Archer Midnight Yaw/Roll Controls Switched in Hover Mode

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

In all phases of flight the RHI Twist function controls yaw/heading except in the Hover Phase.

The Manual Page 17 Table and Page 18 first paragraph descriptions disagree with each other.

Page 17 Control Response Table Hover Phase

  1. RHI : Left/Right : Bank/Side-Slip Control
  2. RHI : Twist : Heading Control
    (These would be the intuitive control responses)

Page 18 First paragraph
RHI (Right Hand Inceptor); Last sentence:
Deflecting left or right changes the aircraft’s heading.
(Confusing control logic and no mention of the RHI Twist Function)

The flight model unfortunately doesn’t obey the control logic in the table on page 17. The twist function causes the a/c to translate left and right whereas left/right on the stick causes the a/c to yaw.

This certainly isn’t the expected behaviour and I very much doubt any certification agency would accept this confusing control logic when in all other phases of flight the controls behave as expected.

RECOMMENDATION

  1. Correct Manual Page 18 first paragraph to agree with the table on page 17
  2. Add a description of the Twist function to the same paragraph
  3. Correct the aircraft behaviour in Hover so that twist/rudder controls yaw/heading and stick left/right controls Bank/Side-slip

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue: Archer Midnight

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

1.Hover the aircraft and observe the response to twist/rudder pedals. Expected behaviour would be to yaw but instead the aircraft will translate sideways in the direction of control deflection.
5.Conversely move the stick left or right and the aircraft will yaw in that direction.
6.Compare the table on page 17 with the first paragraph on page 18

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.
Page 17 Table

Page 18 first paragraph

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]


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Personal Comments and Observations as a Partner Dev staff

So I was going to address this in my orientation video for the Archer.

It’s the opposite from the Joby - meaning:

In hover/TRC mode, Joby acts like a helicopter control - up/down controls height, left/right controls side-slip, twist controls heading just like rudder pedals on a helicopter control counter-torque.

In hover/TRC mode, Archer’s left/right controls heading, twist controls side-slip. That’s how Archer designed it. In fact, both the dev and myself along with other QA Staff had a bit of a hard time handling that from a muscle memory perspective for a while. See why below.

In the actual cockpit, BOTH inceptors operate with up/down, left/right. One of those controls heading, the other side-slips.

Since most players would not have two side-sticks (and we’re not certain what the new Three Tier control system would react to that, not to mention USB loading order remaining consistent ), we mapped the LHI’s left-right function to the RHI because many players would have at least a single-axis throttle and a twist joystick.

As for the manual, we wrote the Joby one first because it was ahead of Archer in the development queue. We probably did a cut & paste and missed the edits. Good news, it’s online, we can get it fixed easily enough.

It doesn’t make sense to have a rudder function that usually controls yaw/heading to operate differently in only one phase of flight on one aircraft. And then to have left and right which usually controls roll also function differently in only one phase of flight. The Joby is set up logically. The Archer has got to be changed.

Just read the table. It’s logical. The a/c function isn’t.

Just look at the table and read across the function of RHI Twist in each phase of flight. It’s logical as is. Are you really suggesting you’re recommending swapping the Twist and Left/Right functions on the Hover column only to line up with the a/c behaviour?

That’s how the actual Archer operates. It’s straight from their manual and documentation provided to us. They reviewed the build and flew it before it went live on the sim, we couldn’t go live without their signoff.

It’s because they have two inceptors - none of them twist. It would probably (in time) make more sense if we could map two side-sticks in the sim, but it’s unlikely that we can and most players wouldn’t have that as a typical hardware setup.

So you made a good decision to combine the functions of the two Inceptors into one control but in one phase of flight only you made the call to reverse the logic.

You surely can’t truly believe that’s a sensible decision in the game.

This seems like another example of the H125 trim fiasco.

One of those inceptors would control either heading or side-slip by moving leff-right. Since we only have one side-stick with typical setups, our choices were to assign a control to twist.

Again, it’s important to remember that in the real Archer cockpit, the inceptors only move forward/aft, left/right. No twist.

I get that you’re confused why twist would control side-slip in Hover instead of Heading, but in real life the RHI would control the heading in it’s left-right configuration, and the LHI in left-right configuration would control side-slip. We only had the rudder axis on the RHI to map the side-slip, which would belong on the LHI as left-right. The manufacturer wanted as close to real mapping of the inceptors as possible and endorsed our design proposal. Hope that makes sense.

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