Advanced Helicopter FDM Feedback

[Sari 18]

You can reposition them, Layout tab in Game Settings, not sure about resize.

Ah, for some reason I thought I'd finished reading the oprep when it turns out I'd only read about half of it. My bad!

Edit, one odd thing I noticed with the orca - upon setting wheelbrake off and remaining stationary, pressing on either rudder pedal will result in it moving forward at 8kph, despide me making no inputs on the stick (have pedals mapped to both left/right turn and left/right pedal in controls). Not sure if intended or not, but gut instinct suggests that shouldnt happen.

Edited August 4, 2014 by Sari

[DJankovic 401]

One question,will we have turning on engine(s)??? for example mohawk ect.??? Turning engine1 then engine2 or that is not gonna happen?

[metralla 19]

I think this cyclic control unlike right turn is to the left and turn left to the right is from the interior view looking at the controls, least using the keyboard. Can anyone confirm this thanks.

http://youtu.be/C4dEtM2g8WU

Edited August 5, 2014 by Metralla

[james2464 176]

Amazing work, loving it. Would be nice to have clickable cockpits though :)

[raven_jj 1]

I think the whole startup procedure would be a great way to prevent all the people who don't know how to fly from crashing.

[PuFu 4591]

well, it is obvious that the new flight model does NOT include interactive cockpits, but why should it? I mean this is suppose to be about flight model, isn't it?

[twisted 127]

wow, so awesome to see this released. top work bis.

a few small points i noticed in a short time. 1. cutting collective doesnt make the heli go down fast at all.

2. when rasing collective i dont seem to need to comepsate for the torque of the heli pulling its nose to the side. EDIt - i had autotrim on. silly me.

but i like the feel of the fliying a lot more even now, can do some crazy flying pretty easier than before, and cant wait to see where you guys take it!

Edited August 4, 2014 by twisted

[nerdwing 13]

Keep in mind folks that Collective does snot equal "Go high, go low" in helicopters. That was the biggest thing to grasp for me when I tried a DCS helo, and its true here as well. There's naturally a delayed reaction and smooth transitions are key to flying.

Not sure how well transitional lift etc is modeled atm, but I've done a few rolling takeoffs and landings just fine in the AH-99. Its obviously a bit sketchy overall, but this is a huge step up from the default FDM in my opinion! :)

Using a Thrustmaster T-16000M at the moment. Very very much looking forward to any future FDM updates. this was a great experience and I only flew for 15 minutes! :)

Mi48 really seems to be underpowered though for flying at sea level. I imagine it'd be capable of a bit higher an ascent rate than it is currently.

Edited August 4, 2014 by Nerdwing

[james2464 176]

For anyone looking for more information there's a great Youtube discussion about it here by PhantomsMediaTV

IvALcucOSNg&

[Sterlingarcherz101 15]

For anyone looking for more information there's a great Youtube discussion about it here by PhantomsMediaTV

IvALcucOSNg&

Cheers for vid.

Before I used pearls a10 mod I would have said pffft forget start ups.

But after it I get it now. Start ups are.cool.

[x3kj 1247]

Before I used pearls a10 mod I would have said pffft forget start ups.

But after it I get it now. Start ups are.cool.

but thats about it. Alot of work to implement it for just a few seconds of looking "cool". Unless you plan to die every 2 minutes and respawn, this is a insignificantly small part of the game experience. And it gets old quickly, its just the same procedure every time. Therefore i'm against such feature as long as plane and tank implementation are in such a bad shape and alot of other bugs still present. They wrote in the Oprep that they want to focus on the core of the TKOH experience: flying the helicopter. Not the maintenance. And i'm glad they do.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Fennek

[KeyCat 131]

Only go a ~hour airtime in MH-9/AH-9 before bed last night but my inital impressions are great! Now you are able to bleed speed very effectively, absolutely love it flying in the hilly terrain where the wind easily can throw you off if you aren't carefull, at least in the LB.

Just a few things from top of my head that I reflected on while testing...

- Would be nice with a click sound when setting/resetting manual trim.

- I prefer to fly with the instrument overlay off and read the cockpit instruments as much as possible but in some situations it would be good to be able to toggle the overlay ON/OFF with a key while doing specifc things like hovering, checking wind etc. just like it was in TKOH.

- One variable I was missing was wind strength. Maybe color coding the wind vane arrow in some way would be enough to better judge the wind speed.

Had no issues getting my TM Cougar HOTAS working but still tweaking the curves to my liking. More testing when getting back home, can't wait!

/KC

Edited August 5, 2014 by KeyCat

[St. Jimmy 272]

Has anyone tried to resize those UI elements? You can at least resize GPS when you've RMB down if I remembered right so does that work with those new elements? I can't test because I'm not at home until Friday.

[the_demongod 31]

I know it's not specifically flight-model related, but can anybody tell me the purpose of wheel brakes? I tried to do a running landing (such as a heavily loaded helicopter would do) but I kind of skidded around until I exploded. If the wheels don't roll, what's the point?

[mistyronin 1181]

I know it's not specifically flight-model related, but can anybody tell me the purpose of wheel brakes? I tried to do a running landing (such as a heavily loaded helicopter would do) but I kind of skidded around until I exploded. If the wheels don't roll, what's the point?

As strange as it may seem the wheel brakes are meant to break the wheels... Like a car, to avoid the vehicle to roll on a pendant or to roll when the rotor is moving. On landing it's used exactly for the same, to avoid rolling.

If you want to do a running landing, just pull out the breaks and then you will be able to roll freely.

[Gutsnav 13]

This user on reddit posted a screen of our WIP UI options: http://i.imgur.com/F3masNS.jpg

This information is also in today's OPREP, which I'd encourage you to take a look at, if you're trying out the new feature, as it offers some extra details!

However, although you can of course simply disable them, I'd also like to ask you why you don't like the gauges? Do you find them distracting/annoying, is the information they provide not clear, etc?

Best,

RiE

It's a personal preference, I just like looking at the MFDs and cockpit. Though unfortunately some helicopters such as the AH-99 or Wildcat have insufficient instruments.

This is true for many features other than just the helicopters, where you are forced to use the HUD instead of instrument panels or something.

That being said, I read in the OPREP that you guys were making some (hopefully) 'splendid' improvements to the HUD. I really like what track you guys are on, and I am looking forward to future improvements on the flight model and stuff.

---------- Post added at 04:56 ---------- Previous post was at 04:50 ----------

Whoops forgot to mention the new gauges are great, yeah..

Gutsnav

[the_demongod 31]

Yeah, I tried that but it didn't work :/

I'm familiar with how they *should* work, but the behavior seemed the same whether or not they were on or off (I assume green means on and grey means off?).

However it could be that I set down the helicopter too hard and that was what caused the damage (although I still heard the grinding sound of static wheels on pavement).

Have you been able to reliably do running landings?

[quickvenge 10]

Yeah, I tried that but it didn't work :/

I'm familiar with how they *should* work, but the behavior seemed the same whether or not they were on or off (I assume green means on and grey means off?).

However it could be that I set down the helicopter too hard and that was what caused the damage (although I still heard the grinding sound of static wheels on pavement).

Have you been able to reliably do running landings?

You just have to make sure you have very little sideslip as you land, and center the pedals quickly after touching down. Otherwise it rolls over real easy.

[b00ce 160]

It feels like most of the deadzone issues have been mitigated for me, so I'm happy... Mostly (See faults below). I'll have to play with it some more and document issues/refine my settings. (All enabled except hard landings and auto-trim)

Faults:

In forward flight, if too much cyclic is applied in any direction ACFT will go into an almost unrecoverable spin/oscillation.

When on the ground, brakes off and collective full down; Pulling back on the cyclic causes forward movement, forward cyclic causes the opposite.

There is no noticeable Effective Translational Lift (ETL).

Translating tendency appears to be exaggerated and mirrored from the expected direction. (In the ghosthawk, the tail rotor should be pushing it to the right, requiring left cyclic)

Also it is nice to feel the ground effect, when you sink to land, you feel like landing on a cushion. Makes you realize that there has really gone some brain grease into this flight model.

Ground effect has been there since Operation Arrowhead, it just isn't noticeable without a HOTAS.

Edited August 5, 2014 by b00ce

[Brainbug 10]

what I really like is that you can make a landing from high speed without (as has been the standard) rising up to crazy heights (and then possible triggering AA fire) because the sink rate was not enough. Now you can drop the collective completely, pull back on the stick and then, when you are basically falling as a brick towards the LZ, raise collective again to slow down, but without gaining height. Needs a hell of a lot of practice, but it is now possible, and that wasn't the case before. Only the AI needs to learn that kind of insertions too..

Also it is nice to feel the ground effect, when you sink to land, you feel like landing on a cushion. Makes you realize that there has really gone some brain grease into this flight model.

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

what I really like is that you can make a landing from high speed without (as has been the standard) rising up to crazy heights (and then possible triggering AA fire) because the sink rate was not enough. Now you can drop the collective completely, pull back on the stick and then, when you are basically falling as a brick towards the LZ, raise collective again to slow down, but without gaining height. Needs a hell of a lot of practice, but it is now possible, and that wasn't the case before. Only the AI needs to learn that kind of insertions too..

Also it is nice to feel the ground effect, when you sink to land, you feel like landing on a cushion. Makes you realize that there has really gone some brain grease into this flight model.

This was entirely possible pre-Rotorlib, it just required fiddling with the control scheme and enabling the use of the Brake key/slider which is no longer present under helicopter controls.

[BinaryMan 1]

I think the advanced flight model would be easier for keyboard and mouse users if collective raise was linear instead of quadratic or whatever it is right now. Collective up and down go from doing nothing for the first half second to moving really quickly, which is really hard to use effectively. Even when binding collective analog to something silly like trackIR forward/Back, it suddenly becomes 10 times easier.

It would also be nice if you could do the same thing with turn left turn right in ground vehicles.

[quickvenge 10]

1. Flight Experience:

• Translating tendency: It is reversed on a bunch of helicopters. Counter clockwise should require more left cyclic. Clockwise should require more right cyclic.
  
• Transitional lift: It needs to be stronger. When going from IGE hover to Transitional Lift with forward speed and same collective settings I hardly see any increase in climb rate.
  
• Ground Effect: I'm not sure if it is just own perception or not. It needs to be stronger. In ground effect hover, and out ground effect hover, don't seem to require that different of a collective setting.
  
• Darn no settling with power, or vortex ring state modeled.
  
• Weird bounce on a couple of helicopters while sitting on the ground: Watch the rate of climb of on the Ghosthawk and Blackfoot. Full collective down, and you can see the rate of climb bouncing slightly.
  
• Hummingbird probably Pawnee too. Needs more mass. It doesn't drop of out of the sky like all the other helicopters when you dump the collective. I can't quick stop without bubbling, but can on the other choppers I tried.
  
• Rolling landings: Is there a speed limit? Seems like I need to touch down no greater than 50-60 KPH otherwise it breaks the helicopter.
  

2. GUI:

• I'm okay with the gauges, though I would prefer not to use them. But there is no easy way to tell if wheel brakes are on, gears are up without looking at the the gauges, or action menu.
  
• We really need more functional displays, and HUDs
  

3. Control input:

• Works fine for me, I have a full HOTAS/Pedal setup. With null dead zones and default sensitivity. I'm good with it.
  
• Cyclic stick is animated wrong right/left in the cockpit. It does the opposite of why I input.
  

[armored_sheep 56]

Howdy folks. I am happy that community can now have hands on beta of the FM settings. I spent some time making research about FM for the in-game helicopters and their RotorLib configs. I really appreciate your feedback and help with tweaking each helicopter characteristics.

One such issue is present instability of Blackfoot on high speeds. I tried to make this helo the fastest in the game. As a result the rotor simulation is not very stable at top speeds. The rolling crash is something that was not desired and will be hopefully fixed soon.

I also noticed some remarks here about Kajman performance. This helicopter is very heavy (12tons) gunship that has no real world counterpart. It should fly reasonably fast but still be able to lift itself. The performance is also dependent on how much it is loaded with fuel, crew and ammo. Like real Hind it is not able to lift off when all possible loads are combined to maximum.

Another issue that I know, but was not able to fix yet, is the Ghosthawk "backward taxi" when collective is set to minimum pitch.

I will also look at ground contacts for helicopters with retractable gear so one does not blow up himself that fast ;)

[aluc4rd 47]

Has anyone tried to resize those UI elements? You can at least resize GPS when you've RMB down if I remembered right so does that work with those new elements? I can't test because I'm not at home until Friday.

You can resize gauges via Configure/Video Options/Display/Inferface size - but it will change size of all UI elements, I'm afraid it's not possible to resize only gauges.