One MUST wait for the full whup whup affect, about 30 seconds after taking the pilot seat with the pilot kit. Apparently the good chopper pilots use a joystick, and PR veterans have given up on keyboard flying of choppers ever working.
My issues are with trying to use keyboard alone or keyboard with mouse to fly choppers. It is impractical to try flying them with the keyboard alone because the Arrow keys randomly fail to consistently control as the Manual describes. This should easily be testable by developers. Maybe they need to take an average keystroke out of the input stream every 0.2 seconds, or maybe the sampling rate needs to differ by control axis or airspeed.
With WASD and the mouse it is possible to fly them some times, though not very well. Perhaps every third try I can drop a supply crate on Jabal Al Burj atop the hill just east of the bridge, which I do for solitaire practice.
There are more random controllability problems with the keyboard but the worst with or without the mouse is:
Upon liftoff they often roll uncontrollably to the right (clockwise). This is not very predictable but does happen about every third or fourth liftoff, often enough that developers should be able to find the problem and eliminate it. I am using a USB mouse.
I believe choppers have been virtually impossible to fly in these same ways since about 0.7 several years ago, when I last played PR before 1.3.
Either there should be an obvious list of known issues on this website, or the PR Manual should so advise players if this will remain true.
By the way, THANKS for a great game!
Regards,
Mac
