Documentation in beta. Some text and images will be reworked as the app settles into 1.0. If a section reads stale, flag it via the feedback form.

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.

Tuning page. Master-gain accent card at top, then effect sliders grouped by subsystem (Forces, Stick feel, Ground effects, Aero buffets, Powerplant, One-shots, Autopilot, Trim relief), with per-slider reset arrows and dirty indicators that appear when a value is edited.
Figure 1. Tuning page. Master-gain accent card at top, then effect sliders grouped by subsystem (Forces, Stick feel, Ground effects, Aero buffets, Powerplant, One-shots, Autopilot, Trim relief), with per-slider reset arrows and dirty indicators that appear when a value is edited.

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. Internally, beta.11 sets the bridge's device-output ceiling to 95% to leave a little driver headroom; Master gain at 100% still means "use the designed profile level."

Master-gain card. Default is 100%. The slider steps in 1% increments.
Figure 3. Master-gain card. Default is 100%. The slider steps in 1% increments.

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.
  • Stick drop — gravity bias on the elevator at low airspeed. In a non-power-assisted aircraft (most GA) the elevator is unloaded when there's no air flowing over it — cable rigging plus gravity pulls the surface down, which pulls the yoke / stick forward. The pilot feels a constant forward pull while parked or taxiing that fades out once airflow loads the elevator. Two sliders: Force (how hard the bias pulls) and Fade airspeed (the kts at which the bias has decayed to zero). Defaults are tuned for a Cessna-class GA feel — drop Force toward 0 to silence the effect on jet / heavy profiles.
  • TrimRelief (alt-trim mode) — a toggle that changes how trim and stick force interact. Off (the default): the bridge uses the legacy TrimFeel mechanic — pitch / roll trim shifts the spring's centre, but airspeed loading still fights total surface deflection, so a trimmed aircraft with neutral stick still pushes against you. On: airspeed loading is computed against (elevator − trim), and the spring centre tracks trim with the same authority. At a trimmed steady state with neutral stick, you feel zero force — and release-the-stick lets it hold the trimmed position, the way a real cable-rigged stick does. Patrik (FB-0002) flagged this as the missing capability vs XPforce / FSforce; turn it on if that mental model matches yours, leave it off if you've tuned a profile around the legacy behaviour.

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).

Slider interaction

Sliders accept the usual three input methods. Drag the thumb, or click anywhere along the track to jump there. To use the mouse wheel, click the slider once first to give it focus — hovering and scrolling does not capture the wheel, so you can scroll the Tuning page past hovered sliders without accidentally nudging them. Arrow keys nudge the focused slider by one step (1% on the master gain, smaller on per-effect sliders that have a wider underlying range).

Dirty indicators and resets

When a slider's value differs from what's stored in the active profile, two glyphs appear next to its value:

  • A small amber dirty dot on the profile picker at the top of the page — summarises “this profile has unsaved changes” whenever any slider is dirty.
  • A back-arrow reset glyph to the left of the value on every dirty slider row. Click it to revert just that slider to the value stored in the active profile.

Each section header (Forces, Stick feel, Ground effects, etc.) also carries a back-arrow glyph that appears whenever any slider in that section is dirty. Click it to reset the entire section in one go. And there's a Discard button on the Profile card that reverts every change at once. Resets are local-only — they don't touch the saved profile, so you can experiment freely and reach for the back-arrow whenever you want a fresh start.

Two sliders dirty — the back-arrow reset glyph appears next to each dirty value, and a matching glyph appears on the section header. The profile picker shows the dirty dot.
Figure 4. Two sliders dirty — the back-arrow reset glyph appears next to each dirty value, and a matching glyph appears on the section header. The profile picker shows the dirty dot.
A different mix — Runway rumble and Engine rumble dirty alongside Master gain. Same back-arrow glyphs on each dirty row, dirty dot on the profile picker.
Figure 5. A different mix — Runway rumble and Engine rumble dirty alongside Master gain. Same back-arrow glyphs on each dirty row, dirty dot on the profile picker.

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 starter closest to your aircraft, fly, adjust to taste, then save an editable copy.

To revert without saving, use the per-slider, per-section, or Discard reset surfaces above. Starter profiles are read-only, so Save is disabled for them and Save as is the path to make your own editable aircraft tune.

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.

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