Many flightsim users, for one reason or another, are unable to use a joystick or yoke with their PCs. These people are left with two choices: either don't use Flight Simulator at all, or control your aircraft using the keyboard. While this may sound extremely difficult, a little practice is all that it takes to be able to fly almost as good as those using a stick. But the default settings make the aircraft, especially large ones, difficult to control. After much experimentation, I've come up with a few simple tricks and edits which make a world of difference, and I'm going to share them with you.

The first thing you should do is edit the aircraft.cfg file. This is the configuration file which is a part of each and every flightsim aircraft, it controls a number of settings regarding how the aircraft will behave and react in different situations. Go to the folder where your aircraft are saved (which by default is c:\program files\microsoft games\fs2002\aircraft,) and click on one of the aircraft. At the top folder, you should see the aircraft.cfg file. Open it using notepad.

There are many different settings here you can change to see what the effect is. But before you do anything, make a backup of this file so that you can easily revert to the original later if necessary. Before FS-2002 was released, editing the aircraft.cfg was not really important to flying with the keyboard. But Flight Simulator 2002 introduced some new settings which we will be changing.

When flying large aircraft using the keyboard, you will notice right away that they are sluggish, and extremely slow to respond to inputs. This is changed very easily. The following is taken directly from the configuration file for the default 747-400, and it is the section we will be changing to remedy this problem

While this is taken from the default 747-400, you will find the exact same settings in the default 737-400, 777-300, and Lear45, as well as many 3^rd party aircraft. The two lines that start with the double slashes are just comment lines, and are not important. What we are worried about is the settings for elevator, aileron and rudder. I recommend doubling them, and sometimes you may need to add a little extra. Here are the settings for the same aircraft as they appear on my system.

This should dramatically change the way your aircraft responds. Some 3^rd party aircraft designers leave this section out when they create their designs. If you find an aircraft that doesn't contain this section, it does not mean you can't make the changes. All you have to do is open the configuration file for an aircraft you've already changed, highlight the above, copy it, and paste it into the new aircraft.

The next thing you can do if you wish is to change your default keyboard assignments. It's possible to assign all the most important functions to the keypad, so that while you are flying, almost everything you need is literally right at your fingertips.

The default settings for aileron, elevator, rudder, trim and throttle are all quite well set up. You can change these if you don't find them comfortable, otherwise leave them as is. But you still have a few keys which are not being used, and so here are the settings I have found to be most useful, and you can consider using them for yourself:

You may also wish to reassign other functions for easier use. I use the [ and ] keys to change viewing modes, and even use the Delete key on the keypad to change to Top-Down View when the NumLock is set. There are any number of changes that can be made, you can always reset them later if you don't like them. So do a little experimenting, and have fun!

If you have any special modifications you've made, whether it's for keyboard flying, joystick flying, or anything else you like to share with them FlightSim world, send it in to flightsim@andyjohnston.net.