A cycloidal rotor is a form of propulsion involving spinning horizontal blades on a vertical axis, rather than a horizontal axis like in a helicopter rotor.

Cycloidal rotors have certain advantages over regular propellers.
For example they allow thrust vectoring in any direction parallel to the blades, meaning they can be used for unique forms of VTOL Aircraft.
Cycloidal rotors also have certain advantages in efficiency, being significantly quieter and more efficient than standard rotors, due to the reduced wingtip vortices, whilst also maintaining a constant airspeed over each blade, reducing problems normal helicopter’s experience related to tip Mach.

Due to limitations in Flyout’s input and connection systems, it is not possible to make a mechanical cyclic.
Therefore, I used the precise rotation speeds of joints to sync the individual blades with the whole disc as it travels around a full rotation.

We can create a lifting motion by creating one central joint turning individual blade joints, which rotate in the opposite direction to, and at double the rotation speed of the blade joints.

With this correctly setup, as the blade is totally travelling vertically, it should face directly up, as it is totally travelling sideways, it should be at 45 degrees to the direction of travel, and as it descends it should level out to be flat.

For continuous rotation of your blades, I recommend setting the range to be a ridiculously high number and setting a custom on input with the same range.
The way I setup my joints is to have two central joints, each rotating at 1000 Deg/s, to achieve a total of 2000 Deg/s, and have each rotor joint rotate at 1000 Deg/s in the opposite direction.
On each rotor joint, I set the same input of one of the central joints going in the opposite direction.
Below is a visual explanation of how the system works.

Due to limitations with how Flyout simulates wings, this will not produce scale lift, here are some methods I use to increase lift.

Additional joints:
By Adding additional joints to the centre and individual blades, you can increase lift, however this also increases complexity, weight, and instability of the system, and I wouldn’t recommend doing it.
Wing stacking:
An easier way to achieve additional lift is to stack wings, this comes at the downside of increasing the drag of the aircraft, making it impractical for flying at speed.
wing shape:
Increasing the width and length of the rotors also increases lift, as it increases the amount of air which the blades are pushing down.
Increasing disc radius:
By putting the blades further out from the central joints, you increase the airspeed of the blades, increasing lift.
I recommend making the shape of the blades as symmetrical as possible, since the rotation of the joints means that each blade is travelling backwards every 2nd rotation. As far as I can tell, the direction of the leading edge has no effect on the overall flight characteristics.


Image (Above): Here you can see how the blades move to generate lift in slow-motion. Please note that the green arrow is only an approximate vector of thrust.

Like collective, control can be achieved by vectoring thrust away from the vertical, therefore decreasing the thrust given by the rotors.
There are two ways to get control:

• Equal vectoring.
  This is where you have the collective setup so that it does not vector trust fully upwards at maximum collective. This is done so that the thrust can increase on one rotor, and decrease on the other, creating a force pair which rotates the aircraft about a central axis.

• Asymmetric vectoring.
  This is where you have collective setup so that it can go to full, meaning that you have additional lift, the issue with this is that causes the difference in thrust on two rotors to be equal whilst applying an input, so there is no control. This can be countered by only allowing each control to pitch the blades one specific direction; however, it leads to a decrease in control effectiveness, and lift when applying controls at max collective.
  This is also more complex, as it can require custom inputs with a
  range of 0 to 1 instead of -1 to 1.

Image (Left): Equal vectoring.
Image (Right): Asymmetric vectoring.
(Red arrow represents the aircraft’s aircraft fuselage, green arrow is thrust vector. This is mimicking a quad-arrangement of rotors.)

Thrust vectoring can be achieved through 2 ways:
changing blade orientation.
This method is the most realistic option, and essentially works by adding a rotation input to the individual blade rotors. You can do this by adding an input directly to the blade joints. This changes the phase of the blades, offsetting the direction of thrust. Another downside to this is that, whilst the blades are rotating, the response speed of the controls will be halved.
All the inputs on each blade can be the same per rotor.
rotating the whole assembly.
This option is simpler, as it only requires adding your input to one of the central pivots, therefore requiring less time to set up, and being easier to work on.
Simply by rotating the rotor, you vector the thrust.
Images (Above): Blades vectoring thrust by changing phase in motion and static.

Controlling the collective the traditional way is impossible in flyout, due to the limitations with the game. Therefore, we must control the collective by vectoring the rotors' thrust away from the vertical position.
The downside to this is that it causes the rotors to then vector their thrust forward/backwards, which can create control issues with certain rotor layouts.

Translation is one of the advantages to a Cycloidal rotor, however it can be very complex and difficult to achieve. The reason for this is that when vectoring thrust forwards with rotors offset in a quad Orientation, a pitching motion is also induced.
This Happens because the vector of thrust may not be an equal distance to the vertical position on the rotors when arranged in front of each other, therefore the rotors do not vector their thrust at equal angles.
The only way to counter this adverse pitching effect is to have another counter-rotating rotor aligned on the
same x and y axis.

Video(Right): this is a short video i made demonstrating an early prototype of a design using 8 rotors, with the outer rotors spinning counterclockwise to the inner rotors. This allows for translation without any adverse effects, here i demonstrate now it can hover at any pitch angle. This is No.6 On the below graphic.

It is possible to achieve flight using several rotor layouts, and I encourage you to experiment with it.
Your craft will need at least a minimum of 2 counter-rotating rotors, to counter the reaction torque, however it is easiest to get all axis of rotation with 4 rotors, each arrangement comes with different pros and cons.
Below are some of the arrangements I have personally tested, and some notes on them.
Here are some rotor layouts mentioned in practise:
(Top Left): Quad rotor Layout, No.2 arrangement
(Top Right): X-shaped Rotor layout with 8 Rotors. No.7 arrangement.
(Bottom Left): twin rotor, No.1 arrangement
(Middle Right): a variation of the no.2 Quad rotor, but with the rotors turned 90 degrees to reduce drag and make it more compact.
(Bottom Right): No.5 arrangement.

Overall, this technology is very new to Flyout, and there are most likely plenty of techniques and improvements which could be applied to my designs, and I encourage everyone to experiment with it.

I plan on updating this guide if any updates or corrections need to be added.

My Demo aircraft is available on the official discord, in [aircraft sharing - 07Lee's various 'Aircraft'] if you would like to test the rotors yourself, or use it as a base for your own aircraft, and my translating-capable Cyclocopter build featured is available in the same thread If you want to have a more in-depth look at how they work. Feel free to use my aircraft as a base to make your own, if you credit me.

Special thanks to David, who helped me to test and experiment with the design, coming up with many useful ideas and improvements to the original, and helped with designing the graphics used in this guide.
Please see his featured steampunk Cyclocopter design on the official discord, in aircraft sharing - Davids hangar, which featured in some of the images in this guide.

My Google Doc version of this guide is accesible Here[docs.google.com]