FS TUTORIAL
SO,
YOU HAVE DECIDED TO BECOME A SIMULATOR HELICOPTER PILOT?
There
is nothing more frustrating for a pilot who wants to fly helicopters but does
not know how to configure and set-up the simulator and helicopter for optimal
performance and where to find all the required information to do so.
THELZ
recognized this shortcoming and has put together these WebPages to help you in
your quest to master the art of helicopter flying with Microsoft’s Flight
Simulator.
While this information was written specifically for FS2004, it applies equally
well to FS2002.
There is no magic bullet or potion that will allow you to master the helicopter
as easily as you mastered fixed wing aircraft. It is difficult to fly well (some
will say impossible).
I am going to show you all you need to achieve the best chances of success, and
if you follow the advice in here, and most importantly PRACTICE PRACTICE
PRACTICE, I can assure you that
you will, eventually, be able to fly a helicopter in flightsim.
And when the day finally comes that you are able to hover and land a helicopter
in the exact place that you intended, the feeling of satisfaction will equal the
size of the grin on your face.
What
we will cover:
Optimizing Performance in MSFS2004
At
first glance MSFS 2004 might not seem that different from 2002. However, after
you spend a little time with the program you'll realize that there have been
lots of improvements and there's a lot more going on "under the hood."
The down side of all that is the fact that it takes a little more effort on
mid-level systems to get the sim running smoothly. A lot of the basic options
and methods that worked in MSFS 2002 will work with the new version but there
are also some important differences. In the following pages we will go through
all the major options in the sim and show you how to find your own personal
“sweet spot” so that you can have a smooth and enjoyable flight simulation
experience.
Hardware Requirements
Microsoft’s required hardware
to run the sim is a 450 Mhz Pentium system with 128 MB of system RAM and an 8 MB
accelerated 3D video card. The truth is, you probably could get the program to
load on such a system but it would be far from usable. If you really want to run
this sim with reasonable performance you’ll need, at a minimum, a 1 Ghz system
with 256 MB of system RAM and a relatively recent 64 MB video card. If you have
to choose between a faster CPU or a faster video card, optimize for the CPU.
MSFS 2004 needs all the number crunching power it can get. Also, if you really
want to be good to yourself, double the RAM to 512 MB. You won't be sorry you
did.
If
your system is not up to these requirements then you probably won’t be very
happy with the program. The faster your hardware is the harder you'll be able to
push the simulation towards the maximum it can provide. Fast hardware also gives
you some breathing room for power hungry 3rd party add-ons like highly detailed
airports, aircraft and high-resolution scenery. At this point in time there's no
such thing as too much power as far as this program is concerned.
Step-1: Installation
The first thing you’ll need to
do is make sure that you have plenty of disk space. You’ll need 1.8 GB of free
space for the basic installation however, if you plan on adding 3rd
party aircraft, scenery and utilities you’ll need a lot more. Most users end
up expanding from between 2 to 5 gigabytes so it's a good idea to allow for this
from the beginning.
If
you possibly can, repartition your hard drive so that you have a single
partition that's used for nothing other then MSFS, planes, scenery ect. 20 MB
will give you plenty of room for add-on aircraft and mesh scenery. Take a look
at the size of your present MSFS2002 installation and use that as a guide. The
reason for doing this is to reduce stuttering. In areas of dense auto-gen the
program goes to the HD a lot and that can cause stuttering if the load gets too
high. Giving MSFS it's own partition will allow you to easily keep it perfectly
defragged and that will go a long way towards getting and maintaining smooth
performance.
Setup, Field of View and Resolution
Once the software is up and
running it's time to start tweaking for best performance. To get started, take
the default setup with the 172 at KSEA as your starting point. This is one of
the toughest areas for frame rates so if you tune for smooth performance there,
you’ll have it just about everywhere else.
Make sure your field of view at
all angles is set to 1.0X and then go to Options-Settings-Display and click on
the hardware tab. Make sure that your video card is properly recognized under
Device Name. To the left you'll see a list of all the resolution and color depth
combinations that are available for your video card. The best choice here will
vary somewhat depending on the size of your monitor and the power of your
hardware. Most users will find 1024x768x32 to be a good compromise. Go higher if
you have a high end video card, fast CPU and large monitor (17+). While you're
still in the Hardware section, note the check boxes on the right. In most cases
"Render to Texture" and "Transform and Lighting" should both
be checked. Do make sure that anti- aliasing is not checked. That is only a
reasonable option if you're running a very high end video card. In any case,
leave it off for now. "Hardware Rendered Lights" should be set to 6.
Set "Mip Mapping Quality to 5 and "Global Max Texture Size" to
Medium. Set the frame rate slider to maximum.
A Little Bug Fixing
Before you go any
further into actual testing you'll need to work around a bug in the Auto-Gen
system. In addition to the regular Auto-Gen that we had in MSFS 2002, Microsoft
added two more auto-gen types. This makes for great looking cityscapes but
unfortunately there's a problem with the system not clearing objects out of
memory once they are no long visible. This will cause a degradation in
performance as you fly the pattern in urban areas. Until MS comes up with a
patch the best way to minimize the impact of this is to turn off the XML based
Auto-Gen objects. This won't effect the appearance of the automatic landscape
very much but will help performance considerably. To disable simply go into your
MSFS Autogen folder and rename the default.xml file to default.xml.bak
Finding the Sweet
Spot
The
next step is finding the “sweet spot” which is simply the base setting that
delivers smooth performance with your hardware. The first step in defining this
is to move over to the "Aircraft" tab and set virtual cockpit gauge
quality to "low". Make sure all the check box options are on.
Now we move on to the meat of the matter, the scenery settings tab. This is where most of the action is for balancing visual detail with smooth performance and good frame rates. Here's a rundown of the starting settings:
Special effects detail - medium
Terrain mesh complexity - 60
Terrain texture size - high
Terrian detail - land only
Water effects - none
Scenery complexity - normal
Autogen density - normal
Add-on dynamic scenery box - unchecked
Ground scenery shadows box - checked
Sun glare box - checked
Lens flair box –
unchecked
Now move to the Weather settings display tab.
Set global weather quality to "medium low."
Sight distance - 60 miles
Cloud draw distance - 40 miles
3D cloud percentage - 20%
Detailed clouds radio button - checked
Cloud coverage density - low
Before we start looking at frame rates we'll need to make a few more settings. Go to "Options-settings-ATC" and uncheck all 3 boxes. Then go to World-weather and select "User defined weather." Click on Customize and set clouds to "few, precipitation to "none", visibility to "20 miles" and wind speed to "none." You'll need to reset this every time you start MSFS while testing. You might also want to go to "World-date and time" and set time to "day" in case the sim has set you up in the middle of the night.
Ok, now we're ready to
find your base frame rate. Return to the cockpit and press shift+Z twice. That
will bring up a frame rate display in the upper left hand corner of your screen.
Watch the numbers for a while and try and determine what the average rate is. If
the rate is less then 20 then you'll want to go back to the scenery settings and
reduce the levels of the following settings:
Terrain mesh complexity
Auto-gen density
Scenery complexity
If you're on really low-end hardware you might have to turn off detailed clouds and perhaps reduce your screen resolution to 800x600.
These are the biggest frame rate hogs so reduce them until you see frame rates of at least 20. If you're getting rates over 30 you can start to increase these settings until you max them out or until your frame rate drops below 30. The last step in turning the sweet spot is to go back to your hardware tab and set your target frame rate to a value that's a few frames per second lower then the average value you observed. When you return to the cockpit the frame rate display should be almost constant and will indicate the locked speed in FPS. Go ahead and fly the pattern and keep an eye on the frame rate display. If it spends a lot of time below the locked value or if you experience a lot of stuttering, reduce it by a few fps and try again. After one or two rounds you'll find the optimum setting. If you have to you can go all the way down to 20 FPS and still have a smooth looking display. Anything lower then 18 fps is going to start looking choppy and will also cut into the maximum gauge refresh rate. If that's the best you can do you can cut back further on the settings listed above. That will get you running but it also indicates that it's probably time to consider upgrading your hardware.
The final locked rate and settings that you used to achieve it should now become your standard setup for running MSFS2002. When your hardware or requirements change, simply re-run the test and you'll be good to go.
ATC and AI Traffic
So
far we've done all of our tuning with no ATC or AI traffic. For those of you who
like to fly small GA aircraft out of small airports this is probably
appropriate. For the rest, this isn't a very realistic situation. The thing to
keep in mind is that raising the traffic percentage in the ATC window will have
a large impact on your frame rates. If you like to fly into busy environments
then you'll need to repeat the above process with ATC traffic set to a level of
your choice. Setting the traffic percentage to 100% can reduce your frame rates
by as much as 40% in and around busy airports so go easy here. The last thing
you want is to have a choppy and slow display during approach and final so
finding the right setting for your machine is important. If your locked frame
rate is below 30 then you'll want to set your AI percentage no higher then about
30%.
3rd Party Aircraft, Airports and Scenery
One
of the wonderful things about MSFS2002 is the vast array of 3rd party add-ons
that are available. The detail and functionality that's available in many of
these packages is truly astounding. The down side is you might be equally
astounded by the impact these things can have on your frame rates. It only makes
sense. When tuning for optimum frame rates your using almost 100% of the
capacity of your system. Throw all the additional computation and rendering
required by a super detailed aircraft or airport into the mix and it's easy to
understand why it can have such an impact. If you're locking at anything close
to 20 FPS then you really don't have much power to spare. You'll want to think
twice before downloading that 9 megabyte B-29 you've been drooling over. The
good news is, on an average machine you can tune for your favorite add-ons and
expect good results. The methods are the same, simply substitute the aircraft or
scenery of your choice and proceed as shown above.
Hopefully,
you now have a better understand of how all these adjustments and options effect
performance and can better tune the simulation to fit your style of flying and
interest. Remember, smoothness is more important then high frame rates.
Now go fly!
Phase 2 of our setup procedures:
·
Which helicopter should you use?
There is as much discussion out there on this one topic
than many other topics combined.
My recommendation to you is to use the LZ Bell 206 Jet-Ranger
Why?
This chopper is based on the default Bell206, but has been
slightly modified for overall better flight characteristics than the stock one.
We want to minimize frustration and maximize satisfaction, so this chopper is
designed to fly more realistically that the stock Bell 206.
Differences are subtle, but in no way make this an easier
chopper to fly than any other helicopter. What it does is fly more
realistically.
Until you can hover this helicopter reasonably well, I
recommend NOT using any other helicopter, even though the itch may get really
strong at times. Switching between helicopters and looking for an easy fix is
NOT the way to go. There are some excellent helicopters with excellent flight
models out there, and there are also some horrible ones as well. Until you can
control this chopper well and understand what a well designed helicopter should
fly like, you should NOT try and fly others, as you will have no guidelines as
to whether it is a good or bad flight model. If it is a bad one, you will only
end up getting very frustrated with the whole experience.
Lastly, do not let the “eye-candy”, pretty paint
schemes and the gee-whiz factor tempt you to other helicopters while you are
still learning. I know this helicopter is plain, blue and ugly, but it’s the
flight-model we are going to be using that is important. When you have
sufficient experience to fly this model well, go ahead and chase all the
eye-candy you want. Until then, be patient.
Phase 3 of our set-up procedures:
It
is critical that the helicopter is set-up properly if you are ever going to be
able to master it.
Helicopters are, by definition, inherently unstable. They will not fly like a fixed wing when you take your hands off the controls. They require constant input to fly level and a lot of hand-eye-foot-brain co-ordination in the hover. Because they are so unstable, you must have the ability to respond to their smallest movements with your controls to make them do what YOU, the pilot want them to do.
So what we need to do is ensure is that the helicopter is able to respond to your control inputs as fast as possible. Many people will tell you that the helicopter is uncontrollable with the settings I am going to give you.
This is blatantly untrue.
Sure, these settings seem to make the chopper twitchy and sensitive, but that is exactly what it is in real life, and exactly what you need in the sim to be able to control it.
If you have the settings lower (further to the left) than these recommended settings, you do NOT have a helicopter that is easier to fly, you end up with a helicopter on Valium. It is actually harder to fly that way!!
The single setting that seems to have the most effect on the overall performance of the chopper is the “GENERAL” slider. I recommend that this slider is moved ALL THE WAY TO THE RIGHT, and then backed off 1 click. All the other settings can be all the way to the right.
Go to AIRCRAFT_REALISM SETTINGS on the main menu bar and configure your helicopter as shown:
Since
we are learning and practicing, check “Ignore crashes and damage”, “Enable
auto mixture”, “Unlimited Fuel”” and “Display indicated airspeed”.
Make
sure that “Autorudder” is NOT checked. We need to be able to control the
tail rotor ourselves if we are going to pilot a helicopter.
Phase 4 of our setup procedures:
Now
we need to configure our joystick.
The
first thing you must know is that you absolutely need either a joystick with a
twist-handle for rudder control, or a set of rudder pedals. Without either of
these, you are not going to be able to fly a helicopter. Period.
The
very best set up will be a digital joystick with a throttle control and a
separate set of pedals. However, a digital joystick with a twist handle for
rudder will also suffice until you decide that you are hooked on helos and want
to upgrade.
Regardless,
get the best you can afford without breaking the bank.
If
you have a force-feedback joystick, turn the force-feedback off, right now.
It’s a nice gimmick, but totally unrealistic when flying helicopters and will
only impede your progress by giving you false feedback and false cues.
The
first thing you need to do is to calibrate your controls/joystick. Follow the
manufacturers recommendations on this. To calibrate your controls, go to
OPTIONS, CONTROLS, CALLIBRATE JOYSTICK and follow the instructions. An
improperly calibrated joystick is of no use to anyone.
The
next thing, and perhaps the single most important tip I can give you, is to set
up the sensitivities and null zones of your joystick/controls for maximum
performance.
These
settings are quite different from those I would use if I were flying a fixed
wing.
What
we want to achieve here is to set up the controls so that they have maximum
sensitivity and minimum null zone.
Remember
earlier when I said:
“ Helicopters are, by definition, inherently
unstable. They will not fly like a fixed wing when you take your hands off the
controls. They require constant input to fly level and a lot of
hand-eye-foot-brain co-ordination in the hover. Because they are so unstable,
you must have the ability to respond to their smallest movements with your
controls to make them do what YOU, the pilot want them to do.”
So
to be able to respond to the helicopters movements and maintain a maximum level
of control, we need to make VERY SMALL , and I repeat, VERY SMALL joystick
corrections. We cannot do this if the sensitivity is low or the null zone is
large.
A
null zone, by the way, is an area of movement of the joystick that has no effect
on the simulator. The software ignores movement of the stick when it is in the
null zone. So, the first thing we do is remove all NULL ZONE from our controls.
We need the stick to be able to respond to the slightest movement of the
helicopter but we do NOT want to be moving the controls like we are mixing a
cake.
If
you have ever seen a real helicopter pilot flying his or her machine, you would
think that they were actually not doing anything, as their hands and feet never
seem to move. What they are actually doing is making constant, minute inputs to
their controls to keep their bird doing what they want it to do.
The
other thing we need to do is set the sensitivity of all axis to maximum.
A
joystick with a throttle and a twist rudder has 4 axis.
Aileron
Elevator
Rudder
Throttle
These
are fixed wing terms, but for now we will use them.
So,
we go to; OPTIONS, CONTROLS, SENSITIVITIES and set up our controls to look like
this.
Phase 5 of our setup procedures:
Real
helicopter pilots gather a wealth of information about what their aircraft is
doing from many different sources. They have their forward vision, peripheral
(sideways) vision, they can hear what the chopper’s engine is doing and,
equally important, they “feel” what the chopper is doing by the seat of
their pants.
Ever
been in a car that goes over a hump in the road and you can feel yourself come
out of the seat for a split second, then land back in the seat?
Or
when the car goes around a corner very fast and you feel yourself pushed out to
the door?
THAT
is seat of the pants. Your backside tells you a lot of what the car is doing.
Unfortunately,
the simulator provides very little peripheral vision, minimal auditory (hearing)
stimulation and NO seat of the pants feeling. That’s why it is so much harder
to fly a helicopter in this simulator than in real life.
A
simulator (unless we go to the multi-million dollar airline simulators) is a 2
dimensional graphical representation of the real 3 dimensional world it is
simulating. It gives us precious little cues as to what it is doing.
So
we need to make it as user friendly as possible and get as many cues and clues
to the pilot as possible to help them “feel” what their aircraft is doing.
The
LZ helicopter you have downloaded is specifically configured to give you as much
information as possible in respect to what it is doing. The views have been
tailored to allow you, the pilot, to see as much as possible and to place your
eyes at a level that gives you the best overall sensations in respect to forward
and peripheral vision.
The
custom sounds, by Manual Gonzalez, are designed to emulate a real chopper when
you increase the collective, to give you the auditory cues you need.
Lastly,
it comes complete with a HUD, a Heads Up Display that lets you have an
unobstructed field of view from the pilots position yet gives you a wealth of
information that allows you to keep control of the helicopter through all phases
of flight.
Some
people seem to think that using a HUD is, somehow, cheating. After all, if
Microsoft wanted to use a HUD, they would have included one.
Not
so. In fact, quite the opposite. Using a HUD is intelligent flying. You need to
see as much of the 2 dimensional simulated world as you can, without panels and
gizmos blocking your views. You also need to get information as to what your
helicopter is doing as well as how it is reacting to your control inputs.
Don’t let anyone tell you that using a HUD is cheating. Its logical, common
sense, intelligent flying.
Why
do you think that just about every military fighter jet and advanced helicopter
uses a HUD? Simple, it allows the pilot to keep their HEADS UP and looking out
of the cockpit, as opposed to peering down at dimly lit gauges.
Phase 6 of our setup procedures:
Actually, this is not related to setting up the sim for
performance. This is where we will give you the background knowledge to
understand how and why a helicopter flies the way it does.
This understanding is critical to your success. If you do
not understand helicopter flight, you have little chance of ever mastering
flying one.
Now this topic can be a little bit dry, but I encourage you
to read the entire section thoroughly to get a good grounding in the
fundamentals of helicopter flight prior to trying to fly one.
Remember, knowledge is power.
Alright! Now its time to begin understanding how helicopters fly and what the control surfaces do. We have also added link photos that describe visually each of the controls and what they do when you apply the control inputs. For a more intense version of the information below, go to the Advanced Instruction page located in the Helicopter Flight Simulator page.
MAIN ROTOR
In order for the helo to lift off the ground, it must have a lifting force greater than its weight. The lifting force in the helicopter is generated by the large rotating blades of the main rotor. The shape of the blade is similar to that of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Air flow across the wing, or blade, creates lift. Lift can be increased by either increasing the speed of the rotor or increasing the pitch of the blade. It is simpler to keep the RPM's of the rotor constant and change the pitch, or angle, of the blade. A slight upward tilt of the leading edge of all blades will considerably increase the amount of lift. There is a plate on the main rotor blade that collectively or at the same time, changes the pitch of the blades. The control is simply called the collective pitch lever. The collective control is located on the pilots left side of the seat. When the pilot pulls up on the collective it is increasing the pitch of all the blades.
In flight simulator terms, the collective is equal to the throttle on your joystick. Add throttle, you begin to create more lift. On FS helos, around 65-70% torque will begin to lift you off the tarmac. In the default Bell 206, you might have noticed you can hear the skids against the ground. You will see the collective control when you get to the link located in the cyclic section under controls.
TAIL ROTOR
The tail rotor is a smaller propeller mounted on the rear of the fuselage. The speed of the tail rotor is directly proportional to the speed of the main rotor. Thrust generated by the tail rotor is what counteracts the torque generated by the main rotor. This keeps the helicopter from spinning around and around, out of control. The pitch of the tail rotor blades are controlled by the pilot's foot pedals. You probably noticed in the FS helo if you don't add some rudder input, the helo tends to change its direction to the left. The input you apply to the joystick is the same as what a pilot does with the foot pedals. You will notice that once you are flying forward in the helicopter, you have to increase the rudder pressure in the FS helo to maintain your desired heading. In real helos, there is constant pedal pressure applied for the same reason. The foot pedals in helicopters are often called yaw pedals or anti-torque pedals. In FS we call it rudder input.
CYCLIC CONTROL
The cyclic control stick is equal to your joystick. This controls the helicopter's direction of flight. This is accomplished by adding additional pitch to selected portions of the rotating main rotor. Increasing the pitch in one area will increase the lift in that portion, and the rotor disc will tilt. If the cyclic control stick is pushed forward, the pitch will increase only on the rotor blades at the rear of the rotor disc. This will increase lift on the rear portion of the rotor disc and lift up the rear of the rotor, effectively pushing the helicopter forward. If the stick is pulled back, it will increase the pitch of the blades at the forward portion of the disc and the helicopter will fly backwards. If the stick were positioned to one side or the other, the helicopter will fly sideways. In FS helos, the same effect will be evident. To see all the controls from the cockpit view, click here on Controls
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