The settings-controls in FSX and most flight sims work well for a yoke, not for a stick.

Take the Warthog HOTAS with so many hats and buttons. How these are organized is more important than how many there are. The stick has a 'fire button'  easy to reach that can act as a shift key. Thus the shift key can be used to tune a radio freq downward instead of upward, zoom fast instead of slow, increase a flap notch instead of retract a notch, drop instead of raise the gear.

Or sequences, hitting the same button does several things one at a time on each press. Such as cylce through certain specific views instead of the view list the sim defaults to. Or in FSX cycle all the ALT1, ALT2, ALT3 popup 2D windows.

Shifts and sequences help enormously to organize the control commands the player wants to give to the simulator.

All flightsims have a controller setup screen. It would be trivial indeed for the game designers to add sequences and shift functions to every dx button on a sim's programming screen.

But apparently this feature has never been on flightsimulators designer's priority list. But it is very high on my desired user feature list.

 

You can do that  with the Warthog Target software but I admit  it is a real pain.

I am with you, I really hope that the new sim will allow  to program a warthog without FSUIPC or Linda for any aircraft.

 

But we’re getting VR!

I agree completely that the new simulator needs this. Just look to DCS for a great example of a powerful control mapping interface.

Any key or controller button can be assigned as a modifier (like Shift/Ctrl or Alt), which in turn can double/triple/quadruple the number of functions per button.

I have a MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 stick. It's about 15 years old, well used but as good as new (that's worth another thread of its own). I use it as a HOTAS with DCS and can get a tremendous number of functions on the limited 8 buttons on the stick, just by using 2 of the buttons as modifiers. Then each of the remaining 6 buttons (plus the hat) have 4 variants:

• Standard (unmodified) function
• 2nd function with Modifier button 1 pressed
• 3rd function with Modifier button 2 pressed
• 4th function with Modifier buttons 1+2 pressed

The hat switch is a perfect example. Using the modifier buttons on the joystick it could do the following things (for example):

• Unmodified = pitch and roll trim
• With Modifier 1 = flaps up/down (hat up/down), rudder trim left/right (hat left/right)
• With Modifier 2 = autopilot adjustment (e.g. bank control with left/right, vertical speed adjustment with up/down)
• With Modifiers 1 + 2 = look around or pan view (useful in case I didn't have TrackIR running)

Conclusion: We need customisable modifier buttons!!! (And a snazzy control mapping screen to go with it.)

It's a perfect solution for those who don't have expensive HOTAS controls, and great for yoke users too. It would even make an Xbox controller much more flexible for the future console users. Just saying 😆