Helicopters, what do you think?

[cj-ibbotson 77]

5 hours ago, rka said:

To realistically fly helis, you need the separate axis. I use a separate axis on my throttle for that.  I nonetheless fail miserably in the Gimbal as well. Can't seem to make sense out of it. In the Bell it doesn't even seem to work (throttle ring doesn't move, in the Gimbal it does).

I have always been very bad with helis so the issue may well be stupidity on my side though.

 

I am struggling myself.  Started afresh this morning and tried to set up brand new control configs on my Honeycomb gear.  I have the Alpha and Bravo.  Also have the Thrustmaster side stick which use for aircraft like this.  I watched a video by Overkill Simulations who assigned various heli controls to his axis etc.  I did the same and set different axis on the bravo for the collective and throttle.  In the gimbal I see the throttle twist grip move smoothly when engines are off but when engines on it jumps around like the axis has calibration problems.  Looking at Windows Controllers status shows axis is fine and not spiking.  In the air Im having problems keeping it stable.  Sometimes it just starts to spin madly.

In the Bell with the same control setup the throttle doesnt rotate.  Collective works fine.  No idea what I am doing wrong.  I tried a different axis on the controller for the helicopter throttle but it made no difference.

Chris

[crimplene 634]

After some fiddling I found out that I need a joystick profile that is completely different to flying planes. All axes absolutely linear, no center deadzone but some extremity deadzone. Now I can sort of fly the helis.

[AGuther 187]

I have also heavy issues. Right after leaving ground it starts wobbling. If I see videos on YouTube it seems to be different than me. I mean even with Piloting on Easy this happens. No way to fly this thing and guess is that something is wrong with it.

It’s overall hard to discuss and find a solutions because everyone just tells me I need to practice. I know that helicopters are not easy, but mine is even not by far stable in the air and I don’t think this is correct also in comparison what I see in other videos. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by AGuther

[roland_lfor 245]

3 hours ago, Stoopy said:

If you start from a regular parking spot I believe that will do it - at least that's how it worked for me with the 407 at an airport I am currently working on.  If you are starting at a Helipad, they seem to be tagged as "Start" positions in the SDK much like the runway start positions that have everything powered up and running when you begin.  

Thanks, that's not what I had during my first 407 try on an heli parking position. I'll try another place.

[crimplene 634]

16 minutes ago, AGuther said:

I have also heavy issues. Right after leaving ground it starts wobbling. If I see videos on YouTube it seems to be different than me. I mean even with Piloting on Easy this happens. No way to fly this thing and guess is that something is wrong with it.

It’s overall hard to discuss and find a solutions because everyone just tells me I need to practice. I know that helicopters are not easy, but mine is even not by far stable in the air and I don’t think this is correct also in comparison what I see in other videos. 

Actually, at first I thought that the Helis are so super unstable that there had to be something wrong: oscillating in all directions like crazy and crashing after a few seconds. But after adjusting the input sensitivity and learning not to over-correct, I now can takeoff and fly. Well, the direction of the flight is still not entirely under my control and landing I can't, but still... 🙂

[Pepsimachine 10]

Flightsim.to has a Missoula airport addon that has a helicopter training pad. 

[NZ255 309]

I prefer the G2 to the 407, seems more refined but that’s anecdotal.

In both the ground to hover part needs work, maybe that’ll come from the ground interaction update that’s been talked about. It’s tricky to get a seamless ground -> air transition. But maybe that’s because of my pedals (not anti-torque style). 
 

Overall, I like it! Will be interesting to see if Hype use this new helicopter model, or stick with their own. It might be easy for them to find something the Asobo model doesn’t do quite as well as as their custom flight model and dismiss the whole thing. 

[AGuther 187]

5 hours ago, crimplene said:

Actually, at first I thought that the Helis are so super unstable that there had to be something wrong: oscillating in all directions like crazy and crashing after a few seconds. But after adjusting the input sensitivity and learning not to over-correct, I now can takeoff and fly. Well, the direction of the flight is still not entirely under my control and landing I can't, but still... 🙂

It seems there is a way to fix my issue:

Quote

Make sure you are at the main menu and not in a flight.
Go to Options, General Options, Flight Model.
Change to Legacy. Hit Apply and Save.
Load a flight with the helicopter.
It should work fine. End the flight all the way, and go back to Main Menu.
Go back to Options, General Options, Flight Model.
Change back to Modern.
Start a new flight.
Should work!
Thanks for figuring this out! It was super frustrating.

See also this video:

 

[lwt1971 7,419]

1 hour ago, NZ255 said:

I prefer the G2 to the 407, seems more refined but that’s anecdotal.

Ya the G2 developed by Asobo + Guimbal appears to be the "reference implementation", fully utilizing all the core heli aerodynamics/physics features in the flight model. The lead from helisimmer.com had some good thoughts on it (see earlier post on this thread: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/626513-helicopters-what-do-you-think/?do=findComment&comment=4874061), they'll be doing a more full review soon.

Not sure if Nemeth Designs did as much on the Bell 407 as Asobo did on their G2 (probably not given that they wouldn't know as much as Asobo about how best to use the core support for helis). But will be interesting to see what other seasoned helicopter sim developers come up with now that they have all the core platform heli features to work with.
 

Edited November 12, 2022 by lwt1971

[spilok 1,136]

What's the best way to "trim" the helicopter as in a plane?  Both new helicopters are fighting me and want to keep vertically rising hard against the throttle.  On my joystick I trimmed planes easily with 2 separate buttons for up elevator and down elevator.  I'd like to be able to level off and fly without the throttle fight.

Stan

[NZ255 309]

29 minutes ago, spilok said:

What's the best way to "trim" the helicopter as in a plane?  Both new helicopters are fighting me and want to keep vertically rising hard against the throttle.  On my joystick I trimmed planes easily with 2 separate buttons for up elevator and down elevator.  I'd like to be able to level off and fly without the throttle fight.

Stan

Look for rotor trim lateral and longitudinal increase and decrease. If you have a 4 way hat switch that’ll give the best results. But that might be how you look around too. Of course VR helps with that 🙂

Edited November 13, 2022 by NZ255
Rotor

[ryanbatc 12,859]

42 minutes ago, NZ255 said:

Look for rotor trim lateral and longitudinal increase and decrease. If you have a 4 way hat switch that’ll give the best results. But that might be how you look around too. Of course VR helps with that 🙂

I tried lateral - oh nevermind LOL as I write this I realized I set only lateral and of course it banked me right and left.  Yeah I'll try binding these to my hat switch.

[Alvega 2,124]

1 hour ago, NZ255 said:

Look for rotor trim lateral and longitudinal increase and decrease. If you have a 4 way hat switch that’ll give the best results. But that might be how you look around too. Of course VR helps with that 🙂

As I didn't have a free 4-way hat switch on my joystick I set the trims on the D-Pad of the Xbox controller that I use for the drone views. It worked perfectly. 

[bvdboomen 259]

I just did a training in the G2 for an hour. I just couldn't get the thing correctly on a helipad at Bolzano. Turns out that I was landing in a crosswind. Now that's hard. The last landings were with a 10kn headwind. Getting the G2 on the ground on a spot I want is much easier then. When I was confident enough I took the G2 to the Burj al Arab helipad and managed to take-off and land by watching the wind direction.

[peloto 213]

The 407 without any help in options at least, with the helps on I think this does not happen or less, when you go max with the collective and the pedal for one of the sides, the torque gets like blocked and the 407 begin to spin for the right and it get unresponsive till you low the collective and you centre the pedals, in different proportion as your needs, and pray that you have enough altitude, then in the take-off, that could be the problem others have, the solution is being gentler when turning with the collective, and flying straight you can up the collective full.

And yes the 407 only struggle for reach 110knots, so with the flight model there is something to work still, and the other problem I think isn´t normal in the real 407 either.