In the assistance options, there’s one to enable Cyclic assistance. Does anyone know what that does? My impression is that it makes the helicopter cyclic less sensitive but I’m not sure. It seems to be an improvement when using a typical gaming joystick as a cyclic control, but I’d like to understand it before deciding to use it or not.
I guess no one knows? Interesting that people advise turning it off, but don’t know what it does 
It seems easier to control cyclic inputs to me. So
my theory is that it reduces sensitivity or dampens cyclic input to help compensate for the fact that most of us are using a stubby gaming joystick to simulate a long throw floor mounted cyclic.
I’m leaving it enabled. If you have a gaming joystick as a cyclic, you should also try enabling it.
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When in sim, the cyclic assistance option has some description on hover:
Adjusts whether you want assistance with cyclic controls in helicopters.
But on the SDK website there is more info for developers:
The different assistance_ parameters are provided to pre-initialise the PID that is used for assistance, and will only be used when flight assistance is enabled. The way the PID works is that it will converge towards a value which makes it possible to stabilize the helicopter in hover, and it’s the assistance_xxxx_xxxx_stability_centre that you can use to pre-initialise the PID. This will make it start directly at the value that stabilizes the helicopter, so it doesn’t “search” as much before stabilizing and is more quickly stable. Note too that there are limits to stabilisation, and if you are too off-center it sometimes does not stabilise at all.
And that’s both how it works and what it does. The assistance option is as if somebody else is on the controls with you, and they are constantly trying to center the helicopter in hover (there is a config entry to make forward speed centered too).
This means the setting description is also literal: somebody is assisting you with the controls the whole time. They never let their hands off and all of your inputs are close to duplicated in range as a result of needing to counter their input. Around the center of the controls, the assistance response will be minimal so the control is more direct, but as attitude changes the assistance will work harder to return to center.
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Thanks. Good insights. I expect when they first tested helicopters on an Xbox they realized they needed something like this. I think this assistance may make sense for short throw devices like thumbticks on a X-Box controller or probably even normal gaming joysticks. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a gaming joystick or x-box controller to be able to adequately simulate a long-throw floor-mounted cyclic control. I don’t feel the need for tail rotor assistance, but then I have pedals. If I was trying to control the tail rotor with an xbox controller, I’d likely turn that on too. 
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On XBOX with helicopters, I find there is a best balance of switching ON tail rotor assistance(doesn’t hinder you from going vertical and doing a pirouette or anything spectacularly loony). I switch the tail rotor +/- to rudder axis left/right for either a twist or pedals. Does not limit anything a helicopter is capable off good or bad.
For each heli I do completely different control profiles, they are all just too different from one to another. Sensitivity/ractivity/etc. Highly tuned to each and you can spend a lot of time tweaking it(if you’re ever done). I also recommend using ZERO dead zones on the controls, even 1% of dead zone can get you chasing the helicopter. So it should be instantaneous, but you will have to find a balance until any given heli feels natural enough that you stare at a spot where you want to be and the helicopter just ‘ends up’ right where you thought it would.
But after many hours of trying different things, using Rudder instead of tail +/- and tail rotor assist(which I’m not sure what it exactly does other than makes them flyable). The Cyclic Assistance doesn’t really help, you actually WANT it very sensitive to make micro adjustments, but how ‘violent’ the movements are is really tuned in the controller’s sensitivity curves, the reactivity settings don’t do very much, mine are all between 70-100%, nothing drastic. Sensitivity can be from -60% up to the full 100% on mine depending on the flight models, on Cyclic the values should always match exactly for both axis. You should be able to have a sense of you ‘know what you are doing’ when lifting off, but should also be able to full disseminate from one type of heli to another for power and flight characteristics(by no means using the same controller profile though!). Hard to explain. Should be able to appreciate the differences, not bull riding some corkscrew death machine that if it were IRL a sneeze would = instant death.
But leaving the tail rotor on increase/decrease makes most of these just ridiculous to control and makes ZERO sense(and I have 30 years of experience with gonzo R/C helis/3d that do what would be capable of scale 30G maneuvers and accelerate to 500mph in 3 seconds-they’re a little temperamental…). It’s not ‘realistic’ to be so out of control, you don’t see real heli pilots hanging on like its a banana bent axle spinning 500 RPM in their hands, it’s fingertips and smooth. But none of this keeps you from going the completely wrong thing and paying the price, the tail rotor assist wont save you from anything.
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I hate the Cyclic Assistance. But always use tail rotor assistance(xbox) and controls set to rudder instead of tail rotor increase/decrease.