That concurs with my tests – I can keep control just fine using the rudder and as long as I keep the nose wheel in the air. But as soon as the nose wheel touches down, it gets really squirrelly.
BTW, the sim always gives you gusts of 50% of the crosswind, and you can’t get rid of it if you use live weather. But you can get rid of the gusts even with a constant crosswind if you select the Clear Skies custom preset, set the gust sliders all the way left, set the gust direction to match the wind direction, then save it as new preset. Load it back in again and voila! No gusts!
Note that you’ll still experience gusts from terrain and cloud turbulence, so if you’re doing flight model testing, do it out over the open ocean to eliminate those factors.
In real life, some of my favorite flights were in the late evening down the east coast of Florida. The air was dead still, the ocean was calm with the moon reflecting off of it, and you could see a “string of pearls” all the way down to the keys. Trim the aircraft for straight and level, and it fly like you were on top of a table. (And yes, there was frequently a woman with me on the flight – KFLL up to Vero Beach Top Hat Dinner Club was a great date!)