W, A, S and D. It is your own preference, not a server setting — turn it on and it follows you around.
Turning it on
PressK while sitting in the pilot seat. A message on screen tells you which way you have just switched it, and the badge on the HUD changes.
A second press within 0.3 seconds is ignored, so a fumbled double-press cannot put you straight back where you started.
Your choice is saved to your DayZ profile and stays set between sessions and between servers.
How it steers
Mouse movement is added to what the keyboard is doing, not put in its place.W, A, S and D keep their full strength, and moving the mouse adds to whatever they are already asking for. You can fly on either, or both at once.
The mix is smoothed, so the helicopter follows the mouse rather than snapping to it.
Limits
- Pilot seat only. Passengers and the co-pilot are unaffected
- Paused while free look is on. Free look is you moving the camera, not the aircraft, so the mouse stops steering for as long as it is on and picks up again when you drop it
The HUD badge
The dial cluster carries a mouse / keyboard badge so you never have to guess which you are on:
See HUD & Fuel for the rest of the cluster.
Sensitivity
PressO to open the Settings tab of the Pilot Panel (the key can be changed). From v0.4.7 it opens from any seat in a helicopter or from its cabin — not on foot — and not while you are typing in chat.
The Mouse Flight settings are in its Controls section:
The rest of the tab — HUD units, size and opacity, the damage panel, instrument vibration, dust effects, alert and radar volume and blade slap — is described on the Pilot Panel page. RESET ALL puts everything back, which also switches Mouse Flight off.
Everything here is saved to your DayZ profile straight away, so it follows you between sessions and servers. Nothing in it is sent to the server.
Free look
On servers runningcrew.freeLookAlwaysOn = 1, free look is normally left on for crew. Mouse Flight needs the mouse for steering, so it switches that off — but only for the person actually holding the controls. Passengers and the co-pilot always get the server’s free-look setting, whatever the pilot has Mouse Flight set to.