Manually configure the range for joystick channels?

Question

We are building a professional simulator based on an old A300 simulator. We have connected the flight controls of the simulator to an BU0836A joystick controller. We have tried to calibrate the control inputs in Windows to our best ability, but we can activate the full range of the inputs when trying to calibrate in X-plane 11. Is there any way to manually configure the range of the joystick channels?

Answer 1

Hi there!

I'm Tyler, the X-Plane developer in charge of joysticks for X-Plane 11.

Is your issue that you're not able to move the controls through their full range of motion in the calibration dialog? If so, the solution is easy: just click the "accept axis" button for each axis that X-Plane *believes* to be uncalibrated, but which you have confirmed has *actually* gone through its full range of motion.

Comments

Hi Tyler, Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Yes, my problem is that I cannot move the controls through their full range of motion. I am aware of the possibility to ignore channels during calibration, but doesn't that mean that I can never use the full range of motion of the controls that are linked to these channels? If so, my origininal question of being able to manually configure the range of a channel is still valid. Or have I missed something else?

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Ah, I think I understand. You're concerned that if you use the "Accept Axis" button, during the calibration wizard, you won't get the full range of motion in the sim. That should *not* be the case---using the "Accept Axis" button should force X-Plane to treat whatever range you can *actually* move the controls through as "gospel" for the entire range.

So, if you move the controls as far as you can, and that winds up being 20% of the hardware's range in each direction, and you hit "Accept Axis," when you're actually in the sim, you should find that moving the controls as far as you can causes the plane to go to full deflection as well.

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Yes, the original question missed a "not" when I wrote "we can activate". Thanks for the latest feedback. It would be really helpful if X-Plane somehow showed which range it uses for max/min. For instance with a vertical bar or a different collor for the used ranged versus the range that is not used. That way I can make sure that the range used by X-plane is in fact the maximum physical range of the controls.