Hi

I don't understand why all the joysticks I can find are center sprung.

Most real aircraft don't have center sprung controls.

This is because it would be almost impossible to control them.

As I understand it some fly-by-wire aircraft have center sprung or pressure sensitive controls, and that might make sense given the computer is flying the aircraft and the pilot is just directing it.

Flying a helicopter with a center sprung joystick is nigh on impossible.

The reason is simple to understand:

Imagine you are holding a right deflection.
This requires a force equal to centering spring force to the RIGHT.
In a real aircraft it would require almost no force to maintain a right deflection, because the controls on real aircraft are designed to "balance"

So it is wrong already, now see what happens next ...

Now we wish to ease the stick to the left.

Because of the centering force instead of applying a force to the left (as in a real aircraft) you have to reduce the force you are applying to the RIGHT!
This is not the same at all!
In fact it uses the exact OPPOSITE muscles that you would use in a real aircraft.
So that is completely wrong also.

Now it gets worse ...

When the joystick is centered it is almost impossible to make small corrective adjustments.
Because you are always fighting the springs.

So whilst it is POSSIBLE to flight sim with a center spring joystick:
a) it isn't realistic
b) it is MUCH harder than real life
c) it is dangerous to fly a real aircraft afterwards (very)

On the DCS Black Shark forums you can read endless discussions about how hard it is to fly the Black Shark.
But it is actually one of the easiest helicopters to fly!
They don't realise that it is the JOYSTICK that is the problem ... not them!
With a correctly designed joystick flying the Black Shark is very easy (and very enjoyable!)

IMO pressure sensitive joysticks are also useless in this regard.

So how to get a correctly designed joystick? I wish I knew ... this is what I have managed so far:

a) Take a Saitek AV8R, replace the center spring with a piece of sponge
b) Use a Microsoft Force Feedback 2

Neither of these is perfect, although with a force feedback capable simulator (Condor, Black Shark, etc)
the FF2 is very good.

I have a theory as to how this ridiculous situation could have developed:

a) products are designed to sell, not be used
b) most people buying joysticks either aren't pilots or don't understand how aircraft controls work
c) the largest % of the market is for fighter simulators, which are fly-by-wire and so it doesn't really matter
d) many serious flight simmers use yokes

The reason I am posting:

- How do I obtain a joystick that is truly suitable for flight-simming? (Gliders and helicopters mainly)
- Does anybody else agree with my viewpoint?
- the CH Flightstick Pro is described as having a "unique centering system" // Is this what I am looking for?

Thanks in advance

Amazing Factory

Yes, but in these are aerodynamic forces acting over the control surfaces...

Some time ago Tarmac Aces - now out of busines - make a joystick (universal base with many grips options) that act like you
desire, since use hidraulic dampers instead springs, the lever stay where you leave. But now "is history".

Maybe you find the same system in this low production stick dedicated do helicopter simulation - but they are expensive.

Edit - sample: http://www.maxflightstick.com/MaxFighter_Standard.html

Or maybe the (expensive) Paccus Hawk Hidraulic Force Feedback acts in the same manner...



The only difference in this is to have one spring for each axis - X and Y - so you have a pronounced axis transition.
Their gimbals are built similar to R/C radio gimbals - another sticks use the same system. And they have the same "spring center force".

User modified Saitek stick with dampers to fly Black Shark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sle-xYRj2wo

Sokol1

Well, You could be right about helicopters, but on fixed wing aircraft, there is a centering force indeed (during flight). This force is changing with the IAS, and it is a very important input for the pilot.

Sokol1: thank you for that informative post

Regarding aerodynamic centering forces:

control surfaces on fixed wing are designed to (mostly) balance these forces out
for example elevators might hinge some distance back from leading edge:

<---O---------->

so during low-g flying you would never feel any centering force

this avoids pilot fatigue and pilot induced oscillations

furthermore IRL these forces increase smoothly from zero
as opposed to these center sprung joysticks which often require a large force simply to deflect at all!

Unfortunately whilst the majority of joystick purchasers remain ignorant we will all be stuck with this useless junk
(or paying through the nose)

This combination of useless hardware and low quality and badly designed flight sim software really destroys the whole experience for me.

(At least Condor + FF2 is a decent combination)

Not strictly true.
You always have a centring force. This is to a zero hinge moment, rather than to zero elevator deflection, and increases from small values at low IAS to larger values at a higher IAS but it is present.
Complicating this is a frictional force in the system that with many early types greatly exceeded low speed, in trim centring forces needed for the minor deflections used in steady flight - this made (for example) the Hurricane difficult to fly at a predictable AOA and speed at low speeds, as the trim caused hinge moments that were smaller than frictional force for large departures in attained speed.

If you (mis)set trim to an AOA different to the one required for the current speed and 'g' loading then there will be a significant centring force that the pilot must resist to keep the current flight path.

Aircraft centring forces are usually much higher even near the centre than our 'flightsticks', but while the PC stick has a very limited increase in force those in an aircraft increase to 'pilot strength limits' when operating near the higher speed ranges, and when far off trim.

Well programmed (which is rare, IMO) the MSFFB2 or similar sticks can cover some of the limitations and performance characteristics of a real system, but it is strongly limited by low stick forces and a relatively small "throw" over too wide an angle.
The tendency of the elevator to "float" reduces longitudinal stability compared to the normal 'irreversable' centre used in PC sticks, so the absence is noticeable.

There is centering force, at least it is my IRL (glider and small prop) experience. Of course it is very low at cruising speed but in flight the stick wont stay in a deflected position, it will return to neutral. If it was not like this, why would we need a trim?

In a normal casual flying situation you only make small corrections on the stick, so the forces are very low, but if you make bigger deflection you will notice them at once.

The hinge placement on the elevator is to reduce the forces but not to eliminate them. (just look at the two arms of moment and it will be obvious)

The consumer joysticks on the market are POS, it is no question. The biggest problem for me is the short stick, what makes the precise flying very difficult and make the centering forces very sudden and unrealistic. That is why I ended up building one on my own:)

cheers
MM

Yes, maybe I should have said:

The control forces in real life aircraft HELP you to fly the aircraft
whereas the centering forces in these joysticks HINDER you.

For my purposes (gliders and helicopters) I fly with finger-pressure so all I need is a joystick with no spring that can hold its deflection when I take my hand off.

How can we bring this to the attention of Saitek, CH, Logitech, ThrustMaster, etc?

Well as long as 99% of the flight simmers are happy with their current products they wont change anything.

I think flight sim community badly needs a company like Fanatec for car sims. Which would make premium, realistic devices, at a high but acceptable price. The tarmac could have been that but unfortunately they failed for some reason.

I got a reply from Saitek:

We are always looking to improve the range, but we also need to take into account the marketing value of products as well.
Your comments are very useful and maybe we can look into a hybrid controller that has spring force which can be deactivated so the stick/yoke/collective is 'sticky'.

Your inquiry has been forwarded to our development team for reference.

AF:

I really don't know where you get this idea....

If you have a (non FBW) aircraft trimmed for straight and level and you apply pitch or roll input, you will have to continually apply pressure to hold it in that position - just like our gaming joysticks. In fact, somewhere there's cockpit video around from an L39 (from the Patriots team) where he's using both hands to hold the stick to one side. If you let go of the controls, they will quickly find an aerodynamic center.

What _IS_ different is that the amount of force needed to hold a given stick position (and therefore control input) will vary with airspeed - the faster you go the harder it is to hold an off-trim stick position.

I can't say "I guarantee no aircraft will...." but I am not aware of any non-FBW aircraft that, if you input a right roll input for example...will "balance" itself to that point and not try to push back to a non-rolling condition.

I've flown small aircraft in real life (Cessna, Mooney)...and I fly online very often with people who are full time airline pilots. Your statements are...bizarre to us.

In a real aircraft 'the centre' moves in response to aero-loads. In the sense that the stick wants to return to the 'stick-free' point you are correct - in the sense that the stick wants to return to the 'centre of travel' ~ well that is (almost) never true.

The best method of simulating it is to have someone who understands how it works programming a FFB response which provides an off-centre stick-free/no force location, a friction response 'smothering' the spring-response at low stick forces, and a spring response increasing with deflection 'out of trim' and at higher airspeeds (with possibility of control reversal at certain mach/aoa/beta values).

I think the OP would be better served by even a basic FFB implementation (offset centre and aero-loads depending on out-of-trim and "q"), but removing the spring (on a damped stick) is better than a misleading 'centre' position on a simply sprung undamped stick.

I'm on board with pretty much all of that, Lieste. The aircraft will always be fighting to hold its stick/yoke/cyclic in a position dictated by load and trim and this will rarely be "center". I'm with you (and the OP) on that.

However, It sounds like the OP thinks trimming happens automatically....if one assumed the aircraft self trimmed to wherever you moved the stick, then he would be correct. However, I'm not aware of (again, I'm not going to say "there are none") any non-fbw aircraft that trim themselves out in this manner (instantly, as soon as you move the stick). Controls do not "balance" themselves like that.

If you're in an aircraft trimmed straight and level, and you want to bank to the right, you would push/turn the stick/yoke to the right until achieving the desired bank angle, and then release pressure. The controls would move back towards that trimmed position as you released pressure...and if that turn resulted in a change in airspeed, the controls wouldn't move exactly back to where they were. The OP's words indicate that if he released pressure, the stick would stay to the right (and the a/c would keep rolling)...and he would have to apply pressure to move the stick back to the left. In fact, he states that outright.

A looooooong time ago (15-20 years) I had a joysticks that you could disable the centering springs on. The only control I could stand to have non-centering when flying was throttle. Flying with no centering force was...bizarre.

Well chaps I have to reconsider my opininion on this matter. At least partly.
Today was a nice weather so I was flying a lovely motor glider (Duo Discus). This topic came into my mind so I tried to concentrate on how does the stick "feel and behave".

I have to aprove that at crusing speed and slight deflections the stick stayed where I left it. The frictional force in the steering system was simply higher than the resulting aerodinamical forces aka moment on the steering surfaces.

It was most obvious on ailerons. On the elevator it was less noticable, and the stick recentered to trimmed position on this axis.

Of course it doesn`t mean that there were no recentering forces, but the friction was higher.

Hey, that resembles what I said

I think you're going about this the wrong way complaining about the available controllers. There are specialty pole cyclics and force feedback HOTAS for sale. The issue is they're problematic either due to cost or glitches.

All fighters have either "center sprung" or pressure sticks. Fighter jets, space sims, and flying shooters are the dominant market in flight sims/games. These stick types are also cheaper to build and build reliably. These are all reasons why you see more of them than other controller types for sale.

I think a more appropriate discussion is from the standpoint of the sims themselves.

Conventional, non-digital fly-by-wire helos use cyclics, which is admittedly best emulated with a force feedback stick like the Logitech G940... a troublesome product according to many people. Lite civilian and prop mil aircraft are probably also best modeled with something like the G940 where you can get rid of centering and just have resistance to motion, not to mention have the sim choose where the stick stays as a result of aero forces and trim. And feel a stall coming on with vibration and tug.

Digital fly-by-wire helos actually use Attitude Command & Attitude Hold principally and are accompanied by pressure sticks, though on the RAH-66 its had more throw than even the newest US fighter pressure sticks. The new Cobra Zulu/Viper uses a pressure stick like this and like Comanche derives from the early research done by the Army labs with ADOCS and LHX.

The common cockpit upgrades for Chinook and Blackhawk, as well as the new Block III Apache, eventually dropped the new full AFCS and HOTAS sidestick system upgrades from the production implementations and have moved those back to a later date. That's were all the helo research points to upgrades and new designs using in the future. X2, for example.

Oddly, very few helo sims even give the option of attitude commanding, even though it is simple to do. Off the top of my head, only Longbow Anthology and Gunship! can do it (let's ignore Gunship 2000 for a moment), while X-Plane can allow a slow-to-respond automatic trimming of pitch loads to sort of mimic this. X-Plane and MS Flight Simulator also do roll performance fairly well, with the former giving optional autopilot wings-leveling.

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=7789

Janes used AC/AH clearly for the reason you've stumbled upon in reverse: the type of joysticks most people already own. They appear to have originally attempted a conventional style and had a trimmer, but thankfully took the other route. You can still find the trimmer assignment, but it's counterproductive and otherwise useless.

In helo sims that either have perfect automatic wings-leveling (EECH, Comanche Gold, optionally in Gunship!, etc) or that are clearly better to be flown with force feedback sticks (DCS Blackshark), you can get a crude form of ACAH using PPJoy and GlovePIE with a center-sprung or pressure stick to compensate for the unnaturalness.

I will say, though, that if you don't use a FFB stick or GlovePIE with conventional helos, then you're better off with something that is center sprung with a lite & long throw like a lubed X52. Enemy Engaged is so simple in its behavior that it's fine with a pressure stick and trimmer, though better with GlovePIE, in my opinion. Blackshark is harder to use with an X65F compared to the X52 when just using the trimmer button or especially with Flight Director turned off.

Still, I've gotten fairly comfortable with the X65F for all my purposes now. I do wish the palm plate was angled downward towards the pinky rather than horizontal, or came with a riser plate about a cm up on the front side and no rise on the pinky end. I find it a little cramped otherwise in the pinky area.

Oh, and the pickle button and china hat POV are swapped compared to US aircraft on it. It's nice, though. Lots of hats. I haven't even bothered with the 4 modes. In fact, I wish the 4 mode button could just be programmed as a switch if I wanted.

So for your purpose, you might want the Logitech G940 and modify it internally to work better as stated on the forums. It also has extensive settings for changing how the force feedback works. The hysteresis issues, which I suspect are related to the high resolution USB signals coexisting, will not completely resolve.

Or pay a grand for one of those cyclic/old-style fighter setups from MaxFlightStick.com they linked above. Goodness. No buttons or programming for that much? They're probably hand built to order. That's how small the market is.

Or just accept and embrace the new trends in aircraft design toward where our joysticks already are at.