Tuning guide

A practical walkthrough from just-installed to this feels right. You won't need every slider — most people tune three or four and leave the rest at defaults. Work through the stages below in order.

Stage 1 — Master gain

The master gain is a single multiplier on top of everything else the pipeline produces. It's a slider from 0% to 100% — 100% is the designed level (the default), 0% turns all dynamic output off. You can only scale down from here; there's no way to push the motor past what the individual effect gains already ask for.

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

• Saturation. If the stick is hitting its 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, the individual effects need individual attention (continue with stages 2+); if not, 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. It exists mainly for quick “soften everything at once” trims on the fly (dialing it down to 50% for a quiet night flight, for example) without touching the profile values underneath. Beta.11 drives the device at 95% of bridge authority underneath this slider, leaving 5% headroom.

Stage 2 — Centring spring

With master gain settled, fly level at cruise and release the stick. Does it return smartly to centre, or sluggishly?

• Sluggish → raise the spring base by 0.05.
• Snappy, maybe even oscillating → drop the spring base by 0.05.

Once linear-flight centring is acceptable, pull a 2 G level turn. The stick should feel noticeably firmer in your hand — this is the G-gain doing its work. If the turn feels identical to cruise, raise G-gain by 0.05. If the stick feels like lead at 2 G, drop it.

Stage 2.5 — Stick drop

Park the aircraft, engine off. The stick should sit slightly forward of centre — that's the stick-drop bias modelling gravity on the unloaded elevator. If it sits dead-centre on a GA aircraft, raise the Force slider on the Stick-drop expander (Stick-feel group) until the resting position looks right; for a Cessna, somewhere around 50% of forward travel is realistic.

Now begin the takeoff roll and watch the resting position. It should drift back toward centre as airflow loads the elevator and disappear by rotation speed. If the bias is still pulling you forward through V_r, lower the Fade airspeed; if it disappears too early (you can feel it vanish during taxi), raise the Fade airspeed.

For jets and fly-by-wire profiles where the elevator isn't free to droop on the ramp, set Force to 0 to silence the effect.

Stage 2.6 — Pick a trim model

Decide whether you want the legacy trim feel or the new TrimRelief alt-trim model. They produce distinctly different feels and the rest of this guide assumes you've made the call:

• TrimRelief off (default). Pitch / roll trim shifts the spring's centre, but airspeed loading still fights total surface deflection. A trimmed aircraft with neutral stick still pushes against you a little. Existing profiles were tuned around this; leave it off if you've already got a tune you like.
• TrimRelief on. The spring centre tracks trim with full authority and airspeed loading references (stick − trim). At a trimmed steady state with neutral stick: zero force. Release the stick and it holds at the trimmed position the way a real cable-rigged stick does. This is closer to the XPforce / FSforce model.

Toggle on the Tuning page under Stick feel → TrimRelief. Switching mid-tune will shift the felt forces, so pick before you start grinding through stages 3 onward — or expect to re-walk the loading stages after you flip it.

Stage 3 — Aerodynamic loading

Climb to cruise and push the stick forward without trimming — you should feel the air pushing back. Too light? Raise the pitch-loading gain. Too heavy (you can't move the stick at all)? Drop it.

Repeat the exercise in roll: bank left, hold it, release. The stick should fight you when you hold it out of centre. Adjust roll-loading.

Stage 4 — Ground effects

Taxi at 10–20 kt on a paved runway. You should feel a low-frequency rumble. Adjust the runway rumble gain. Now taxi onto grass — the rumble should intensify to something distinctly rougher. That change is automatic from the surface-type enum; you don't need to tune it separately.

Apply brakes during taxi. You should feel a brake shudder added on top of the runway rumble. Adjust brake shudder if it's too much or too little relative to the runway rumble.

Take off, come around, and plant a firm arrival. You should feel the touchdown thump plus, immediately after, the runway rumble. Adjust the touchdown thump gain; most people want this one on the firm side.

Stage 5 — Buffets

Climb away, reduce to just above stall speed, and enter a power-off stall. You should feel a progressive stall buffet before the break. Adjust the stall buffet gain.

If your aircraft has spoilers, deploy them at cruise and feel the spoiler buffet kick in. The buffet scales with handle position times airspeed, so you can use a partial deployment at low speed to confirm the effect without overwhelming the gain.

Overspeed and Mach buffets are harder to bench-test; tune them by feel during normal operations. Turbulence overlay is weather-dependent — set it to a level where rough air feels present but not annoying.

Stage 6 — Mechanical one-shots

Retract and extend the gear. Extend and retract one step of flaps at a time. Tune gear-deploy and flap-step gains to taste. Most people keep these subtle — they're confirmations, not drama.

Stage 7 — Powerplant

At idle RPM, you should feel a gentle continuous rumble. At takeoff power, you should feel a distinctly firmer one. If it never feels like much, raise engine rumble. If it drowns everything out, drop it.

For jets, verify reverse-thrust rumble fires on rollout. For piston singles, skip.

Stage 8 — Rate damping

If your stick oscillates back to centre after a sharp input, or if control inputs feel “twitchy”, raise rate damping. Too much damping makes the stick feel dead and laggy — back off.

This is a subtle knob and most people never touch it. Defaults are tuned to be broadly inoffensive across the speed range.

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.

Common patterns

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

Firm centring, moderate aero loading, moderate rate damping. Touchdown thump on the firm side; the main gear really does thump when these aircraft arrive. Engine rumble: subtle.

Aerobatic (Extra 330, Pitts)

Soft centring, low rate damping (let it respond sharp and fast), high aero loading. Disable stall buffet or set it very low — aerobatic pilots want the stick to go quiet at the break.

Heavy jet (747-8, 737 MAX)

Firm centring, heavy aero loading, aggressive rate damping (heavy aircraft don't snap around). Autopilot back-drive gain high — these fly on the autopilot most of the time.

Bush / STOL (Kodiak, Porter)

Low centring base so the stick doesn't fight you at stall speed, but high G-gain so it firms up in turns. Gear bumps and runway rumble on the firm side — gravel strips are where these aircraft live.