone is set to 0%, that tiny wobble that was caused by my walking registered as a valid input in the sim, so it also wobbles the aircraft and overrides autopilot.
By increasing the deadzone, I’m increasing a range of input levels that the sim should ignore as it is not a valid input. So if I put a deadzone of 10%. Then any movement made by my joystick whether it is a wobble or a slight movement to a direction I don’t want it to go to within that 10% range, is ignored by the sim. Thus avoiding any autopilot override issue or that wing roll issue on landing.
Neutral zone is introduced to bring compatibility to the Thrustmaster TCA Quadrant Airbus edition. Where you have throttle controls for forward and reverse in the same axis. The neutral zone is to determine at which point in your throttle control is set to IDLE. Because in that hardware, the IDLE doesn’t sit at 0% on the axis. But it’s actually sitting at around 10% on the axis. So adjusting the Neutral zone, means it’s shifting the neutral idle position at a different point in the axis. So any input coming from below that would be treated as a negative input on the other direction.