You are right, something strange is going on…the overwhelming majority of our users don’t see or get this problem. I am wondering if its something you guys have hardware/software in common?
I’ll pass it back to Dan to have a look.
Tony
Thanks Tony - That’s all I can ask for. There’s only so much I can discover by myself, so having your team help investigate the root cause would be awesome. I’m certainly willing to try whatever suggestions you guys might have.
Like the video shows, it’s not bad in 2D. I can fly the 47 in 2D without too much difficulty. It still feels sluggish to respond and so I have to stay that much more ahead of it than I’m accustomed to, but at least it’s doable.
Once I switch to VR the input lag compounds the problem and I can barely manage a hover without oscillating all over the place. The time between physically deflecting my joystick to the time I see it reflected in-game is just too long. It’s like playing a fighting game with 250ms delay.
The only other helicopter in MSFS unfortunately is the H135 mod. I don’t notice any significant input lag there (it’s just as flyable in VR as it is in 2D), but the simplified flight model largely negates the usefulness of the comparison I think.
Anyway, let me know if I can help investigate this issue further. The 47 is the perfect VR sight-seeing aircraft otherwise.
Bell 47 cyclic response - YouTube
Realistic setting
Guys I am going to open up a discord later today hopefully, this will enable us to chat directly and see if we can get to the root issue of these problems…interested?
Tony
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I agree 100% with everything you said. The takeoff is the worse experience if you take off with the stick not neutral (wherever neutral is) . If the heli starts to drift quickly in any direction, stopping the drift is impossible without swinging right to left or back to front or both as you need to make very large inputs to regain control because it just does not respond quickly enough. I have watched many real life Bell 47s on YouTube and none of them ever do that. I have Maxflightstick heli controls and they work perfectly on the Aerofy R22.
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After 3 weeks, I´m totally giving up on flying the “realistic” mode. I have some 220 hours in real life R-22s, plus some few in R-44s, Rangers and AS350s, and NEVER, even under 25+ knots gusty winds I experienced a sudden, violent roll to the side, almost impossible to counteract even with full cyclic to the oposite side, ending with a loooong PIO, when not with a crash. All of this in a straight and level flight, with good weather. And it kept happening again and again. I read here that you guys swear that this is the behavior of real 47s, so I must take your word on that, but it looks like nothing I ever experienced. Matter of fact, I was able to fly straight and level in the 22 in my very first flight, with almost no cyclic corrections, and the 22 is known as a very unstable machine. With time, I even used to fly with the wrist resting on my tight (obviously, hover was much more difficult). I found the “medium” mode much closer of my rw experience. Don’t take me wrong, I just LOVE your 47. I don’t want to fly any other aircraft anymore, and I’m very thankfull to you, guys. I’m just reluctant to believe that it´s impossible to fly straight without having to fight the controls every second.
Maybe Google “Retreating Blade Stall”, as that sounds like you have simply flown too fast and the retreating side of the rotor has ceased to generate sufficient lift and caused a severe roll to the left.
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Thank you Hawk, but I don’t need to Google it, I had to learn it to get my PP licence, RBS and other helicopter aerodynamic traps. I assure you I was not too fast, I was flying around 70-80 kts. Fast, but well inside the safe envelope, and it didn’t happen only once, it happens randomly. It also happens when hovering, the rool gets too hard too fast. Also, I find very difficult to keep a stable nose attitude when flying faster. It always induces an up/down pendulum, very different than the helicopters I’ve flown. Maybe I’m too rusty, or maybe my joystick is not that good, but I’m having a really a hard time. Well, I suppose that to change the settings to medium is not a big deal, except for my pride 
Well, I can fly the real thing, but I’m having a hard time with this one too. I refuse to dial down the ‘realism’. It’s advertised as a realistic sim, but it simply isn’t. The devs seem happy with the behaviour and while I can understand they want to believe their pilot dev, I think there’s a serious disconnect between what he wants/expects and what’s actually realistic.
I partly suspect that his BH47 was seemingly without hydraulics, which has been interpolated into what we got here, but hydraulics does not change the behaviour of the helicopter. It changes the stick forces, which are (mostly) irrelevant. Sure it feels like you have to put in a large amount of cyclic to counter, but that’s only because the forces are heavier when the disk isn’t level…and for the same reason it feels slower to react, but again, once you get on top of the stick and move it with the same precision/speed as with hydraulics, guess what…it behaves exactly the same.
Now, this still leaves us with the rather bizarre power requirements, the weird pick-up behaviour and a bunch of other stuff.
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Ah sorry Alceu. I meant no offence.
I’ll see if i can get someone else in the team to reproduce what you are experiencing, as I have the sliders set to full realism and have only experienced the behaviour you’ve described when I’ve deliberately pushed the speed too high. Well maybe the odd occasion when I’ve lost concentration and it’s got too high on its own. 
Just out of interest, are you using the realism presets or the sliders in Heli Manager? A screenie or exact description of those settings, which cause your issue, might help us to reproduce it.
Cheers
Paul
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No offence taken, thank you so much for the posive and helpful attitude. I was using the realism presets. I can fly very well with the “Medium” preset, even lowering the stability a little, but whenever I try the “realistic” preset, I always end up with a very tense and unstable flight. When flying in real world, I could perform some precision manouvers, like fast stops (straight and sideways), lateral variable heading “squares”, even with 10 kts winds, straight, 180 and 360 autos, all ending with the copter in control, but in the sim almost every curve ends up in a pendulum, very difficult to control. I’m using a regular Trusthmaster Hotas X joystick without the spring, but that has a small “deadzone”, without any physical extension, so maybe that’s an issue to make things harder. Anyway, regardles of the setup, every flight with the 47 makes me happy at the end. I’s always uplifting, no pun intended 
i’ve had a 20cm extension on my warthog stick since shortly after starting with the b47g, as it was way too hard to fly it without.
i’ll try taking that out and see how i get on without it.
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Sorry for the delay Alceu (@alceubap), but I’ve been out of the sim for a while, due to a mixture of other commitments and the hot weather we’ve been having in the UK, up until recently. A VR headset isn’t too comfortable when you don’t have aircon and the ambient temperature is so high.
Anyway, I’d remembered that i actually have a HOTAS X lying around, from my days in Elite Dangerous, so gave that a try. I have to say, that i found it far more difficult to control the Bell with that, when compared to the extended Warthog. It’s flyable, but it demands an awful lot more effort.
I fly with the settings all the way over to realistic on Heli Manager and would find it very hard to fly any sort of distance with the Bell and the HOTAS X. Unless i needed a workout that is. 
I have yet to fiddle with the sensitivity settings and there might be some improvements to be had in those, by softening the response as it were.
Cheers
Paul
I’m curious, was this ever shown to him? Are you really at all concerned about this or happy to leave the flightmodel as it is?.
Multiple RL pilots have complained about these issues, yet I see no attempts to address or investigate it.
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Hi, Paul! Thank you so much for taking the trouble to test it. It shows that I was not being so whiny after all hahaha. Well, meanwhile I found out that the built-in dead zone of the HOTAS X is really making my life difficult, as any subtle correction against a perceived move tendency will not work at all until too late and too much. Anyway, I’m confortable in flying with a slightly “less realistic” setup, what feels closer to my rw experience. It has been a delight. I´m also quite happy with the new update, made everything smoother, although I lost my co-pilot again 
Cheers!
The small pre programmed dead zones in most of the commercial joysticks and rudder pedals are a disappointment. I’ve bought a few things hoping to mod them for heli flying, only to discover they all have dead zones in their firmware. (TM Airbus / t16000m / warthog / saitek logitech pro rudder pedals)
I ended up putting an arduino pro micro in just about everything to get rid of it.
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Well, it’s good to know about it. I was thinking about buying a better stick, but if all of them have this issue, I’ll look for other solutions. Maybe to build everything from scratch, using arduino. I know nothing about it, but one always can learn.
here’s a good starting point! https://www.instructables.com/Arduino-LeonardoMicro-as-Game-ControllerJoystick/
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@smitty excellent start, thank you!
Well, I took a few months off from this issue, and came back on to see if it’s been fixed yet, and it hasnt. Reading the threads I’m wondering if the users that are having issues are using arduino with a custom joystick like myself?
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