ACE COMBAT 8 Flight Stick and HOTAS Support: Current Status
What the publisher has and has not said about flight sticks in ACE COMBAT 8, and why licensed hardware is a different question from in-game support.
Applies to: Flight stick and HOTAS support in ACE COMBAT 8 as stated by the publisher and as reported by players, checked on October 15, 2026
Quick answer
Flight sticks and HOTAS setups are partly supported, and the publisher has confirmed the gap itself: an announcement dated September 30, 2026 states that some of the configuration options available for certain devices in ACE COMBAT 7 are not available in ACE COMBAT 8, that improvements are being worked on, and that these changes "may take time". No affected-device list, no list of missing options and no schedule have been published. Two sticks carry the ACE COMBAT 8 name — the HORI SPF-034 and the Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS NEO ACE COMBAT 8 Edition — but a licensed device is not evidence that in-game configuration options survived the move from ACE COMBAT 7, which is the distinction most pages on this topic blur. Which devices work in practice is known only from player reports, and this page labels them as such.
At a glance
Flight stick and HOTAS support on PC is partial, and the publisher has said so itself rather than leaving players to discover it. An announcement dated September 30, 2026 states that some of the configuration options available for certain devices in ACE COMBAT 7 are not available in ACE COMBAT 8, that the team is reviewing and improving flight stick support, and that these changes "may take time". No date, no affected-device list and no workaround appear in it.
This page keeps three things apart, because pages on this subject tend to run them together. The first is what Bandai Namco Entertainment has stated, which is quoted below rather than summarised. The second is the hardware sold under the ACE COMBAT 8 name, which comes from the manufacturers. The third is what players report about sticks they already own, which is a different kind of evidence and is labelled as such throughout.
The official statement, September 30, 2026
The announcement is short and narrow in scope. It confirms that the publisher received player feedback about flight stick support, apologises for the situation, and says the team is reviewing the matter and working on improvements. The full official position is contained in the two quoted lines below.
| Item | What the announcement states |
|---|---|
| Confirmed problem | "some of the configuration options available for certain devices in ACE COMBAT 7 are not available in ACE COMBAT 8" |
| Stated goal | To bring the flight stick experience "closer to ACE COMBAT 7" |
| Stated timing | "While these changes may take time" — the improvements were not finished when the announcement was posted |
| Not stated | Which device models are affected, which configuration options are missing, which driver to use, when an update lands, or any workaround |
Read the tense of those two lines together. The problem is stated in the present tense — the options are not available — and the fix is stated in the future conditional. An announcement that says improvements may take time is not an announcement that support has been restored, and no later post has superseded it as of October 15, 2026.
The goal wording matters too. The stated target is closer to ACE COMBAT 7, not identical to it, so the announcement does not promise that every ACE COMBAT 7 option returns.
Licensed hardware is not the same question as in-game support
This is where most writing on the topic goes wrong, and it goes wrong in a way that misleads buyers in both directions. A stick can carry the game's branding and still lose configuration options, and a stick that carries no branding can still work. The two lists are compiled by different parties for different purposes.
| Licensed hardware | In-game input support | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Which sticks are sold for this game, and where | What the game does with the stick you already own |
| Who provides the answer | The manufacturers, with permission to use the name | The publisher, in patch notes and announcements |
| What the publisher has said | Nothing that names a supported device list | That some ACE COMBAT 7 configuration options are missing, and that improvements are in progress |
| What it does not tell you | Whether your device's options survived the move from ACE COMBAT 7 | Which devices are on sale under the game's name |
The practical consequence is that "is my stick supported" has two honest answers. If the question is whether a device is sold for the game, the answer is in the section below. If the question is whether the game exposes the configuration options you used in ACE COMBAT 7, the answer is the quoted sentence above: some of them are not available, and the publisher is still working on it.
Hardware sold under the ACE COMBAT 8 name
Two flight sticks are sold under the game's name. The details below come from the manufacturers' own product listings, not from Bandai Namco Entertainment.
| Device | Platforms listed by the manufacturer | Listed price |
|---|---|---|
| HORI ACE COMBAT 8 Flight Stick (SPF-034) | PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Windows PC | $129.99 |
| Thrustmaster T.Flight HOTAS NEO ACE COMBAT 8 Edition | PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC; a separate Xbox and PC version is also listed | $149.99 |
A third-party compatibility list — the PCGamingWiki entry for the game, which is not a publisher source — names the same two devices under compatible flight sticks. Neither the publisher nor the manufacturers state which configuration options each device has in this game, and the publisher has not published a supported-device list.
Because the licensed list is a manufacturer list, this page does not treat it as an answer to a compatibility question about hardware you already own. Treat it as "these are the sticks sold for the game", nothing more.
What players report
The table below lists thread titles from the game's Steam discussion board, with what each one is about. These are recorded as player reports: titles tell you what people are asking, not what works. We have not tested any device listed here, and none of it comes from the publisher.
| Thread title as posted | What it concerns |
|---|---|
| Easy HOTAS Support | A request for simpler HOTAS setup, among the more active threads in the discussion list |
| HOTAS support workarounds? | Players looking for ways to make unsupported setups work |
| Thrustmaster T.16000M HOTAS Default Mapping | One specific device and the mapping it ships with |
| Turtle beach flightdeck | One specific device, raised by a player |
| Guessing Driver Support will come after launch? | Expectation that driver-level support arrives after release — an assumption, not a statement |
| any tips for play on mouse and keyboard? trying to learn the new settings | Players choosing keyboard and mouse over a stick |
If a stick is what you care about and you are still deciding whether to buy the game, the in-game control modes are a separate question and are covered on the controls and difficulty page. If you are trying to get a device working right now and have hit an error rather than an input problem, start from the crash and error code page.
What the publisher has not published
- An affected-device list. The announcement says "certain devices" and stops there. There is no official breakdown by model or by manufacturer.
- A list of the missing configuration options. Only the general statement that some options from ACE COMBAT 7 are unavailable.
- A schedule. The announcement gives no date and no release window, only that changes may take time.
- A supported-device list. Neither the store listing nor the announcements enumerate which sticks are supported.
- A commitment to full parity. The stated aim is to move closer to ACE COMBAT 7, which is not the same as promising the same option set.
This page will need revisiting if the publisher ships the flight stick improvements described in the announcement, adds licensed hardware, or changes the status of that post. Until then, anything beyond the quoted lines would be an assumption about a statement that has not been made.
Sources and review scope
- Bandai Namco Entertainment — flight stick support update, September 30, 2026 — the source for this page's official position: the statement that some configuration options available for certain devices in ACE COMBAT 7 are not available in ACE COMBAT 8, the apology, the stated goal of bringing the experience closer to ACE COMBAT 7, and the "may take time" wording. Quoted rather than paraphrased.
- ACE COMBAT 8 — Steam announcements — the publisher's announcement feed, used to date the flight stick post and to confirm that no later post supersedes it as of October 15, 2026.
- Steam store API — ACE COMBAT 8 app details — source for controller and input categories on the store listing, and for confirming that the listing does not enumerate specific flight stick models.
- Steam Discussions — ACE COMBAT 8 — the discussion board the player thread titles in the table are taken from. Titles are recorded as posted; the threads are player posts and are not publisher statements, and their contents were not tested by this page.
- PCGamingWiki — ACE COMBAT 8 — third-party wiki, cited only for its compatible flight stick list. It is not a publisher statement and is labelled as third-party above.
- HORI and Thrustmaster product listings for the ACE COMBAT 8 Flight Stick (SPF-034) and the T.Flight HOTAS NEO ACE COMBAT 8 Edition — manufacturer pages, checked October 15, 2026, for platform lists and prices. These are vendor claims about their own products, not a Bandai Namco Entertainment support list.
Checked on October 15, 2026. The official position on this page is one announcement, quoted directly, and it is deliberately not expanded: the announcement does not name affected devices, missing options, a driver, a date or a workaround, so none of those are supplied here from other sources. Prices and platform lists in the licensed-hardware table are manufacturer claims. Thread titles in the player-report table are recorded as evidence that a question is being asked, not as evidence of what a given device does, and no workaround tool is described or linked. Where this page reaches a conclusion it is a reading of the announcement's own wording, and that wording is quoted next to the conclusion.
Checked on October 15, 2026 against the Steam store listing and the Steam Web API app-details endpoint for ACE COMBAT 8, the publisher's own Steam announcements, and the Steam achievements API. Requirement figures, the DRM notice and the difficulty descriptions are quoted from official sources rather than paraphrased. Where a detail comes from a third-party wiki or from a player post rather than from Bandai Namco Entertainment, it is labelled as exactly that. Anything the publisher has not stated is written as unconfirmed rather than guessed.
Not independently play-tested. This is not a claim that every platform or game version was tested. Source review: Oct 15, 2026.
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