Stupid Flight Sim Tricks

Any Letterman fans out there? Well, here's one to try if you have the FSX demo:

 

Launch any flight and turn on Mouse-as-Yoke (from the right-click menu or by pressing CTRL+Y). Fly around for a bit and then press the middle mouse button (or mouse wheel button as the case may be). Notice anything funny?

 

Somehow we mapped the SLEW_RESET command to the middle button in normal mode--a bit of a pain if your hand happens to slip. Fixing this means going to the control assignments dialog and removing the mapping. Unfortunately we make this difficult because we filter the assignments based on mode so you won't see this in the list. Hooray us!

 

Anyway, to remove the mapping try assigning any other command to the middle button. You should see a message in the assignment dialog to the effect of, "Button 2 is already mapped to blah, blah, blah." Click OK and you should now see Button 2 in the assignment list. You can now click Delete Assignment then OK and clear the assignment. Phew! Keep this tip handy because we may not fix this in the final release (to keep from breaking something else). Instead we'll add it to the FSX blooper reel. <g>

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 21, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  August 22, 2006
  Somewhy this 'SLEW_RESET' function in normal mode works with my mouse, but when I tried to reassign the function to the middle mouse button, it didn't work. I mean, when I pressed the middle button (the wheel in my case) nothing happened, as if I didn't do anything. I would like to assign "Mouse Look" to the middle button, but I can't :( Tell me please, how can I do that? Maybe there is another way?
  
  My mouse is Logitech PS/2.
• Anonymous
  August 22, 2006
  Thousands of disabled and laptop flyers will be over the moon that you have
  re-established this vital accessibility feature.  Big, big thanks.
  
  There are some serious problems/issues with its implementation though that I
  have noticed in the released demo.  These are:-
  
  1). Each time you enter the mode the mouse pointer is placed lower and lower
  down the screen.  In the end, this means that because the pointer is not
  snapped to the centre of the window when in Yoke mode, there comes a point
  when you can no longer pull the elevator back at all because the mouse
  pointer is at the bottom of the screen.
  
  2). To make this feature functional at all they really need to snap the
  mouse pointer to the middle of the window.  This way you never run out of
  room to move your Ailerons and Elevators.
  
  3). At present the pointer is kept visible whilst in Yoke mode and changes
  to a cross shape.  I imaging the thinking was that you can still use the
  mouse to click objects whilst in Yoke mode.  In reality, you would never
  want to use the mouse for anything else other than controlling the primary
  controls when in Yoke mode.  So it would make more sense to hide it.  In my
  experience 9 out of 10 people who use this feature hate having the pointer
  shown.
  
  4). To exit Yoke mode at present you must either press the assigned key or
  right click to access the pop-up menu then deselect Yoke mode from the list.
  The assigned key method is very good.  The menu de-selection method just
  does not work well because while you are moving the mouse to de-select Mouse
  Yoke mode from the pop-up menu, you are still making inputs to your Ailerons
  and Elevators at the same time.  It would be much better to have it how it
  use to be in that a single right click not only accessed the pop-up menu,
  but also took you out of Yoke mode.  This is how it use to work in any case.
  
  5). If there is still anyone on the team from Flight Sim 95 days, they will
  remember how when in Mouse-as-yoke mode, moving the mouse up/down moved the
  Elevators, moving the mouse left/right moved the Ailerons but by holding
  down the left mouse button meant that up/down movement operated the
  throttles whilst left/right movement applied and de-applied the brakes
  resulting in the parking brakes being applied once the normal brakes were
  fully applied.  Please, please can we have it this way again.
  
  Over the last 6 years I
  have had alot of contact with the sort of people who depend on this feature
  simply to be able to use the sim due to their disabilities whilst
  developing my replacement Mouse-As-Yoke Add-on. So these comments are based
  on 100s of requests made to me for my Add-on plus my own insight, also being
  disabled myself and having to use a combination of my chin, on my touchpad
  and my nose on the keyboard.