MSFS CLS2Sim Settings for GA planes

[bnfbmk]

Following on from a discussion started in the MSFS 2020 Suport Update thread, as requested here are some thoughts about possible settings for GA aircraft. I only have real life experience in the C172 and C152 so would be great to hear from anybody about settings for other planes. I’m certainly no expert at this and have found my way to where I am so far by trial and error. I am grateful to those that posted in a similar thread on the Avsim forum a few weeks ago, very helpful thoughts on there too.

I have the CLS-E Mk2 Yoke and CLS-E Mk2 Rudders and started by using Stephan’s C172 as a template.

Effects Tab – I set rudder ground friction lower at 100 which made it easier to steer the plane on the ground. “Yoke pulled forward” lower at 12%, Speeds 0 and 35 set. Elevator (not rudder – caused unrealistic issues with steering) affected by prop wash – idle 40 and max 500 thrust. Motor vibrations enabled 10% (personal choice for me – it does add something to the experience IMO). Ground, Turbulence and Stick Shaker all disabled. I would love ground and turbulence effects to work well but for me they just produced very rough and random movements of the yoke and especially rudders which weren’t realistic to me.

Buttons Tab – I bound buttons including trim in MSFS so all set to Not Bound. I read the advice about having trim as a hardware setting but thought I’d try it through the software and it works great.

Analog Inputs and Axis Range – unchanged

Axis Force Settings – this was the main one to get right – I wanted to have the right level of force at the right speed. So very loose at the stall, but very stiff at the highest speeds. Perhaps the best thing is to play with the settings here – but I found it could be done by modifying only the “Force Scale Factor” tab. Specifically the shape of the curve and the Max Speed (higher value Max Speed gives lower overall force effect and vice versa) One hard thing here was to get the yoke and especially rudder to not suddenly “come to life” when building up airspeed on the takeoff roll which I found unrealistic. But I got there in the end. Some planes seemed to work better with a plain exponential curve whereas others seem better with a Custom Curve.

Autopilot settings – this seems to work well on default I think, I made sure “Don’t set pos in AP mode” is checked.

I don’t think I changed many other settings – only I didn’t tick “Use hardware trim” (see “Buttons Tab” above – against official recommendation???) – I thought I’d see if I could get it to work through the software and it does seem to work well.

Using these settings, I get elevator drop, a good take-off roll with smooth(ish) introduction of airflow across the control surfaces, variable yoke/rudder force depending on airspeed, trim pressure that works as per real life and an autopilot that drives the yoke realistically. I’d love good ground vibrations as I said – anybody got this working realistically??

As for the other GA planes, I just adapted the settings from above to give a similar feel using the Axis Force Settings tab. I’d love to hear from anyone with knowledge of the 208, TBM or CJ4 as to how the forces compare. In my head I imagine that the bigger the plane, the more force it generates on the yoke but this is probably garbage? I was naively surprised to learn that the CJ4 is all “pulleys and cables” according to a real life pilot on the Working Title Discord – I thought it might be all hydraulics!

I think CLS2Sim stores the profiles as .zcs files so I’d be happy to share these if that would work (not sure if it’s as simple as that??)

TLDR – It takes a fair bit of tinkering, but it works, and it’s epic. As others have said, no way back to a standard yoke.
Ted

[webmaximus]

Many thanks for all this great advice!

I’ll start playing around with this myself the next coming days and might come back for questions.

[dsjameyson]

I’m curious about the axis force settings.

To @bnfbmk, could you share what you’ve used for these axis force settings?

One peculiarity of the profile sharing system, is that it is restricted by hardware. And I can imagine some good engineering/safety reasons for it being that way.

I’m using the CLS-E stick, and what I’m trying to do is a bit conceptually different. Rather than directly reproduce/simulate the GA plane experience, I’d like to model a sort of “active sidestick” with control loading feedback, which references some of that physical experience.

[bnfbmk]

Hi, here is a screenshot of my C172 Pitch, Roll and Yaw Force Scale Factor curves. I used slightly different curves for other larger GA planes…

C172 Force Scale Factor curves

Hope it helps, let us know how you get on 🙂

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