I still think there must be a better solution than the weird flight control logic ASOBO uses. In MSFS the flight control deflections are directly related to the joystick position at low speed, but at high speed the control logic all of a sudden becomes force based, reducing control surface deflection to simulate high stick forces associated with higher speeds (which you have no indication of as the in-sim yoke or stick directly mimics your joystick).
I think the flight controls should either 100% control the control surface deflections or be 100% force based, not some weird hybrid. In other words the in-sim yoke should either directly mimic your joystick which in turn is directly controlling the flight control surfaces (no weird limiting of maximum deflection as a factor of speed). Or the joystick should be considered as a force input rather than a control input, this way the in-sim yoke is not slaved to your joystick, your joystick rather becomes a force input acting on the in-sim yoke or stick. Full deflection of the joystick corresponds to maximum force an average pilot is able exert on the flight controls. This is kind of how it works already anyway at higher airspeed, but at least you would now be able to see what is going on.
I think the “force based approach” has two added benefits:
1 Trim can be simulated correctly. Currently if you trim the aircraft the trim isn’t moving the elevator. The elevator and yoke position remain neutral, still the aircraft is pitching when trimming, how? In real life, should the elevator be stuck or held in position, the elevator trim tab starts to act like a tiny elevator but instead works in reverse . This is some workaround because on the real aircraft the in-trim position is variable while on most joysticks the in-trim position is in the center and not variable. It looks really stupid to trim the elevator in MSFS (and most other sims), when trimming full nose up, it will look something like this in external view:
Note: in real life if the elevator would be held neutral like in the above photo, the elevator trim tab will start to act like a tiny elevator in this situation but working in reverse. The nose would pitch down instead of up .
When using a 100% force based approach, I think this could be fixed. As an example, when trimming the nose up, the trim tab exerts a force on the elevator, changing its position, the in-sim yoke would move to the nose up position as it is slaved directly to the elevator. You’ll need to push forward on the joystick to return the in-sim yoke to the previous position in order to maintain altitude. In real life it would be the same, when maintaining altitude while trimming up or down you’ll need exert more force on the controls, the only difference being that in real life the flight controls would need to remain more or less in the same position when maintaining altitude and more force would be required to keep the yoke in this position when being out of trim situation. (considering conventional elevator with trim tab, not THS ).
2 It is currently possible to control the aircraft with autopilot servo’s engaged. In real life (at least on all aircraft I have flown) it physically isn’t possible to move the flight controls with the autopilot engaged, unless enough force is exerted on the flight controls to trip the autopilot offline and hand over controls to the pilot. When seeing joystick input as a force input rather than a direct flight control input, I think this could also be realistically simulated. When the joystick input corresponds to a force less than the autopilot disconnect threshold, the autopilot is in command and manual inputs are ignored, when above the threshold the autopilot trips offline and the pilot is in control.