Hello,
I have removed the in progress lesson, can you check that you can take this lesson again?
Thanks,
Hi,
thanks a lot. Everything works now as it should be. Great and fast excellent support. Very kind and good job!
It very much depends on your setup, in my experience. We are using the Honeycomb combination at the office currently and to me that is very similiar to the experience of training to fly the Cessna in real life. Of course there is more tactile feedback in real life, but I have found I feel weāre 80% there in terms of realism.
Iāve spent many many hours reminding real life students to scan their nose attitudeā¦ over and over again. It is a constant struggle to maintain altitude and bank angle in a real plane, and often turbulence and convection in the atmosphere creates an even more challenging task. That said, simulators provide less visual feedback (thereās less pixels on a screen than cells in the retina after all) and the narrow range on most yokes and joysticks offer a greater challenge. But I still want to throw it out there that learning to fly manually is not something anyone does in an hour or two, but through a long period of constant trial and error. We have airline pilots to come to assessments who are definately not done with their muscle memory training. At some point it does become muscle memory, but it only gets there by long practice and by learning to use visual references for corrections.
I hope you find more fun in airliners, and we hope to get you back for the instrument and IFR course, where weāll use the autopilot a lot more 
Thank you for your encouraging reply. I have continued to practice and will be back to take the test again when I think I can hold altitude and speed. Seems I have no problem with bank and coordination.
Hello people.
I just got news from Turtle beach for the situation I have mentioned above in this thread and this is what they said:
Hello Andre,
our developer responded:
"The inputs that are seen in the Training menu are hardwired to default profiles from MSFS 2020. Therefore, when you select Single Engine Propeller for example, in-game then also select via the Flight Management Display, the training menu will mirror the controls from that default profile.
This currently does not work or update for custom button mapping profiles that are made - so you will be unable to view which button does what on the display with your custom profile. Instead, we recommend creating a mapping chart to help with remembering what button does what."
If you require further assistance or additional information please do not hesitate in contacting me.
Sincerely / Viele GrĆ¼Će
Sascha
Customer Support Agent
āāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāā
AndrƩ
Thats great you got in touch with Turtle Beach. We would recommend you follow their guidelines for setting up the keybinds/axis as their system would allow more flexibility with knowing which button/control does what.
Hello man!
I was also confused by the turbulence, since on the loading screen of the lesson it written that wind is 4 knots. So tou are not alone.
I write separate topic regarding this but maybe you also gad somethibg similar: the issue is that even after I trim my airplane for straight and level flight my altitude everytime staring to increase and then decrease and so on. It may vary from -400 to + 500 feets per minute.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong?
The lesson instructs to use right rudder to counteract slipstream effect in the climb. However, I seem to need airleron to maintain a level wings level. Can you advise further?
Iām giving up flight sim because of this.
I used to enjoy just setting a course and letting autopilot handle things, but since trying to learn how to hand fly properly, I realise that itās completely impossible.
Even with expensive honeycomb gear the same as Navigraph are using, I can not maintain level flight at all. Even with only 5 knot winds, the plane is going up and down like a yoyo.
Same thing during turns. The rudder and ailerons are just about controllable, but using elevator, power and trim to try and maintain steady altitude is literally impossible.
Even if I manage to hold the perfect angle, after maybe 0.5-1 seconds, the plane will either be climbing or descending at 500 feet or more.
Iāve spent so much time and money trying to enjoy this hobby, but I finally realise that Iām actually useless at it.
It canāt be the sim, as there are thousands of people happily flying with it every day, which means it must just be me. Obviously I have no ability to fly, so I give up now.
I can understand the frustration but I really wouldnāt say give up. Its super common for people to hit a wall like this, even in real flight training. The described symptom is setup and technique, very much so not ability!
The Academy course mimics flight training quite closely. It is very very typical for a student to hit a point where they need extra training and practice in order to overcome a difficult maneuver (which is why, in the real world, you should always take the āminimum training costā with a grain of salt. The minimum hours for a PPL license to be granted is 45 hours however the average hours to obtain the license is closer to 70 hours! Thats roughly 30 hours of lessons needing to be repeated, confidence boosting via solo flight etc etc, there is always something to practice or become more confident in!)
Back to the sim, here are a few pointers.
- Check your controls sensitivity settings. Round out twitchiness using dead zones. This will reduce the small movements that bring on large outputs which cause oscillation.
- Donāt chase instruments. When youāre scanning instruments, that tends to bring on oscillations and next thing you know it, youāre 20 miles down the road and varying altitudes. Relax, point the nose at the horizon and keep a light touch on the controls.
- Fly with a very light grip. Referencing the last part of the previous point, rest two fingers on the controls and apply very light pressure. Back in the day, my instructor told me to stop squeezing the black out of the yolk. That has stuck with me for 17 years!
- Trim trim trim. One of the most, if not THE most important component of flying is trim. Set the desired altitude, hold it, let the speed stabilize and then trim off the pressure. If you donāt have proper trim set, youāll be fighting yourself all the way through the flight. Not only is that extremely tiring, its extremely stressful too.
- Use very small corrections, then wait. One small pitch changeā¦wait and let the aircraft settle, then adjust again. The 0,5 to 1 second corrections you mention are actually faster than the aircraft can respond so youād end up actually amplifying the oscillation.
Youāve clearly put a lot of effort into the hobby and I would definitely recommend not writing it off. Give the tips a go and lets see how it goes! Weāre have a wonderful community here and weāre all around to help whenever its needed 
Thanks for the reply.
I have tried for so long though.
-Sensitivity is set as per the guide, but even adding sensitivity to the pitch axis too, it did not improve anything for me.
-itās hard not to chase instruments. I understand that you shouldnāt chase them if weāre talking plus or minus 25-50, hell even 100 knots difference in vertical speedā¦but when itās second zero and the next -900, itās hard to ignore that. Trying to go purely by sight also is hard because you might think to look at it that you are level, but then a quick glance at your instruments shows that youāre really really not.
-Iāve always done the light grip thing, in fact in the past Iād sometimes only use a light grip with one hand even (although this is I think what led to the yoke become loose, which I fixed by tightening the internal part and gluing it basically), but I now try to remember to use 2 hands.
-trim is where the issue is for me. no mater how hard I try, I can not get it trimmed. I understand how youāre supposed to do it in the sim, move the yoke first, then trim little and often until you can let go of the yoke. The trouble is, no matter how much I try this, I can never get it right, and the minute I think itās done, it drifts again within a minute. Iām sure this is mostly due to the wind in the sim maybe? but if youāre gonna turn the wind off and not fly with realistic weather, why bother to learn at all?
-small corrections is what I tried, but no matter what I try, how long I wait, the aircraft never seems to respond to the trimmingā¦or when it does, soon afterwards, the wind changes again and itās like I need to star from scratchā¦so I could spend 10 minutes just trimming to get level flight, have level flight for 60 seconds, and then have it be completely off. Most likely I wasnāt properly trimmed to start with, because of the afore mentioned lack of skill.
I really enjoyed getting the sim working smoothly, setting up all my FIPs to control the avionics in spad.next, programming it all, etc. (I use the sim for the main controls though, spad.next is JUST for the FIPs for their dials and buttons) but I honestly feel at this point that I just can not fly by handā¦like at all.
Over the past few months Iāve really struggled with this. I and some very shaky landings, even though I was letting the G1000 handle everything until the last 200 feet or so, touchdown was awful, and ever since then I have been trying to go back to basics and learn everything properlyā¦but truthfully, I just canāt.
Iāve had a few times where Iāve decided to step away, take a weeks break and try againā¦but every time I try and come back to it, I either see zero improvement, or I get worse.
So now Iāve packed away all my kit, uninstalled everything flight sim related, and need to take as long a break as possible, so Iāve removed all temptation to try by putting it all away. Each time I try, I feel even worse that I just can not do it.
Iām not really sure why Iām even posting here to be honest. I think Iām way past the point of asking for tips and help. I guess I do feel slightly better knowing that even in the real life, people spend so many hours repeating things to try and learn to fly. I still feel like most people who flight sim seem to be able to just pick it up and get on with it though, whereas Iāve spent ages and seem to get absolutely nowhere. I understand what the controls do, and how to manipulate them, I just canāt seem to put it into practice in the sim.
Likely the hardware is exacerbating things quite a bit here, zero to 900fpm in a very short space of time wouldnāt happen outside of intentional movement.
A jittery pitch sensor could be causing all this frustration from the beginning. I can tell you that its virtually impossible to trim out controls that are constantly wandering.
A good test to perform would be:
- Press the Windows key + R
- Type joy.cpl
- Select the Alpha and look at the axis. Are these jittering or otherwise acting inconsistently when moved?
- In MSFS, check the control profiles for all the connected devices. (including anything the FIPs register as) and make sure that nothing except the yoke has elevator trip assigned.
- Load a flight with zero wind, get into straight and level flight at 3000ft, set the autopilot and let it trim itself. Once in a stable flight regime, disconnect the AP and try to maintain that stable flight. If you cannot, the flight controls may be leading the flight astray.
Another point about weather āwhy bother learning without realistic weatherā. In real world flight training, particularly around the very beginning of the training, your instructor will definitely schedule the first handful of hours in around the early morning. The intention here is to have the least amount of weather impact on the flight, which includes wind. Its also not uncommon for your instructor to delay the flight because of wind. They will not put you in a position where weather can impact the early stages of learning the very basics. The max crosswind and top of the day turbulence can wait until you feel more confident.
Interesting point about the weather. I usually have been trying after work when Iām on an early finish, so anytime in the afternoon from about 14:00 onwards.
I think Iām going to stick to my plan to take an extended break at least for now.
If I do come back to it ever, Iāll try with clear skies and no wind to start with then.
I did already test the controls before I took it all down though, and I donāt think thereās any jitter.
In the windows game controller settings, the yoke responds exactly as intended, and in the sim itself, the setting page confirms smooth movement without any jitter.
I month or two back, I did discover that it was not returning to center after pulling lightly on the yoke, but I fixed this using the honeycomb calibration procedure. Now it moves smoothly, and no matter if I pull strong or very very lightly, the dot returns to dead center when I let go.
This is with the honeycomb xpc, paired with the bravo throttle and charlie pedals.
I also bought the echo controller, thinking that I could just use that if I wanted to try again at a later date without setting everything up againā¦but that thing is absolutely awful for jitter. Itās weird as thereās no jitter at all with the controls at rest, but as soon as you make any change to any of the axisā they behave very erratically, not smooth at all.
So I am familiar with how a bad controller reacts, and what jitter can do, but my main controls donāt seem to have this problem, only the echo.
Thanks again for your reply, but I think Iām just going to take a huge break from it all. If i come back Iāll try your test though, and stick to clear weather to start with.
I can appreciate your points, fighting weather can be pretty frustrating but going back to my previous point about removing the weather entirely, this would be perfectly fine and it does mimic that of real life flight training when you intentionally take dawn flight slots to avoid the weather/wind almost entirely.
That said, its always good to take a break if your frustrated, the sim will be here and so will we in case you need any help!
I just set up my kit again and tried to take off and fly the C172 in free flight for the first time in a couple of weeks.
I changed just a couple of things. Graphics wise I set the default Ultra profile, only turned off traffic (as I use FSLTL for that), changed TLOD to 100, changed TAA to DLSS ultra performance (my monitor is stupidly high res 7680x2160, so ultra performance isnāt as bad as youād think), and set frame gen to FSR3ā¦I found out that you can at the same time, turn on smooth motion for nvidia. Sim renders 30FPS, FSR3 FG makes it 60FPS and then smooth motion makes in 120FPS to match my monitor 120Hz refresh rate. All of this has made the sim super smooth and feel more natural to me.
I also changed the alpha XPC sensitivity to -60 on the roll axis, as previously instructed, but -40 on the pitch axis. I know in the guide in the first lesson it says roll -60, rudder -60, pitch at default, but for me -40 seems to work better. Not sure why. I have the xpc yoke if that makes any difference? My pedals are the Charlie rudder pedals, and I set them -60 as instructed and they seem ok like that.
I didnāt touch weather or turbulence settings yet (a lot of people online seem to say that, for GA, āRealisticā turbulence is too high, and to set it to medium or lowā¦but the first lesson said that Realistic is the correct setting, so Iāll try and stick with it). I was flying out of Liverpool, and itās quite a hot day in the UK today, with clear skies, not much breeze (although Iām nearer London in real life, not Liverpool, but it seems like weather is unbearably hot everywhere in the UK right now)ā¦so maybe that helped???
Anyway, I was only in the sim for about 15-20 minutes, but I did manage to take off in a fairly straight line, trim for level flight at 2000 feet, and perform around 3 or 4 30 degree turns in both directions without losing or gaining too much altitude.
I tried to do as you said and ignore the instruments to some extent, only glancing at them occasionally, and instead focus on the sight out of the front of the windscreen. I tried to make sure that the distance between the plane front and the horizon was kept the same during level flight, and focus on the distance from the nose of the plane and the horizon during the turns too, and that did seem to help me maintain altitude without really having to look at the numbers.
After the 15 minutes or so in the air, I was at 2100 feetā¦so not too bad considering I was not really watching the numbers, just looking at the front of the plane and the horizon.
I didnāt want to push my luck, or try more turns, end up failing and feel bad againā¦so I decide to just land and call it a day. I did rush the landing, definitely came in way to high, with way too much speed considering my flaps configurationā¦but I still managed to not tip the plane and only bounced once.
Compared to all my previous attempts this year, I will call this a small win.
My plan is to just repeat this process maybe every other day or so (so that Iām not over doing it or trying to FORCE myself, causing me to fail through anxiety) until I feel completely comfortable making level flight and turnsā¦then to try and repeat the lesson to get a result Iām happy with.
On my first attempt at the lesson, I managed to somehow get 100%, but I think it just takes you best score, and I must have done 1 perfect turn, but about 3 or 4 awful ones. I am no9t happy with that, Iād like to have all turns at least above 75% and at least 100% for one turn in each direction.
When I do retake the lesson, will it update my scores for each turn? If Iām unable to get a 100% turn at all, will my overall score be reduced from what it is now?
Either way Iād like to retake it when I feel ready.
For now though, Iām not sure if it was the graphics setting making it smoother, the sensitivity settings making it feel more natural, the fact that I was focusing on the horizon more than the instruments, or just the fact that I took more than 2 weeks awayā¦or maybe a combination of all of thisā¦but it seems to feel much better today than it has all year.
So Iāll end today on this high note and try again in a day or two. Fingers crossed.
Thank you for the feedback. It sounds like you are making great progress.
Cheers
Ian
felt confident enough to retake the lesson, and managed to still get 1 turn with 100% and most other turns above 80% (1 turn was only 61% because I let the alt change by just over 100 feet).
Not perfect, but Iām much happier with this result.
Trying to move on to lesson 4, but boy is that tricky. So much to take in and so many different visuals to try and remember.
I think Iām going to have to just take each stage one at a time in free flight and practise loads until Iām ready. I.e. focus on getting steady Vy climb, then maintaining that with turnsā¦do that over and over until I have it. Then to the same for each type of descent.
Iāve been trying throughout the day to do all 3 stages in lesson 4, as Iām off work today, but struggling pretty hard, especially on power off descents, as itās a real struggle to maintain 68. Feels like on second itās holding, then the next Iām either doing a huge dive, or nearly stalling.
So I think that taking each stage bit by bit in free flight is going to be the better approach, Iāll come to power off descents later.
For now, I think another little break is a good idea though.