FM still superstable

[some1]

Downloaded 1.5.4 open beta.

 

1. Disabled gyro stabilization

2. Disabled Autopilot

3. Took off

4. Did various maneuvers including accelerating to 120 km/h, flying sideways at 100 km/h, flying backwards, spins along vertical axis.

5. Landed (poorly, but I ran out of patience).

 

All of this without touching the cyclic!

 

Even violent maneuvers and changes of airspeed doesn't seem to have any effect on pitch and bank. The only difference without gyro is that the aircraft slowly pitches up, but that doesn't seem to be related to anything that the helicopter is doing.

It looks like there is still something that unnaturally stabilizes the helicopter. That, or the FM is fundamentally lacking.

 

Track attached.

GazelleFM.trk

[sorcer3r]

The current FM update is a step in the right direction but you are right there is still room for improvement.

 

Your track file shows very well that e.g. tail rotor roll effect is missing.

[Zee Pet]

It still feels like there are no effects of airflow on the tail boom or tail-fin. Try hovering with ANY of the helicopters already in DCS, then jam your rudder over to one side, hold it there and don't move any other controls until you crash. Now try it with this Gazelle, I guarantee you'll get bored, dizzy, and eventually throw up before the helicopter is in any danger.

[0xDEADBEEF]

I would like to chime in as well with a couple of thoughts. Just flew it a couple of minutes and I basically agree with what you guys said.

 

Opposed to the initial version, i did not have the feeling the helicopter flies completely off and i was able to easily control it without relearning how to fly a helicopter, good job on that, I really appreciate this improvement!

 

The biggest things I noticed (which I already mentioned at the initial release):

- Now blowback/pitch vs power effect at all. Well ok, there is a tiny little bit of nose-up at ~150kph, but 0.1mm of fwd cyclic was enough to compensate. In general I feel like I'm not moving the cyclic at all.

- I am still able to drop or rise the collective without any kind of pitch-attitude change.

 

This is the same for SAS on and off. I feel like those two effects may have the same origin.

 

- going to extremes: dropping the collective at 200kph with simultanious full aft cyclic does not change the rotors RPM at all. The RPM needle stays steady instead of rising through the roof.

- the torque meter feels very linear to the collective position. I would expect it to lag a little behind. I would expect the swashplate to react linear, but the forces to take some time until torque is demanded from the engine and recognized by the torquemeter.

 

 

Still, great work so far! I'm very much looking forward to the future progress of this module, I'm afraid its going to be one of my favourites :joystick:

[Zee Pet]

I know I'm sounding critical and I don't mean to be offensive but it feels like its a mix of SFM and AFM, not what I would expect for something that is supposed to be 'twitchy' or hard to fly. I find it weird that the SMEs and RL pilot wouldn't have brought up what 0xDEADBEEF said about pitch, but hey, if they said that's how it is I'll have to respect it.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Zee Pet