+1 to Zeus and Semler
I’ve had a variety of crappy joysticks, and I constantly tweak the layouts, so I had to make a priority-list to remind myself whats most important…
As a general tenet I try not to bother mapping cockpit switches that a real pilot would have to take a hand off stick or throttle, to interact with (eg. AP settings, jammer, landing gear, etc)
Here is my list, in rough order of descending priority but also grouping some related items together:
fcr/tgp slew (4-way)
antenna-elevation (up/down)
man-range (in/out)
trigger (1 and 2… but really only trigger2 is critical)
pickle
missle-step
pinky-zoom / dx-shift
uncage*
cursor-enable*
slap-switch
tms (4-way)
dms (4-way)
cms (up and left)
comms (4-way)
trim (4-way)
speedbrakes (in/out)
wheelbrakes
autopilot-paddle
cursor-zero (not a real hotas button but I’m told double-tap-TMS-down may do this in a future update, so it’s fair play)
Simulator Stuff
look-closer, reset fov
recenter track-ir
toggle mouselook
toggle pilot-body
etc
*Special Combos =>
dogfight with ACM radar => hold tms-up; look at target; release
dogfight with HOB missiles => hold cursor-enable; look at target; hit uncage; release
That last one is pretty powerful … but something to keep in mind before, say, using the dx-shift layer to map ‘uncage’ or ‘cursor-enable’