How to fly the chopper with the keyboard

To circle strafe with a helicopter in any game you have to understand some things about helicopter controls.

There are three main controls, the cyclic, the collective, and the pedals.

• The cyclic tilts the helicopter to the right, left, forward, and backward. (Like leaning in a direction.)
• The collective makes the helicopter go up and down. (Like climbing or squatting)
• The pedals rotate\turn the helicopter to the right or left. (like turning your head)

To circle strafe (or orbit while facing the target) you will need to tilt the helicopter to the right with the cyclic, while using the pedals to keep the helicopter pointed at what your circling.

To orbit to the right you would tilt the cyclic right, while turning the pedals left. In human terms, you walk leaning to the right(cyclic), and then keep your torso turned to toward what you are circling (pedals).

I'll try to translate to controller controls later.

Update for Comments: If the bird just spins like a top and falls to the ground then you are using to much pedal, and need to tap it less often. More likely you are loosing altitude as you strafe pointing at the target. This is normal helicopter behavior; I'll explain.

When a helicopter tilts in a direction, some of the force used to lift the helicopter is taken away to be used to shift the helicopter. This means you also have to increase the collective, or make the helicopter go slightly up while you execute the maneuver.

In most games there is a balance point of strafe and lift. This means you tilt(cyclic) the bird enough that full throttle (collective) keeps you at the same altitude. After that it's just a matter of rotating the bird (pedals) to keep it pointed where you want it.

Sorry, I haven't been able to translate to xbox controls yet.

This is a hardware limitation of your keyboard. Unfortunately, the only solution is that you must purchase a better keyboard that does not have this limitation.

To be more specific:

In order to save money, keyboard manufacturers often put many keys on the same "circuit" of sorts within the wiring of the keyboard. This prevents multiple keys in the same region of the keyboard from being pressed simultaneously. Sometimes it even prevents more than 2 keys at all from across the whole keyboard being pressed at once. Often the shift, ctrl, and alt keys are not within this limitation, so you can hold shift and press 2 other keys at once and it will still work fine.

Even high-end gaming keyboards often have a similar hardware limitation, although the cap is much higher so that it is unlikely to be reached during the normal course of gaming.