Hi everyone,
I recently acquired a Gravis Mac MouseStick II and am having trouble getting it to play nice with Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. I was hoping that someone here has had some success with this combination before (or has experience with the MouseStick II in general) and could let me know what I'm doing wrong.
Details:
System: Macintosh SE/30 running System 7.1
Application: Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0
Driver: Gravis Mac MouseStick II v3.3
I initially tried loading the Microsoft Flight Simulator set in the MouseStick II control panel and then starting Flight Simulator. The comments for the set recommend setting the joystick setting in FS to "1 Joystick", which I did. This technically works, as the joystick does make the aileron and elevators move in-game, but the axis is flipped (pushing the joystick forward moves the aileron position to the left), and the sensitivity is much too high. Messing with Flight Simulator's joystick sensitivity settings does help a bit, but moving the stick all the way to any edge will result in the aileron/elevator controls getting "stuck" at their maximum position, which can only be fixed by selecting "Calibrate" in the FS joystick menu.
These issues make the stick unusable in Flight Simulator, and changing the joystick settings in either FS or the MouseStick II utility doesn't seem to improve things enough to make it usable. Changing the advanced settings in the control panel only provides minimal improvements. I could probably dial in a workable setting if the X/Y axis issue could be fixed, but I'm not sure how to change that.
After messing with all of the available settings to no avail, I tried to create a custom set for the joystick using the 4-way keymap configuration, effectively trying to map the joystick movements to button presses. This works as expected outside of FS - I tested it in a text editor and moving the joystick output the correct keypresses. Confusingly, it has no effect in FS - the joystick controls function exactly the same as before, and setting the joystick to "Joystick OFF" in FS just disables it entirely without allowing the keypresses to go through. The joystick also has no effect when pressing Command + M to use the mouse as the yoke. I thought for sure this configuration would work, just poorly, because the joystick buttons (trigger, top buttons, and throttle buttons) all work no matter what the configuration in FS is set to - even if the joystick is turned off in FS. This one has me stumped.
It's worth noting that I don't have these issues outside of Flight Simulator. The joystick controls the mouse cursor perfectly on the desktop - it has full range of motion and returns to center as expected, so I don't think it's a hardware issue like some are having. The buttons also work completely fine in FS. It seems that FS is somehow reading the input of the joystick directly and thus bypassing the keymaps set by the MouseStick II utility.
This post is getting a little longer than I expected, but I'm hoping someone else has run into this issue before or has successfully configured the MouseStick II to work with Flight Simulator and could point me in the direction of a working setup/configuration.
EDIT: Not sure if this is relevant, but the joystick was new in a sealed box and had never been used up until this point. The driver was installed from the included floppy disk, which was also new. This leads me to believe that this is some sort of software or configuration issue as opposed to something caused by a worn or damaged joystick.
I recently acquired a Gravis Mac MouseStick II and am having trouble getting it to play nice with Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. I was hoping that someone here has had some success with this combination before (or has experience with the MouseStick II in general) and could let me know what I'm doing wrong.
Details:
System: Macintosh SE/30 running System 7.1
Application: Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0
Driver: Gravis Mac MouseStick II v3.3
I initially tried loading the Microsoft Flight Simulator set in the MouseStick II control panel and then starting Flight Simulator. The comments for the set recommend setting the joystick setting in FS to "1 Joystick", which I did. This technically works, as the joystick does make the aileron and elevators move in-game, but the axis is flipped (pushing the joystick forward moves the aileron position to the left), and the sensitivity is much too high. Messing with Flight Simulator's joystick sensitivity settings does help a bit, but moving the stick all the way to any edge will result in the aileron/elevator controls getting "stuck" at their maximum position, which can only be fixed by selecting "Calibrate" in the FS joystick menu.
These issues make the stick unusable in Flight Simulator, and changing the joystick settings in either FS or the MouseStick II utility doesn't seem to improve things enough to make it usable. Changing the advanced settings in the control panel only provides minimal improvements. I could probably dial in a workable setting if the X/Y axis issue could be fixed, but I'm not sure how to change that.
After messing with all of the available settings to no avail, I tried to create a custom set for the joystick using the 4-way keymap configuration, effectively trying to map the joystick movements to button presses. This works as expected outside of FS - I tested it in a text editor and moving the joystick output the correct keypresses. Confusingly, it has no effect in FS - the joystick controls function exactly the same as before, and setting the joystick to "Joystick OFF" in FS just disables it entirely without allowing the keypresses to go through. The joystick also has no effect when pressing Command + M to use the mouse as the yoke. I thought for sure this configuration would work, just poorly, because the joystick buttons (trigger, top buttons, and throttle buttons) all work no matter what the configuration in FS is set to - even if the joystick is turned off in FS. This one has me stumped.
It's worth noting that I don't have these issues outside of Flight Simulator. The joystick controls the mouse cursor perfectly on the desktop - it has full range of motion and returns to center as expected, so I don't think it's a hardware issue like some are having. The buttons also work completely fine in FS. It seems that FS is somehow reading the input of the joystick directly and thus bypassing the keymaps set by the MouseStick II utility.
This post is getting a little longer than I expected, but I'm hoping someone else has run into this issue before or has successfully configured the MouseStick II to work with Flight Simulator and could point me in the direction of a working setup/configuration.
EDIT: Not sure if this is relevant, but the joystick was new in a sealed box and had never been used up until this point. The driver was installed from the included floppy disk, which was also new. This leads me to believe that this is some sort of software or configuration issue as opposed to something caused by a worn or damaged joystick.
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