NZFF

An interesting post from the developer.
The Dodosim 206 was arguably the best heli ever produced for FSX/P3D

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Dodosim 206

Woo hoo, Nick will be pleased

The Dodo 206 was the only thing holding me to FSX.. I may have to go back to it but... too many sims, so little time.

Was it really that good?
Why?
Flight dynamics or what?

It was the only helicopter that you started like the real thing and had failure modes built in. It was the only helicopter that you could auto more or less accurately, you could run out of pedal, almost realistic VRS... the list goes on. It really pushed the outside of the envelope when it came to FSX.. in fact it might have been the first aircraft to use an external flight model. Not sure on that though. A lot of people are still using it because it urinates all over pretty much every other helicopter for the ESP platforms. Showing its age now in terms of the visuals but the systems and flight dynamics hold up really well. It'll be interesting to see how they can improve on it.

Indeed, sounds very interesting. I always understood it was a cut above but wasn't entirely sure why. I'll keep an eye on it.
I probably need to decide on whether to go paragliding (for real), or VR/controls for sim.
Tough call, as would love both and have budget for neither ... maybe not a tough call after all then!

Not sure what you're aiming to do but honestly, you don't NEED VR. It's great and all but you need a pretty decent rig to run it properly. I'd suggest getting a reasonable monitor, Track IR or similar and an X56 HOTAS or similar w/ pedals. If you take the springs out of the stick then it's pretty good for helicopters. You can put the springs back in for other things too.

Yeah, been flying sims a good while. I have a small monitor (by modern standards, 32" I think it might be, samsung curved thing it is). I have standard joystick, sprung, so might check about removing those, but also pedals and a bunch os Saitek panels (multi, radio, switch, TPM) along with Cessna trim wheel, Desktop Aviator fuel switch and park brake.
Of course what is missing for helis is collective / twist throttle. I tried the Vive Pro (on hire) for a week some months back and felt the resolution wasn't there (hard to read gauges at a glance); the HP Reverb is coming and looks good and I'm on the hire list for that, so hopefully get to play with it in a couple months. It'll be interesting to compare. My rig handle the Vive Pro ok, but whether it can drive the higher res of the Reverb remains to be seen. Watch this space ... !

If you're after proper helicopter controls, I'd check the Pro Flight Trainer. Not terribly expensive on the grand scheme and combined with VR, you're pretty close to the real thing. There are others on the market notably from Komodo. Just have a look around. I'll be buying a PFT when I'm not touring.

Yeah, looked at the PFT Puma stuff before and it is what I have my eye on.... nice! (unless I go paragliding instead of course, which would consume the budget!)