If you are new to the flight simulator world, you may wonder if you should use a flight simulator yoke or a joystick. After all your joystick is great for all of your other games, so isn’t it also fine for your flight simulator? Actually the decision is not based on the software you have, it doesn’t really matter if you have Microsoft Flight Simulator, FlightGear or any other flight simulator package.

The most important point to consider if you should get a yoke or not is the aircraft that you are planning on flying. When I first started getting interested in flying and flight simulators, I was under the impression that all aircraft used a yoke or flight stick as it is also called. The earliest aircraft did actually use a control that is more of a joystick or flight stick than a yoke. The yoke came later and was used in most aircraft but not all. For example military aircraft, acrobatic aircraft and some training aircraft kept a flight stick. Even these days, aircraft use a combination of yokes and flight sticks. Perhaps one of the most well known uses of the joystick in the cockpit is in the airbus A320 and A340 passenger jets. Boeing is keeping with the yoke though and has no plans to change.

So, to choose between a yoke and a joystick is to know which aircraft you would like to fly. If you don’t know do your research and find out what control is in the cockpit of the aircraft that you would like to fly. If you can’t decide or don’t know if you would like to fly an Airbus or a Boeing aircraft, get one of each!