I've recently been expanding by horizons by trying my hand at helicopters. Now unlike fixed wing, I know very little about helicopters bar what I've picked up in books on rotary wing physics, and more importantly I've never flown at the controls, or even in a real helicopter, so I'm pretty new to this.

This got me wondering, which of the two major sims has the most realistic flight models for helicopters. Now I own both simulators, so I played about with helicopters in each and had very different experiences.

In x-plane, I noted that the helicopters were rather unstable, and responded very quickly to any control input. This meant that I frequently found myself in a state of hysteresis, as I was constantly chasing the helicopter trying to keep it stable. To some things up, I wasn't very good at it.

FSX on the other hand, is a totally different beast. It seemed almost slower. The helicopters were more stable (but not to the point where you can let go of the controls and it'll fly itself), and control inputs were less erratic, meaning I could fly in a much smoother manner. With a little practice, I could hold a hover, fly around and even land more or less where I wanted to.

So both models, whilst feeling very different, still make sense and are believable, but one has to be more realistic then the other. I'm inclined to think it's probably x-plane, although difficulty doesn't necessarily correlate with realism. Are there any helicopter pilots (or people with actual hands on experience) out there that could shed any light on this?

I'm should note that I'm flying stock helicopters from both sims. If there are any third party addons (I've been eyeing the Huey X) that improve helicopter flying, or maybe a different sim altogether, I'd be happy to here about them.

This is exactly how a heli behaves. I just startet my PPL-H training a few weeks back. So I have little heli experience IRL, though I have it. In my eyes X-Plane is the winner.

Stock FSX helicopter FM is absolutely worse. If you want to fly helis with FSX you should have a look at Dodosim. AFAIK, they do the calculations for FM external and feed it back into FSX.

My personal preference is to fly the Ka-50 in DCS:BS. In my eyes it have the complete experience. Great flight model, realistic start-up procedures; cascading system effects, awesome damage model, clickable cockpit.

And there will be Take on Helicopters(still in development). A dedicated helicopter game based on the engine used for the Arma series.

@EagleEye, I figured that would be the answer. It looks like I'll have to keep on practicing in X-plane then. I'm sure I'll crack it at some point.

I picked up DCS Black Shark a while back, and I enjoyed the flight model in that. I found all the systems a little daunting though, so didn't put that much time behind it. Also, the Black Shark didn't really excite me that much. I would prefer a military helicopter sim in something like a Black Hawk, shuffling troops around, rather then just flying a dedicated gunship.

Which I guess is where Take On Helicopters comes in. I read the preview on rock paper shotgun, and it sounds a lot of fun.

I'll certainly check out those Dodosim Helicopters though, and see how I get along with them.

FSX helicopters are not as good as XPlane ones. If you want use FSX you can use Dodosim Bell 206 or external flight engine - HTR (Helicopter Total Realism) available at www.hovercontrol.com

I like X-Plane better for helo physics. They aren't perfect..but they are better than FSX. As EagleEye said - you might check out the Dodosim stuff though for FSX..I haven't tried it, but I've heard it is good bit better than stock modeling.

For X-Plane - you have some good choices included the MBB / Kawasaki BK 117. You can read the review on that here: http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_438a.html

I find that the only way that I can fly helicopters in FSX, is to turn off crashes. I can't get them down get them down easy enough to prevent the chopper from blowing up. Seems like the slightest touch..and that's it!
Cheating, I guess, but only way it workss for me.

I picked up the Dodosim 206 over the weekend. While the model isn't the prettiest (I've been spoiled by the likes of Carenado and A2A), the flight dynamics are certainly more entertaining. I've just got Tileproxy up and running as well, so I've been having a blast exploring with it.

That x-plane video is in a totally different league though, it looks amazing. I'll definitely have to dig x-plane out again for that, and maybe splash out for some fancy scenery too.

Another vote for X-Plane. No one has ever really managed to do helicopters right yet, but X-Plane is probably the best of the lot.

And with the right aircraft and maybe some tweaks, FSX does OK.

Helicopter Total Realism (HTR) over at Hovercontrol is interesting, but I haven't made up my mind as to if it's the cure all for every aircraft.

A very nicely done freeware helicopter for FSX is the Hovercontrol Bell 412 by Jordan Moore. It's available over at Hovercontrol of course, in the downloads section with the file name "Hovercontrol_412_PE_v1_FSX.exe". There are also HTR files for it.

Real22v10.zip is out there too, I probably got it from Simviation, and it improves the default R22 considerably.

There's a freeware natural head movement utility over at Simviation that makes things feel somewhat more "real" as well.

Cheers!

Rick...