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Fair enough. I have been beta tester for Milviz for about a year. The two projects that I tested and which have already been published are the Cessna 310R and the Beaver. Dutch, the developer of the 310R is active on Avsim. He can viciously oppose if I am not stating this correctly 🙂 Beta testers are under an NDA, so I cannot tell you any specifics about what Blackbird has in development right now. Suffice to say that I already got my hands on a few of the projects and that I am optimistic that they will be as well received by the community as the 310R 🙂 Peter

The only airport from FSimStudios that I do not have yet is Edmonton. I think I'm gonna buy it just to show my support for them.

Just wait and see (I am a beta tester for them).

Thanks a lot for this contribution. I thought for the whole time that the Embraer was released by FSimStudios, which I hold in very high regard for their Canadian sceneries 😬

Hello Geoff, what a great post, thanks for taking the time to write it. For the first time, I understand why I struggled so much with helicopters without VR. I am not a total newbie to helicopters in the sim. I have tried them again and again in FSX, P3D and XP-11, but with a few exceptions I never was able to land them. However, now with VR in MSFS, I am doing fairly well with landing. Not always spot on, but it is relatively rare that I crash. I can handle the FlyInside Bell 206 with settings somewhere between medium and realistic even when the frame rates drop into the 20s (By the way, the frame rates get better with each update they release). Without VR, I am doing exactly what you describe: look down, hover, fly backwards and crash 🙂 Since I am having a blast with VR and helicopters, I want to get deeper into it. I published a scenery package with heliports just yesterday, and I have further plans down the road, in particular around emergency helicopter operations. My problem is that I have no idea how helicopters are formally operated. Do they follow VFR procedures or special operations? How is an emergency helicopter deployed? What are the restrictions on landing space? If you have any link regarding all of this, that would be fantastic. Cheers, Peter

I haven't fully analyzed this yet, but with the latest update I got 35 fps in VR with the FI Bell 206. It was at night and in a rural area, but still I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe they are optimizing the bird 🙂

Right you are. I guess that that's an indicator that I am not particularly attached to a specific helicopter 😄

Thanks, the Cowan seems indeed to be better for VR. I got the FlyInside because it appears to have a more realistic flight model. Of course, at 14 fps, that doesn't matter very much anymore. I am not very particular about which helicopter I use. I might just wait for another helicopter to be released and fly the default 407 rather than getting a second 406. Peter

How is the performance of the FlyInside Bell 406 for everyone? I can only fly helicopters using VR, and the 406 is a resource hog on my system. Under identical conditions, I only get 14 fps during start and landing (just when it matters) in the FlyInside model, but 36 fps with the default Bell 407.

It is a bit tricky. I asked on the FSUIPC forum and John gave me the advice to use the FSUIPC logging feature to figure out which variables are changed when a particular control in the VC is moved. That helped me to figure it out, although it may be different for different helicopters. FYI, here are my current settings. Not perfect, but a start. I think the R44 is WIP, but the Bell 406 assignments seem to work well. Peter [Buttons.FlyInside Bell 406 Helicopter] 0=RB,1,C67473,0 -{ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_DEC}- 1=RB,2,C67472,0 -{ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_INC}- 2=RB,3,C66592,0 -{ROTOR_LATERAL_TRIM_INC}- 3=RB,4,C66593,0 -{ROTOR_LATERAL_TRIM_DEC}- [Axes.FlyInside Bell 406 Helicopter] RangeRepeatRate=10 0=AX,256,F,65765,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: AXIS_THROTTLE_SET }- 1=AZ,256,F,67528,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: AXIS_HELICOPTER_THROTTLE_SET }- 2=CX,256,F,67471,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_SET }- [Buttons.Cambri Helicopter] 0=RB,1,C67472,0 -{ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_INC}- 1=RB,2,C67473,0 -{ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_DEC}- 2=RB,4,C66593,0 -{ROTOR_LATERAL_TRIM_DEC}- 3=RB,3,C66592,0 -{ROTOR_LATERAL_TRIM_INC}- [Axes.Cambri Helicopter] RangeRepeatRate=10 0=AX,256,F,65765,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: AXIS_THROTTLE_SET }- 1=AZ,256,F,65767,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: PROP_PITCH_SET }- 2=CX,256,F,67471,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: ROTOR_LONGITUDINAL_TRIM_SET }- [Buttons.Robinson R44 Helicopter] 0=PB,1,C65607,0 -{ELEV_TRIM_DN}- 1=PB,2,C65615,0 -{ELEV_TRIM_UP}- [Axes.Robinson R44 Helicopter] RangeRepeatRate=10 0=AX,256,F,65762,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: AXIS_ELEVATOR_SET }- 1=AZ,256,F,65767,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: PROP_PITCH_SET }- 2=CX,256,F,65766,0,0,0 -{ TO SIM: AXIS_ELEV_TRIM_SET }-

I have asked our son about this. He works at a hospital and has witnessed ER helicopter operations a couple of times. He said that engines are shut off most of the time because, in Nova Scotia, the ER team has to stay with a patient for a while and accompany them into the hospital (the pilot remains with the helicopter). Given that almost all helipads in our province are attached to a hospital, it appears to be common that you depart from a helipad from cold and dark. Peter

Care to share a link about basic helicopter operations? I have occasionally played with helicopters in FSX and P3D, but I found them uncontrollable. Things were a bit better in XP11, but not to the point that I enjoyed it. What really made a big difference for me now is VR, and now I am hooked. I have lots to learn, so any pointers in the right direction would be great. Peter

I am not a helicopter pilot, but it seems counter intuitive to me that the engines are always running when starting on a helipad. In any way, it would be great to have the ability to start cold and dark wherever one commences a flight. Thank you thank you thank you, that did the trick. It now clicks, and I can start the engine 🙂 Peter

I am getting frustrated about this heli. I have never seen idle rel clicking, and never got the engine to start. Also, a cold and dark button would be really helpful. Most of the time, even when I start on a helipad, engines are running.

You should definitely go. The plane is really elegant and the cockpit is breathtaking. I was on the Concorde, and the Tupolev, in the technical museum Sinsheim (Germany). The Concorde is a clear winner 🙂

Hello Umberto, sorry for the public rant yesterday. I know you have put a ton of work into this program. If it works, GSX is great. However, after struggling with it for 4 months, I just got very frustrated yesterday after I couldn't even get GSX to appear in the menu bar anymore. I guess my main problem with GSX in MSFS is the Live Updater. It never worked, I always had to use the offline installer. Yesterday's problem appeared after using that installer to get the latest version. I then tried to uninstall GSX completely to get a vanilla version, but the addon manager didn't do that properly and I had to remove the Virtuali folder manually. After a reinstallation, I suddenly had two GSX folders with dead startup links to Couatl. That's when I wrote my post. Part of my GSX woes is related to being an early adopter (and the associated issues with the installer), and part to me insisting to use it with smaller airplanes like the BN-2 Islander or the King Air, and to custom code GSX for smaller airports. I haven't edited config files for airports and airplanes for the last two months, but before that, the GSX editor often created some bizarre results, like the pilots suddenly being launched vertically into the air. I trust your statement above that these editor issues have been fixed, I am just not in the mood to try it again anytime soon. Give me a few weeks or months and I am sure I will return to using GSX. Peter

Flop here. I bought it right when it was released and struggled with it ever since. Uninstalled it today, pity I loved GSX in P3D and was soo looking forward to the MSFS version.

General Fusion hasn't demonstrated that their spherical arrangement works yet. And fundamentally, both spherical setups face the same problem: Focusing a lot of energy on a small target. Reminds me of how the atomic bomb was developed. They used conventional explosives to compress nuclear matter and also struggled to make that spherical. As is obvious, they figured it out.

This experiment is very different from what scientists have tried before. Since the 1960s, plasma physicists tried to capture a plasma (a gas of charged particles) that is 100 million degrees hot. At the NIF, they instead shoot a nuclei with intense X-ray laser beams. A beautiful concept which I have been following for 15 years. We are not there yet when it comes to fusion reactors, but in my opinion, the laser approach seems to have the potential to get us there within 10-20 years. Peter

I have beta-tested the Beaver with VR and it worked beautifully, but that was of course not with the 40th anniversary edition yet. Maybe something changed there?

All good points, but knowing me, I wouldn't do a walk around if I know everything will be just fine. Some airplanes do have failures like you mention. I think it would be good if FSRealistic had a kind of API for developers, so that they could place visual effects on the fuselage if a problem was triggered. Reminds me of the good old times with A2A in FSX. They actually had a good walk around implemented.

Do I correctly understand that the walk around is strictly a camera effect? No occasional problems are spawned, like a broken light or a blocked pitot tube?

I am not a real pilot, but I had the pleasure flying in a small airplane recently, and the pilot used a moving map. It was a cheaper system, so not at the same level as Navigraph, but it shared many features. I also know that https://foreflight.com/ is used by real world pilots, and that looks pretty similar to Navigraph. Some flight simmers use Foreflight as well, but it is more expensive than Navigraph. Peter

Well, the in-sim plugin is essential for VR, it is the main reason I even bought an ultimate subscription. It is really a bummer for me that VFR maps are not available in it.

Oh. That takes away the urgency for me