Do you actually harvest with your combine yourself or do you hire a worker?

[Oceansize]

Occasionally I want to do my own harvesting, but I find it impossible to drive the combine in a straight line at harvest time when all the lines in the soil are obscured. So I always just end up hiring a worker. With all the other stages of arable farming I do not have this problem because there are always lines in the soil to follow. But not after the crop is fully grown.

Do any of you harvest yourself and what is your technique for keeping things straight? Finding a reference point off on the horizon and driving towards that just doesn't work well enough for me. Anybody got good pointers? Edit: I use cockpit view exclusively because TrackIR

TIA!

[ttower]

I turn the camera to the side a litte, so I can see down the edge of the field, where I have already cut. Basically, the very edge of the Header is directly in the center of my screen. I can then keep the edge of the header moving along in a (mostly) straight line.

Also, you can use the crop "chunks". When you are cutting, the harvester will take sections of the crop, not exactly where you are. If you watch carefully, you can see that the crop sections are getting to close or to far away from the cutting balde, and adjust accordingly.

[DrtyDiesel]

I usually hire a worker while i run a chaser bin between the harvester a truck waiting to take the grain to a silo.

[Oceansize]

Edit: I wrote this in response to a question that has since been deleted.

If a field is not perfectly level (and none of them are), you must make micro-adjustments to your steering to make sure you are driving in a perfectly straight line.

Normally, I do this by putting one of my tires in a groove in the soil and then make sure it stays in that groove as I drive down the field. But you can only see the groove if the crop hasn't grown yet. So when you're harvesting in a combine, this technique doesn't work. For some crops with very wide rows (such as potatoes) it's a lot easier, but for wavy grain like wheat barley and oat, it is very difficult to discern any straight lines on the field to follow as you're driving.

I assume most people try to keep their combine in a straight line by looking over at the edge of the header and making sure it follows the edge of the field, but I dunno, this just doesn't work well for me. With combines' turning wheels being at the rear instead of the front, you can get off track very quickly and easily, making for very ugly edges.

So I'm trying to find out if anybody has a better technique for harvesting in nice neat straight lines.

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by ttower:

I turn the camera to the side a litte, so I can see down the edge of the field, where I have already cut. Basically, the very edge of the Header is directly in the center of my screen. I can then keep the edge of the header moving along in a (mostly) straight line.

Also, you can use the crop "chunks". When you are cutting, the harvester will take sections of the crop, not exactly where you are. If you watch carefully, you can see that the crop sections are getting to close or to far away from the cutting balde, and adjust accordingly.

This is exactly how I used to do it when I was playing FS15. I'm an immersion junkie however so I've been playing from the cockpit using TrackIR now that FS has TrackIR support. I'm trying my hardest to stay within the cockpit view. TrackIR is great for the other stages because you can actually lean over and see precisely where you're placing your front tire.

[zencc2011]

hire worker if you dont have gps mod, drive straight will kill your finger on keyboard

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by zencc2011:

hire worker if you dont have gps mod, drive straight will kill your finger on keyboard

G27 here

[Enorats]

In FS17 I used workers for everything. I just drove the delivery trucks myself. Here though, their AI just seems horrible. I suspect it's more a matter of the map itself though, as they're getting caught on every little bump in the road, and the hillsides (er, cliffs) that are entirely too close to either end of my fields.

Driving myself isn't much better though either. I combined two of the smaller starter fields into one big field, and sold off all the farm buildings to make room for an even larger overall field. Now I've got a small bump in a couple locations in the middle of the field and my harvester literally cannot go up and down it because the header gets caught on it. My small starter harvester can manage alright because it's just a couple spots, but the big one I prefer to use (obviously) ends up running aground in dozens of spots all over. Not sure who playtested this game X_X

Even my unmodified starter field is unnavigable to my larger harvester. It's beyond frustrating.

[Oceansize]

Originally posted by Enorats:

In FS17 I used workers for everything. I just drove the delivery trucks myself. Here though, their AI just seems horrible. I suspect it's more a matter of the map itself though, as they're getting caught on every little bump in the road, and the hillsides (er, cliffs) that are entirely too close to either end of my fields.

Driving myself isn't much better though either. I combined two of the smaller starter fields into one big field, and sold off all the farm buildings to make room for an even larger overall field. Now I've got a small bump in a couple locations in the middle of the field and my harvester literally cannot go up and down it because the header gets caught on it. My small starter harvester can manage alright because it's just a couple spots, but the big one I prefer to use (obviously) ends up running aground in dozens of spots all over. Not sure who playtested this game X_X

Even my unmodified starter field is unnavigable to my larger harvester. It's beyond frustrating.

Funny, I'm sitting here thinking the AI is much improved in FS19 when it comes to finding room to turn around at the ends. Sometimes they seem to do it in very bizarre ways, but UNlike the previous FS games, I'm never finding out the hard way that they've been up against a tree for the last hour. I'm very happy about that.

[Enorats]

Mine are stopping in the middle of fields, randomly plowing through (and destroying) crops, getting stuck on cliffsides, and generally just making a mess of everything.. and that's just with the easily driven starter stuff. I honestly haven't even let the AI drive my bigger vehicles aside from the harvester, which it promptly got stuck.

To be fair, I get the harvester stuck on everything too, thanks to the darn terrain issues. End up having to spam "V" to lift and lower my header rapidly or the harvester won't move.

[ZENTRIERER]

Simple to drive a clean straight line, use the compass when steering...

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by Enorats:

Mine are stopping in the middle of fields, randomly plowing through (and destroying) crops, getting stuck on cliffsides, and generally just making a mess of everything.. and that's just with the easily driven starter stuff. I honestly haven't even let the AI drive my bigger vehicles aside from the harvester, which it promptly got stuck.

To be fair, I get the harvester stuck on everything too, thanks to the darn terrain issues. End up having to spam "V" to lift and lower my header rapidly or the harvester won't move.

Can I ask, is this on multiplayer?

I have literally harvested 100s of tonnes without a single issue using helpers and a mix of big and small harvesters. Zero issues. There must be some commonality here somewhere between you guys getting all these issues.

[TangOscar]

I use the information in the bottom right corner of the minimap. Most fields builded straight, a few in 45 degrees. All I do is, alighn myself and keep my alignment (most of th etime 360°/0° or 180°.
I don't look at anything else during sowing/harvesting/fertilizing/... .
The rest ist Micro adjustment, like Oceansize mentioned (correction of 0.2°)

[Purno]

Keeping straight isn't a huge problem when you use the camera view outside the vehicle. I do however use AI to operate harvesters so I can drive the tipper between harvester & silo.

[Ydyp]

I did use workers at first when I ran my harvest to the silos or selling points, though after seeing how much they ask 1200+ per hour (in real time) I stopped using them. Man wish I was paid that much in real life ;)

Originally posted by Purno:

Keeping straight isn't a huge problem when you use the camera view outside the vehicle. I do however use AI to operate harvesters so I can drive the tipper between harvester & silo.

For some jobs and especialy with tractors I have a bigger successrate to go straight in cabin then outside, though I use a steering wheel which helps tremendously to do microadjustments on the fly without the fear of overcorrecting. With wide combines I do still use 3rd person camera for some crops, for corn, sunvlowers and cotton for instance I still will do in cab view.

[Jagz]

Hire a worker for a few seconds , This will put the vehicle straight ,then cancell him take control and just use cruise controll to and dont turn ,this should (should in brackets) keep the vehicle and lines straight