Flight Yoke Add-on Package

 

The Flight Yoke Add-on Package contains two special features that are designed to work in conjunction with a force feedback flight yoke : Autopilot Follow and Aileron Remapping.

This add-on package is included in FS Force v2.0, but requires a separate license to activate.  Please visit the Purchase page for purchasing information.  You can try the feature out in "demo" mode by flying in the vicinity of KSEA airport.

 

Autopilot Follow

In a real airplane, the yoke will move as the autopilot (AP) controls the aircraft, both in pitch and in roll.  With FF joysticks, this is not something that can be replicated, due to the fact that most FF joysticks are designed to stop the forces when you remove your hand. 

With a force feedback flight yoke, however, this now becomes a possibility.  When you engage the autopilot, FS Force monitors the AP activity and produces yoke movement corresponding to the AP inputs.

AP Follow is guaranteed to work with aircraft that use the default autopilot functionality built into FSX / P3D.  Some specialty 3rd party aircraft, however, implement their own custom AP functions, and the AP Follow feature may not work with these aircraft.  This may include aircraft from PMDG and A2A, and possibly others.

 

Aileron Remapping

The Aileron Remapping feature attempts to produce a linear relationship between the movement of the physical and the virtual yoke, in the roll axis.   

Feature Rational

Some explanation might be necessary to demonstrate the need for this feature.  I recently had the chance to acquire a flight yoke to use with FSX.  One of the first things that struck me was the excessive amount of yoke deflection that was required to roll into and out of normal turns.  For instance, in order to roll firmly into and out of a 30 degree bank turn at normal cruise speed, I was having to use FULL YOKE DEFLECTION.  As a real pilot who has flown light GA type aircraft, I thought that was very unrealistic.  Something on the order of 20 - 30 degrees of yoke input would have been more congruent with my experience.  

After flying around in the sim a bit and doing some experimentation, I came to the conclusion that the cause of this anomaly was some special input mapping that FSX does between the physical game controller and the virtual yoke in the simulator.  I put together a little video to demonstrate the problem:  

 

 

It seems to me that the creators of FSX designed the simulator with the expectation that most users would be using a joystick.  Most joysticks typically have about 30 degrees of motion from side to side.  A real aircraft yoke, on the other hand, typically has about 90 degrees of motion from side to side.  The engineers at Microsoft most likely decided that a linear mapping between the physical device and the virtual yoke would not be ideal, since it would lead to over sensitivity in the roll axis.  I think they were right about that.  However, this non-linear mapping is no longer needed or desirable when you are flying with a flight yoke, since it has a greater degree of motion.  

Aileron Remapping basically straightens out the graph that you see in the video.  It produces a very nearly linear relationship between the movement of the physical flight yoke and the virtual yoke in the simulator.  This in turn, of course, affects the flight dynamics.  With this feature turned on, you will find that you do not need to make such drastic yoke inputs to achieve normal roll rates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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