Hi , I have been remapping my new Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick X Airbus Edition which I will use solely for MSFS2020 on X Box Series X .
The stick is advertised as having ’21 Action Buttons’ of which ’14 are remappable’. So I just needed to work out which buttons are remappable and why some of the default bindings were referring to buttons with numbers as high as 27 to 31 .
I found that four of the buttons are duplicated and therefore of limited practical use . The Sidestick has a set of ABXY buttons on either side of the stick . Default out of the box has A=1 , B=2 , X=3 , Y=4 .
While trying to remap , I was unable to set up different functions to the different group of ABXY each side . So for example , if A (button 1) on left side is chosen to Increase Flaps , the same A on the right side is automatically also set to a duplicate button 1 with the same function to Increase Flaps .
I contacted TM Support for clarification and they promptly replied with …. “As it so happens, the A, B, X, and Y buttons on Xbox are fixed and cannot be reassigned to different functions due to console’s protocols. This results in having two identical sets of buttons on each side.” and “You can assign your desired functions to other buttons and, if you have TCA Quadrant, to some buttons on that as well”.
It will be some time before I can get a quadrant , so in the meantime I will have to make do with the reduced number of buttons . I am very pleased with the action of the stick but as others have stated - you can’t have too many buttons .
I had not picked up on this limitation while researching to buy a joystick , so I just wanted to share this info as the effective loss of 4 buttons could be an important consideration for others .