Four axes, and nowhere obvious to put them.
It does not matter which of these you pick. What matters is that one of them feels natural under your hands — so try a few, keep the one you stop having to think about, and then go into training and fly it. That is the part people skip, and it is the only part that makes anyone good. An hour in training will do more for you than any layout on this page. Nothing here flies the aircraft for you.
11 layouts · 2 caught on camera
Mouse flies
Rotary Vehicle Mouse Control enabled. The mouse takes pitch and one other axis; the keyboard takes what is left. This is what most people run.
- Mouse L/RRoll
Mouse roll · WASD
Collective raise / lower W / S Pitch — cyclic X Mouse up / down Roll — cyclic Y Mouse left / right Yaw left / right A / D Free look L Alt Suits Coming from Battlefield or any other shooter with helicopters. The aircraft banks where you point and the collective sits where the throttle used to be.
Costs you Yaw is on keys, so the nose moves in steps. Gun work is coarse — fine for rockets, poor for a minigun.
Said on cameraYour Chopper Pilot · 2:20
- Mouse L/RYaw
Mouse yaw · WASD
Collective raise / lower W / S Pitch — cyclic X Mouse up / down Roll — cyclic Y A / D Yaw left / right Mouse left / right Free look L Alt Suits Gunships and anything with a minigun. The nose becomes the crosshair, so you fly the aircraft by aiming it.
Costs you Roll is on keys, so banking is stepped and coordinated turns take practice. The harder of the two to learn, and the one that shoots.
Seen on their settings screenVGAIN · 1:00
- Mouse L/RRoll
Mouse roll · left-hand collective
Collective raise / lower L Shift / L Ctrl Pitch — cyclic X Mouse up / down Roll — cyclic Y Mouse left / right Yaw left / right A / D Free look L Alt Suits Anyone who wants the collective where a real one is — under the left hand, on its own, not sharing keys with anything else.
Costs you Shift and Ctrl are worse than W and S for holding a steady climb rate, and you give up whatever you had bound to them.
- Mouse L/RYaw
Mouse yaw · left-hand collective
Collective raise / lower L Shift / L Ctrl Pitch — cyclic X Mouse up / down Roll — cyclic Y A / D Yaw left / right Mouse left / right Free look L Alt Suits The rifle-aim split with the collective off WASD, which leaves A and D free for roll and keeps the whole left hand on flying.
Costs you Same as above, plus the steeper yaw-on-mouse learning curve.
- Mouse L/RRoll
Mouse roll · thumb yaw
Collective raise / lower W / S Pitch — cyclic X Mouse up / down Roll — cyclic Y Mouse left / right Yaw left / right Mouse thumb buttons Free look Right mouse Suits A mouse with side buttons. Roll stays analogue on the mouse and yaw moves to the thumb, so both hands keep their jobs and A/D come free.
Costs you Yaw is still on/off rather than proportional, and you need the buttons — this one does not exist on a plain two-button mouse.
Keyboard only
Mouse control off, every axis on a key. You lose fine, analogue control and you gain an aircraft that does exactly the same thing every time — and a mouse free to aim.
- Mouse L/RNot used
WASD + arrows
Collective raise / lower W / S Pitch — cyclic X ↑ / ↓ Roll — cyclic Y ← / → Yaw left / right A / D Free look L Alt Suits Splitting the aircraft across both hands: left hand on power and tail, right hand flying the cyclic on the arrow keys. The mouse is left alone entirely, so it is free to aim and the view never fights the aircraft.
Costs you Both hands leave the rest of the keyboard, so anything else you need — flares, crates, seats — has to be reachable from one of them.
- Mouse L/RNot used
Arrows fly · WASD supports
Collective raise / lower W / S Pitch — cyclic X ↑ / ↓ Roll — cyclic Y ← / → Yaw left / right Q / E Free look L Alt Suits The same idea the other way round: the cyclic on the arrows, collective and yaw grouped together under the left hand on W/S and Q/E.
Costs you A and D end up unused for flight, which feels wrong to most people until it does not.
- Mouse L/RNot used
All left hand
Collective raise / lower Space / L Shift Pitch — cyclic X W / S Roll — cyclic Y A / D Yaw left / right Q / E Free look L Alt Suits Everything under one hand: cyclic on WASD, yaw on Q and E, collective on space and shift. The right hand never touches the aircraft.
Costs you Four fingers doing four jobs at once. It is the most cramped of these, and the hardest to hold a hover with.
- Mouse L/RNot used
Real-pilot keyboard
Collective raise / lower L Shift / L Ctrl Pitch — cyclic X W / S Roll — cyclic Y A / D Yaw left / right Q / E Free look Right mouse Suits The cockpit, as closely as a keyboard allows: collective under the left hand on shift and control, cyclic under the right on WASD, tail rotor on Q and E.
Costs you Nothing is analogue, so every input is full deflection. Small corrections have to be made by tapping.
Hardware
A stick, a throttle or a pad. Genuinely analogue on all four axes, which no keyboard can be.
- Mouse L/RNot used
HOTAS — stick and throttle
Collective raise / lower Throttle axis Pitch — cyclic X Stick fore / aft Roll — cyclic Y Stick left / right Yaw left / right Stick twist or pedals Free look Hat switch Suits The real arrangement. Collective on the throttle lever, cyclic on the stick, yaw on the twist or on pedals — all four axes proportional at once, which is the thing no keyboard can give you.
Costs you Setup work, and the game's sensitivity curves need attention before it feels right. Aiming a rifle from the seat becomes awkward.
- Mouse L/RNot used
Controller
Collective raise / lower Left stick up / down Pitch — cyclic X Right stick up / down Roll — cyclic Y Right stick left / right Yaw left / right Left stick left / right Free look Hold left bumper Suits Two analogue sticks, which is three of the four axes solved out of the box. The most forgiving way to learn a hover.
Costs you Collective on the triggers is coarse, and everything you do outside the aircraft is worse than it would be on a mouse.
Everything that is not an axis
These do not change between layouts. Two of them ship unbound, and one of those two is how you do logistics at all — worth fixing before your first run rather than while a squad waits on the crate.
Lock / unlock vehicle L Activate counter measure V Buy ammo / supplies B Deploy supply crate G Horn H Fire weapon Left mouse Cycle weapons Z Cycle fire mode B Eject from projectile C Next / previous seat 0 / 9 Seen on their settings screenVGAIN · 2:04