Helicopters in MSFS

[dogmanbird 269]

if you get a chance, check out the yaw thing and see if you can notice it

[jimcarrel 688]

If you will think about it, the tail rotor is very small compared to the main rotors, once your at speed it is a bit hard for tail rotor to overcome the the forces of the Main rotor pulling the heli forward..

At top speed, one has to pull nose up and completely drop cyclic in order for tall rotor to obtain control.  It takes practice to do a fast 180 without dropping or gaining a lot of altitude. I will say that what you are implying could be partially true, because ASOBO will not yet allow for true heli physics. Which is one reason we are so pleased with the accomplishment.

[Bobsk8 12,728]

12 minutes ago, jimcarrel said:

If you will think about it, the tail rotor is very small compared to the main rotors, once your at speed it is a bit hard for tail rotor to overcome the the forces of the Main rotor pulling the heli forward..

At top speed, one has to pull nose up and completely drop cyclic in order for tall rotor to obtain control.  It takes practice to do a fast 180 without dropping or gaining a lot of altitude. I will say that what you are implying could be partially true, because ASOBO will not yet allow for true heli physics. Which is one reason we are so pleased with the accomplishment.

The person that made the bulk of the Youtube videos on this Heli, RotorSimPilot,  is a licensed Heli pilot of both piston and turbine powered Helis. He is really impressed by the job they have done on the H 135. 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Bobsk8

[dogmanbird 269]

Do you find the amount of tail rotor influence at higher speeds, in the mod currently, to be fairly realistic? There seems to be a lot at 150knots

it’s not a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely interested in how close it currently is to flying a real heli. 😀

Edited April 26, 2021 by dogmanbird

[Paraffin 2,197]

4 hours ago, jimcarrel said:

If you will think about it, the tail rotor is very small compared to the main rotors, once your at speed it is a bit hard for tail rotor to overcome the the forces of the Main rotor pulling the heli forward..

Not just the main rotor, there is also a very strong windvane effect from the fuselage tail and vertical fin when flying at cruise speed. It should come on gradually without a detent or lock, but you're basically feet off the anti-torque pedals at cruise speed in most helicopters. 

4 hours ago, dogmanbird said:

Do you find the amount of tail rotor influence at higher speeds, in the mod currently, to be fairly realistic? There seems to be a lot at 150knots

it’s not a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely interested in how close it currently is to flying a real heli. 😀

All maneuvers are done with the cyclic and collective at cruise speed until you drop airspeed enough for the anti-torque pedals to have an effect.

It's probably not very realistic, but then you wouldn't normally be pushing the pedals at cruise speed. So I wouldn't count it too much against this model since it's not a full-on helicopter flight model from Asobo yet.

 

[jimcarrel 688]

apologies for typing "cyclic" instead of "collective" in my post above. I got to thinking about that when I left for town. Got back and sure enough I mis-typed. (elderly noggin)

[Bobsk8 12,728]

 

[espent 1,397]

This was a pretty cool video that shows what is possible to do today with different helicopter scenarios:

 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by espent

[HPG 403]

Hopefully NeoFly incorporates some stuff like this, would love it! 

[dogmanbird 269]

That’s interesting. With the RC helis, even with a fuselage shroud, there’s still seems to be a fair amount of tail rotor applied for realistic turns when going full speed, unless they’re big arcs. If scaled up to full size, they’d probably be travelling 500knots

[Matchstick 1,886]

Maybe worth mentioning that FlyInsides' Bell 47 module (shown in one of the videos above) is due for release this Friday (30th)

[Bobsk8 12,728]

On the H 135, has anyone else seen a jumping or popping of the video every few seconds, when cruising. Looks like going over a small , sharp, speed bump. Kind of immersion breaking. Nothing else I fly in MSFS has this issue. 

[Brandon01110 407]

On 4/26/2021 at 10:25 AM, jimcarrel said:

ASOBO will not yet allow for true heli physics

its just a shame my immediate thought goes to how badly asobo might break other aircraft physics when trying to implement helicopters.

[Paraffin 2,197]

12 hours ago, dogmanbird said:

That’s interesting. With the RC helis, even with a fuselage shroud, there’s still seems to be a fair amount of tail rotor applied for realistic turns when going full speed, unless they’re big arcs. If scaled up to full size, they’d probably be travelling 500knots

What's the actual airspeed of your RC helicopter? I know there are some that have set speed records in the neighborhood of real helicopter cruise speed, but if you're not flying the RC helicopter at those speeds then you won't get the same windvane effect. It's the true airrpseed on the model that matters.

There are probably other things at work too, like far greater mass and inertia in the real thing, compared to much more lightweight RC helicopters.

 

1 hour ago, Brandon01110 said:

its just a shame my immediate thought goes to how badly asobo might break other aircraft physics when trying to implement helicopters.

If they know what they're doing, they'll incorporate a set of completely different flight characteristics alongside and separate from the fixed wing flight model, rather than just tack extra features onto the fixed wing model. That's what X-Plane does, and I assume DCS also. Changes and improvements in the helicopter flight model can't break any of the fixed wing flying when it's done that way. 

In those sims, the software "knows" you're flying a helicopter with different response to ground effect transitions, different wing/blade stall effects, and unique hazards like vortex ring state, or "mast bump" in certain models.

It's clearly possible to hack the existing fixed wing flight model to partially simulate a helicopter. We're seeing 3rd parties do this right now, since Asobo dropped the ball on developing helicopters for the sim's initial release.  However, even if they manage to do a great job, you've got different developers figuring out their own solutions to the problem. That limits the number of great helicopters we'll have to fly eventually in MSFS.

The right way to do it in my opinion, is to have these helicopter features built into the default flight modeling in the sim, so every 3rd party developer doesn't have to re-invent the wheel. I hope that's Asobo's plan. We'll get a wide selection of better helicopter models that way.

 

 

[Bobsk8 12,728]

2 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

On the H 135, has anyone else seen a jumping or popping of the video every few seconds, when cruising. Looks like going over a small , sharp, speed bump. Kind of immersion breaking. Nothing else I fly in MSFS has this issue. 

Got an answer from one of the programmers for the H 135. He said to disable camera shake in MSFS , turn of Multiplayer ( I never use it so it may be off now), and this might be caused by turbulence in MSFS,