Well for what its worth I did a screenie of my MSFFB2 centring in hotas.
After moving the stick full around and then letting it centre it shows perfectly in the middle of the cross-hair red square under the green square, I can only assume that these other peoples sticks have faults of some kind or are not setup properly.
My stick is 9 years old and works faultlessly after daily usage of around 4-5 hours, shame they stopped making them
Here's my settings if anyone wants to try them
[rts_joystick]
X=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Y=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Z=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
RZ=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
FF=1
U=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
V=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1X=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1Y=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1RZ=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0
1U=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0
1V=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0