Hi all,
I have been wanting to move away from using my mouse over the cockpit for sometime now, so I started to look for answers to move away from the onscreen controls to physical buttons, dials and switches, but also keeping a realistic price cap on things…
When I started with MSFS on release I only had and used a cheap gamepad, and did most things using the mouse in game. A year on… here is what I have ended up with…
I’ll start with the Saitek panels which do create a lot of immersion, but as for controlling the Garmin nav computers, it was back to zooming in with the mouse. After some searching around the only option I wanted was to plunge into buying one of the RealSimGear units… but after more research I decided to hold off and just do something much simpler.
I now use a 15gbp retro game pad to control my Garmin navs, with SpadNext to setup the button controls. It works a treat btw, D pad for the right knob control, XYAB buttons for the Direct to, Menu, CLR, ENT, Left/Right trigger buttons for map zoom in/out, other buttons to finish off - using the Auto throttle on the panel to switch GPS/VLOC mode as I mostly fly GA.
Some of the button settings in SpadNext with the Gamepad ( great bit of software if you have the Panels and other peripherals )
I also use Flight Stick.x for control and throttle, Xbox controller for drone camera.
I have also gone down the DIY route with my TrackIR - I have a PS3eye camera with a 25mm IR camera filter tapped to the lens, and have the LED pro clip on a headband. The software is FaceTrackNoIR v200 with is very smooth and runs at 75fps with the ps3eye. (FaceTrackNoIR I’m using PointTracker 1.1, Accela Filter Mk2, FreeTrack2.1 which needs a little tweaking but worth it)
For charts and airport info I just use aurora.nats here in the UK, it has what I need and free.
https://www.aurora.nats.co.uk/htmlAIP/Publications/2021-10-07-AIRAC/html/index-en-GB.html
I just use the in game world map for planning, and sometimes getting the Nav frequencies.
I do occasionally also have a tablet/mobile phone with a flight tracking map - VFRmap app.
This is probably very basic to most home cockpit simmers, but for those starting out and want to budget what they spend hope this can help somehow.
Any suggestions or similar tweaks would be welcomed, as I am always adapting my setup, thanks…