When Flying Chopper, Auto Maintain Altitude and Speed Key?

[rogerx 11]

When flying the helicopters, is there a key to maintain altitude and speed?

(I recently found the 'q' key can maintain altitude, and is very useful for the gunner of the chopper when zeroing in at long distances.)

[maxton0600 10]

There is no key to do this. You will have to use your controls to maintain speed and altitude. The only thing ARMA allows you to do is Auto-hover. It is good when you want to keep steady in higher altitude or assisting new players with landing. Still I would reccommend not using auto-hover for landing since it often swiwels you helo like crazy before steadying it up (unless you do yourself before).

When I made a comparison how long it takes to land with 250kp/h speed using autohover and without the result was all against auto-hover. It took almost 30 seconds to land with it enabled but only about 6s without it on airfield (both).

[erazeri 1]

When using analogue collective for flying I find it very useful of having "collective raise/collective lower" binded to my hotas so I can just tap it and it will override the analogue collective for a while and switch collective to neutral position which is almost impossible with my current throttle. To maintain altitude and speed just keep the same nose dive with a joystick keeping your climb rate at 0 and collective at neutral. Never use excessively collective raise as you wouldn`t use in a real chopper and you will find it`s quite realistic at the moment but you still can`t over stress your engines and blades to break them.

Edited September 5, 2013 by eRazeri

[rogerx 11]

... To maintain altitude and speed just keep the same nose dive with a joystick keeping your climb rate at 0 and collective at neutral.

Pretty much everybody knows how to perform this task manually. However when searching the map, it would really be nice to auto maintain speed & auto maintain altitude. I know tapping the 'q' key while in auto hover will hold the chopper's exact altitude until the joystick is moved again. This also is an undocumented feature and will confuse most as the 'q' key is mapped to rise/lower. ;-) ... I heard from one person, it's essential when piloting the AH-99 with a gunner sniping enemy from afar.

I'll likely open a bug up as pilots should be able to maintain both speed and altitude, similar in fixed wing aircraft. Going into map view is a hassle without it, and extremely risky!

[maxton0600 10]

Pretty much everybody knows how to perform this task manually. However when searching the map, it would really be nice to auto maintain speed & auto maintain altitude. I know tapping the 'q' key while in auto hover will hold the chopper's exact altitude until the joystick is moved again. This also is an undocumented feature and will confuse most as the 'q' key is mapped to rise/lower. ;-) ... I heard from one person, it's essential when piloting the AH-99 with a gunner sniping enemy from afar.

I'll likely open a bug up as pilots should be able to maintain both speed and altitude, similar in fixed wing aircraft. Going into map view is a hassle without it, and extremely risky!

I think the point here is that you shouldn´t open the map in jet or helo at all. :D

All you need is to know approximate shape of map and some basic landmarks. When you have got that you just need to take off and set waypoint where you want to attack in process. After this all you should need is that waypoint and rought estimation of your area based on map knowledge and landmarks so you can choose direction where to fly.

[rogerx 11]

Marking a GPS or performing other simple tasks after putting a fixed wing aircraft into auto level and auto maintain speed is quite common.

However, the futuristic ARMA 3 theme still has the pilot performing most tasks manually, such as manual controls versus having automatic pilot.

Done. Filed Bug #14039, "No Auto Pilot!" Feel free to down vote and explain you don't want people multitasking and surfing pron while flying. (ie. No Texting Laws, etc...)

Edited September 5, 2013 by rogerx

[maxton0600 10]

Yes, there should be autopilot at least for maintaining direction and level of flight you are right. To be honest I too use map when new ARMA comes up till I get basic knowledge of map. Still the question here was not for fixed wind plane but helo. :)

In addition to that problem depending on you PC performance and for how long has you ARMA been running (including you actions and mission you played) the map can take from 0.1 to 5 secs to appear or go back to game.