Controls too laggy

So, for reference, I got my CPL last year at Chinook helicopters in BC, which operates 6 Bell 47G2s and has a rep as one of the main Bell47 operators remaining. (Including full maintenance, etc)
I also have a full cyclic/collective/anti-torque system + VR set up at home, so it’s not like I’m fighting with a regular joystick. At home I fly both DCS, Xplane and AFS2 and have no issues flying any of the helis there. Some parts are easier, some are harder.

I can now fly the FlyInside Bell47, but if the ones I trained on where like this, I’m pretty sure I would still be trying to solo…or most likely quit as I like living too much.
The controls simply aren’t that sensitive and the response that slow. It’s an easy helicopter to fly. Sure, it takes work to fly it well, but it’s simply not that hard. Many solo below 20 hours, whereas the R44 students would be pushing 30+.

I have the controls set up as suggested, I have reduced quality, just in case it was a FPS issue as some suggested on Discord and sure, with a lot of effort, I can pick it up, hold it in a hover, etc…but it’s way harder than it should be.
This is the main issue. Cyclic is too sensitive and the response too laggy.
There’s a bunch of other stuff, that just seems off.

  • Pedals : Not a lot of work needed. Granted, I can’t do any drastic accelerations, as the laggy controls will throw me into PIO straight away.
    Similar power changes have little effect (manual throttle)
  • Throttle/RPM: RPM response seems super laggy as well. Sure. hot and heavy it can be sluggish, but not this much. I flew 4 of the 6 '47’s we had and while they were all different in their throttle response, none of them were remotely as bad as this.
  • Hover attitude: US helicopters hang left skid low, due to compensating for translating tendency. This is further exaggerated in the '47, as the pilot sits in the left seat. It also, with only 1 person on board, sits tail low.
    Normally you land left heel, whole left skid and then the right skid.
    This one seems to sit flat laterally and if anything slightly nose low.
  • No flapback? This doesn’t appear to be modelled at all. I’ll start accelerating gently and without any input, it will just continue to do so.

There’s a bunch of other issues that caught my eye, but I would need to spend more time to check, but frankly, the control issue keeps getting in the way.
I really wanted this to be good. I bough MSFS this week just for this, but this simply isn’t even close. Sounds about right, looks about right, flies nothing like it.

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Thanks for your reply :slight_smile: we have taken great pains in what we were hoping was a faithful representation of the Bell 47. I cannot answer too much on what you have said above but I will point this post to our flight model Dev who has 2500hrs on the real 47 and hopefully can answer your points.

Tony

I would suggest to take Implicit in your development team!

Hi @mdamstel and welcome aboard.

I am sure that the conversation between @Implicit and the flight model lead will be very useful.

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I’ve got a helicopter specific control setup, homemade mongrel style, and I found that setting -30% sensitivity in the control profile in the sim made a big difference for me. In other sims I’d normally run it without a joystick curve. Might be worth a try to tweak your hardware

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I think one big issue here is we all have different setups. With a super advanced setup these things will be more obvious. I have just gotten pedals and I fly with an X55, full realistic settings as the heli software recommends. And I find it to be very sensitive… but the rudder response seem a bit low and weak, and hard to get it to do stuff. Also have to keep in mind, MSFS2020 changes all the time, the SDK is still very much a work in progress as is most of the systems, I dont know how much that affects this heli but it feels like people just expect everything to be perfect when the sim still is 1 - 2 years away from even get close. I love it, the sim for the most part has been great for me, and this heli is the best experience I have had yet, so rewarding once I figured it out.

People with VR and super fancy setups need to perhaps go back to a regular setup for a moment, I’m not sure how my X55 would be if it got even more responsive, there is some play in these sticks, and nothing you can really do, its the design, they do response instantly but the wiggle in the stick make it tricky sometimes… and this is still one of the best sticks on the market, its a 200$ stick after all, and most people wont even have that.

I have no real life heli experience at all. I just used to fly in heli’s in FS98 - FSX, thats about as far as my experience goes…

One thing, does the heli’s you fly have the balancing things, weights or what ever in the rotor system or not? that will apparently make a huge difference, maybe this heli they modelled this off has a bit of a different setup? I dunno…

I’m sure these guys will listen and evaluate this based on our feedback, so far I’m blown away, I’m screaming like a little child when I manage to fly and land this thing! :smiley:

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In my experience so far, the helicopter has been performing very well with my setup. When I first tested the helicopter for a brief time i was all over the place. Not completely out of control just a little wobbly on hover and taxi, until i settled down and realized back to one or two fingers on the controls and take a deep breath.

I have now gotten to the spot where I can fly this helicopter anywhere I want put it down where I want and I feel very much in tune with it, almost no effort. I fly with one or two fingers in cruise and make subconscious adjustments as needed. The less you react the better response in the controls, in my experience. Even outside of VR handles great. Just finished a little flight traveling SoCal and I’m just in awe with the scenery and this helicopter and it’s a awesome experience to say the least.

I have noticed some control lag myself, especially in VR due to little latency. I have already gotten used to this and it’s honestly not a problem now.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately lol, I’m using the honeycomb yoke ( all I have for now ) and been working great. Not traditional perhaps, but it gets the job done with no dead zone with my custom calibration.

Using different hardware will always very the experience for sure. Also lets not forget flight sims in general are always going to be more twitchy then the real aircraft. FS95, 98, FSX, P3D, Xplane etc… always very sensitive. Seems to be getting better as technology gets better. In Real life much more intuitive and ‘easier’ to handle vs the sim for sure. That’s being said as a fixed wing pilot. I’m fairly brand new to rotor-craft and I’m hooked. I have so much to still learn.

Interesting observations above from @Implicit. I have a feeling this will be valuable to the dev team and curious to the response from the dev with 2500 hrs has to say. I don’t say that sarcastically, but with hopes, that this awesome helicopter can be refined to the best of its abilities in msfs. I have faith the flight model can be tweaked to get very authentic, which is a nice touch of pace for msfs.

I have also noticed that FlyInside team have been very respectful and open to ideas and suggestions. This is a very good thing and refreshing to see. It shows they care about their customers and their product. I have seen this for myself. Reminds me of A2A, which I’m very fond of. We need more devs like this. Not just about making money which is important of course, but also have passion in aviation, simming and setting the bar high in competition, to separate the junk products and stand out in the crowd.

I believe and know this is the better business model in the long run, rather then put out a mediocre product rinse and repeat, numbers game.

A little long winded here I haven’t slept all night flying this helicopter lol

-Robert

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Thanks Robert, I know Lewis very well, met up for a chat once, he’s a great bloke :slight_smile:

Tony

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I have the same problem to control the Bell 47 in the Sim. I’am a real helicopter pilot with 4000 flight hours, including 3000 hours on the Bell UH 1d which has nearly the same rotorhead System.

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So for reference…
I spent a long time yesterday fiddling with the balance of the flight model settings in the heli manager because I felt the same way. Lowered VR graphic settings because I was experiencing low FPS. First time back to MSFS since update 3.

I have a proflight trainer lynx upgraded to a puma with the toe brake mod. My rig is fairly decent. It runs a Rift S well. I’ve been simming since FS98, IL2, on to DCS and XP11.

While I agree the XP11 payware AC were easier for me to hop into, this has potential.

I landed on 98% sensitivity and 15% cyclic stability and 0% yaw.

The out of the box settings seemed off for my setup. The body of the helicopter was twitchy but the disk was sluggish to respond. I was rocking nasty PIO with every maneuver.

Now I feel I’m starting to get used to all of the systems lag and aiming to be a bit further ahead of this bird than I would be a Robbie. And at hour 4 in transition it’s starting to feel better.
Where I’m still struggling:

  • Pedals needed to coordinate banking turn more like a fixed wing. Hard to explain, but the pedal movements feel more like “I’m banking left, add pedal to trim out the ball” than my experience. In robbies the pedal adjustments are associated with the other control movements, more emphasis on the collective and power settings than cyclic and you fly the disk through the turn.

  • Too much sink IGE slow speed maneuvering. Adjusting the collective slightly is normal, but it feels like I have to add quite a bit to keep the skids from contacting the tarmac.

  • Collective response is too slow. I agree the engine should lag a bit, but the collective should respond. Engine lag IRL isn’t that big of a deal. In governor off training in the 44 at least. The rotor rpm actually increases a bit when you first raise the collective due to coning and centrifugal force.

  • Light on the skids window too small. Or the gear extension isn’t enough. There should be a noticeable lift of the heli body where the weight comes off the gear before the ground contact friction is completely broken. It’s hard to find center before it’s airborne and PIO chasing begins.

I haven’t flown in about a year, but I have ~100hrs in R22s, R44s & R66s. PPL working towards CFII.

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I noticed this too. I’d gently add 1/4", wait, add 1/4", etc. At 19.5", it would then get light and then slowly keep climbing up into a 3’ hover.

The more I think about it, the more the lack of flapback concerns me. It suggest that there’s no dissymmetry of lift modeled. (Which also seems to correspond with the post saying that it rolls the wrong way at RBS and doesn’t pitch-up).

@Implicit or anyone who can confirm this with real time in a Bell47, would like your opinion on the flight model (tail rotor behavior), I made a mention to this on another topic here on the forums 2nd post. Errors, remarks, tasks to be corrected

I was curious about the tail rotor being “offloaded” when at cruise. Shouldn’t we be inputting some right pedal to keep coordinated?

I notice I have to hold left pedal most of the time throughout the whole flight in cruise, unless lowering the collective of course.

Here’s a youtube video of Joseph that flies the B47G at 18:20 he explains this.

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In most cases ‘right’ pedal is really just less left pedal. Remember it’s countering the torque from the engine and the tail rotor needs to do less in forward flight due to the keel effect from the small stabilizer and tail rotor itself.
The only times I can recall actively putting in right pedal is on engine failures (from hover or autos) and in cross/tail wind approaches where you’re fighting the tail a lot.

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Thanks for the response on this. I’m new to the world of helicopters and enjoy learning what I can, in the sim and out. Maybe one day I can get some real stick time transitioning from fixed wing aircraft.

I do enjoy the B47G in the sim, and hope these issues mentioned above in this thread can be refined as time goes on. I really feel this helicopter is worth the effort, keeping in mind the limitations of msfs etc.

-Robert

I have done ALOT of flying today, and I find that in cruise once I get it pointed I can just leave it, unless there is winds disturbing my peace. Atleast when I’m doing 80 - 90 mph…

I need to work more on my landings now, and maybe some hover training as well.
I can hover already a bit but its so easy to get in to trubble, its scary.

I like to do some more advanced manouvers, where I really have to use both pedals to see what it will let me do, and as mentioned before, for hard left you need to adust cyclic accordingly, there’s only so much power to be had either way. :smiley: Bed time for me! o/

When I’m flying I miss the little nylon string for coordinated flight that you see in X-Plane helis. So I’m obsessed with keeping the ball coordinated in flight, in cruise. I’ve noticed if i take my feet off the pedals the ball holds left. I expect this one way or the other, just wanted to be sure this was modeled accurately and wasn’t sure if right pedal was needed in this helicopter. (for cruise)

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I’ll throw in here too that helicopter anti-torque pedals don’t have a spring loaded center.
Neither do any of the other controls.

Once your in the aircraft, picked up to hover, the left pedal you have input becomes your center.
Your muscle memory holds your feet in this position. If you look down though, you’ll notice your left foot (or power pedal) is slightly more forward. This just becomes your cruise position.

Try the skateboard turn - flying straight, then pull back on the stick, nose up until it starts to stall, then spin it with the pedals so you are pointing back to earth, then let it drop and pick up speed and lift. Not sure how realistic and legitimate this is, but it’s a lot of fun and I’m sure I’ve seen Tom Cruise do it :laughing:

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So I went over all of this with Rick in detail. I appreciate the in-depth feedback.

Cyclic - We really think the cyclic response is correct. It may come down to controls setup, but he’s got 2500+ hours in this type, and says the lag-response is spot on. In terms of the cyclic being too sensitive, have you tried turning it down a bit? That can definitely come down to different joysticks/etc.

Pedals - As Implicit stated it’s not really right pedal in a cruise, just less left pedal, which is implemented. If you look at how tiny the vertical stabilizer is, it makes sense too.

Throttle - Still need to test this more

Hover Attitude - We’re finding ourselves slightly left-skid low in a hover (to counter the translating tendency), if we have flat we start drifting to the right. Rick says the 47 is one of the few helis you’ll actually land flat though for touch-down.

Flapback - Should be there - The faster you’re going, the more forward pressure you need to hold.

RBS - We did find a huge bug here, backwards sign in the code. To be fixed in an update today.

FPS - It may be worth double checking FPS? Down at 20fps and lower the flight-model can feel quite odd.

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And cant really model after those with a long extention for their sticks as 99% of us wont have that. Dont think that would be doable on my X55 Rhino for example, not without heavily modifying it.

Been watching some videos of this thing too, some of them linked here and to me it looks pretty spot on with the inputs I do in the sim.

I know some operators remove the counter weights to get more feel and sensitivity, apparently it also removes some 200 parts from the system.

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