Look , all I know is that a friend I see every few months has a helicopter that has a control mode that does the following 1 . Maintains mostly fixed position in space with a slow drift in any orientation . 2 . Uses one stick to translate the helicopter in a coordinate system anchored to the ground . Stick frontback motion moves the helicopter northsouth . Stick sideways motion moves the helicopter eastwest . Twisting the stick moves it up down . All of this happens independently of where the helicopter is pointing at the time , and it works consistently . 3 . Uses another stick to change the helicopter ' s orientation . Stick twist rotates around the vertical axis , leftright deflection rotates along the northsouth axis , frontback rotates around the eastwest axis . That ' s all . Flying that thing in that mode is literally like flying in Minecraft , and it looks kinda unreal . Due to limitations of the helicopter itself , in some combinations of orientations and translations , the entire helicopter might be rotating around the rotor or around some other axis to generate an additional drag force needed to balance out the main andor tail rotor torque . But the controls still work . The reason it ' s unreal is that you can pull tricks that otherwise would take lots and lots of practice . E . g . you can make the helicopter spin around its rotor axis , and push the translation stick forward and it will gladly translate north along a relatively straight line . Using normal controls I imagine you would have to counterrotate the control stick in a circular motion synchronous with the rotation of the helicopter itself , and make sure that you don ' t exceed the limits of your model . If you fly models you can probably imagine how hard it would be to go through a small opening while the helicopter is tumbling rotating around all 3 groundreferenced axes at the same time . It ' d be hard to just nail the opening , much less maintain a desired flight path . Yet it was quite a trivial thing to pull off for someone like myself who would probably crash a heli with classical controls in under a minute . Push and twist the orientation stick to make it tumble , then use the translation stick to navigate through the opening . I don ' t know how much training it would require using traditional controls , but sure as heck a onceeveryfewmonths pilot such as myself would not ever pull it off . The additional benefit of the system is that it automatically compensates for wind gusts . You can blow at it using a leaf blower from 6 feet away and it stays in the same position you use the translation stick to compensate any residual drift since it ' s not GPSreferenced . I also believe that there ' s a flight envelope protection so that you won ' t ever fly as fast as to stall the main rotor . Once you go fast enough , the helicopter starts tumbling along the frontback axis , but you ' re still in control it has zero net lift , and still translates along all three axes as needed .