The Simmer Ritual: Mapping Controls on Simulators

As I have explored the world of flight simulation over the past 20 years, I have seen a lot of aspects of the hobby. I have met a lot of people and gotten so many pieces of hardware, as well as tried almost every single simulator that I could get my hands on, whether it'd be a military or a civilian one.

Out of all of these experiences, there always seems to be a single constant. A sort of ritual everyone that plays any simulator game will know: control mapping. The mapping menus, good and bad, will always be there to welcome you before you have even put in a single second in the air.

I have always been one to be diligent with my mappings, but it is very clear that everyone has certain feelings about this ritualistic rite that we all have to go through. I have seen people be afraid of these menus and of having to map their controls, as well as people that have wanted to dwell in the rite and make sure that every possible button they would ever need is mapped to a position they will subconsciously remember.

I lie in the middle, as someone that will make sure everything critical is mapped before I set to the skies, but I will leave any extra mappings to either their default spots on the keyboard or just map them as I learn the module or simulator.

I have seen extremely bad control menus, where keybinds are confusing, terribly labeled and controllers get lost with the clutter. Axis commands that invert themselves, and the worst of all, unclear signs as to if closing the menu will save your new controller bindings that you spent the last 30 minutes working on.

There are so many little aspects to this aspect of simulation and flight simulation games that it is kind of impressive that I do not see much more discussion other than some people complaining when they have to assign some buttons again because an update has removed their bindings, or when a game just straight up lacks the ability to bind certain controls.

Then there is also the case of older games that have limited controller support, at least with modern sticks and throttles that have way too many buttons. Such is the case of Falcon BMS, which has to subdivide your controller inputs into different clusters so that the amount of inputs per device does not exceed the simulation engine limitations.

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IS THERE A PROPER WAY TO SET YOUR CONTROLS WITHOUT THE HEADACHE?

Short answer, no. Long answer, yes. If what you intend is for yoru suffering while assigning buttons to decrease exponentially, then what you most certainly shouldn't do is assign your buttons while on an active multiplayer environment inside a combat or civilian flight simulator. One of my dearest friends, you know who you are, always ends up getting frustrated every time that he has to go map new controls for a module or a game, he does it on live multiplayer environments. This leads to frustration, crashes, and sometimes a little bit of teasing from our side.

Don't be like my friend, do not even try to map your controls from scratch on extremely complicated modules while you are also trying to keep up with a highly volatile and dynamic environment. Give yourself time to set the basics controls up and then, only then, try to join multiplayer environments. If you need to map anything you didn't on your first time around, then you will be capable to do it on the fly since all the basics are already set in stone. There are some games, like War Thunder, that have a proper set-up wizard. It might have its blindspots, but it beats trying to figure out what you need to even have the basics down. Which means that your level of suffering will depend on just how your game of choice decided to implement their controller bindings. Just make sure you have your axis bound before you start rolling down the runway, or you will end up like my friend did two days ago while flying in DCS. As a ball of fire burning at the end of the runway overrun.

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About the Author

Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos

Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy