I am using a combination of XBOX controller and HOTAS one currently, and individually they work fine.
One annoying thing is when I want to interact with ATC or the Map, I have to left click the stick to get the top menu and cursor mode, and hand over control to the AI pilot.
Is there anyway to not have this happen, I.e. I keep flying with the stick and use cursor mode on my controller for example? Alternatively, any way to operate ATC and map myself would be good, without handing off to AI pilot.
I find using my wireless mouse works best as I can access the top menu and continue to fly at the same time. I find using the Xbox controller for those interactions to be very clumsy.
No it won’t. If you disable the AI piloting in cursor mode then the plane will be flying free while you are in cursor mode. Not a big deal in my opinion, most planes can fly just fine without input for a little while if balanced right.
I don’t know if you can set up a shortcut for this feature. I guess not since it’s an option/assistance, not an actual control feature.
It depends what your definition of AI piloting is. The AI pilot is a weird entity on it’s own that works differently from the std plane autopilot. I generally ignore the AI pilot these days it was causing so many out of control stall crashes mainly when I was taking screenshots. When using a flight plan I just engage the autopilot when I want to go do other stuff with the mouse. Other than that I have also programmed ‘pause’ to ‘P’ and ‘unpause’ to ‘CTRL-P’ on the keyboard which is a great way of giving yourself a moment to think about changes you want to make on buttons dials etc before resuming.
ps. If you want a great smooth setup that works well, I recommend ditching XBox controller entirely and adding a wireless keyboard and separate optical mouse with scroll wheel to your setup. The mouse works really well for cockpit interaction. The HOTAS One also works well with this combination. I leave my XBox controller powered off most of the time now. The benefits are ease of interaction with cockpit buttons and dials, better view zooming (mouse scroll wheel), access to all the PC keyboard shortcuts/bindings (most of which are decades old). The XBox feels a lot like a PC when you make this switch. The HOTAS One has a XBox button so you can still access the XBox desktop to shutdown etc. I’m not moving back to the XBox controller. I’m an admirer of what they did to get FS2020 UI features to work with the controller, but for practicality (for me) it is a way better experience with keyboard + mouse + HOTAS.
Thank you everyone that is really great help. I have ordered a wireless mouse for now and might add a keyboard later too - as I don’t know any of the shortcuts I figure I am not losing out too much with this currently.
Thanks for being so helpful and welcoming, I was worried I would be asking stupid questions
I will give that a go. I wonder if my joystick will still control the plane rather than cursor when I do that.