Skip to content

Undocumented find: A great Mac-compatible flightstick

The VelocityOne Flightsticktl;dr version: I highly recommend the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flightstick (right) for use with X-Plane on the Mac. Despite not being advertised as Mac-compatible, it works incredibly well, and at only $129 on Amazon, is a very good deal.

There are tons of buttons, three separate analog axes, a mouse and display built into the top of the stick, LED lighting (which you can also disable), and much more. Keep reading for a lot more detail, but if you're looking for a good Mac-compatible Flightstick, I'm over a year into my VelocityOne, and haven't had any issues yet.


I recently built myself a new gaming PC—Frankenmac was nearly seven years old, and was incapable of running the games I wanted to play with any sort of decent framerates. I won't bore you with the details of the build, but the perforance jump from an Nvidia 1080 to Nvidia 4080 graphics card was very impressive!

My main gaming outlet—on both my Mac and my PC—is flight simulation. On the Mac (or PC), it's X-Plane, plus Microsoft's Flight Simulator on the PC. As I don't have a lot of spare desk space, or the desire to spend a ton of money on flight peripherals, I control the simulators with a flightstick1A joystick with features specific to flight sims, such as a yaw axis..

I've been using a Saitek evo stick (as seen at right in new condition) for a long time—how long? I purchased it in May of 1999, so apparently it was safely Y2K compatible!

But it was starting to show its age—there's a fair bit of play in the controller, which makes it tough to fly precisely, and the coating that makes it feel smooth in the hand was peeling away everywhere. I figured after 24 years it was time for a new one.

Ideally, I wanted a flightstick I could use on the PC or Mac, and it had to have certain features: a yaw axis, ideally two sliding controls (one for throttle, one for flaps), be comfortable to hold, and be hefty enough to set on a desk without it tipping while in use.

If you search for macOS-compatible flightsticks, it doesn't look like there's much out there. There are a fair number of cheap sticks that advertise Mac compatibility, and a few high-end stick, throttle, and pedal sets as well. But in the $100 to $150 range, where I was looking, I really didn't find much of interest at all.

So I resolved myself to purchase one with only PC compatibility in mind; for Mac flights, I'd just keep using the old Saitek, as I couldn't justify the cost of a high-end setup.

The VelocityOne FlightstickAfter reading many reviews and doing some research, I chose the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flightstick. That's it at right, all lit up and ready to go (click the image for the large version).

I selected this one based on various reviews, as well as the compelling features and great price point—it lists for $129 on Amazon, but when I bought it, it was on sale for just $106.

I took a bit of a chance with this purchase (though it's easily returnable), as the VelocityOne doesn't get nearly as much attention as Thrustmaster and other name brands. But having now used it for many hours of flying, I am completely impressed. Here are the features of this stick that really stand out to me…

Note: I have not tried to use the joystick in its Bluetooth mode, only wired. I have no idea how well (or even if) it works via Bluetooth on the Mac. If you're planning on connecting via Bluetooth, make sure you purchase from somewhere with a good return policy!

  • There are four variable sliding axes: The stick itself twists for yaw (rudders), plus the smaller sticks at top left and right. The fourth sliding axis is the scroll wheel at the top of the stick—this is perfectly placed for elevator trim adjustments. My old stick had only yaw and a single throttle slider.
  • The integrated OLED screen! Yes, it's a joystick with a screen. And on that screen, you can see useful info at a glance, including a timer2Perfect for timing various tasks on IFR flights. you can start, stop, and reset with clicks on the wheel that surrounds the base of the stick. But the real beauty of the screen is that you can configure the joystick settings—precision level, audio levels, orientation, touchpad sensitivity, lighting, Bluetooth, and more. No flightstick management software is required, because you can do it all on the stick itself.
  • Two separate thumb point-of-view controls. The left side one is digital, making it perfect for quick-glance views in various directions. The right-side one is analog, which is great for moving the viewpoint around as you're in chase mode, or to look at various portions of the cockpit.
  • The top and bottom of both the left and right hand sliders have detents you can click into. When you do that, the flightstick sends a button event. So you can set the top detent on the throttle to activate afterburners in military jets, for instance. Or set the bottom one to toggle thrust reversers after landing. Slick!
  • The touchpad between the two large buttons at the top of the stick. This works (mostly) like the touchpad on a laptop—touch it, and you can control the mouse in the simulator. Click the pad, and it's as if you left-clicked the mouse. So if you need to get to a menu, no need to reach for the mouse, just use the touchpad. It's nowhere near as smooth as a "real" touchpad, but it works well enough for occasional in-game use.
  • The design is perfect. It weighs 29 ounces (822 grams), and most of that weight is in the wide base, so it's very solid sitting on the desk. It includes three screws you can use to mount it directly to a desk via three holes in the bottom of the base, but I don't see a need. The LED lighting, with five colors or off and settable intensity levels, is a nice touch. It's super-comfortable to hold (and the hand rest is height adjustable), and the screen on the top is like the ultimate bit of geekdom to cap it off.
  • The USB cable can be unplugged from the flightstick, making storage easier. And it included a 10 foot cable, so I was able to route it from the PC, behind my desk, and up to a spot on the desk where it's ready to plug in. The connector is a standard USB-C plug, too.

After I made sure the flightstick worked well on my PC, I did the next logical thing for any primarily-Mac-based user: I plugged it into my Mac, despite not a word about Mac compatibility on the box. Generally speaking, the Mac does well with USB controllers, so I thought it might actually work to some degree. But it's better than that, as absolutely everything works, including the touchpad, which I was not expecting.

It was super easy to configure in X-Plane, and it's much more accurate than my older Saitek is now—or probably ever was, for that matter. And because all the flightstick configuration is on-stick, there's no need for driver software.

Hopefully the Velocity One will prove as durable as my old Saitek—I've been using it for about 15 months now, and it's holding up very nicely so far.

11 thoughts on “Undocumented find: A great Mac-compatible flightstick”

  1. Hi!

    Just read your post on the Velocityone Flightstick and Mac OSX support. I bought one yesterday but my M1 Mac doesn't recognize it in the Game Controllers or even in X-Plane 11.

    Can you share if you have M1,2 or M3 or if you are using an Intel Mac?

    Thanks :D
    Lee

    1. Lee:

      I use it with my M2 Studio .... are you trying to use it via Bluetooth or wired? I've only used it in wired mode, where it works fine.

      But it doesn't have any macOS-provided configuration file, so you won't see a Game Controller section in System Settings when it's connected. But X-Plane sees it fine and lets me configure it. It's just connected via USB-C directly to my Mac. You don't see it at all in X-Plane?

      -rob.

  2. thanks for the quick resp. Oddly I connected via USB to my M1 Mac and it doesnt recognise it in Xplane 11, no joystick appears. i config for both PC and XBOX on the joystick mini screen, but still nothing shows up...

    As for bluetooth, I learned today that it connects to my Mac or PC but is not compatible with XCloud, i.e. FS2020 option is not possible, which seems v odd given they are XBOX compatible and would lead to large sales potential from Mac FS enthusiasts on the Xcloud.

    Have no option but to return it to Amazon now.

    Thanks all the same :)
    Lee

    1. I wonder if they added support in Plane 12, somehow—I don't have 11 installed to test with any more, so can't verify.

      Sorry it didn't work for you :(.

      -rob.

  3. Hi and thanks for this post! I was in the same boat searching for a new stick that was ambidextrous.

    I just wanted to let you know that the stick worked great on my M1 iMac running X-Plane 12 with no issues.

  4. Hi Rob,
    Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write this up. My conclusion after spending a bunch of online search and in-person question asking time was "I should get a PC if I'm really interested in getting into this, and therefore will hold off a while" but I'm now *slightly* more interested in trying to dip a toe into Mac-based X-plane shenanigans. Any luck with throttle quadrants? I don't understand why, but the nice throttle quadrants seem even more sensitive to drivers and mapping utils than the sticks. The age of cloud-connected GPU engines like GeForceNow is also pretty wild.

    1. "Any luck with throttle quadrants?"

      I'm not enough of a dedicated flight sim pilot to have ever even looked at those, given they're all usually quite costly. I just use the one throttle lever on the stick, which works fine.

      Sorry;
      -rob.

  5. Velocityone Flight stick works good on my iMac M4
    X-Plane 12 (just for those who is concerned buying it to use with Mac

  6. VideoBuddy is an amazing platform for downloading and streaming videos seamlessly! The interface is user-friendly, and it offers a great variety of content. Don’t forget to check it out and download the app for the best experience!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *