Controls too laggy

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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I’m sorry, that’s simply not true and mechanically impossible with the way the Bell 47 is rigged.

Flapback: As you start to accelerate, the helicopter will pitch up, if you don’t take any further action with the cyclic. I don’t see this happening at all.
Are you modelling dissymmetry of lift and phaselag?

As for the control response being spot on, I also strongly disagree. It has nothing to do with how the 47 flies. Seriously.

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Well as someone fairly new to helicopters, I’ve been learning a lot with all these different terms in heli physics, thanks to this thread.

The more i fly this model in the sim the more I get used to it. Funny enough, I thought I was going to have some issues with the honeycomb yoke flying and it turns out it works very good lol. On par with X-Plane helis just as well, IMO.

Edit: My settings in the sim heli manager is on realistic, have not tried experimenting with the settings.

I thought trim was going to be a issue, as stated in other threads and surprisingly it’s not a concern for me using the honeycomb I do have to hold a little forward pressure with speed. Still learning about dissymmetry of lift. I guess when the retreating blade losses lift then RBS can occur. Nice to hear this is going to be fixed. Fascinating learning this stuff. :slight_smile:

I ordered some VKB sticks coming in the mail from last week curious to how they are going to perform. Hopefully they can be reliable and give somewhat close precision to the warthog controller. Would be nice to have a extension to put on the stick. Would love to get the pro flight trainer puma but that’s not going to happen anytime soon lol

I am going to test this in the sim here in a little bit, been trying to research exactly what Flapback is.

I guess this is what they call the balloon effect with helis ? I’ve been curious about this. But haven’ paid to much attention to it yet. I watch one of the videos on youtube that talks about a term called cushion creep takeoff where once you set the collective in this case sealevel to - 1500 feet 21" give or take i can exit IGE transition to ETL and release forward pressure to climb out without touching the collective

Similarly to a plane the more thrust being applied the more the nose wants to come up under power which then would require nose down trim to relieve forward pressure.

Here’s a video talking about what I mentioned above starts at 22:28, to describe what I’m talking about.

Hi, I did -30 like you posted it, my first pattern was much better with this settings. I have a hotas warthog with heli extension. Quite happy with it.

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Glad that helped. I’m finding it actually a very natural bird to fly now, it’s well behaved and predictable. It took a bit of time to get used to but not that much, really enjoying it now. I’m wondering if Mr Implicit there has an issue with his hardware setup, because what he describes really doesn’t match my experience of flying her.

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