Anyone familiar with this?

I've played with it a little, but find it difficult to control the aircraft with the keyboard and mouse. I was wondering if a reasonably priced joystick would solve the problem.
Here are a couple I found:

Logitech G Extreme 3D PRO Joystick, 12 Programmable Buttons, 8-way Hat Switch, Stable, Weighted Base, Rapid-fire Trigger, USB, PC - Black/Silver

Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Precision Fightstick

DaveTheCoder changed the title to FlightGear Flight Simulator .

Generally speaking cheap HOTAS can work but really aren't good. Lots of analogue drift and less precise/harder to control. Obviously not as comfortable.

About how much do you have to spend to avoid those issues? Can you recommend any particular models?

I've tried it years ago when the tutorial was still ridiculously unusable (text going way too fast).

I have Condor Soaring (glider simulator), keyboard barely usable, especially when the tow plane start pushing and we have to gently play with the pedals to keep a steady yaw angle.

Not so long ago, I bought a used analog gamepad Thrusmaster Firestorm Dual Analog 3, pretty cheap, so not too much money wasted in something I might not like and it works pretty good with such flying simulator. Plus it is good for arcade games or many other games.
Maybe you could give it a try so if you finally don't like FlightGear or all flying sim, you won't have lost too much.

If you are looking for the absolute cheapest thing to just try out then the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro is probably the move it seems, yeah.

Flight simulation gear is one of those things people get obsessed with. Like guitars, guns, and Gucci bags.
If you're into flight Sims you'll probably want the more expensive HOTAS like the VKB. But the Logitech is a decent joystick if you aren't a dedicated simmer.