Cyclic/collective control, middle seat, single player

[scoobie]

With the introduction of multicrew to Mi-8 (on 8/16/23), it seems impossible to drive the Big Lady from the crew chief's position (a.k.a "flight engineer", a.k.a. "technician") when you are in SINGLE player - cyclic and collective can no longer be controlled from the middle seat. If you hop in the chief's seat when low and slow, you're likely to crash, she will pitch up, the engines will whine desperately and down you go.
Is it intended or am I doing something wrong?

Edited August 17, 2023 by scoobie

[firimar]

yeah, same, if you switch to middle seat position in flight to toggle some switches, it pitches up and tries to kill you

[MAXsenna]

They probably should implement an "auto pilot" function similar to Huey then.
I think that would be the best/most "realistic" option.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[HC_Official]

22 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

They probably should implement an "auto pilot" function similar to Huey then.
I think that would be the best/most "realistic" option.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

+1 the AI pilot should take over when u leave a pilot seat and go to either side gunner or engineer seat

[MAXsenna]

+1 the AI pilot should take over when u leave a pilot seat and go to either side gunner or engineer seat

Automatically, absolutely!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[scoobie]

I was thinking about EASY solution - restore control. Point is, when I am... sorry... when I was in the chief's seat, I used it to search things on the ground with Mk. 1 eyeballs (the pilot/co-pilot can't see down) etc. while at the same time I could still fly the helo. Turn a little, descent a little etc. AI pilot won't let me do it. Besides, I have yet to see AI pilot which would seamlessly switch on/off when you jump seats. I don't think anybody would sit in the chief's seat for long for any other reason, because there's little to do for him there - in DCS I mean, not real life. What are you going to do there - stare at oil temp. gauges? For an hour? Doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

I'm not against AI pilots as such - for example in Mosquito, when you're tinkering with the aft radio from the navigator's seat or in Mi-8 if you're a gunner, basically whenever your hands and eyes are busy with different things - sure thing, but AI here, in the cockpit, is crutches (and cruthes difficult to make right), not a solution. Or in other words, it IS a solution, but to a different problem (gunners etc.).

[randomTOTEN]

I have no problems with loss of control when switching to the Flight Engineer seat while in single player. The AI pilot flies around just fine.

[MAXsenna]

13 minutes ago, randomTOTEN said:

I have no problems with loss of control when switching to the Flight Engineer seat while in single player. The AI pilot flies around just fine.

Oh, that's cool. Could it be some trim issue for those that have an issue? 

3 hours ago, scoobie said:

What are you going to do there - stare at oil temp. gauges? For an hour?

Tune the auto pilot?  

[randomTOTEN]

5 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

They probably should implement an "auto pilot" function similar to Huey then.

Yeah, from testing it appears to already have this feature. You can adjust the autopilot from the engineer seat, but all you're doing is fighting the AI pilots control inputs. When you resume pilot control, I think perhaps you suddenly have to fight those inputs you had previously made on the panel, and suddenly you're fighting for control.

If you don't mess with it, it appears to work fine..

I'm against putting fake flight controls into a seat that doesn't have them.

[scoobie]

Yeah, OK, now I get it... there IS some kind of the AI pilot there (not to be confused with AUTOpilot), I just didn't notice yesterday because it simply crashed my helo and I thought it happened only because my HOTAS got cut off when I jumped in the middle seat. That AI dude just can't fly too much (I imagine it's SUPER hard to program anyway), so one must fly fairly calm/polite right before giving the controls off to AI.

I just wish this "controls division paradigm" (division between particular stations/seats) could be overridden, melded together, when only a single person is manning the aircraft (SP or MP).
Otherwise it enforces using mouse/keyboard and/or using only spring loaded switches to control the cockpit (which s*cks for things that aren't spring loaded in the cockpit). I mean - hardware potentiometers, latching switches and similar things will be annoying to use They already are in the Mossie for example.