I take you word for it but I have read so many widely differing opinions here and in other forums…from “the FM is totally awesome” to “it’s complete ■■■■”. Don’t know what to make of it…
Well, I can tell you that much for free: anyone who claims the flight model of this bird is “complete ■■■■” instantly disqualifies their opinion. I would never listen to those people ever again.That’s the kind of people who would claim that “Avatar” was the worst movie ever made.
4 Likes
I agree. I think sometimes we forget to expand a little on our comments and maybe just stop and think for a moment before posting.
I would say that the FI 206 is indeed good, and it brings more helicopter features to life than the default FM at the moment, while still having room for improvement.
The key point being “room for improvement” does not equate to a garbage product in any way. If you enjoy helicopters in MSFS, this is a solid choice and I am glad I bought it.
4 Likes
Couldn’t agree more. It feel like some people think because something is the "official Asobo " heli physics it must be better for some bizarre reason, when of course the reality is FlyInside have been developing heli physics for years longer than Asobo and have pilots of their helis making them. It comes as no surprise that FI are ahead of the game on all the other developers of helis for MSFS.
I did 3 hours each back to back of the Cowan and FI 206’s a couple of days ago. It’s no contest when it comes to the FM. FI hands down feels SO much better. I have absolutely nothing against Cowan… i eagerly gave them my money! Their external model is beautiful, much better paints, good sounds… but the Asobo FM simply isn’t up to par. As I spend 99.99% of my time flying rather than looking at the models, all the areas where the Cowan is currently superior are pretty much irrelevant to me.
There is one specific, essential area of the heli flight modeling that I feel neither Asobo or HPG seems to have got a hold on and FlyInside have… Inertia! Anyone who knows basic physics and has flown the FI 206 and the Asobo FM based helis (and HPG, but they are moving to the Asobo model anyway) will surely see the vast difference between them when it comes to inertia, and the correct feeling of inertia is in my opinion essential to a heli flying like a heli. Not so much in cruise obviously, but all the other fun manoeuvres we can do in helis depend on properly modelled inertia to feel correct and for me this is where FI are, at the moment, well ahead of the competition on this platform.
2 Likes
I have both of the 206Bs and I like them both for different reasons. I fly both of them. Because the ranks of helicopter developers are so thin, I think that it is important that we support all of them so that we get more and better rotorcraft in the future. Let’s praise the efforts of all of these developers and try to stay away from bashing anyone.
2 Likes
The cowan 206 requires a LOT more left cyclic in a hover than the FI one. Does anyone know which one is correct?
1 Like
The FlyInside B-206 B-3 version 2.06 is now out! New features, beautiful liveries!
- 9 new liveries
- Greatly improved contact points, light-on-skids behavior
- Improved interior plastic textures
- Adds Heli Manager setting for untinted windscreen
- Engine door mesh now semi-transparent
- Adds illuminated landing light-bulb to exterior
- Collective Sensitivity adjustable through Heli Manager
- Corrected yaw behavior in Easy/Medium modes
- Twist throttle adjustable via mouse-wheel
- Corrects twist-throttle label directions
- Improved door-pocket textures
- Battery switch now correctly disables panel lighting
- Corrects HSI visual glitch
- Adjusts headset scale
- Attitude indicator mesh corrections
12 Likes
Ground handling is MUCH better in this version. Great update!
2 Likes
Left cyclic would depend on factors such as weight and balance, loading and which way the wind is coming from in a hover in real life.
I still don’t think the Fly inside 206 requires enough anti torque pedal for takeoff and for landing, and autorotations, when the torque comes off, the right pedal needs to go down, and I don’t feel that is the same as well.
But maybe I need to set my pedals profile up different. I have the thrustmaster TPR pendular pedals, so they seem to work really well, but does not feel the same as the 206 to me in real life. BTW, I have little over 1300 hours IRL helicopters, mainly in Bell 206.
The rest of the helicopter is really nice, I like the clarity of cockpit in VR, much better than the Cowan. The Cowan seems lower resolution, or foggy in VR, especially at night.
1 Like
Great to see improvements still coming here. Good sign.
Does anybody know if the textures now are much improved and near enough to the Cowan Bell 206?
Wondering also if the fps has improved much as well. I seem to recall it was slightly heavy on performance to start with.
Vonzeigler,
You are correct, there is something wrong with your pedal setup. At no time will the 206 require right pedal with collective pitch from takeoff. More or less depending upon power requirements, but certainly not right! You should check your setups. Sounds like something is misconfigured.
RotorRick
No. The comment on right pedal was upon dropping the collective, not raising it for increased power, which requires left pedal.
Seems to need a bit more right pedal action than I am getting,
The 3 steps of autorotation, Down collective, aft cyclic and right pedal, the right pedal is not needed in the sim very much, as it is in real life.
Not sure if its my setup, everything seems to be normal with my pedals…
Other than that I love the aircraft, its really great!!
I have to give it almost full right pedal initially on autorotations to keep the nose pointed in the same direction. Not sure if I have the correct technique, though. Speaking of technique, would be awesome if some real-life pilots could do a tutorial series on the FI 206…
Couldn’t agree more. The graphics of the FI 206 has been criticized by many, but I prefer it for the reasons you state. I only fly in VR, so maybe it is different in pancake mode…
Really nice update and a big 
to the developers . Fantastic machine to fly and the hours slip by !!
( Great to have all the settings to cater for various joysticks / controllers etc . Makes flights so much more enjoyable !! )
4 Likes
I’m really enjoying flying around in the B206. One of the great things about FI and their custom flight model is the “choose your own control level” option available. I’m not great at flying choppers, and the rudder-axis-by-wrist-twist is really a horrible way to control the pedals in a helicopter (and in any aircraft, really… I’m working on getting a pedal setup someday), so getting rid of torque effects is a key component to my enjoyment of a given helicopter flight. The B206 and the B47 let me dial up how much realism I want. (I mean, sometimes I like to turn it to full realism and see how long I can go before crashing ignominiously…) The Hype 145 does that too, but by just autotrimming torque out of existence… (Works for me!)
One thing the B206 desperately needs, though, is a bit of camera improvement. The current camera settings are workable, but just barely. I use my hatswitch for camera control, as I’m guessing a good % of MSFS users do, and it works great on most add-ons. This, unfortunately, doesn’t. Notably:
-
There are no instrument views available. This isn’t much of an issue on the B47, which… well… doesn’t have a lot of instruments, but on the B206 it’s very problematic, unless you’re using head tracking constantly, or are in VR. The instrument view slot is taken by a view from the backseat. Which is a neat viewpoint, but should be the last of the instrument views if it’s included. I need to see the GPS, the start switches, etc., when I flick through the intstrument views.
-
The pilot views (plural) are actually pretty useful, but they are split – the pilot side (right) is the look-down angle useful for landings, and the copilot (left) has a higher angle better for level travel. These shouldn’t be separate side views, though. There should be a down-look and straight-look option for each position (better), or for the pilot side at a minimum.
But at least they’re usable views! There are some fairly pricey add-ons – I won’t name names - where the basic camera setup lacks a quickview to the right. I mean… come on…
It would have been nice if Asobo had included some sort of easy and/or sensible way to adjust camera presets, too. But that’s a separate issue.
I’ll have a chat with Dan, some valid points about views and I’d like to see some of them implemented also.
Tony
Anyway we could turn off the death roll spiral it does as it get in VNE?, its a bit over exaggerated in that effect on the sim, but fun ride down to the ground.
Glad that in my real life flight hours in the Jetranger, it never did that…
They would of put me in a box, and not let me out on weekends, worse than work!
2 Likes
They have: You can define your own custom views quick and easy: Manually move the camera into a position you need via arrow keys and mouse and simply press CTRL + ALT + a number key of your choice to save it.
After doing so you can simply pull up each saved view with the associated number key.*
- this might be defined with a key combination by default, I don’t remember. But I have it set up in such a way that I only need to press a number.
The views are saved persistently on a per aircraft basis
Yes, but those become custom camera views that aren’t bound to the pilot/instrument view settings, and therefore aren’t accessible through the hatswitch. AFAIK, the only way to change the camera position for those assignments is to manually enter the coordinates in the camera.cfg file, which is extremely difficult for the casual user. The only other way to do it would be to set the custom camera views to the switch, which would then require a separate stick configuration for each plane… which would bring up the insanely terrible UI Asobo has created for controller settings…