So yeah, it takes a lot of getting used to, like in the real bird except when we crash ours, nobodies’ day gets ruined.
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In the real bird you’ve got the advantage of peripheral vision showing you where your body is. Too many times in VR I’ve recentered my view thinking it was cocked up only to find my head wasn’t on straight for the entire flight; only realizing when checking my body/leg orientation after taking my headset off.
One can look at the sight’s function in 2 basic ways: 1) as a targeting device, 2) as a flight instrument.
To me, it’s first function is to be a reliable flight instrument. If a pilot loses his horizon due to fog, cloud, rain or dust, he needs to immediately know the attitude of his helicopter. In any other machine, he can immediately reference the HUD or attitude indicator. This machine lacks the former and sometimes, except for the standby gyro, the later. So the sight may be all the pilot has in such a pinch. The manufacturer’s solution is the least confusing solution for the disoriented pilot.
I don’t know about you, but occilating +/-10 degrees around any axis is normal helicopter flight in my books 
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Gives us all a bit more sympathy for Nick Cages character in “that movie” doesn’t it? 
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Having the HUD symbology and PNVS image stabilized on the horizon regardless of head position would be the least confusing solution. What we have now is the most confusing solution because there’s zero information on where the actual horizon is unless you look at the SAI (which in DCS drifts all over the place). The “horizon” displayed is effectively wrong when looking certain directions, which would cause the pilot to try and maneuver according to the indicated horizon rather than the actual horizon.
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I hear what you are saying @Clutch. I can only say what works best for me from the perspective of an instrument pilot, not a warfighter. I want that sight to tell me the attitude of the helicopter and nothing more. If the sight AND and horizon ladder AND FLIR image are all roll-stabilized then that instrument is telling me my head roll along with my helicopter roll. The one thing the pilot knows (not the DCS player or VR headset wearer; the pilot) is his head’s axis. Knowing that, any apparent roll in the sight is automatically helicopter roll.
Also, I am not saying this can’t work the way you would prefer. It certainly could. But it would require a much fancier helmet. Maybe something like what’s in a current gen fighter (F-35 say).
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Saw a clip from that movie a few months ago. The graphics were even cheesier than I remembered.
Wheels
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Nope!
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But that’s not how it’s working right now. It’s showing pilot head roll only, independent of aircraft attitude. The only two instruments showing aircraft attitude after this “fix” are the FLT page and SAI. Apparent roll in the sight only equates to aircraft roll when the pilot is facing forward with head perfectly aligned to the aircraft.
I wish Casmo was still around to explain this stuff. When I use the IHADDS I could completely eliminate the horizon line and pitch ladder and it would change absolutely nothing of the IHADDS functionality because their lack of stabilization to the horizon makes them useless as a primary flight instrument.
I might also be getting confused with how all this is being described. From what little I’ve seen on the forums I see terms like “roll-stabilized” and “accounts for/does not account for head roll” which can both be interpreted completely differently from a linguistic perspective because they’re incomplete statements: both are premises lacking explicitly stated conclusions. Not having technical or aerospace background I default to linguistic interpretations.
If you repeat the same look angle you have in your initial post about the issue above (looking down and your left some), and then roll the AC to the left does the roll line/ 0 pitch line in the PNVS tilt to follow the roll?
Where’s the roll/0-pitch line? I can’t find it marked in Chuck’s Guide.
Sorry, I used the wrong nomenclature, I should have looked it up first. Page 308 and 309, respectively the “Cruise Horizon Line” or the “Transition Horizon Line.”
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Ah I see what you mean. I’ll need to pay more attention to it to be 100% certain, but it rotates with the pilot head roll axis last I noticed. So aircraft roll will be added to/subtracted from the pilot’s head roll. Same with the PNVS image, which is the main issue I have because PNVS is supposed to allow visual flight at night.
Example problem: If I bank the aircraft 30 degrees right, I have to tilt my head 30 degrees left to align the PNVS image with reality. I don’t know about you guys, but my noggin didn’t come issued with an inclinometer.
So I’m clear if you bank 30 degrees right, the PNVS image doesn’t bank at all, or it doesn’t bank to match the pilots visual picture?
If I bank 30 degrees and don’t rotate my head at all, the PNVS image will be rotated 30 degrees relative to actual horizon.
If I’m “wings level” (rotors level? 
) and rotate my head 30 degrees, the PNVS image will be rotated 30 degrees relative to actual horizon.
PNVS image appearance will be the same (30 degrees of tilt) but the cause is different (aircraft bank vs. head “bank”).
If the actual horizon is visible, you’ll see two horizons criss-crossing each other.
In the screenshot I posted a bit back, I’m guessing I have my headset titlted maybe 40-45 degrees. If I maintained that and banked in the same direction 40-45 degrees, the PNVS image would be near perpendicular to actual horizon.
It would probably make more sense if I describe it as being rotated according to the pilot’s head axis relative to the horizon. It’s giving me a bit of a mindf–k thinking about whether it rotates with the aircraft’s roll axis, or if it doesn’t and is instead rotating with the pilot head, which in some cases will follow the aircraft’s roll axis and in other cases won’t.
Okay that does sound problematic, as IRL you’d be banked 30 degrees inside the helo and so the visual picture I would think would matchup between the PNVS and your eyeball (or be pretty close).
That sounds correct, because the camera source that is generating the video image your eye is looking at, hasn’t rotated at all. So tilting you head and the viewscreen you eyeball is seeing isn’t going to cause the image to shift at all since the camera source has no roll ability in that axis anyway.
In either of these cases does the horizon line in the IHADS not match up with the horizon on the PNVS picture? So long as the horizon line is tracking with the horizon on the PNVS that to my understanding sounds correct.
Horizon line does track with PNVS horizon.
Still, the main problem is that nothing in the IHADSS indicates where the actual horizon is.
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As in the literal where the sky meets the ground horizon? I don’t know of anything outside of synthetic vision systems that give you that on an instrument. You normally just get a reference to what is “level” via the aptly named artificial horizon, that doesn’t tell you where the real dirt meets sky horizon is either, just what’s level.
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Yes. That reference doesn’t appear to exist in the IHADSS any more from what I can tell. When the PNVS image stayed level you could at least have a reliable source telling you where the sky and ground where.
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