@peter-ostry Thanks Peter! Part of what I am thinking is suggestion number 2 of @gbarcza :
"a finger velocity sensivity adjustment to filter out unwanted bending while normal playing"
... along with maybe an addition setting to not begin key-bending until some percentage of the pad is uncovered.
The act of key bending on physical open-hole flutes is sooo natural and common that I think it would provide a very direct means of expressivity to a significant percentage of potential Sylphyo players ...
Making use of CC's to accomplish key-bending is (I'm thinking out loud here ...) maybe not so straightforward ... such a system would need to know which base key is in effect in order to determine which pair of notes we are bending from (easy - the prior Note On) and to (challenging - where is the target note??)