Star Wars Squadrons HOTAS Support: How to Activate and Known Issues

Support for Star Wars: Squadrons HOTAS is plug-and-play, but there are issues.

As long as Windows detects your HOTAS and the current drivers and software are operational, Star Wars: Squadrons will automatically enable HOTAS support. Keep in mind that your HOTAS must be plugged in before starting Star Wars: Squadrons - your stick and throttle will not be detected if you activate it after starting the game.

From there you can enter the settings, access the orders, and change the orders and entries as you like (which I recommend doing: the stock entries for my X52 Pro were all over the place). There's a lot to consider, and for whatever reason, you can't manually set the double-tap and hold functions yourself, but those quirks aside, you can assign override buttons. from "mouse" to any entry. You can have duplicates, but they cannot be in the same category (you can assign the auxiliary fire key to also select an option from a context menu, for example). Additionally, I recommend adjusting your inputs outside of VR if you plan to use both.

Plus, you can tweak a handful of settings for added convenience. You can reverse the y axis and change your throttle preferences in the "general" section, and the "flight stick" section below which has separate sliders for sensitivity and dead zone for pitch, yaw. , body roll and even the throttle. That said, there is one major issue in particular that you should be aware of here at launch: the dead zone of the stock is a trash can.

Even at zero percent, players report a large dead zone on a variety of different HOTAS when playing Star Wars: Squadrons. EA is apparently aware of the issue and is working on a fix (among other HOTAS issues), but keep this in mind before entering the cockpit. There is no way to adjust the HOTAS curve in the game (you will have to use the software on your stick), and the game itself uses a nonlinear exponential curve. Translation: The controls seem to float and you will need to make a lot of targeting adjustments.

The HOTAS support in Star Wars: Squadrons works well enough to get the job done, but it may be best to wait for EA to make some adjustments before committing to the control scheme. It's great to see HOTAS support right off the bat, but it's a few tweaks that aren't great.