The MV-22B Osprey has become one of my favourite aircraft for sightseeing in large countries. I can fly around at up to 280 ktas and explore the vast landscapes and at the same time I am still able to land even on very small bush airstrips, if I need to take a break from touring our planet … and actually do something real.
However, smooth vertical landing was always a challenge for this little goose, even with my Virpil throttle, which allows very precise axis positioning and measurements.
The normal axis sensitivity is a 45 degree line, where:
joystick axis input = game throttle axis output.
After mapping out the relevant throttle power levels for each mode of Osprey operation (see image below) I tried to tweak the sensitivity so that I get a curve which is as flat as possible in the areas (green) where it matters most.
Practically I now have gained twice the axis resolution in fly and hover. Especially hover control now seems a lot easier to me. I am looking forward to landing the Osprey on some of the countless helipads.
We now have FS2024 and an officially supported Osprey release too. So I wanted to check if the flight characteristics are still as in FS2020 and how I could adjust the throttle axis for smooth flight performance.
For the Osprey (50% fuel, flight at 5000 ft ALT, hover at 0 ft ALT, Clear Skies) I can now observe the following flight performance with different throttle settings:
Throttle
Nacelles
Ktas
NR
TRQ
Comment
99,0%
90 deg
0
102
111
Eng. enters “red”
89,0%
90 deg
0
99
108
Eng. enters “yellow”
81,0%
90 deg
0
96
104
VTOL hover 27000 kg
71,0%
85 deg
20
93
101
very slow landing
66,0%
90 deg
0
90
98
VTOL hover 16000 kg
59,0%
75 deg
75
89
96
slow landing
56,0%
75 deg
60
87
95
slow landing
47,0%
0 deg
275
83
91
level flight
40,0%
0 deg
205
81
88
level flight
37,0%
0 deg
150
80
87
level flight
20,0%
60 deg
12
74
80
taxiing
20,0%
70 deg
8
74
80
slow taxiing
17,0%
80 deg
2
72
79
very slow taxiing
All in all there are no major changes to the flight model of FS2020. The main operating areas of the throttle, where I find a high resolution very useful, are still:
66 to 89% throttle … Hover + VTOL
37 to 47% throttle … Level flight
However, I found out that for smooth a approach and landing the transition phase should also have a reasonable resolution. So the key changes that I tried to make in FS2024 are:
reduce the effect of the discontinuity point (red arrow).
maintain normal (45 deg) resolution in the “approach and landing” range (47 to 66% throttle)
There are two ranges which are practically not used (or really needed), where my throttle input can be of very low resolution:
0 to 20% … Engine idle and taxiing
90 to 100% … Engine overload
In total that is a range of 30%. Sadly, due to the way in which FS2024 models the curves, there are limits to how much optimization is possible.
As I already wrote in my first post, the normal axis sensitivity is a 45 degree line, where: joystick axis input = game throttle axis output.
For a better throttle resolution I still try to keep the axis curve in the main operating areas (green areas) as “flat” as possible (25 to 40 deg). This makes it easier to select the proper game throttle axis output.
Remark: While trying to find the best settings I noticed that in FS2024 the UI designers made a box where the width is not really equal to the height, and where they removed the grid lines of the 10% step intervals. Especially the missing grid lines are making it harder to pick the right settings. It would be nice if those would find their way back into the UI. So the orange lines that you can see in my picture have been added by this old goose.
Sounds interesting. On a linear curve the resolution for most flight phases aren’t granular enough, I agree.
What are you using to setting up the throttle?
In 2020 I used Axis and Ohs. That program can only handle continuous curves, so I set up two curves, one for apln mode and one for vtol. A button press toggled between them. It worked, but not perfectly.
I use a Virpil throttle … but I keep everything calibrated to a linear (1-to-1) curve outside of FS2024. Stacking multiple non-linear curves on top of each other would be too confusing for me.
The only curve adjustments that I make are from within FS2024 and the axis calibration settings (which are way harder to locate than in FS2020). In FS2024 I only found them right next to the command binding assignment behind the “settings gear” button.
You can see the settings that I did make in FS2024 in the image.
