TOH: another game or a real helicopter simulator?

[Hansonius 1]

The first time I came across TOH was at the Aviodome flightsimulator exibition in Lelystad,The Netherlands. I was impressed and bought TOH.

But the day to day practice is a different story. And my experience up to now brings me to the question:

What/Who are you guys aiming at: the 16+ year old gamer (if you turn around the numbers you are closer to my age!) or also the flightsimmers like me?

The following remarks may be due to the fact that I may be spoiled by Ms FSX and all its beautiful addons, I might have missed/misread some points, but here it comes!

GENERAL:

1. Where is a real manual?

The pilot handbook and the on-line “manual†are not a manual. For instance You spended 5 pages on the Larkin family, but not a word on how to set up the views for the POV/hat-switch on a joystick/controller.

2. You state that het game is also for the novice but you do not explain things step by step. To quote a different post: “ You take a lot of knowledge for granted. An enourmous amount of research needs to go into figuring out the smallests of tasks.â€

3. Where is the “onboardâ€help function?

4. Where is the pause button?

I want to learn what I am doing wrong not by crashes and restarts but by a pause button and then figuring out what is going wrong.

5. Where do I find a printlist of all the (joystick)controllfunctions / keyboard strokes? I can't memorize them all.

6. Why are so keyboard/mouse oriented? Almost all gamers and flightsimmers have a joystick or even more controllers.

7. As said in other posts the default settings for the helicopters are far to sensitive as far as I am concerned.

VIEWS:

1. Have you tried it? Controlling the helicopter with your joystick and at the same time hold down the alt key for “freelook “ and use the mouse to move around? As said before where do I find the programming of the POV/hatswitch viewmodes for the joystick/yoke.

2. Where are the outside views? One button/knob for all the views with a submenu would do the job perfectly.

3. Can “freelook†be programmed on a button of the joystick ?

4. As I am a flightsimmer I like to have a look at my instrumentpanel and not just the basic six.

5. The basic instruments are resizeable and can be dragged and dropped, but not to a different screen. As I have a mutiple screen setup with a panelscreen, that would be great.

6. In general I need more direction (manual!) on controls.

SCENERY/TEXTURES:

1. I now I am spoiled by the ORBX Sceneries for FSX but the scenery of HOT is quite fuzzy, a lot of shimmering when you get close and low.

So what is it going to be? A game like Arma and Carrier command or a real flightsimulator? To my feeling it is a bit of both now. If it stays like this I spoiled € 40,-, but I do hope you are going for a real simulator, because HOT has a lot of potential!

Hans, the Netherlands.

[jedra 11]

Wow, that's a lot of questions!

Personally I think that the game falls in between and game and a simulator, but some of the flight model changes made by the community which will provide input to flight model changes in Patch 3, will push it more toward simulator I think. I am not a pilot, but other people who are have commented on the flight model, but they have also provided the community with updated flight models. Yesterday, I downloaded the X-Plane 10 beta/demo and on the strength of flying helos in ToH I was able to fly a helicopter and land it - the controls in X-Plane are MUCH more sensitive and I can tell it is more of a sim. Just the fact that I could fly a helo in X-Plane shows that ToH must be somewhere near a correct flight model.

Someone else may go through your points, point by point but I will answer generally...

1. My G940 flightstick works perfectly with the game. By default the POV was set up to view, but I did need to remap a few things for my personal taste. I use Track-IR so, looking around is done with this. I think for a serious simmer, you would be well advised to invest in Track-IR - it is excellent. Anyway to assign commands to your joystick, you can go into the options/controls menu, click on a function and then move the appropriate controller to assign it to that action. So, yes if your stick doesn't assign it by default you can assign free-look this way.

2. I am not sure what you mean by pressing pause to figure out what is going wrong? You can press ESC to pause the game though.

3. If you press ENTER on the numpad, you will get the outside view.

4. If you fly in Expert mode you will get a better sim experience. Those 'six' instruments will not be shown and you can then use freelook to check the instruments on the cockpit dash. Also, expert mode turns off auto-trim, which a lot of the time is more of a hindrance than a help.

Sorrry for the short reply - got to get my kids from school. But if you are honest with yourself, you didnt just jump in a plane/helo in FSX and have it flying like a pro in minutes. Like a lot of games of this ilk it does take some practice.

The community here is helpful and any questions you ask will be answered.

Stick with it though - it is a great experience!

[hon0 10]

Welcome Hans !

Here you go for Printable keymap. It's arma's one. But Take On Helicopters don't have a lot's of new command except for Trim and engine.

You've multiple solutions to set up the views..

Go option/Control/ALL control and rebind everything as you want.

Or do it directly in your Joystick software.

You have a triple head without track IR?

If you want to modify the FOV : go to "x:\Users\x\Documents\Take On Helicopters" and edit the file named "yourname.TakeOnHProfile". Modify as you want;

fovTop=0.75;
fovLeft=1.3333334;

By pressing "pause" you want to be able to look at your instrument and check what is wrong just before a crash?

[Hansonius 1]

Thanks guys for answering to my very long post!

In the meantime I already figured out a couple of things with the help of other posts.

And of course flying with FSX took me quite some time too, so I'll keep on digging and use your remarks and suggestions.

Hans

[JesseDavis 1]

If you can't afford a trackIR, then freetrackNoIR is a reasonable alternative and is supported natively in ToH. Just make sure you have a reasonably good webcam (PS3Eye works great)