Tuning guide

A practical walkthrough from just-installed to this feels right. Most pilots only touch four or five sliders — the rest are at sensible defaults. Work through the stages in the order below; each one builds on the previous.

Stage 1 — Master gain

The Master gain slider sits at the top of the Tuning page, above everything else. It is the master force-feedback volume: 0% to 100%, default 100%. 100% is the designed profile level. You can only scale down from here — the per-effect sliders work up to the same ceiling, and Master gain trims the whole stack at once.

In 1.0, Master gain scales the centring spring coefficient too. Drop it when the whole stick feels too strong, including the baseline spring. Set it to 0% when you want the bridge armed but completely silent.

Start at 100% and fly a full circuit at your usual cruise speed. The one thing to look for:

• Saturation. If the stick is hitting motor limits — harshness at full deflection, the centring spring feeling "notchy" near centre, buffets that mash together instead of fluttering — drop Master gain to 80% and repeat. If that cures it, individual effects need individual attention (continue with the later stages). If it doesn't, your aircraft may simply demand less authority and you can leave Master gain lower.

Most pilots leave Master gain at 100% and tune the per-effect sliders from there. The slider exists mainly for quick "soften everything at once" trims (drop to 50% for a quiet night flight) without touching the profile values underneath. Underneath the slider the bridge drives the device at 95% of its full authority, leaving 5% headroom.

Stage 2 — Centring spring (Forces card)

With Master gain settled, open the Forces expander. Three sliders matter here for centring:

• Spring strength — how firmly the stick wants to return to centre. Range 30%–100%, default 30%. The 30% minimum is intentional: baseline centering stays alive even on the lowest setting.
• Spring deadband — width of the neutral zone around centre, where no spring force is applied. Range 0%–30%, default 5%. Wider feels looser; narrower feels twitchier.
• Low-speed spring floor — how much spring survives when the air-load model is small at taxi, approach, and parked speeds. Range 0%–100%, default 50%. Raise it if the stick goes too limp below flight speed; lower it if taxi centering feels too artificial.

Fly level at cruise and release the stick. Does it return smartly to centre, or sluggishly?

• Sluggish → raise Spring strength by 5%.
• Snappy or oscillating → drop it by 5%.

Now pull a 2 G level turn. The stick should feel noticeably firmer in your hand — that's the G-load gain in the Stick-feel section doing its work, covered next.

Stage 3 — Stick feel (Stick-feel card)

Open the Stick feel expander. The sliders grouped here cover G-load stiffening, deadband, the control-edge bumper, and trim authority — but most pilots only touch three. Set the control-system feel first.

Control system

At the top of the group is the Control system selector — a per-aircraft choice (saved in the profile) that reshapes how the spring and aero loading behave:

• Manual — mechanical / cable controls that load with airspeed and stiffen under G. The default and the right pick for GA and most prop / turboprop aircraft (C172, TBM 930, King Air 350i).
• Hydraulic-boosted — a gentler, smoother boosted feel; aerodynamic loading is still present but reduced (747-8).
• Fly-by-wire — a constant side-stick spring that doesn't load with speed or G. Engine rumble and the stall stick-shaker are also silenced on the side-stick, since an isolated FBW side-stick doesn't transmit them; stall buffet and ground / touchdown cues still come through (A320neo).

G-load base & G-load gain

• G-load base — baseline stiffness at 1 g, wings-level. Range 0%–100%, default 90%. Sets the floor the G-load gain stacks on top of.
• G-load gain — how much positive g stiffens the stick (and negative g loosens it). Range 0%–100%, default 35%.

If your 2 G turn feels identical to cruise, raise G-load gain by 5%. If the stick feels like lead at 2 G, drop it.

Deadband base & low-speed widening

• Deadband base — the "stick is centred" zone at cruise. Range 0%–20%, default 5%.
• Deadband low-speed widening — extra deadband at taxi / parked airspeeds, so the stick floats free instead of fighting micro-spring. Range 0%–40%, default 15%. Fades back to zero by 60 kt.

Control-edge trigger & gain

• Control-edge trigger — stick deflection past which an extra spring snap kicks in, simulating running out of mechanical travel. Range 50%–100%, default 85%.
• Control-edge gain — strength of the bumper. Range 0%–80%, default 30%. Set both to zero to disable the effect.

Elevator & Aileron trim authority

• Elevator trim authority — how much elevator trim shifts the spring centre. Range 0%–100%, default 60%. 100% = trimming fully re-centres the stick at the trimmed surface position; 0% = trim doesn't move centre.
• Aileron trim authority — same idea for aileron trim. Range 0%–100%, default 30% (most GA aircraft have little aileron trim; jets and twins have more).

Stage 4 — Aerodynamic loading (Forces card)

Back to the Forces expander. Three sliders together model the "stick gets heavier as you fly faster" effect:

• Force gain — scales the pitch / roll aero-load force. Range 0%–300%, default 100%. Single slider applies to both axes; the asymmetry between pitch and roll comes from the actual control positions, not the gain.
• Cruise reference (kt) — airspeed where the aero load reaches the designed magnitude. Range 40–800 kt, default 120 kt. Set this near your aircraft's typical cruise speed.
• Max output force — hard clamp on the pitch / roll constant force after all gains apply. Range 10%–100%, default 70%. Raise it if you find the stick saturating at the clamp before it reaches its motor limits.

Climb to cruise and push the stick forward without trimming — you should feel the air pushing back. Too light? Raise Force gain. Too heavy (you can't move the stick at all)? Drop it. Same exercise in roll: bank left, hold it, release.

Stage 5 — Stick drop (Stick-drop card)

The Stick-drop expander has two sliders modelling gravity on an unloaded elevator (cable-rigged GA aircraft).

• Force — forward bias on the parked / taxiing stick. Range 0%–100%, default 25%. At default the stick rests roughly halfway forward against the 30% spring. Set to 0% on jets / fly-by-wire where the elevator isn't free to droop.
• Fade airspeed — speed at which the effect fades to zero. Range 0–120 kt, default 30 kt. Drop it if the bias is still pulling through V_r; raise it if it disappears during taxi.

Stage 6 — Trim (Trim card)

Trim decides what a "trimmed stick" actually feels like. It's a single Enable trim toggle:

• Off. Trim does nothing to the stick.
• On. Trimming eases the held airspeed-loaded force — it's computed against your hand input above the trimmed position, (stick − trim) — and shifts the centre to the trimmed position. At a trimmed steady-state with centred stick: zero force. Release the stick and it holds where you trimmed it, the way a real cable-rigged stick does.

Trim is elevator-first: one Elevator strength slider, with aileron strength under an Advanced disclosure. The older centre-only trim mode (which only shifted the centre, without relieving force) was retired — there's no separate switch for it. 1.0 also corrected the MSFS elevator and aileron trim telemetry that feeds trim, so retest it on a current build before judging an older profile.

Stage 7 — Ground effects (Effect gains)

Open the Effect gains expander. Ground effects fire only while on the ground (or, for touchdown, crossing the boundary):

• Runway rumble — ground vibration on the rollout. Default 35%. Scales linearly with ground speed from 2 kt to 80 kt. Surface-type scaling is automatic from the sim's surface enum (grass / gravel stronger, ice weaker) — you don't tune that separately.
• Gear bumps — one-shot kicks crossing runway expansion joints or grass-strip ruts. Default 25%. Engages from 15 kt to 60 kt.
• Brake shudder — vibration under braking, scaled by brake-pedal pressure. Default 40%. Active above 3 kt with brakes past 5%.
• Touchdown thump — one-shot kick the moment wheels meet pavement, scaled by sink rate. Default 90% — already firm. Greaser landings produce almost nothing; an 8 fps arrival saturates.
• Reverse rumble — extra rumble on the rollout while reverse thrust / beta-range props are engaged. Default 50%. Engages from 30 kt to 120 kt ground speed. Jets / turboprops only.
• Nosewheel shimmy — a rapid side-to-side (roll-axis) wobble at and above taxi-rotation speed, the classic nosegear shimmy. Strongest on a free-castoring GA nosewheel, weaker on steered / damped airliner gear.
• Ground-acceleration pitch cue — fore/aft acceleration on the ground felt as a pitch-axis force: the takeoff surge throws the stick aft, braking pushes it forward. Tuned per aircraft by mass and braking authority; never fires airborne.

The group also has an Undercarriage type selector (wheels / skis / floats) that scales the continuous ground rumbles — leave it on wheels unless you fly a ski or float aircraft.

Bench-test path: taxi at 10–20 kt, apply brakes, take off, plant a firm arrival. Adjust whichever gain feels wrong.

Stage 8 — Aero buffets (Effect gains)

Aero buffets are continuous airframe vibrations driven by aerodynamic state:

• Stall buffet — airframe shake while the stall warning is active. Default 50%.
• Stall stick-shaker — a sharp, fixed-frequency buzz gated on the sim's stall-warning flag, modelling the mechanical shaker airliners and turboprops fire at stall warning. An Enable stick shaker checkbox plus an amplitude slider. Off on the C172 (it keeps its buffet); on for the turboprop and jet built-ins, which dial their stall buffet down a little so the two don't double-stack. Silenced automatically under the Fly-by-wire control-system feel.
• Overspeed buffet — airframe shake past V_NE. Default 60%.
• Mach buffet — transonic shake past M_crit on swept-wing aircraft. Ramps from M 0.82 to M 0.95. Default 50%. Silent on GA props.
• Spoiler buffet — airframe shake from deployed spoilers / speedbrake. Default 40%. Scales with handle position × airspeed (above 60 kt).
• Flap buffet — sustained airframe buffet from extended flaps at speed. Default 35%. Engages on detent 2 and above (most GA aircraft buffet hardest past 20° flaps), between 50 kt and 90 kt reference range.
• Gear buffet — sustained airframe buffet whenever the gear is extended in flight above 80 kt. Default 25%. Set to 0 for fixed-gear aircraft.
• Turbulence — random shake overlay scaled by how much the aircraft is being knocked around. Default 40%. Driven by rolling G-stddev on MSFS (no ambient turbulence SimVar) and the ambient turbulence dataref on X-Plane.

Bench-test path: climb away, slow to just above stall and enter a power-off stall. Deploy spoilers at cruise. Extend full flaps at 75 kt. Extend gear at 110 kt. Adjust whichever feels wrong. Overspeed and Mach are harder to bench-test — tune by feel during normal operations.

Stage 9 — Sustained aero drag (Effect gains)

These are sustained pitch forces from the airplane being configured for landing — distinct from the buffets (continuous vibrations) and the one-shots (single thumps). Felt as a steady pull on the stick that you trim out, the way you'd trim out a real airframe configured for approach.

• Flap drag — sustained backwards pitch force at flaps + airspeed. Default 15%. Engages from 30 kt up to a typical C172 V_fe around 95 kt.
• Spoiler drag — sustained nose-down pitch moment when spoilers are deployed at speed. Default 22%. Engages above 5% handle deployment, 60 kt to 220 kt. Distinct from spoiler buffet (vibration).
• Gear drag — sustained pitch force from gear-down drag in flight. Default 8% (subtle). Set to 0 for fixed-gear aircraft.
• Propwash pitch — single-engine prop nose-up tendency from prop slipstream over the horizontal stab. Default 18%. Engages above 30% RPM, fades out by 90 kt as free-stream velocity dominates. Set to 0 for jets and multi-engine.

Stage 10 — Mechanical one-shots (Effect gains)

• Gear deploy — one-shot shudder during gear extension / retraction. Default 60%.
• Flap step — one-shot shudder on every flap-notch change, both extension and retraction. Default 35%.

Most pilots keep these subtle — they're confirmations, not drama. Tune by retracting / extending the gear once and stepping through every flap notch in turn.

Stage 11 — Engine rumble (Effect gains)

• Engine rumble — continuous vibration from a running engine, scaled by RPM. Default 45%. Engages at 15% RPM, fully loaded by 100% RPM. Gated by the combustion flag, so it's silent during engine-off glides.

Where the simulator reports a real per-engine vibration value (X-Plane's sim/cockpit2/engine/indicators/engine_vibration is the canonical source), the bridge folds that into the rumble alongside the synthesised RPM-based amplitude. The two combine by max(), so a real vibration spike will be felt without overriding the rumble base.

Stage 12 — Rate damping (Rate-damping card)

Rate damping resists rapid stick motion — pulling harder while already pitching fast feels heavier. Subtle knob; most pilots never touch it.

• Pitch gain — force per rad/s of pitch rotation rate. Range 0%–30%, default 8%.
• Roll gain — same on the roll axis. Range 0%–30%, default 6%.

If your stick oscillates after a sharp input, or inputs feel twitchy, raise both 2–3%. Too much damping makes the stick feel dead and laggy — back off.

Stage 13 — Autopilot follow (Autopilot-follow card)

Cues the stick toward the autopilot's commanded position when the AP is on. Current builds ship this off by default for all bundled profiles because stock MSFS still treats physical stick movement as pilot input. Use it as a small visual / tactile cue unless you own the input axis with a virtual-device / HID-filter setup. Two sliders:

• Authority — gain on the AP position that the stick chases. Range 0%–8%, default 5% when enabled. Field reports put the useful stock-MSFS range in the low single digits; the UI deliberately avoids the old oversized scale.
• Strength — spring stiffness while AP follow is active. Range 0%–100%, default 25%. Higher values can excite a feedback oscillation on MSFS: the sim reads the moving physical stick, the AP sees pilot input, over-corrects, and the loop swings. Do not use AP follow to drive the airplane on stock MSFS.

Stage 14 — Watchdog (Watchdog card)

The stale-telemetry watchdog fades dynamic forces to zero when sim packets stop arriving (sim crash, freeze, full disconnect). Distinct from sim pause, which is instant and not user-tunable.

• Stale threshold (s) — seconds without a sim packet before fade begins. Range 1–30 s, default 5 s.
• Fade window (ms) — how long the fade-out takes once stale fires. Range 100–3000 ms, default 500 ms.

Defaults are conservative — short enough to catch a sim crash, long enough to not trip on a brief network hiccup. Lower the threshold if you fly with a long-haul aircraft in a flaky network and a 5 s gap is too long to tolerate.

Save and iterate

Hit Save often — overwriting a profile is cheap and the file is on your disk, so you can copy it somewhere else as a backup any time. It's normal to come back to a profile after a few flights and tweak one or two values. The amber UNSAVED pill on the Profile card tells you there are unsaved changes; the dirty-dot on each section expander tells you which group has them.

Common patterns

Light single (C172, PA-28, DA-40)

• Control system: Manual.
• Spring strength 30–40%.
• G-load gain at default; G-load base 80–100%.
• Force gain 80–120%, Cruise reference 100–120 kt.
• Touchdown thump at default 90% (main gear really does thump).
• Propwash pitch enabled at default; tweak to taste.
• Gear buffet / gear drag at 0% (fixed-gear).
• Engine rumble at default; present but not dominant.

Aerobatic (Extra 330, Pitts)

• Spring strength 30% (minimum) — soft centring.
• Rate damping pitch / roll 2–4% — let the stick respond sharp and fast.
• Force gain 120–180% — high aero loading.
• Stall buffet 0–15% — aerobatic pilots want the stick to go quiet at the break.
• Control system: Manual; trim off — trim doesn't shape the feel here.

Heavy jet (747-8, 737 MAX)

• Control system: Hydraulic-boosted (or Fly-by-wire for FBW types).
• Spring strength 50–70%.
• G-load base 100%; G-load gain default.
• Force gain 120–180%, Cruise reference 300+ kt.
• Rate damping pitch 12–20%, roll 10–15% — heavy aircraft don't snap around.
• Autopilot follow off by default; if you want a cue, use 5% authority and 25% strength.
• Mach buffet at default; relevant at FL370.
• Stick drop force 0% — fly-by-wire elevator isn't free to droop.

Bush / STOL (Kodiak, Porter)

• Spring strength 30% (minimum) so the stick doesn't fight you near stall.
• G-load gain 40–55% — firms up in turns.
• Gear bumps + Runway rumble 50–70% — gravel strips are where these aircraft live.
• Cruise reference 70–90 kt.