I think some people were thinking it was more akin to a helicopter but alas its just a drone.
This is as close to a helicopter as it is to a submarine. Sorry there is nothing in common other than a vertical takeoff as none of the secondary effects of controls are present and it feels like it has zero inertia . It is a very basic coffin drone. This is what I call human sized drones.
I tried it yesterday at sunset time in NY and it was spectacular. But landing is harder than I expected. Partly due to the lack of downward view. I crashed it on the third building I attempted. Before that I circled around the Empire State Building and it was surprisingly hard to get the craft out of the swaying motion.
Still very nice flight! Thanks for the idea!
This is why VR is so good for helicopters because unlike planes that are constantly moving forward any sort of vertical takeoff and landing means you can move in any direction as well as up and down and also yaw and roll!
You need #d or a wide view so you can use you peripheral vision to stabilize your descent and no drift in the horizontal. You need to either increase your field of view or use VR.
TrackIR helps to a certain degree, too, because it has 6DOF but only until you leave the camera field of view so it’s not huge, but still useful.
I’m surprised how important subtle peripheral view is thought. I noticed when flying in real life that I felt annoyed by a certain pair of sunglasses and my landings sucked when I wore them. Turns out these sunglasses had super wide earpieces (almost like blinkers) and I couldn’t make out the ground from the corner of my eye in the flare phase.
Only when we get wide VR glasses or multi monitor support in MSFS this limitation will be lifted.
But you’re right, with the ability to look downward over the side window frame is helpful in VR for vertical landings.
I’m not a helicopter pilot but when I fly them in X-Plane my landings resemble ultra STOL landings in an airplane, including an approach and a very short flare phase. That makes it easier in helicopters than in the Volocity where you seem to hover and then lower down to the surface like a load on a crane.
Iv not flown this in VR yet but im looking forward too just for sight seeing tours
I am a helicopter pilot and when doing towering takeoffs ( vertical ) until the climb rate falls to less than 50 ft a minute you need to watch and reference 2 fixed objects 90 deg apart to keep it steady.
I have used sims with 3 screens but VR is the bomb as it makes it very real!
Interesting! And for landing, is the „approach and short flare“ technique correct that I just described? I imagine for spot landings (a for a crash site for example) you have to go down vertically, too? Is it the same reference technique then?
You always avoid vertical landings and takeoff due to safety though it is ok in a twin engine.
Landing is about 14 degrees and you maintain 40 knots above 200 feet at about 300 ft pm , When at 200 feet you reduce rate of descent and we say forward and down, we never stop moving until about 15 feet above the ground. We dont flare a helicopter we say reduce forward speed by pulling back on the cyclic gently and then quickly level at about 20 feet so we end in a hover over where we want to land. Its all very gentle and what is strange is that you add power at the last 100 feet to slow the rate of descent!
For a vertical descent we just apply the same procedure but then slowly descend from a height you have chosen to stop moving .
Fascinating, thanks for the info! I thought about going back to X-Plane for helicopters even though the graphics suddenly look so 2009, but that sounds like a fun thing to learn!
X plane is very realistic for helicopters and if you buy a nice scenery package its still hard to beat.
This isn’t an X-Plane forum. Keep the focus on MSFS and the topic subject.
I have to disagree. For me the Volocopter is zero fun to fly. Extremely sluggish, tedious to keep moving and with a super ugly cockpit too.
It doesn’t hold a candle to the H145, the Bell 47 and the RSP R44. I’ve removed the Volocopter via the content manager, because for me It’s literally a waste of space.
why? the bell one is very good.
Drones don’t autorotate. Not only that, if they did, the motors would act like generators and with this many motors, they would likely over charge the electrical system and fry it. maybe not with the right countermeasure or regulator in place, but still…
Cars use it for recuperation. It’s probably too rare to justify the additional tech and weight in a drone, but in principle it’s not a bad idea.
In scenarios where the drone takes off and lands a lot (short distance transportation) it might even be worth while, no?
If Asobo had added a proper VTOL API to the game with their addition of Volcopter I would have had some respect for it but all they did was add a pathetic once off .wasm file to within the aircraft package, Sure this makes it fly in 3 dimensions and not much else and as if it could not get worse it has almost no yaw authority! It’s just a stocking filler as they have seen the demand for helicopters and this was the quickest and cheapest way to do it to try and keep people happy while we wait 24 months for an Asobo helicopter API and physics.
Anybody know how to recharge the batteries when they run out, other than going out to main menu, or restarting. I have tried “repair and refuel” and also looked in the control listings but have not found anything.
Seems I have invented a new challenge " how many different heli pads can I land on before the batteries run out"
Asobo didn’t add this is, Volocopter themselves did it. It isn’t a replacement for helicopter support, there is no helicopter support at the moment (although the 135 and 145 have done an excellent job on making it happen).
There is a similar amount of yaw control as a drone - there’s no tail rotor, it’s all done by varying the speed of the props. Is it slow and boring, yup, it’s designed to be.
There’s no autorotation in a drone like this, just like consumer drones. The props are not variable pitch so at best with them rotating, they may slightly slow your descent. Run out of power and you should expect to drop. Switch off some of the props from the overhead panel and see what redundancy there is (with available power that is), then play with how many are required to stop a descent.
Whether the real aircraft has a ballistic parachute or not remains to be seen.