If you've been looking for a non-boring way to train your FPV flying, you've found it. Firehawk makes it extremely easy to put heavy hours of "stick time" in the sim. I'm an active FPV pilot with hundreds of real flight hours and I've been looking for quite some time for a simulator that offers what some call "arcade fun" or actually any kind of objective-based gameplay that is not boring or tedious. I wanted something that will allow me to take my mind off flying, while flying. Something, that will give the flying a purpose. How many times are you going to fly a race, or a "freestyle" obstacle course in DRL Simulator, Liftoff, Uncrashed, Flowstate, FPV.SkyDive? How long can you play the battleground sims like FPV KamikazeDrone or FPV Battleground, where taking your quad to a target on a basically fields-and-forests map takes often a few minutes of straight line flight, and then you repeat it again, cause the target tank didn't die? For my personally, these experiences never scaled. I can fly them for an hour-two and that's it, because in the end, it's just not that exciting. Firehawk is different. Firehawk gives you an environment, where you will not think too much about flying, as you have other objectives to worry about, and the flying is just a way to achieve a goal, not the goal in and on it's own. This significantly alters your learning experience and allows you to actually reach the state of flow that is necessary to build muscle memory for your piloting. (btw, if you're starting your FPV drone adventure, might want to see the "FlowState: The FPV Drone Documentary" movie, it's free on yt). On top of an actually good simulation of the flight (tuned for the size, thrust and mass of these combat drones here) you also get: - multiple good maps, choke-full of fun locations to fly around, gaps, tunnels, chimneys, valleys - on each map, dozens of missions, anti-ground, anti-air, protection of friendlies, hard targets, targets indoors - during your "run" next map is chosen randomly and set of missions in the map is also chosen randomly - even for the same mission in the same place on the same map, the mission parameters are randomized as well, so for example two of your "defend allied base" missions are never the same - power-ups and pickups, like heals, extra minigun, extra energy, doubling your guns, located randomly, quite often in gaps - a tech tree to progress through, with about a dozen of drones and few dozens of weapons/gadgets for your drone - good weapon variety for different playstyles - easy, medium, and insane difficulty level bosses, spread out randomly throughout the "levels" The above gives you what actually feels like infinite rogue-like replayability. You can try the fire-dropping drone, you can try the fast skirmisher, you can try the slow heavy hitting tank, you can try a hit-scan laser sniper, a corrosive gas drone, or a tech drone with six gadget slots, and then you can use the hulls of the thematic drones together with stuff they were absolutely not designed to work with as well. At first you might be focused on the objectives, shooting the targets, and maybe not dying. They you will start picking up stuff, and not only the stuff that is high in the air, but things on the ground, things in the gaps. You will hide behind chimneys, you will cruise in the valleys to approach an aircraft carrier without beeing seen. And after a while, you will start picking up powerups from inside buildings, and doing loops around bridges just for the hell of it. And after that, when you take your actual FPV drone out for a spin, it will feel like it's a different drone, but that would be wrong. It will be a different pilot. Technical advice: ## If you have just keyboard and mouse - W and S keys will be your throttle/speed buttons, A and D for "strafing", and mouse for looking around, you always fly in the direction you're looking. This is an easy arcade-like experience that feels more like a plane, than a drone. ## If you have a Game Controller - If you don't have a radio controller for drones, Firehawk works ok with a game controller as well. - I do not recommend that you use Arcade Mode with a controller. This mode doesn't feel like actual drone flying at all. It feels like a winged plane that doesn't roll but somehow flies sideways, and whatever muscle memory you build by this, will not be of any use in actual FPV drone flying. Do not do this to yourself. If you have a controller, fly realistic mode instead of this, you will thank me. I guess this mode tries to accommodate people who come from FPS background like COD or BF chopper flying. It kind of copies the mouse/keyboard mode, but left stick is the W,S,A,D keys, and right stick is the mouse. Even if that's you, you'd be better off in realistic mode, honestly. - Use realistic mode, and make sure your left stick is Throttle on vertical (up-down) and Yaw on horizontal (rotation left-right), and the right stick is Pitch (looking up-down) on vertical and Roll ("strafing/banking" left-right) on horizontal. This is known as the "Stick Mode 2" and 99% of real drone radio controllers work this way. - The only problem with the controller is, that for the moment, the auto-fire doesn't work, so you will have to press your trigger buttons to shoot. This makes it difficult to "pinch" the sticks between your thumb and index fingers for precise control and press buttons at the same time. Flying with your thumbs on the other hand, might not allow you the precision of control that pinching allows. I hope the devs will fix this. ## If you have a Radio Controller - It is preferred, if you already have a radio controller, to use that. I use my Radiomaster Boxer and it works perfectly. I have weapons autofire on the side switches, and one of the 3pos switches is for switching the flight modes between 0 and -30degrees, right button for gadget activation, left button for "drone recovery" when I get tangled in a tree or sth. - The game has Flight Mode Switch, you can configure it, so you can switch between two states of camera angle and fov settings. You will have it much easier, if you set one state to be at 0 degrees, and another maybe at -30 degrees. The 0 degree is for hovering and slow maneuvers, and the -30 degree is for fast attack runs and chasing stuff - You can also configure switches for left and right weapon, so you can disable/enable them at will. They do eat energy from the common pool, so disabling one is sometimes beneficial, so the other can cycle for longer. *If you don't have a radio, but want to buy a first radio to start your FPV journey, Radiomaster Pocket ELRS is a very good radio that many serious pilots use. It's small and affordable and will last you for many years. Also buy Firehawk - it's he best way to train FPV :)
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