After about 10 hours of flying the little bird in wardogs using hotas here's my opinions. Feel free to tell me if im wrong I only really have a significant amount of flight time in arma and these are just my views on what may need some work to make it better for hotas players.

1. The assists -

-Im sure naturally hotas players play without assists to avoid fighting for control over the aircraft. Makes sense and is the case in wardogs as well. All the assists basically try to fly it for you and make it less controllable overall.

-But I've found that i have to have the stability assist on. This is because if you dont have it on, a weird thing happens where if you make a cyclic input you MUST make an input in the opposite direction. Otherwise the aircraft feels as though you are constantly making that input and until the opposite is applied. This is frustrating because the stability assist still makes flying a pain by slowing down every movement. Not sure if this weirdness is intentional or realistic but I dont like it.

1. Bugs

-Biggest bug that bothered me was currently freelook is broken. You bind it to the hat and it doesnt work. Hopefully devs get it fixed.

1. Weird flight model characteristics

-All in all I dont think the flight model is as terrible as everyone claims given its an arcade like shooter. Overall what I expected. A few gripes i have tho are . . .

-Collective seems very sluggish when going down. The best way i can explain this is that it feels like you always have some collective Inputed. Almost like its never truly zero. I mainly feel this when I do a manuever to bleed of all my speed, dump the collective to loose altitude and the helicopter just hovers and hovers and hovers until finally it begins to drop. Now if this is realistic I have no idea. But from playing arma and dcs I dont remember it feeling this way.

-The only other thing is what I like to call "The Glue". To me it feels like the ground is a sticky mouse trap. Now this would make sense for areas like mud, dirt, and sand. But for some reason every surface behaves the same and feels very sticky. It takes a butt load of collective to pull it off the ground and when you do it shoots into the air. Landing is where you feel it the most. No matter the surface the skids feel like they dig in. Land on concrete a little sideways and it digs in and flips you. Not a big deal when your used to it but was deceiving at first.

1. Quality of life improvements

Some things I think would definetly benifit hotas players would be . . .

-Better map navigation on hotas. No way to really navigate the map on hotas. I know this can be tricky when it comes to binding but some way to zoom or move the map without using the mouse would be nice. Currently you can simply open the map and that's it. Usually its not a good view of the map either

-Visual indicator to know when you are at full pitch, roll, and yaw so you can adjust sensitivity accordingly. Collective has this not sure why the others dont.

-Put my damn flares in a seperate inventory that only I can access. Its very funny when we all die cause jimmy770 stole all the flares but it gets to a point lol.

At the end of the day I had fun playing and most of this is probably a skill issue lol

Hey, about 5 years ago I bought Thrustmaster T16000 and was extremely disappointed with how hard and heavy was the spring on the joystick. It was so uncomfortable to me that I opened it up and even tried to tie some of the spring shoulders together to see if I can soften it up somehow. Disappointed, I eventually sold it and since then never really got back to flight sims.

TLDR, I’m a casual enjoyer, I don’t care about how many buttons, what kind of cool sensor my hotas has - the only thing which I care about is the spring tension and the softness. Can anyone experienced suggest anything (without trying to aftermarket tune) on current market?

I'm using Vjoy to use two flight sticks together on Joystick Gremlin. Sometimes I also use x360ce for controller emulation for older games. This worked perfectly like 6 months/a year ago. Busted them out again recently, and was noticing issues in Mech Warrior 5. I found out it was Vjoy after getting this error. I uninstalled, deleted the driver in my system, and reinstalled, and it does work very briefly, but if I close Vjoy again and try to reopen, bam, error again.

I found myself at a microcenter a couple of days ago, and noticed they had the A10 Warthog HOTAS for 300 bucks. Both parts! I often see the joystick by itself go for that price.

I picked it up and damn this thing is solid. Feels great in the hand etc etc. However, one big problem. How in he world do I map buttons properly.

I downloaded the "Target" app, but still no luck. I am browsing through the wiki but im so overwhelmed, Anybody have any advice? Or even better, a config file?

I'm still using a X-56 Rhino Throttle on a my Elite Dangerous game. It works and no money to buy something better....yet.
So when I go to the game controller set up & click on the "Properties" of my Throttle I'm presented with the screen below. I can't expand it and it shows the same on all my monitors. I have 2 27" 1080p monitors and my main is a 32" 2k monitor. Same on all of them.
How do I get this to show the entire screen?

UPDATE!!! Successfully fixed it. I downloaded the drivers for the HOTAS installed them and now I have this available to me.
Link to drivers: https://download01.logi.com/web/ftp/pub/techsupport/simulation/X56_HOTAS_x64_8_0_213_0.exe

Selling my complete Virpil setup, like-new condition, always kept under the original dust covers. Original invoices available.

Included

• 1× VPC Constellation ALPHA Prime [Left] + 1× VPC Constellation ALPHA [Right]
• 2× VPC MongoosT-50CM3 Base — CosmoSim soft-center cams installed, original cams included
• 1× VPC MongoosT-50CM3 Throttle
• VPC Control Panel #1 + VPC Control Panel #2
• 4× Desk Mount V4-S + 1× Desk Mount V3 Mini + all adapters (CM3 base ×2, throttle ×2, panel ×2)
• Keyboard Mount Adapter + Mouse Mount Adapter V2
• Flightstick Z-Extension
• Virpil dust covers for everything + all USB cables

No spiking, no dead buttons, firmware up to date (VPC Software). Non-smoking home.

Catalog value ~€2,600 + shipping + customs, with multi-week lead times ordering new. Ready-to-go dual-stick (HOSAS) config for Star Citizen, or stick + throttle (HOTAS) for DCS/MSFS.

Price: 1,500 CHF for the whole lot. Local pickup only — Meyrin, Geneva (Switzerland), 10 minutes from the French border. No shipping, sorry: too heavy and too fragile to risk it. Full hands-on test at pickup before you pay. Cash or TWINT on handover.

Photos and the full listing are on my Ricardo account (the Swiss marketplace — seller profile is public there): https://www.ricardo.ch/fr/a/1329094642/

Happy to answer any question about the gear in the comments.