I’ve recently started using a Joystick for Air Battles (haven’t tried it with other vehicles yet).
I was wondering if people prefer using the Keyboard + Mouse combo or using the Joystick likewise.
I’m finding my Joystick response to be extremely sensitive. I’ve adjusted it, but it’s still not quite what I’d expect from the vehicle. Ironically, it’s saved me from being shot down a few times but often results in a near miss (or a hit) with the ground.
I was wondering what other people’s experiences are and if there’s a ‘best way’ based on any type of vehicle, air or otherwise.
I’m about to make the migration to joystick from mouse and keyboard, but it’s very much a steeper learning curve than the game.
Try meddling with the deadzone if it’s overly twitchy and won’t let you center, and if it’s slow to act, increase the sensitivity. If it’s too fast to act, decrease the sensitivity.
It’ll take a fair bit of messing about to get used to it, and your best place to really use them is in sim, because otherwise you are facing mouse and keyboard users more.
Take it easy and also backup your control profile. Even don’t use the profiles provided, make a fresh one, from your keyboard ones is the advice I’ve seen passed out recently.
I’ve been making several control profiles so I can experiment. Interesting to know that most players only use them in Sim. I’ll keep that in mind. For now, I’ve lowered my Sensitivity Settings, but I’m still experimenting.
From my experience mouse and keyboard for arcade. For realistic I would still use mouse and keyboard as I find the precision of the mouse is superior in most situations to the extra manoeuvrability of the joystick.
for sim joystick, although there are many very good sim players who use mouse joystick and I’ve noted messing around with it that it has very smooth input once you’re accustomed to it which makes shooting easy.
I started arcade with joystick but quickly learned that it wasn’t a wise decision and that isn’t needed. I now use mouse and pad controller to fly and find it very similar in ability to a joystick.
I also started with joystick in AB and I wouldn’t suggest it. Like OP said, it’s too sensitive in that environment. You just can’t compete with how many points you’d be getting with mouse-aim. Also, you don’t really learn much towards joystick control because Arcade doesn’t allow flat-spins and realistic aerodynamics.
I suggest using mouse-aim in Arcade to quickly unlock some tier I-III planes, and then progress to RB/SB for joystick combat.
I found it depends of the joystick and his software. Before i used Logitech 3D pro and it was really hard to aim and fly straight. Now i am using Virpil joystick with extension and i have no problems with the aim; movements are smoothy, real pleasure! Use joystick only in SIM! Buy rudder pedals and throttle!
Although i do not play Air AB - the usage of MnK versus joystick depends imho on individual preferences and play styles and ofc the played game mode.
So if you like performing headons or have fun with effortless point and click on ground units, the MnK is the recommended way.
The main advantage of mouse aim lies imho solely on the artificially increased stability in those 2 situations - and the possibility to use the WASD keyboard whilst looking around with the mouse. To use a joystick with the right hand to fly and the mouse with your left hand in order to look around is rather complex.
Playing with joystick in Air RB is recommended if the user is able to create undisturbed 1 vs 1s (imho very rare in Air AB, for me my main strategy in Air RB) as the increase of turn performance and overall handling allows you to fight and best pilots in comparable or even better planes - at least to a certain degree assuming equal pilot skills and similar energy states.
By the way - disabling the instructor is recommended as he prevents you from using the full potential of your plane.
The most obvious downsides of joystick vs mouse aim is that you have to avoid headons vs mouse aimers and that the correct setup might take ages.
To make things even worse your perfect setup for plane A needs sometimes severe changes for plane B. Even in case that A and B are almost identical and share the same flight model there might be the need for an adjustment. Best example - my IT P-47 D-30 flies perfect, the almost identical US P-47 D-28 is “wobbeling” at lower speeds with the same settings.
Afaik a hell of joystick pilots have individual joystick settings for their preferred planes, this takes time.
A much easier way is to look for planes with similar flight models and flight characteristics - allowing you to use the same profile for all. I use a generic jostick setting for all of my planes (and i play exclusively with joystick in Air RB due to the convenient markers) as i am simply too lazy to create and switch to individual profiles, actually i only change gun convergence when switching planes.
I’m actually that type of person as well, which led me to the OP. However, I noticed that even with settings adjustments the stick seemed over sensitive. Is it more realistic in Sim Mode?
Arcade mode is a boosted version of all flight models and controls. So yes, planes are much more reactive in Arcade, compared to using Full Real Controls in Sim. Flight characteristics will be much more realistic Sim.
There’s also the issue of getting your flight controls setup to your liking. Things like Sensitivity and Nonlinearity can go a long ways into making your controls fit you, and will make your plane much easier to handle.
Sensitivity adds a delay to the controls. It’s especially useful for new players to lower your Pitch sensitivity to avoid flatspins. As you get better, you can advance your sensitivity back towards 100%, or to a level that you prefer. There is no right or wrong setting.
Nonlinearity adds a curve to an axis. Think of it as a virtual joystick extension.