Hey Guys,

I may have misunderstood this statement in the past... more specifically I may be a late-clicker of sorts, which is funny because if I consider how capable I was of flying before the last few days it seems odd that it was a "pre-click" era of my journey.

So I've seen several blog posts and comments from experienced pilots that say that eventually something just clicks and you get better at flying. I assumed I was past this point because I've been flying around in the air, doing acrobatics, making my way through gates, riskily flying near myself, and in general doing OK with my progress in flying. Along the way I had picked up techniques and developed styles of flying that suited me and learned tricks but there was still an underlying forcing of the movements.

Then recently I watched this video by skitzo about rates. https://goo.gl/G7VKtf and I watched how he moved the sticks to make the motions that he was making. It was an ah-ha moment somewhat, as I knew I could recreate those movements, but I didn't really think much of it until I logged into liftoff and gave it a try. Flying in liftoff was awesome I had learned new a technique that I'd been trying to learn, a sort of flowy feeling. It's not quite flying like skitzo because it's still my own style but it's a more evolved and sequential version of my style.

I was jazzed...

I still hadn't thought of it as "clicking" yet (although reflectively I think this might have been my click moment) but I was definitely motivated to keep up with sim time again. After about an hour of flying all the sudden I knew exactly what I was doing with every stick movement I made.. No forcing just sort of channeled my inner pilot and if I wanted to go direction A then I went direction A... if I wanted to go backwards I went backwards... if I wanted to dive a virtual building I could do so and do it close to that building... The next thing I know I go through my favorite racing course in Lift Off and I shave more than a minute off of previously fastest time... Then more freestyle flying with awesome control that I never had before... (at this point in the story I am about 5-10 more hours in of Sim practice I am so hooked... the equivalent of 100-200 batteries) I give the course another try... zoom zoom! now I shave another minute off my time... I can fly a race full throttle now? when did that happen?

I thought I already had the click... There was a period where I found that I had more control than I had before but it was subtle and for the most part it was really more of a transition over a 1 or two week period. It mostly happened when I put my first build (the bumblebee) in the air. Now I am questioning...

So the questions for you all (and the TLR)

Did you ever feel the "click"?

If you ever felt the mysterious "click" at what point in the journey did it happen for you? early on before you had already developed a certain amount of technique and style or sometime after.

Is this "click" thing all in my mind and I am just really re-finding my joy of practicing in simulators?

Or are there multiple clicks? if so should it be called a ratcheting effect instead? :p

"ratcheting effect" is a good description but then again, sometimes there's days where i don't" feel" the quad at all and just resort to cruising around...

I suspect we have all been where you are and indeed, we're all still there.  My feeling is that you never stop learning and the rate of progress of course varies from person to person (mine is painfully slow).  For me, I've always thought of my progress in plateaus.  I fly and crash over and over again while learning and improving until I kind of stall at a "plateau".  I'll hang there for a while...sometimes even feeling like I've fallen off to the previous one.  Eventually I'll reach the next one though.  You may have felt the "click" but you'll have more then one as you continue to progress and move forward.  Regardless of how fast or slow you progress or how many times you "click"....enjoy the ride, that (for me) is what its all about!

Still waiting for that first "click"...

(12-Aug-2017, 10:06 AM)fftunes Wrote: ...sometimes there's days where i don't" feel" the quad at all and just resort to cruising around...

This is a very good point. There are absolutely days where I feel like I can't manage to fly the way I want to no matter what. Usually though I have something equipment wise that I can blame it on (per my stinky thread)

(12-Aug-2017, 01:51 PM)sirdude Wrote: Regardless of how fast or slow you progress or how many times you "click"....enjoy the ride, that (for me) is what its all about!

I would agree. This hobby for me is an investment in getting back to a more typical lifestyle after a significant bit of changes (I moved from my home town 2 years ago and at first didn't do anything to make friends or go out because I couldn't figure out how it works where I am). Flying has given me technical stuff that I can work on at home as well as an online community to connect with (you guys at IntoFPV) and a new set of friends in the town where I live now. So at it's root, while sometimes I forget, this hobby is really primarily about having a hobby for me... It's done a great job at that! 

(12-Aug-2017, 02:16 PM)sloscotty Wrote: Still waiting for that first "click"...

You can borrow some of my click scotty, I don't mind. :p

(12-Aug-2017, 02:16 PM)sloscotty Wrote: Still waiting for that first "click"...

Somehow, I doubt that......

I have had the H8/E010 toy grade click, which included the LOS 'nose in hover' auto stabilized of course.

After flashing silverxxx FW to the H8 I had a minor acro click before I killed the board. Click Click, BOOM!

I put my E010 board onto a HK 'Wisp' frame with FPV setup which gave me my first FPV click, which was mainly retaining orientation with goggles on, back to self stabilization!

Now with the Tiny7 I have had a proper FPV click, where I used to be jealous of the people I would take for a flight, cos I was better at LOS. Now I feel bad for them cos I can't fly LOS like I can FPV.

I have to say, flying chase is great practice for muscle memory, cos you just have to react to what your chasing, disconnect the thought processes and just let your fingers do the work. Its a bit like playing guitar actually, there is no possible way you can sing the song if you still have to think about what you are playing.

(13-Aug-2017, 05:43 AM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: ...
I have to say, flying chase is great practice for muscle memory, cos you just have to react to what your chasing, disconnect the thought processes and just let your fingers do the work. Its a bit like playing guitar actually, there is no possible way you can sing the song if you still have to think about what you are playing.

That's it... I think you've hit it on the head. The main characteristic change, and this might sound a bit odd because it's opposite of what one might think of a skill that requires muscle memory as clicking in, the ability to think about the movements of the sticks. 

Previously the sort of week long click-like feeling was when the muscle memory aspect of how to fly was greater than my need to consider "left stick increase throttle and yaw left, right stick roll left, then throttle-0 full right stick roll right (a fake-out sort of roll that I've often enjoyed doing) to just doing it naturally without thinking. 

What has changed now is I can be conscious of where I need to position the sticks... not in the individual details of "up, down, left, right" but more like 2 dimensional animated grids of "sticks start here, and flow like this in order to produce that look"... 

Now that I consider the mental change this so-called "click" actually doesn't sound as mystical anymore lol... I have a pretty clear idea of what it is that changed mentally for me that felt so much like a click. 

So for a visual representation of what this would look like mentally (I am a visual pattern thinker... I am not sure this will even make sense to anyone the way I am displaying it but it's what comes to mind... if I was a better graphics guy and had something other than paint on this new computer I might be able to show it a little better)

Half powerloop, half roll at the top to reverse direction before falling back to previous elevation:

I am not sure that a simulator video deserves it's own thread in the video section but I do want to show what this new-found control looks like. One of the things that I'll be really interested in finding out is how much of this translates to real flying. I think that about 75% of it will much like the rest of things I've learned in simulators but who knows it could be less or more.

Please note: I am overdoing a few stylistic elements here... and there is a lot of motion. The stylistic elements will eventually be toned down a bit but excessive amounts of motion are kinda something I do so I doubt that'll be going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully you don't get motion sickness from videos :p

I wanted to pull this topic back up because since originally posting this my flying skills have probably more than doubled.

So my thought on the "click"...

The click is real!

I have indeed experienced the plateaus/ratcheting that were described in some of the great replies... however this point where I had this breakthrough was the catalyst for accelerated growth. There was a big difference between how I learned before and after this experience that I called a "Click"... For example, post-click I was able to fly and complete race courses in Liftoff. Not just the one or two that I had made it through before, but pretty much all of them (with the exception of the parking garage... I still need to go back and see if I would still have problems with that one).

I can say for sure that this period in my journey was definitely "the click"... I've had situations where I made bigger improvements suddenly, and it turns out that the difference wasn't that I had gained new skills, the difference was, all the sudden I had a better awareness over what I was doing.

Now if only I could experience the same with my building I am so tired of having dead quads lol

Nice!

I wish I could translate what I do in the simulator in real life but it just doesn't happen, maybe I'm just too scared I don't know, but I wish I could do at least half the things I do in the sim

for me, I find that I can do many of the same things except some of the proximity. Part of that has to do with the fact that the simulator doesn't have realistic collisions. For example in your video you hit a bush right away... that impact would have at least disoriented the quad in real life, if it didn't knock you down.

As I improve on the simulator I absolutely do improve in the air... I find that I lag a bit in my in-the-air capabilities but not by too much. The big thing, and I think you touched on it, is the difference between flying without concern for crashes or not.

I can fly without concern for crashes in real life as well... but I'll be doing waaaaay more walking...

The way I get around this... is when I fly freeflight in the simulator I spend about 4 parts of my time flying crazy and pushing to learn things... and then 1 part (20%) flying as careful as I would in the air. Practicing in the simulator with the same rules as real life helps.

The other thing that has helped immensely for me... is racing multiplayer... This has helped me develop significantly more control.

oh yeah... and one more thing that I just recently started working on... wearing the goggles on the sim as much as possible. The little differences in eye hand coordination kill me I've recently discovered. So now when I fly in the simulator I try to make sure that I use the goggles to close that gap.