My first impressions, not so good.

[Colasanto 10]

For once, I was hoping to get a game that just played nicely and just 'worked'

My first BI game, and where I really wanted to praise and give good feedback, I just can't.

My issues:

Saitek X52 Pro Mapping in your 'schemes' had got the throttle the WRONG way around, Had to manually change this. I actually laughed at the stupidity of such a mistake.

Opening steam overlay causes the UI features to flash, eehk.

It seems in career mode you FORCE people to take the horrible and self-testing enduring training missions. I do NOT need these training missions at all, every time i try to advance my career it takes me straight back to the 'training selection page' - The auto rotation 'introduction' just sits and hovers the helicopter over the water and red/white checked 'landing' area, hell is that about?

Ground textures are really bad, it's like FSX on ultra low settings. I don't get fps issues, 30-40fps with my settings and view distance at 7k with textures on very high. It just looks bad. The helicopters themselves look quite pleasing, however you alienate this with the hindering camera views, you can't do much in the way of camera. Maybe i'm used to ezdok in FSX, so everything else seems sub par.

This is just a first impressions, I'm yet to actually play any proper career missions as it seems the game wants to hold my hand through training missions, which either break or I do not want to do. Most of the above is constructive criticism. The game isn't "crap" as other people may put it, it just needs some extra care and attention.

I hope to come back with more positive views and experience enjoyment from this game in the future after I've played it a bit more.

[DnA 5028]

Hi and welcome :)

Saitek X52 Pro Mapping in your 'schemes' had got the throttle the WRONG way around, Had to manually change this. I actually laughed at the stupidity of such a mistake.

I'd like to laugh with you, but we consider this to be correct for helicopters. The throttle is used as collective and pulling that towards you (raising it) is what's being simulated. The main issue is that the X52 Pro throttle is an airplane throttle. If you'd like it to be the other way around, you're welcome to swap the axis, as you've pointed out ;)

It seems in career mode you FORCE people to take the horrible and self-testing enduring training missions.

You are not forced to take on the training scenarios. Feel free to skip them entirely and start the first real Career contract. At any point when you do want to start a training scenario they are available at the Heliport, or from the separate Training section of the game.

[royaltyinexile 175]

It seems in career mode you FORCE people to take the horrible and self-testing enduring training missions.

The career mode is specifically designed so you can elect to take on tutorials if you wish, and avoid them if you do not. We don't enforce tutorials. Information about the heliport can be found in the manual, in the map menu, and tasks.

it's like FSX on ultra low settings

The ground textures are not the same as Arma 2 fidelity, but if you're genuinely experiencing 'worse than FSX', please consider reading this post, which tries to help explain the video options in a little more detail.

Best,

RiE

Edit: I should always refresh the page before replying; ninja'd by DnA ;)

Edit 2: Damn links.

Edited October 29, 2011 by RoyaltyinExile

[froggyluv 2130]

That link doesnt work ^^^

[Colasanto 10]

Hi and welcome :)

I'd like to laugh with you, but we consider this to be correct for helicopters. The throttle is used as collective and pulling that towards you (raising it) is what's being simulated. The main issue is that the X52 Pro throttle is an airplane throttle. If you'd like it to be the other way around, you're welcome to swap the axis, as you've pointed out ;)

Thanks for the welcome! - Yeah, I can see where you're coming from with that and I totally understand. So not a stupid mistake, so I apologise for that. However, with helicopters, 'throttle' would be up and down movements, where as x52 pro as you said, is like a planes throttle, forward and backwards. I think it'd make sense for the x52 to function as I've remapped it. Just my personal opinion on it though.

You are not forced to take on the training scenarios. Feel free to skip them entirely and start the first real Career contract. At any point when you do want to start a training scenario they are available at the Heliport, or from the separate Training section of the game.

This was tricky to get around, though. I did go through a couple of the training missions, such as sling loads as thats new to me in this sim, I also took the lift off, landing ones to get used to how this sim works. Once I did those, I didn't want to endure the others ones, Now when selecting the next career mission, it took me back to my last training task. To get around this i had to revert all the training I did. So not so obvious to get into the career mode when only doing so many training missions.

The ground textures are not the same as Arma 2 fidelity, but if you're genuinely experiencing 'worse than FSX', please consider reading this post, which tries to help explain the video options in a little more detail.

Like I said, this is my first BI game, I've never brought a game from you guys before, but I'm very interested in civilian sims. (Big FSX fan with 1000s of dollars worth of addons). I've configured the settings to allow me 30-40fps in game, usually sticks at 38fps actually and it does look very nice, especially the helicopters. Just some textures in general look a bit, meh. However I'm comparing this to my FSX setup, which is totally unfair so I'll give you that.

--

To elaborate from this now, played my first proper mission with William Hayden, which I think is a great character so far. He has the professional with a hint of subtle rudeness type of personality, which I find amusing and fun. I enjoyed the flight, how the heli handles and how the game handles the physics and aerodynamics. It is quite impressive, there is a few niggles with it, but nothing too bad to mention at this stage, Will need more evaluation.

One problem I did have in this mission, was once I landed at haydens compound, hit the engine switch down. I then followed by exiting the heli, this left the heli in a limbo of half state engine and wasn't able to progress further, forcing me to revert to a last auto save and land again. You should stop people from exiting during this process, or let the pilot continue the process once he steps back inside the heli.

On the note of autosaves, during the first mission, I think i recall 4 autosaves; Temporarily halting my flight and experience, it totally ruins the immersion and can even cause temp instability of the helicopter once it continues due to being taken out of focus and your flight stick changing during that time. This is very bad and my first most major concern, it needs to be fixed. Allow auto saving in the background by default.

[Macadam Cow 1]

lol,

ArmA newcomers = "BIS, your game is too hard, nothing is explained to me, we need more tutorials ! It's too realistic !"

ToH newcomers = "BIS, your game is too easy, everything is explained to me, we need less tutorials ! It's too arcadish !"

:D

However I'm comparing this to my FSX setup, which is totally unfair so I'll give you that.

Buying a BIS game is like buying a good wine. You don't buy it to enjoy it imediatly, you have to wait a little bit for it to develop its full potential.

Thanks to the addon makers and BIS support in less then a year ToH will be ten times better.

And you wont have to pay anything !