I don’t think the programmers have heavily dumbed down the flight model for this “game”. After all, the real copters must be flyable by human beings. I think that limits in controller resolution and system frame rates together account for a number of issues.
After a lot of experimenting I have come to the conclusion that the low resolution of my collective controller may be affecting my ability to hover. My research indicates that my collective controller is 8-bit. Assuming the range of full movement is 256 steps, my back-of-the-envelope calculations say that I’m using about 10-15 steps of my 255 step range to control my hover.
Also, my ability to hover appears to diminish as time goes on, as if the flight model dynamics are changing. At flight start I find it very easy to hover but once I’ve been flying I can rarely get back to that stability. I doubt it’s the difference in fuel weight doing that!
If you’re doing your own research on your controls, I suggest turning off the wind.
Helicopter controls do helicopter things, but it doesn’t fly right regardless. It definitely needs a serious patch. I would just enjoy it with what you can do with it, regardless of having to fight just to remotely go in a kind-of straight line. I wouldn’t shop for new peripherals or even spend too much time getting that ‘perfect’ controller setup just yet. The Cabri needs a few tweaks but does fly much closer to ‘honest’ than the 407. Not to mention the 407 is also about 25-30% down on actual capability, it’s painfully slow. I’m sure eventually it will be able to fly straight in a level attitude, like an actual helicopter of this caliber. You’re going to go through a lot of trouble now for naught when a patch just randomly shows up for it. The flight model is just not good, probably about 60% right at best, nobody is laying out millions of dollars for a 407 that flies like this IRL, pilots nor passengers.
I just see no reason to do that, they CAN give simmers a flight model which is closer to reality and also give xbox controller players the choice to select how to fly. But changing the flight model because many cannot control a helicopter in the “no assistance option” is not the right way, or they should change the name to “microsoft flight game”.
just uploading a short vid of short take off and landing. Too bad it was snow there, with only a white ground the control is difficulter.
It needs to be changed, because the flight model is junk now. I have no issues landing on moving ships with windy seas, but it’s this MS heli-game, not a Bell 407. We put WAY to much faith in what we’re given to us in this sim too often. No secret manual is around to tell you what you are doing ‘wrong’. No real pilot would fly this thing as it is now, it would be grounded. Just watch the next Ranger fly overhead in a nice straight line perfectly level with a pilot just happily moving along at 120 with two fingers on the controls.
easy: a Flightsimulator is a Flightsimulator and not a xbox game. So I expect the best realism they can offer to us ( I know, it is a simulation and never 100% real ).
But of course I also would understand if they tune the “included for free” helicopters a bit more for the “majority” and let the more “professional” ( hust ) helicopters for the third party market.
Been a few years since I flew in snow, certainly requires different take off and landing techniques and map reading becomes more difficult. I remember when the local authorities started switching off street lighting at midnight to save money in the areas I was flying after the Finacial crash. Long familiar towns suddenly changed shape and reduced in size at the flick of a switch just to make the job even more challenging for us Police pilots!
best effect I seen at these little 5€ Kamov double helix fun thing… it also affects the water… a dream if we see such effects in future on all helis ( and of course the Bell ).
Update good or not, i had a flight over London with the Bell and i am blown away!
NEVER seen anything nicer in MSFS, this sim is sometimes really amazing!
AVG 60fps in VR with this quality… sometimes i wonder why the performance sucks in very bad looking regions and in others it looks stunning and also performs good!
Just following up on the control curves, here are mine:
Cyclic:
Collective (2nd/right curve is the twist grip throttle, which I haven’t really attempted to mess with because of not having tried to turn off the FADEC or governor):
Pedals (I think the center dead zone was there by default, and I haven’t tried to remove it yet):
I’ve had some time with this now. You’ve damped and limited the “authority” of the cyclic. The collective curve is about what I expected and this adjustment made MOST of the difference. (I still think the G2 tends to climb way too easily) The limits on the cyclic and pedals are interesting. They made crashing a bit easier because I could no longer make those moves that would otherwise stress the bird and kill me in real life!
Thanks, IIRC my intent was to get a bit more fine control near the center to avoid overcorrecting when making small movements, like on final on an approach, etc., while still being able to get full control response at the extremities when you need it (more for stuff I’d be doing in the F/A-18E; this is the same as my fixed-wing profile, just with aileron → lateral cyclic and elevator → longitudinal cyclic).
Those were mainly to just get the range of motion into something that was comfortable. The stick I’m using for this is a Thrustmaster Magnetic Base/Warthog Base that I put stick extenders on, so the full stop-to-stop physical deflection angle gets rather awkward when it’s that tall. I also basically put it on the floor between my knees, so I had to reduce the angle in the X-axis I needed to move it to get to full control deflection (i.e. adding the extremity dead zone) without having to move my knees out of the way; that isn’t as much of an issue in the Y-axis, so I didn’t need as big an extremity dead zone to get it to a comfortable range of motion.
Again, as previously mentioned, for the pedals I was just trying to get it such that I can get full range just moving my feet at the ankles per how helicopter pedals were described to me, but, since you should be making fairly small movements with them to begin with, it probably shouldn’t be that noticeable under normal conditions.
Is it possible to hand off flying the helicopter to the computer for a while? I would want to do this to manipulate the Garmin unit in flight. Since we need the right hand on the stick all the time it makes manipulating the Garmin knobs with the mouse almost impossible while flying the helicopter. In addition, I’m in VR so I need to lean in to be able to read the GPS unit, which is a sure recipe to fly the helicopter into the ground…
or check out Virpil controls