Yes. Now you need a day or two of practice before it starts to feel normal.
You shouldn’t have to hold a pedal when moving at a decent speed. It should fly straight enough without. As long as you have your stick under control, or your trim set close to where you want it.
Keep in mind that, different from airplane rudder pedals, helicopter anti-torque pedals (on most helicopters at least) do not spring back to neutral, they will stay in the position that you last put them in. Keeping them in that position should cost more or less no effort, and therefore shouldn’t feel uncomfortable at all. Before you can use rudder pedals as anti-torque pedals, you have to remove the centering spring!
That’s the thing though, in the Huey I need to hold the pedals in roughly that position no matter if I’m hovering, cruising at 100, 80, or 60 kts. If I return the pedals to center, then I need to fly the heli with a steady 5 degree bank to the left in order the fly in a straight line.
Yes.
This is all coming together.
You do not HAVE to hold the rudder pedals once moving above a certain speed. Once moving, you can make comparable adjustments with the stick. Similar to an airplane, but far more vital, the pedals are most important on or near the ground, when hovering, and when moving slowly.
You can not fly hands free for long in sim as the helicopter and trim were not made for that, and the limits of the MSFS helicopter engine begin to show themselves. You will need to correct and adjust to maintain straight flight. Pretty much every helicopter built for the MSFS helicopter flight engine shows similar behavior.
This is not entirely the fault of the sim, as many airplane simmers just think they should fly helicopters the same way as they would fly a trimmed airplane, as within the above limits, you kind of can. But it is unrealistic and not how one really would fly and control a helicopter.
Thank you for the explanation. My argument has never been that it’s wrong that the helis need constant corrections or constant holding of the stick in a direction other than dead center, is that I have to fly the thing SIDEWAYS to get it to fly in a straight line.
Yeah, I was kinda summarizing the day’s discussion but since I replied to you, it might have read differently to you than the more generalized tone I intended. Sorry for that. In hindsight what began as a reply to your post probably should have just been its own post.
I agree the Huey needs a LOT of anti torque pedal when it needs any. And I think that is something kinda common to Taog’s helicopters. IIRC they all require quite a bit more than other designers’ helicopters. And I know the Alouette had those settings reduced in later patches.
Without pedals, I have totally lost control of the Huey once or twice to torque and no amount of anti torque seemed to counter it. And especially without pedals, countering torque for any length of time with a twist is uncomfortable.
At least with the Huey it’ll eventually fly straight with all that pedal. There’s some from other devs where they’ll fly sideways no matter how much pedal you give them. The FI helis may have their shortcomings but they DO fly straight.
Are you flying with zero wind? Every aircraft flies a bit ‘sideways’ to fly in a straight line.
Depending on the wind, weight & balance, cruise speed, etc. you may have to fly slightly sideways to go in a straight line. It also depends on the helicopter’s vertical stabilizer design at what speeds it becomes more effective and unloads the tail rotor.
…and then there is how the developer implemented the flight model. It’s not that the Asobo FM isn’t capable. The Cabri has much better pedal response and behavior than most of the 3rd party addons.
I need to spend some more time in the FI 206 since the latest update, but I’ve been experiencing a conflict with the HeliManager software and the Varjo Base software. I posted in the FI discord about it but haven’t gotten a response yet. When I try to enter VR with the HeliManager running it crashes my PC. After some testing I found that I can use the FI birds, but I have to start the flight first, then shutdown HeliManager, then I can enter VR.
Most of the Robinsons I fly IRL don’t have an attitude indicator, so I couldn’t tell you if I was skid low or slightly crabbing while flying a straight ground track…
I was just thinking about this and wondering how were you using the pedals. Did you put your whole foot up on the pedals and move them with your legs? For helicopters and tail draggers, you should keep your heels on the floor and use your ankles to operate the pedals. Not your legs. This allows for much finer control and is a much more comfortable way to fly with them.
There’s a button just under the joystick flange in front where you can push it to lock the left/right access. But you have to release it if you need to turn left or right. not very practical doing that.
I had my whole foot on the pedals. I felt like my feet were locked on em and there was no alternative way of using em. They’re gone long time ago now so…
Yes, and the financial stake is tied to his reputation. So it would be in his best interest not to lie about the accuracy of the flight model. 
There is a lot to love about his model in motion in the air. And a lot to dislike, especially near ground, taxi, hover, and landing where helicopters feel too light.
I don’t think he is lying, but most serious developers would & should think that their product is the most realistic and best. I just don’t agree with him. I don’t think it’s bad, but it has issues in some areas just like every other helicopter FM in the sim business.
Pedal response & behavior in the FI FMs is very good, but the ground contact model isn’t great and it’s a little too ‘loose’ in a hover, based on my experience. Toag’s Huey’s pedal response isn’t as good, but it’s better in a hover and easier to ‘feel’ what it’s doing during pickups and set downs.
My issue is, that simmers with no real helicopter experience of their own will argue with my opinion, because “Rick said” the FI FM is the most realistic. I’m not basing how I feel on anything other than my own experience. Which is why I always disclose that I’ve never flown a real 206 to compare the simulated one too. I just have a hard time thinking that Robinsons would be that much better in control response as compared to a B206. Especially when you consider the cost difference.
Taog’s Huey isn’t perfect, but overall it’s closer to my experience of how a real helicopter feels in more areas of the FM than most other 3rd party helis.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinion on how they feel about any certain product. However, if a user on the forums asks how an addon helicopter behaves, I’ll speak to my experience with it.
I am noticing a few issues on Xbox Series X. None exactly game breaking but they do seem to be related to the Huey.
First, it seems to take a long time for each model to unpack the first time you fly them. This is common in big addons but maybe worth mentioning in the notes. Also 2/3 of the helicopters crashed the sim before unpacking and their first flight. Military and tall skids IIRC.
Then, the sim still seems to crash more often when trying to load the unpacked Hueys.
And the glass screens can go black.
Finally, poor frame rate at times (glass or steam, worse in cockpit but also in external view) and it seems CPU related because time stops. GPU would just be fewer frames but time and sound would continue.
Most of these issues seem to be mitigated by rebooting the sim. But that is a many minute process. A fresh boot seems to run the Huey better. By the second or third flight, some of the above issues may pop up again. So it is kinda like there is a memory leak or something that keeps draining resources after a flight. 
Anyway, Taog’s is good with patches, and I expect these issues will be resolved or at least mitigated.
And while it is easy to say, “Well, you are on Xbox.” these issues are not common on console with $30+ addons. In fact, the more premium the addon, the better it tends to work on console. A2A and PMDG included.
Still a brilliant helicopter.
From Taog on discord a few days ago.
My belief is yet again the “memory optimizations” in SU15 have really degraded the series x experience. I’m sure that if this helicopter was available in SU14 we would not be seeing these issues. I was excited they were addressing this by making a SU16 and GDK with the Xbox team, now that has been delayed til after the new sim is released. I’m sure the Xbox teams responsible for the new GDK aren’t privy to all the issues and the urgency SU16 is needed before 2024 is released. I’m afraid this is where we are with series x until they fix the GDK. SU15 should have never been released.
This is quite possible. But that the performance deteriorates over time, and gets worse with subsequent flights does hint at something in Taog’s code that is also hogging some resources.
While it could be related to the SU15 debacle (and really, how that patch got released in its state on Xbox is a shame) I beta test, and I am quite familiar with the SU15 issues, this seems like something over and above all that.
At the very least, it is worth mentioning in here so folks can make a more informed decision to buy. Some folks are less tolerant of issues like this than I am.
I find smaller devs have the most difficulty releasing addons that are fully optimized for console. Like, that takes manpower and smaller devs don’t have the manpower so instead it just takes them more time. Worth doing though, optimizing for console, since most Marketplace sales these days are from console simmers. And if devs want a piece of that console pie, they really should make sure what they release is optimized for console from the start. Nobody forces devs to release their aircraft on Xbox. Our money is the same to them. Their addons should be the same for us.
And to reiterate, these are issues with the X which doesn’t seem to be the console of note in the above post from Taog’s.
A potential memory issues aside do you see any performance improvement by turning off the animated dancing Hawaiian ornament, or the cockpit vibrations? Both can be turned off in the options flipboard (page 2 I think), just wondering if they save some CPU cycles. I so thought I saw improvement fps wise removing the soldiers sitting in the back too.
Kind of? But once these issues come up, there seems to be no way to completely get performance back. Nothing except rebooting the sim. Then a flight from the exact same place, with the exact same settings, typically is smooth as butter.
It isn’t like we can adjust things like TLOD that could really help with the CPU burden. So reducing things like traffic and the dancing hula girl can help, but these aren’t the settings that really change the performance in any profound way.
IME this type of issue usually comes down to one unoptimized, bespoke, dashboard instrument. And if fuses work, said instrument can usually be isolated by turning it off!
They go hand in hand. Taog is being limited by MS/Asobo because of the Series S, that’s why your Series X isn’t as good as we both know it can be. In fact that’s exactly what they say ”I will try of course to find solutions but it will always remain difficult to find the right compromises when I can’t upload two different versions of the Huey for each XBOX declination.”
My post from June describes my feelings with SU15, series S, Series X and PC.
No, no improvement at all. Even with all the additions disabled (heat blur, crew, modern avionics, etc), it’s still sluggish on Xbox.
