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Chapter 9
Expert Essays—Unleashing the
Simulator’s Full Potential
9.1 Tuning the Handling of Aircraft X-Plane
If X-Plane is set up and flying, but aircraft seem to be too sensitive in pitch, or if they pull to one
side, the simulator’s handling may need to be tuned.
Before performing the following, make sure the joystick and/or other control devices are set
up and calibrated. See the section “Configuring Flight Controls” of Chapter 4 for instructions on
doing this.
To easily see whether the controls are properly calibrated, go to the Settings menu and click
Data Input & Output. There, select the rightmost of the check boxes labeled joystick ail/elv/rud.
When you close the Data Input & Output dialog box, you will see, in the upper left corner of the
screen, the aileron, elevator, and rudder inputs from the flight controls (such as a joystick, yoke,
rudders, etc.).
With properly configured controls, the aileron, elevator, and rudder joystick inputs all read
around 0.0 when your flight controls are centered. When the controls are pushed full left and
forward, they should read around −1.0. When the controls are pulled full aft and right, they should
read around 1.0. If this is what you see, then your controls are properly calibrated. If not, it’s no
wonder the plane is not flying correctly! You need to configure the controls as described in the
section “Configuring Flight Controls” of Chapter 4.
If the controls are indeed properly calibrated as per the above test, but the plane still is not
flying correctly, it’s time to look at the first level of control response tuning. Go to the Settings
menu and click Joystick & Equipment. In that dialog box, select the Axis tab. Leave the flight
controls centered and hit the button labeled Use this position as center.
With that done, close the Joystick & Equipment dialog box and move the flight controls to the
centered position. Check to see if the data output (which should still be on the screen from the
pre-test in the above paragraphs) is around 0.000 when the controls are centered. If it is, then the
hardware works fine and the center point was set successfully. If the data output does not read near
0, the hardware is either of poor quality (or failing) or the center point was not properly set.
With the center point set correctly, try flying the plane once again. If it still does not handle
correctly, read on to tune the next level of control response.
Open the Joystick & Equipment window and select the Nullzone tab. Look at the three sliders
labeled control-response (one each for pitch, roll, and yaw) in the upper right of the screen.
If these three sliders are fully left, then the control response is linear; that is, a 50% stick
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