Hi!! Are you planning to add a new setting similar to Anti Gravity/ lightness witch is in other fbl brands?
I think it’s a really good help in micro or mini Helis.
Thanks and congratulations for your work! ??♂️Msh brain fan!
The Antigravity function recently added by a well known brand of control units does nothing more than modify the shape of the pitch curve received from the transmitter by transforming it from a straight line ranging from +100% to -100% into a rounded curve that reduces the pitch movement excursion in the lower part of the curve in order to reduce the collective pitch movements in the area typically used for hovering.
Extremely simple and trivial, also because with most modern transmitters it is possible to draw such a collective pitch curve directly in the transmitter.
This feature is already present since ever and since the first Brain controllers were released ten years ago:
Going to the ADVANCED section, Setup tab, Input under "Pitch Exponential" it is possible to introduce exponential curves for positive (normal flight) and negative collective pitch commands (inverted flight) with three equal or three different values for each of the three different setups. This for all kind of radios also for those where it is not possible to create several rounded pitch curves that can be unlinked by a switch.
Hi Rick, sorry to jump in here. I have no personal interest in this "anti-gravity" function, nor do I think it is a particularly good thing in general for the RC heli hobby as it is a level of "autonomous flight" that could potentially hinder the hobby's efforts to stay separate from increased regulation by aviation authorities etc.....for good reason, it is not permitted in a competition environment at least.
Anyway, with that said, as I understand it pitch expo is not quite the same thing. I cannot speak for what Spirit have done (I'm not convinced it operates the same as Mikado's process from what I've seen) but the Neo's anti-grav function takes into account the position of the heli in relation to horizontal. So, when upright, a positive pitch offset is at a max value, and when inverted, a negative pitch offset is at a max value. When the disc is vertical (knife-edge), there is no pitch offset introduced. So, there is some feedback loop from the accelerometers/gyros somehow, which affects the level of the offset introduced. Just fyi, in case you were considering implementing such a feature for micro helis (I see no point in this for 500+ size helis to be honest).
Just my thoughts.....
The Antigravity function recently added by a well known brand of control units does nothing more than modify the shape of the pitch curve received from the transmitter by transforming it from a straight line ranging from +100% to -100% into a rounded curve that reduces the pitch movement excursion in the lower part of the curve in order to reduce the collective pitch movements in the area typically used for hovering.
Extremely simple and trivial, also because with most modern transmitters it is possible to draw such a collective pitch curve directly in the transmitter.This feature is already present since ever and since the first Brain controllers were released ten years ago:
Going to the ADVANCED section, Setup tab, Input under "Pitch Exponential" it is possible to introduce exponential curves for positive (normal flight) and negative collective pitch commands (inverted flight) with three equal or three different values for each of the three different setups. This for all kind of radios also for those where it is not possible to create several rounded pitch curves that can be unlinked by a switch.
Friend of mines been talking about Anti Gravity and got me interested then reading this I've just finished setting up my Align 470 and will have a spare Bank which I could experiment Pitch Exponential and be interested if anyone has tried it out on the heli.
The Antigravity function recently added by a well known brand of control units does nothing more than modify the shape of the pitch curve received from the transmitter by transforming it from a straight line ranging from +100% to -100% into a rounded curve that reduces the pitch movement excursion in the lower part of the curve in order to reduce the collective pitch movements in the area typically used for hovering.
Anti-gravity featured by well-known brand has nothing to do with simple pitch-expo curve you're writing about.
It uses ground position tracking algorythms (same as auto-level and rescue) to dynamically add positive collective when the helicopter is right side up and negative collective when it's upside-down.
It requires flawless operation of ground-tracking algorythms to work properly
Renaming "pitch exponential" to "anti-gravity" does nothing good but only confuse Brain users.
What you are talking about is not the feeling of lightening of the model obtained by less stick movement needed to increase altitude and more stick movement needed to decrease altitude, but a real automatic pitch.
This would prevent new users from learning proper management and control of collective pitch and even experienced users would gradually lose the ability and skill of proper collective pitch control.
It would turn heli-models into semi-automatic drones and make them lose the taste and pleasure of learning to "tame" their model correctly. There would be no more "taste" of being always aware of the weight of your model and of the earth's gravity and being able to control and counteract it in any attitude the model is in without overloading the power delivered by the motor and therefore without losing RPM.
If this is what the users want nowadays, we take note and since it can be easily implemented we will implement it but we find it really very sad and depressing.
If heli-models will be more and more able to fly autonomously, they will become semi-automatic drones and after a short time everything will become too easy and consequently really boring. There will no longer be any difficulty and the taste of the "challenge with oneself" of being able to control a vehicle that was once so difficult to fly will be lost.
As a consequence, we foresee a rapid loss of interest in heli RC. It will no longer be a difficult hobby, but a child's game that everyone will be able to play.
Competitions will no longer be based on the skill and ability of the pilots, but on the choice of the best components and on the possibility of spending money, and they will become competitions no longer based on skill and ability, but on speed in the execution of maneuvers, and there will no longer be any difference between RC car races and RC heli races.
Having said all these things that are only our personal considerations, we will also implement this feature.
We only hope that after the initial enthusiasm due to the curiosity of the novelty, this feature will be gradually abandoned and no longer used.
Also because in the unfortunate event that the accelerometers stop working in flight or get stuck or malfunction because they are blinded by excessive vibrations, new users may no longer be able to control the collective pitch of the model and it could become a dangerous situation for people and things.
Must admit to begin with this is what I wanted but since reading a post of yours about setting using pitch expo for *Anti Gravity* (minus expo %) and having tried various degrees of expo, have now got just the right amount with my hand management can now do few nice continuous flips/rolls but also a nice difference is with my circuits and piro circuits, but then there's the curiosity now that you've mentioned the above A/G
It would turn heli-models into semi-automatic drones and make them lose the taste and pleasure of learning to "tame" their model correctly.
Well... after FBL "revolution" they already are super easy to fly 😉
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Yes, it's true, it sounds like a real contradiction but it really isn't.
Electronic flight controllers in the end do just what that half kilo of expensive bits and pieces that made up the mechanical flybar mounted on the older, heavier and more expensive models did. Flybars that twisted around the main shafts when dropped and had to be sawed off in order to disassemble and replace them.
But flight controllers do it much more accurately and much better because they can do it faster (or slower) and to change the flight characteristics it is no longer necessary to disassemble the flybar to mount a longer or shorter one, nor is it necessary to change the paddles by mounting different types larger or smaller and/or with different aerodynamic efficiencies, nor is it necessary to add or remove weights, nor is it necessary to move the uniballs on the flybar mixers or to change the blades by mounting faster or slower types of blades.
Nowadays with flight controllers you only need to move a switch or turn a potentiometer to get the same things immediately and you can do it while you are flying.
Even the tail gyros do nothing more than what was done with the "revo mix" of the transmitters. Only the Heading Hold function introduced something more than what was there before and simplified the piloting.
However, the difficulty and skill required to fly RC helicopters has not changed much.
On the contrary, it has become more complicated due to the greater power of today's electric motors that allow you to maneuver much faster than before and require much faster reflexes.
Also Rescue functions do not change the method of piloting, they only serve to try to reduce damage cost and repair time when you are losing orientation and control of the model. They are not used during flight.
Instead the functions of "Semiautomatic Pitch control" (more correct term than "Lightening" or "Antigravity"), "Automatic return to home", "Automatic Hard deck", etc. are very different things that slowly tend to transform RC heli into semiautomatic and then automatic drones where the skill of the pilot will be less and less relevant.
These are just considerations made by taking note of what new users want.
Completely agree, and I don't like the direction things are going to be honest - more and more autonomous flight functionality, leave that stuff to the quads!
Must admit to begin with this is what I wanted but since reading a post of yours about setting using pitch expo for *Anti Gravity* (minus expo %) and having tried various degrees of expo, have now got just the right amount with my hand management can now do few nice continuous flips/rolls but also a nice difference is with my circuits and piro circuits, but then there's the curiosity now that you've mentioned the above A/G
After reading this from another thread on here,
(BrainDev, Yes, I apologize for not being clear from the start, to get less stick movement to make the model go up and more stick movement to make it go down, the values must be negative.
Try -15% / -20% / -25%.
There is no absolute value that fits all pilots and all models.
It depends on the weight of the model, the RPM used, the type of blades used, the maximum collective pitch value set, etc.
But it also depends on the personal taste of the pilot.)
What I forgot to mention in my earlier post, with using pitch expo on it's own seemed okay but felt it lacked something even though I ended up with 27% minus expo which feels about right for me now, I then started using bit of pitch pump numbers and as I slowly increased so did the feel for centre of gravity, I can only assume when poss/neg stick inputs used gives little added collective to help maintain continuous flip/rolls.
"Renaming "pitch exponential" to "anti-gravity" does nothing good but only confuse Brain users." Count me as confused.
I had the Brain on 2 helicopters, and don't remember anti-gravity(last time I needed to revise any settings on them was years ago), but installing the Brain on my new 3rd heli showed the revised field name as "Pitch Exponential(Lightening)". My understanding(or misunderstanding) from the above is that can be used to reproduce the effects of adding positive or negative expo to the pitch curve on my radio around center stick. I'm not sure I understand why this is called "Lightening". Unless perhaps you set this expo to make the pitch curve more sensitive around center, in which case smaller (collective)stick movements are required by me to fly the same way. I suppose that might make me feel the helicopter is lighter around center stick. If this is correct, then it would also require smaller collective movements to fly tic tocs.
Was this the thinking behind renaming it "Pitch Exponential(Lightening)"?
I'm not asking to be pedantic. I just want to understand. I had never played with this setting in the Brain, but this discussion has piqued my interest.
The name wasn't changed from “pitch exponential” to “anti-gravity”; the "note" (lightening) was simply added in parentheses.
As you can see, this thread was started a full five years ago, and your post is the first and only one to appear in the last five years.
As you well know (we were all beginners at first), beginners tend to make excessive stick movements at the start and consequently give excessive commands, risking rapid loss of altitude for the model.
Introducing a negative exponential in pitch reduces the control amplitude by 50% toward the center of the stick, and even if beginners move the pitch stick a lot while hovering their models, the amplitude of the control will be attenuated, and the model will lose little altitude—and this is the meaning we intended to convey with “Lightning”: Excessive downward pitch stick movements cause the model to lose altitude less and more slowly compared to a pitch curve without exponential, giving a sensation of greater “floating” and less “weight” to the model.
This, however, does not compromise the ability to “save” the model from a crash by applying 100% control to stop the model from a rapid descent and quickly move it away from the ground.
Those who are already skilled at flying will not use the exponential for the pitch curve and will leave the value at zero, which is the default setting for new ESCs and/or after a “Reset to Factory Default” command.
All of this applies to those who, from the very beginning, use collective pitch curves of -100% / +100% with 0% at the center, so they can get used to this type of control right away and acquire and memorize the reflexes they’ll need when they start performing their first aerobatic maneuvers.
However, this does not apply to those who fly scale models, will never perform aerobatics, and use asymmetric or specialized collective pitch curves.
I would like to point out, for those who may not have noticed, that with many radio systems it is possible to add an exponential to the elevator and aileron curves, but there is NO option to add an exponential to the collective pitch curve as well.
Another point related to this topic that is worth mentioning here and now is that some radio systems, like ours, use negative exponential values to indicate a decrease and reduction in control input around the stick center, while other radio systems use positive values to indicate an increase in the exponential effect of the controls around the stick center.
Yes, sorry to resurrect an old thread. When I have questions about a product, I usually try to approach the product designer or company, instead of 3rd party sites. Those sites often give misleading information. In this case, I found the thread I was looking for, and was simply trying to learn additional information, instead of starting a new thread.
Thank you for explaining the Lightening name revision. That is what I suspected. For your information, I have never flown with expo on the pitch curve(or the equivalent shape in the pitch curve, since, as you correctly point out, pitch expo is generally not available on most radios), for all those reasons you cite. I don't intend to start now, especially now that I understand what this parameter does.
Part of my confusion between Lightening(which shows up in the set up software) and anti-gravity is that the latter term now appears in the newer mtr files(but not my older older files). That is what initially lead me to this specific thread. But I'm not longer confused. Thank you for your time.