Button Boxes & Stream Deck for DCS, MSFS and Truck Sims
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Every simmer reaches the same moment: the F/A-18 UFC, the A320 MCDU, the truck’s retarder and beacon switches — the controls that live on a keyboard, three menus deep, exactly when you cannot afford to look away. Button boxes exist to bring those controls back under your fingers. This guide compares the three honest routes — a Stream Deck, a ready-made sim button box, and a DIY build — and explains where vJoy fits into each, because on this site the virtual-device side of the story is half the fun.
What a button box actually buys you
Not immersion points — time and errors. In DCS, punching coordinates into a UFC or flipping through a checklist under pressure is measurably faster and less error-prone on physical, labelled controls. In MSFS, a box of toggles for lights, pumps and autopilot modes keeps your mouse free for the view. In ETS2 and ATS, the gains are everyday ones: engine brake, retarder stages, hazards, trailer attach and camera controls on real switches instead of key combinations you forget between sessions. If your sim time is relaxed GA touring with everything mouse-clickable, you may never need one. If you fly study-level aircraft or trucks seriously, the box quickly becomes the upgrade you touch most.
Route one: Elgato Stream Deck — the flexible favourite
The Stream Deck was built for streamers and adopted by simmers because its per-key screens solve the labelling problem completely: every button shows an icon or text label, pages fold hundreds of functions behind fifteen or thirty-two physical keys, and the community has published deep profile ecosystems for DCS and MSFS in particular. It is the best choice for complex aircraft, where the set of controls you need changes per module and per phase of flight, and it doubles as a general desktop controller the rest of the week.
The honest weaknesses: the buttons are identical, untextured keys, so true eyes-off operation by feel is weaker than on a box of real toggles and rotary encoders; it is a USB HID device whose sim integration often runs through plugins or keyboard emulation rather than appearing as a native joystick; and the per-key screens, while brilliant, make it the least ‘cockpit-like’ option here. None of that stops it being the recommendation for most DCS and MSFS readers — flexibility wins.
Elgato Stream Deck — check current price
Per-key labelled screens and deep DCS/MSFS community profiles. The flexible button-box favourite.
Route two: a ready-made sim button box — real switches, zero building
Dedicated sim button boxes — the generic USB boxes sold for racing and flight sims — give you what the Stream Deck cannot: chunky toggle switches, rotary encoders, push-buttons and sometimes a starter knob or gear lever, most presenting themselves to Windows as a standard game controller. That last part matters on this site: a device that appears as a joystick can be merged, curved and remapped through the vJoy ecosystem, and in truck sims a physical box of toggles is simply the most satisfying way to run lights, brakes and beacons. Quality across the generic market varies widely, so buy from listings with clear photos of the internals or strong community reviews, and prefer standard USB HID boxes over ones needing obscure proprietary drivers.
PC sim button boxes — check current range
Real toggles and encoders that present as a standard controller — ideal for truck and racing sims.
Route three: DIY with Arduino — cheapest, and it teaches you the stack
The third route is the one this site’s readers are unusually well placed to take. A cheap Arduino-class board, a handful of switches and encoders, and a feeder approach can turn a home-built panel into axes and buttons a sim can use — and the vJoy ecosystem has a purpose-built tool for exactly this: vJoySerialFeeder takes serial data from a microcontroller and presents it to Windows as a vJoy device. Our vJoySerialFeeder guide walks the chain end to end, from wiring a first button to mapping the finished panel in DCS or ETS2.
DIY is the cheapest route per button and the only one that gives you exactly your layout — a UFC replica, a truck dash panel, a bespoke switch row for one aircraft. The cost is your time: basic soldering or Dupont-wire assembly, some configuration patience, and a panel that will look homemade unless you invest in enclosures and labels. For many readers that process is the hobby, and the resulting box pairs with a Stream Deck surprisingly well — physical toggles for the fixed switches, screens for the changeable ones.
Which route for which sim
| Sim | Best first route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| DCS World | Stream Deck | Per-module, per-phase labels; deep community profiles |
| MSFS | Stream Deck, then a toggle box | Airliner flows suit labelled keys; GA panels suit real switches |
| ETS2 / ATS | Ready-made button box | Fixed, physical controls: lights, brakes, retarder, beacons |
| Assetto Corsa / racing | Ready-made or DIY box | Standard-controller boxes map natively and merge via vJoy |
| Any sim, on a budget | DIY Arduino + vJoySerialFeeder | Lowest cost per control; layout exactly yours |
Our verdict
Buy the Stream Deck if you fly complex aircraft in DCS or MSFS — nothing else matches its labelled flexibility. Buy a ready-made button box if your sim life is trucks and racing, where the controls never change and real switches feel right. Build the DIY panel if the making appeals to you at all: it is the cheapest route, the most personal, and the one that will teach you the most about the vJoy stack you already use. Start from the download page for the driver, pair the box with a stick from our first joystick guide, and you have the control setup most simmers end up with — just arrived at deliberately.