Bill10 - if you happen to own sim racing pedals you can use those too, rather than buy additional hardware.  Only mentioning just in case!

I was a FSX user then skipped the whole next phase, when I came back to FS2020 I found rudder pedals were mandatory from then on.  

Try an XBOX controller.  The L/R buttons work great for differential braking..

dd

1 hour ago, bill10 said:

I tried this, unless I have missed some setting, AUTO RUDDER isn't working as it did in FSX. 

It's been a while since I last flew without rudder pedals, but I could see a lot going wrong without them. Assuming you eliminated the most obvious problem (cross wind) and use clear skies for weather settings, use a jet. The bigger the better. Small airplanes need rudder pedals more badly than larger ones.

Avoid single-engine pistons, especially the PC-12. It has a very powerful engine that generates a lot of torque. Flying it without rudder pedal is (virtually 😉 ) suicidal.

With twin engines, it depends. The good ones have engines where the propellers rotate in opposite directions, that cancels the torque generated by each engine. But not all twins are born like that.

The torque effect is much smaller for jet engines in general, because different parts of the engine rotate in different directions. And if your plane is heavy, the torque will have a much smaller effect. 

All I said above is basically a band aid. Rudders are quite important for proper control of an airplane, and once I got rudder pedals, I immediately started to wonder why I didn't get pedals much earlier. Maybe you will even be tempted to try the forward slip maneuver used by the Gimli glider 

IMHO, rudders ae more important that a yoke, and a good yoke is a game changer in itself. If you can afford it, I encourage you to invest in good rudder pedals. Some options are expensive, but if you consider that you might only have that expense once in your life, it is much less frightening.

My first pedals were low quality (Saitek) and broke after 5 years or so. I definitely got my money's worth out of them, but now I have Thrustmaster pedals and they feel like they will outlast me.

Peter

Interesting and well timed thread for me...

Rumour (or hope?) has it a set of rudder pedals will be nestling under the Christmas tree for me this year! 😁

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by Vel

vkb is now mark 5. They are as precise as Thrustmaster's best pedals (TPR pendular), (I've used both a long time). The VKB have no toe brakes. 

I have a TM warthog throttle on my left. It has two big handles. I set the brakes on the left handle, throttle on the right.

My pedals are TM's best pedals (TPR) that do have brake axis. I don't use them, because for me, hands are more precise than feet. Easier for me to modulate how much or how little braking I need right now. 

So for me, the vkb having no toe brakes is a non issue. If it had them, I would not use them. I like hand brakes better.

2 hours ago, Max Kraus said:

I was a FSX user then skipped the whole next phase, when I came back to FS2020 I found rudder pedals were mandatory from then on.  

It appears I've hit the same wall .. I see a flight sim hardware purchase in my future.

2 hours ago, qqwertz said:

Avoid single-engine pistons, especially the PC-12. 

Well it’s not a piston. It’s a turbo prop. 

22 hours ago, bill10 said:

I tried this, unless I have missed some setting, AUTO RUDDER isn't working as it did in FSX.  IN FSX I could turn on AUTO RUDDER step into, lets say the Majestic Q400, line up on the runway, apply power and I would have directional control simply by pushing the joystick left and right. In an external view the aileron axis, joystick left and right, would turn the nose wheel and deflect the rudder. And this was through out the takeoff roll, no matter the speed. Taxing was also easy. I don't know if they changed the logic between nose wheel steering, auto rudder or something else but it seems to have changed. 

I am just trying to find a solution with my current setup, no rudder pedals. It seems no matter what settings I chose or configure I cannot get it to behave the way it did in the past. I have directional control while taxing but NOT during the late stages of the takeoff roll or landing. I will purchase rudder pedals and that's ok if that is the solution to MSFS24. Coming from FSX I assumed I could turn on AUTO RUDDER, since I did not have rudder pedals, and it would work as it did in the past. Again unless I missed some setting, MSFS24 is more lets say complicated in control settings than FSX, I cannot get AUTO RUDDER to work they way I thought it did. 

I’m not sure there’s a way out of your situation within the software itself…?

unless you take the advice to set wind at 0/0 or some other static weather. 

but even then you’re still going to run into aerodynamic forces where rudder is helpful or necessary (e.g., single engine props, esp turbines). 

you could switch to, or add, a joystick with a twist grip. Many people do this (is how I started), and it works reasonably well, especially if you stick to jets (tho jets aren’t necessarily a panacea in and of themselves 😉).

But honestly, there’s a reason IRL aircraft all have them, so I’d say to just bite the bullet and find a decent pair of actual pedals 😁👍

(I myself am still using the same old Logitech/Saitek setup I bought 8 years ago, and they’re still going strong)

ThrustMaster makes a set for about $100, IIRC, and they’re relatively compact, too. 

20 hours ago, qqwertz said:

Small airplanes need rudder pedals more badly than larger ones.

Um…, nope. 

 

20 hours ago, qqwertz said:

And if your [jet] plane is heavy, the torque will have a much smaller effect. 

Nope again.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Um…, nope. 

Nope again.

Care to explain your assessment? From my perspective, both of my statements are based on basic physics:

• smaller planes tend to be slower, so a given amount of cross wind will result in a larger difference between the direction where you want to go and the direction in which you must point the nose of the airplane (E6B calculations).
• And torque divided by mass equals angular acceleration. Hence, heavier planes are less affected by a given amount of torque.

Note that I am not arguing that you should fly a real airplane without rudder. I am just outlining what you can do in a simulator to mitigate the effects of flying without rudder pedals.

Since it looks like you've decided to get some pedals, my only advice would be to either go cheap or go all out. The cheap pedals will likely have a cheap spring and maybe an annoying dead zone, but they'll get the job done and the positives of just having some pedals outweigh any of the small annoyances. From what I've read about some of the midrange pedals, many of them are built like a tank but have really heavy springs which could make small corrections annoying. If my old CH Pro Pedals ever die, I'll likely replace them with the Thustmaster TPR's... AFAIK they are the only pedal with movement that mimics actual rudder pedals, vs the sliding on the floor motion you get with other pedals out there.

The biggest drawback of any rudder pedal? If you don't keep them under your desk, you'll be crawling on the floor to set them up every time you load up the sim, since you'll no longer be able to fly without them!

1 hour ago, qqwertz said:

Care to explain your assessment? From my perspective, both of my statements are based on basic physics:

• smaller planes tend to be slower, so a given amount of cross wind will result in a larger difference between the direction where you want to go and the direction in which you must point the nose of the airplane (E6B calculations).
• And torque divided by mass equals angular acceleration. Hence, heavier planes are less affected by a given amount of torque.

Note that I am not arguing that you should fly a real airplane without rudder. I am just outlining what you can do in a simulator to mitigate the effects of flying without rudder pedals.

People seem to think that an aircraft’s size/weight affects it relation to aerodynamics. But in fact, aerodynamics act uniformly regardless of size/weight. 

To over simplify, e.g. the rudder, just take a look at the relative size of a 747’s rudder vs a c172’s. 

if your assertion was factual, large aircraft would have small rudders. But we see that Jumbo Jets also have jumbo rudders that are the size of many aircraft’s entire wing. 

the key to understanding this is that aircraft are far more affected by their SHAPE and relative DENSITY than their size and weight (I.e., swept wings, pointy noses, cargo/fuel vs volume, and all that jazz).

in re torque on jets, again,  relatively speaking - the torque forces are directly related not only to the design of the engines (counter rotating, jets, etc), but also to the mass of the aircraft  I.e., the power required to move any given aircraft at a given mass (not the same thing as weight).

E.g., if it were possible to hang a sufficiently powerful turboprop on the nose of a 747, you can bet there’d be a LOT of rudder & aileron needed (just as with OEI on conventional airliners).

in sum, it’s the design and mass of the aircraft that matters, and not its size and weight  

 

Edited December 6, 2025Dec 6 by UrgentSiesta

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I’m not sure there’s a way out of your situation within the software itself…?

I think you are right!! 

With the same term being used .. AUTORUDDER .. for both sims, FSX and MSFS24, I thought I just missed a setting somewhere to achieve what my setup had in the past. That was/is the BIG issue with fltsim software, even thou the term is the same did the logic change OR is some other setting need to be set. It would seem that, with my testing and this forums help, that the logic WAS CHANGED and AUTORUDDER no longer functions the same as in the past sims, specifically FSX.  And that's OK I do not have an issue with purchasing rudder pedals. The reason I didn't buy them for FSX is that I didn't need them for the way MY setup was configured. Now I understand it was EXTREMELY unrealistic compared to real world aviation protocol but I was ok with that being the case. I was a controller at the time, now retired, and air traffic controllers make HORRIBLE pilots anyway!!🙂 

So I'm in the market for rudder pedals now!

41 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

[1] To over simplify, e.g. the rudder, just take a look at the relative size of a 747’s rudder vs a c172’s. 

if your assertion was factual, large aircraft would have small rudders. But we see that Jumbo Jets also have jumbo rudders

[2] in re torque on jets, again,  relatively speaking - the torque forces are directly related not only to the design of the engines (counter rotating, jets, etc), but also to the mass of the aircraft  I.e., the power required to move any given aircraft at a given mass (not the same thing as weight).

[3]  if it were possible to hang a sufficiently powerful turboprop on the nose of a 747, you can bet there’d be a LOT of rudder & aileron needed (just as with OEI on conventional airliners).

 

 

I see where you are coming from, but

[1] To rotate a heavy plane you need a lot of torque, which is the reason why the B747 has a larger rudder than the C172. That's a different aspect of the point that I was trying to make about large aircraft being less receptible to a given amount of torque.

And when it comes to cross wind, the demonstrated crosswind for a C172 is 17 Kts and about 35 Kts for the B747. So larger planes can handle more cross wind.

[2] Yep, mass and weight are different, but as long as you stay within, say, 50 km near the Earth's surface, they are proportional to each other. So the difference doesn't matter too much for airplanes. But you are correct in stating that larger airplanes will use more powerful engines and need more torque.

[3] You are absolutely correct about that. But since they use jet engines for jets, the torque is not that big. Hence, I would still prefer to fly a 747 vs a 172 without rudders.

Having said that, I do not intent to fly without my TPM pedals anytime soon, if ever 🙂