I just cant figure out hovering/landing...

[Synapse14 1]

So first let me say this this forum is STUPIDLY hard to post on... all the CAPTCHA's and precautions in place, its almost not worth posting.

Now. I am about to start Helicopter school in April... so I may well soon figure this out soon, but I just simply cannot get hovering and landing. Every time I land I either crash or its very very rough, and I cannot get hovering... Ive tried the sling training missions about 20 times and still not luck. Its getting to the point its frustrating. I am using an X52 Flight System and I dont know if its me, or possibly the stick... or both.

Does anyone have any advise?

[MeerCaT 1]

I have exactly the piece of advice that no new-commer wants to hear and all experienced people will give (in various guises): TIME.

There's a reason that real life pilots refer to their experience in terms of "hours flying". It is all about clocking up time with your bottom in that seat and that seat up in the air.

I currently have 57 'hours played' in this game according to Steam. Now that of course isn't 57 hours solid flying, due to game/mission loading time, menu navigation time, time spent walking around on foot in the game etc. however I have played many hours in 'offline' mode and since Steam only seems to log 'hours played' while in 'online' mode, I'm going to go ahead and round it up to 60 hours flight time (at least).

Now 60 hours doesn't make me any expert. Hell, it doesn't even make me any good! And it probably doesn't even qualify me to give any advise to others about how to fly in this game - so it's just as well I don't intend to! :-)

Sure all of us with 20-30 or more hours in this game could sit here and reel off streams of in depth 'tactical' tips and know-how on keeping your inputs small and frequent, and how to manage your collective and pedals and relationship between all the controls and bla bla bla ... until you're not even sure which way is up anymore!

But no, I believe there is nothing...NOTHING, more important or beneficial in the learning process for this than my bum-to-seat-seat-to-air philosophy.

Just sit there in your 'floating' seat for as long as you can possibly bear it. No really, just try getting in a heli, put it in the air and stay there (I don't mean hovering in one spot - although, of course, that's a good thing to try occassionally while you're there). It doesn't matter what you're doing up there as long as you are clocking up masses of time being there.

"How does this help me learn how to land without chipping a tooth each time?" I hear you ponder (or is that just the echoes of your footsteps I'm hearing as you stroll off in dejected boredom after the second paragraph?)

Trust me, if you spend 30, 60, 120 hours up there, just having fun and enjoying the experience of being there, then I GUARANTEE you will not fail to learn.

No amount of talk is going to build up your muscle memory and your mind's sub-conscious understanding of how the heli will react to all manner of inputs and situations.

Until you're subconscious mind is doing a great deal of the work you're not going to enjoy the take offs and landings ... and hovering is just a pipe dream!

[sylvain1958 1]

Hello and timely on TOH I flight(theft) also with the X52 pro and I have the same problem .il lack of precision to .Pour to improve curves you can reduce zones died into the trap from configuration Saitek. For me ca takes place a little better and easier to steal(fly)

Good flight(theft)

Sylvain

[Derbysieger 11]

MeerCaT brings up some very good points. It really comes down to practice. However, there are a few things you can do to make things easier.

First of all, if you didn't already do it, update your game to 1.03 and I also recommend the latest Beta-Patch which brings the latest FM changes among other things. You can find it here: http://takeonthegame.com/download/beta-patches/

Then you want to make sure the game is running at a reasonable framerate. Below 30fps you get noticable input lag and below 20fps, hovering becomes extremely difficult. I tweaked my graphicsettings in a way that I get a minimum of 25fps on Seattle.

Finally, make sure that your joystick is properly set up. Deadzones should be off or at a minimum and sensitivity should be linear (default), but you can tweak it to suit your personal style. If you don't have pedals and use a twist joystick you should set the deadzone for your z-axis high enough so you don't accidentally apply pedal.

I would recommend you concentrate on the light heli first. It's the easiest to fly. Here are some good instructional videos by a real pilot that show how to do a normal landing approach in TOH: http://www.youtube.com/user/MD500Enthusiast/

[Serclaes 0]

What helps me is to have a reference point far away from the helicopter. Most people tend to make too strong inputs and over correct and a close reference point reinforces that. Just select a biiig field somewhere and hover around in it. Just try to stop any movement that comes up and don't try to hold it over a steady point. You'll notice with time that you can anticipate what the helicopter is going to do and counter it before it happens. And slowly but surely the helicopter will stay at the one point you want.

This might help too:

Also: stay low in the ground effect. If you're too high you might start bobbing up and down or "slide" off.

---------- Post added at 09:54 ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 ----------

Sorry missed the landing part.

At first it helped me to land with some forward speed. That way you avoid the ground effect. When you're able to hover it's going to be much easier.

I still have problems with my approaches because I can't find the right vertical speed + forward speed. But try have a reference point in your cockpit and hold your landing point there with collective, while holding the same speed(about 60 KIAS) with cyclic. You'll have to break once you're on ground height and will land a little further than your aiming point but hey it's a start.

[Armhunter 1]

What i started out doing was: right before I would want to land I would set the helicopter in auto hover mode. It would help keep the heli level, then you can just slowly guide it to where you want to land it and lower the collective. it makes it much easier. Once I got used to it, I just started landing on my own.

[strawman 1]

I'm new to this as well ,I have a saitek evo and have compressed the spring with a cable tie making the throws much easier and avoiding over correction against the cantering spring. Makes it much smoother for smaller inputs. Finding out it's all about smaller more subtle inputs. Not what I’m used to in other flying simulators.

[nightsta1ker 10]

First, I'd like to introduce myself as a real world helicopter CFI, so that you know what my credentials are.

The first thing that needs to be said is that unless you have a set of real helicopter controls for your computer (full cyclic, collective and pedals), this game is going to do you no good on your journey to becoming a real helicopter pilot. It is a game. It was created for fun. Not for simulation purposes. The flight dynamics are better than most games (including FSX, although I strongly feel that X-Plane physics and systems have everything else beat hands down), but it is still a game.

And even in the most realistic simulator, unless you have full motion platform, real controls, and a dome projection for 180 degree FOV, you are not going to be able to experience the sensation you will get in real flight. Hovering is actually quite easy in real life compared to the game. Your inner ear, lower spine, and peripheral vision are all adding huge amounts of data to your brain telling you what is going on. Also, with the systems and dynamics lacking as they are, I would not recommend you use this game to try and get an experience for real helicopter flight or operations. The game is fun, yes. Challenging, yes. Realistic? I would have to say no. The missions, gameplay, characters, interactions with objects... None of it feels very real to me based on my experience as a real pilot. My recommendation is, if you want to enjoy the game for what it is, great. But leave your impressions of the game at home when you go for your first real lesson, you will find out how vastly different the real thing is.

As far as hovering goes... try not to over control. This is a common mistake for beginners. Use very small movements with your hands. Look out to the horizon , but use your peripheral vision (limited as it is in the game) to look at the corners of the screen to see where you are moving on the ground. Use stick PRESSURE, rather than stick MOVEMENT. If you are drifting left, apply a slight amount of pressure to the right. If it's not enough, keep increasing the pressure until you get the desired result. But if you are using more than an 8th of an inch of movement at a time, you are going to be all over the place.

Landing is easy, just hover (once you get the hang of it) and lower your collective slightly and let the helicopter settle. Go to a wide open area with no obstacles and practice doing run on landings like an airplane. The skids will slide on the groung (you will do this in a real helicopter too when you start training). Landing with some forward speed is always easier. Once you get the hang of that, start slowing it down. Try landing at lower and lower speeds until you can do it from a hover. Then, when you get the hovering and smooth landing down, you can start practicing putting it on a precise spot. Pick a marker of something on the ground and practice setting it right where you want it. It's challenging, even for me, a real world helicopter pilot with hundreds of hours. This game is a bit tricky, but it's not impossible. As Meercat said, it takes time and practice.

Good luck!

[Dwarden 1124]

So first let me say this this forum is STUPIDLY hard to post on... all the CAPTCHA's and precautions in place, its almost not worth posting.

Now. I am about to start Helicopter school in April... so I may well soon figure this out soon, but I just simply cannot get hovering and landing. Every time I land I either crash or its very very rough, and I cannot get hovering... Ive tried the sling training missions about 20 times and still not luck. Its getting to the point its frustrating. I am using an X52 Flight System and I dont know if its me, or possibly the stick... or both.

Does anyone have any advise?

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