I have a set from Thrustmaster for my combined driving and flight sim rig, it works really well for mfd input. (F16 mainly).
A set of blank buttons eg at the bottom of the display that could be mapped to in display functions would have been very useful.
(I've gotten used to how it is now - and actually really like it after a year - but not going to say it couldn't have been done better. It would look less minimalistic, however.)
Playing games can hardly have any consequences, but driving does. All those buttons/knobs are designed to minimize the chance you have to look for something.
Virtual keys somehow alleviate a little bit as there are reduced physical keys but still, you will probably have to press multiple buttons to do one single task.
Wehn driving, you don't want to move your sight away from the road. Thus, muscle memory is super important. But touch screen simply rendered all that useless.
