Tuning

The Tuning page is where you set how the stick feels. Every slider writes its new value to the running pipeline on the next 50 Hz tick — so you can fly with Tuning pinned on a second monitor and tweak forces while they're happening.

Master gain

The first card is Master gain, highlighted in brand amber. It's a single multiplier, applied after every other effect has done its math, displayed as a percentage from 0% to 100%. 100% is the designed level (and the default); lower values attenuate every dynamic output at once. There's no way to push past 100% from here — that ceiling is the one the per-effect gain sliders work up to.

Slider groups

Below the master gain, the rest of the Tuning page is grouped by subsystem. Every group is collapsible and remembers whether you had it open. From top to bottom:

Centring spring

The force pulling your stick toward neutral. Parameters:

Base coefficient — stiffness at 1 G.
G-gain — how much stiffness grows with load factor.
Min / max clamps — the spring never goes softer or harder than these.
Deadband — how much stick motion the spring ignores around centre; scales with airspeed so parked aircraft don't feel sticky at dead-centre.

Aerodynamic loading

Pushing the stick at cruise should feel like pushing against air. Separate gains for pitch and roll. A single multiplier on each; the underlying physics scales with airspeed squared so the effect naturally drops off as you slow.

Stick feel

Rate damping — body-axis rotation rates subtract from the commanded pitch/roll forces, so a rapid deflection decays back to the trim point. Like viscous damping in a real stick.
Control-edge bonus — extra spring force at the last 10% of stick travel to simulate hitting the control stops.

Ground effects

Runway rumble — continuous periodic force, scaled by ground speed and surface type (grass ≈ 1.5–1.9×, ice ≈ 0.3–0.5× compared to paved runway).
Touchdown thump — a single impulse the moment on_ground flips to true.
Gear bumps — repeated shorter impulses during taxi.
Brake shudder — continuous low-frequency rumble proportional to brake pedal deflection.

Aero buffets

Stall buffet — builds as AoA approaches the stall warning threshold.
Overspeed (VNE) buffet — fires when the sim flags an overspeed condition.
Mach buffet — high-altitude high-Mach vibration.
Spoiler buffet — scales with spoiler handle position and airspeed.
Turbulence overlay — rolling standard deviation of G-load used as a turbulence proxy, fed through a low-amplitude jitter.

Powerplant

Engine rumble — continuous periodic force scaled by per-engine RPM percent, gated by the engine's combustion flag so shutting an engine down silences it.
Reverse-thrust rumble — kicks in when the sim reports reverse thrust engaged, for rollout feel.

One-shots

Gear-deploy shudder — a single impulse when the gear handle moves.
Flap-step shudder — one impulse per flap step, in both directions (extending and retracting).

Autopilot

Autopilot back-drive shifts the spring's centre to match the AP-commanded deflection. Two sliders: back-drive gain (how hard the spring pulls toward the commanded position) and rate limit (how fast the centre is allowed to move).

Dirty indicators

Each slider shows a small amber dot next to its value whenever its current position differs from what was last loaded from the active profile. A single amber dot in the profile picker at the top of the page summarises “this profile has unsaved changes” when any slider is dirty.

Figure 3. Two sliders dirty (runway rumble and engine rumble) — note the amber dots. The profile picker mirrors the state at the top.

Saving your tune

The profile picker at the top of the Tuning page has two inline buttons:

Save — overwrites the active profile with the current slider values. Disabled when the profile is a starter preset (those are read-only).
Save as… — opens a small dialog to save under a new name. Typical pattern: pick the Cessna 172 starter, fly, adjust to taste, then Save as Cessna 172 — my feel.

Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S saves, Ctrl+Shift+S opens Save-as.

Resetting to defaults

The Reset to defaults menu (top-right of the Tuning page) pours the built-in default values back into every slider. It doesn't overwrite any saved profile — you still need to Save to persist the reset.

What's next

A practical walkthrough of how to take the defaults and turn them into something you'd fly every day lives in the Tuning guide. Once you've got a tune you like, save it, and see Profiles for how to manage multiple tunes.