I've never purchased any fight simulator software so this question may be obvious to some. My question is this, are there any joysticks that allow four proportional (top-bottom, left-right, twist, trigger) control movements for the elevator-aileron-rudder-throttle respectively? And if so, which software works with these joystick? I'm not interested in using a buddy box at this point.

Thanks,
Todd

Todd,
I have been flying FMS for about a year and a half it is a free down load and hundreds of planes are also available for download I also have a Logitec wingman I bought for $19.00 from Best Buy it has two sticks. FMS is not the absulute best simulator but it is great for the price and a good place to start. http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html

In my opinion Real Flight G2 is the best. I bought one here on RCU a few months ago and it does a Great Job of being realistic.
But it is $200.00 I think the FMS is a great place to start.

Just my $.02 KCFlyBoy

I used Logitech Rumblepad. It has two "sticks" and a slider, which gives you 5 proportional channels. You just need to re-assign the sticks to proper channels in the sim.
Works fine. The only little problem is that the throttle stick also has a spring, which returns it to the central (mid-open throttle) position. You may try to fool the sim by calibrating the throttle channel over its half-range: from the middle up.