The thumb that couldn’t roll
A trusted tester came back from a phone session with a puzzled report: “I can’t seem to control roll. It feels like I only have rudder and elevator.” He was being generous. What he actually had was a slow-motion graveyard spiral with a FIRE button on it.
The plane you couldn’t turn
On the phone, pushing the stick sideways used to just skid the nose around — fine if you only ever nudged it, useless the moment you wanted a real turn. And if you buried the stick to get that turn, the plane rolled past vertical, tipped its nose below the horizon, and flew itself into the dirt. Lean it a little and nothing happened; commit and you died. There was no bank you could actually pick and hold — exactly the “only rudder and elevator” feeling, with a hidden cliff at the end of the throw.
A thumb is a stick, not a mouse
So the virtual stick stopped chasing a dot and started flying the airplane. Push it sideways and you now command a bank angle the plane rolls into and holds — a light lean for a gentle turn, the stick buried for a knife-edge carve right at the airframe’s limit. The plane keeps its nose on the horizon through the whole turn instead of tucking under, the rudder coordinates it for you, and the harder you pull with your other thumb the tighter it bites. Let go of the stick and the wings roll level on their own.
Aiming didn’t change — the fine-aim cursor still points your guns and turrets exactly where you drag it. Flying is flying now; aiming is still aiming.
How it feels now
Hold a full-stick turn and the plane rolls smoothly into a hard bank, settles there, and carves around gaining a hair of altitude instead of shedding hundreds of metres into a crash. Ease off to half stick and it holds a gentle lean without wandering. Release from a hard turn and you’re wings-level in about a second. It flies on the ailerons you can feel under your thumb, the way it always should have. Desktop mouse and keyboard pilots see no change — this is a phone fix, and the plane itself flies exactly as before.