Doh, can't change the topic title, anyways this is supposed to be for Thrustmaster joystick

I did the:
[joystick]
timed=false
setting mentioned in another thread, and while that didn't get the joystick to work, it did cause me to get more sensible numbers in calibration:
0064,0064,0064,0000 in game calibration
Pushing forward make the 3rd number 0, pushing backward made the 3rd number 127
However sideways, twist, and throttle do nothing in calibration (actually forward/back does nothing when flying.)

Buttons work fine though.

It's a DOS game from 1995. Half that stuff hadn't been invented yet. ;)

Ya but DOSBOX should be translating the joystick input into a format the game can handle.

Doesn't matter what translation DOSBox does; Terminal Velocity wasn't coded to handle that stuff.

Best DOSBox could do is translate things like handle twist into stuff TV can understand; but mapping your throttle twist to joystick left-right wouldn't be much use.

Even modern games have to "know" an input type is possible - There's no way to get truly arbitrary input.

Sure, you can buy a $10-15 foot pedal on Amazon that'll work with basically anything...But that's because it translates foot pressure into keypresses of a specified key. The game things you're pressing a keyboard key.

It's a good question; it's just not possible. :)

My Thrustmaster T.16000M works fine with this game and you are on the right track by setting timed=false in Dosbox.
The only thing I can imagine that is still not correct is either in the TV configuration menu the axis (x, y, throttle, roll, etc.) have to be assigned to be analog, which is the most likely cause, or there are other controllers plugged in, in that case unplug the unnecessary controllers (dosbox only supports 4 axis maximum atm.).

...Or I could be wrong about what Terminal Velocity supports. A quick Google check didn't tell me when twist-handle joysticks were invented, though. I just don't remember owning or seeing any in the 90s. But then, I never spent more than $50-70 on a controller.

DOSBOX just disabled my display, had to unplug the computer just to get things working again. ctrl-alt-delete didn't even work. All I did was the timed=fixed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SideWinder#3D_Pro was a twist joystick out in the mid 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceOrb_360 had 6 axis, worked with 1995 Descent.