Tutorial 12 Times

We have 12 tutorial missions in FSX. The last 4 are helicopter tutorials and the last one is really difficult. You fly through a series of gates which are up a hillside ravine at tree top level, then down a cliff face. After that you land on a moving yacht's helipad (and the yacht captain isn't particularly helpful with the landing).

So anyway, I have always flown it from spot view simply because it's much easier, and I've gotten some well intended flak for designing the course to have such poor visibility when in the cockpit. So I flew it from the VC when one of my co-workers (whom is a very good sim helicopter pilot) was having some difficulty getting it done in the VC. Instead of completing the course in 1 minute and 51 seconds (my fastest in spot view), I did it from the VC in 10 minutes and 10 seconds! I was proud of myself for just completing it in one try.

Well Steve just sent me an e-mail gloating that he did it in 2 minutes 26.3 seconds! That is insanely fast from the VC and he must have been practicing a lot. I've said to various people (and the narrator says this during the tutorial), that if you can complete tutorial 12, you should be able to fly any mission (or free flight scenario) in a helicopter. I really think is true. The only important thing missing from the helicopter tutorials (that I know of) is autorotations. I wanted to get it in there, but the helicopter tutorials were a bit late in the dev cycle. But, there are some opportunities to make an autorotation in at least one mission...