H-60 Interactive Blackhawk pack - Patch 0.6 released - Join our discord

[yax 597]

UH-60M Interactive Blackhawk

A fully interactive Blackhawk for Arma 3

By Hatchet team

Discord: https://discord.gg/E3neUNMFc5

 

Background

In the past year, RiverX and I have spent a lot of time working on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, trying to push its realism as far as we could get within the restrictions of arma.

As we learned about what Arma can and can not do, and what we can and can not do, we started thinking about a new project that would allow us to put on a lot more polish and detail.

In February we started work on this new project, and today we've decided to start sharing some progress with the community.

 

 

Description

With this mod we aim to implement a highly realistic and immersive UH-60M Blackhawk, with some other minor variants possibly added in the future. Our aim is to add in-depth custom interaction with the aircraft for all 4 crew positions, to turn operating the aircraft in to a real team effort.

As of now, all interaction seen in the startup video is multicrew compatible, meaning the copilot and pilot can take turns pushing buttons and flipping switches however they like, and it'll work as it's supposed to.

 

Media

 

 

 

 

Vehicle Interaction

As you can see in the video, we've already managed to get a good portion of the startup procedure functional. If you look closely you can notice that every interaction is followed by a little hand icon being attached to the interaction, along with the name of the person who performed the action, this allows you to see where other crew members are interacting with the vehicle, so you can intuitively know what everyone is doing, this can of course be turned off.

 

For Mod Developers

The vehicle interaction system is in no way hard coded for the Blackhawk, it is implemented as a completely separate vehicle interaction framework, allowing switches, buttons and animated knobs/levers to be defined completely through the vehicle's (cfgVehicles) config, and we'll be releasing this framework separately with detailed documentation, to bring simple interactive vehicles to the whole arma community.

 

The way forward

As for release, for now all we can say is "it's ready when it's ready". We intend to release the blackhawk in feature packs, releasing updates with for example FMS functionality, or FLIR functionality.

 

We hope to start finding community groups who can help us do testing within the next couple months.

We'd also like to take this chance to reach out to anyone with experience operating the UH-60M in real life. We are currently looking for people with real life experience to advise us on getting some of the features down.

 

[ski2060 167]

Can't. Wait. ...

[PotionSeller 22]

Do you currently have plans to add "SOAR" versions of the Blackhawk? such as the DAP

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Friggin' awesome stuff! Really cool. 🙂

[roberthammer 582]

Very nice , like a TKOH mod 😄

 

btw Is that a new BH model or Yura's?

[CraveMode 16]

This is ***ing amazing. We have a community where we host a Realism server. It was in hiatus recently but we have brought it back with more emphasis on realism and this mod would be perfect. Hell, wish we had this level of detail on interaction with all vehicles.

[GEORGE FLOROS GR 4207]

Realism makes this game alive !

Congratulations ! 

[yax 597]

4 hours ago, PotionSeller said:

Do you currently have plans to add "SOAR" versions of the Blackhawk? such as the DAP

 

We'd like to implement some versions like this in the future, though all variants will share the same UH-60M cockpit.

 

1 hour ago, roberthammer said:

Very nice , like a TKOH mod 😄

 

btw Is that a new BH model or Yura's?

 

The basis is the vanilla arma 2 blackhawk model, with a new interior made from scratch by Riverx, he will also be giving the exterior a facelift to bring it in to 2019.

 

57 minutes ago, CraveMode said:

This is ***ing amazing. We have a community where we host a Realism server. It was in hiatus recently but we have brought it back with more emphasis on realism and this mod would be perfect. Hell, wish we had this level of detail on interaction with all vehicles.

 

Thank you, a large part of this project has been implementing the interaction system as a standalone framework, so this will make it much easier to bring this level of interaction to other vehicles in the future.

[robert31178 100]

I like it so far!! The cockpit looks a lot less laggy than the illegal Peral port that everyone is "not" using........

[RiverX_PL 33]

43 minutes ago, robert31178 said:

I like it so far!! The cockpit looks a lot less laggy than the illegal Peral port that everyone is "not" using........

We appreciate that 🙂

[160thSixgun 106]

Can anyone else hear angels singing?

Seriously.. So this means eventually we can program other helicopters with this same level of interactivity, specializing in the systems of that individual aircraft?  Oh be still my beating heart!

[M. Capry 4]

Really looking forward to this!
Hopefully, we will eventually see an ESSS version, allowing for external fuel and weaponry pods.

[yax 597]

On 6/21/2019 at 6:09 PM, 160thSixgun said:

Seriously.. So this means eventually we can program other helicopters with this same level of interactivity, specializing in the systems of that individual aircraft?  Oh be still my beating heart!

 

Yes, and any other vehicle, though it is important to remember that while this will massively simplify the process, it will at its core still be very complicated and labor intensive to reach this level of detail.

 

Interaction config demo

Interaction configuration will be very similar to the process of configuring ACE interaction. Similarly to ACE interaction, the framework allows interaction both on mempoints and on hardcoded model coordinates. I used that technology to make a quick demo of how little lines can be involved for very basic interaction.

 

Here's a demonstration of adding functionality to the engine start button in the vanilla MATV:

This was the config/scripting in the gif:

class cfgVehicles {
  class MRAP_01_hmg_base_F;
  class B_MRAP_01_hmg_F: MRAP_01_hmg_base_F {
    class vxf {
      class interaction {
        class b_starter1 {
          positionType="coordinates";
          position[] = {-0.08,-0.85,-0.62};
          label="Engine Start";
          radius=0.5;
          buttonUp="(_this # 0) engineOn true";
          clickSound="vxf_Switch_Sound";
        }; // b_starter1
      };
    };
  };
};

 

[Pek 15]

If there's going to be a Mod of the Year award this surely is getting my vote.

 

I can't wait! 😄

[xxgetbuck123 945]

Bring this technology to all the Vanilla vehicles and you've got yourself a whole another gaming experience. 

[soronelite 135]

Great work ! Looking forward to try it :)

[diesel5187 73]

I fly these IRL, I volunteer as tribute for testing and feedback. 

[yasotay 198]

Diesel!  Great to see you here!  Hope all is well.  I'm still hangin' at the schoolhouse.  As an old Hawk driver I am really excited to see this level of detail in Arma helos.

[robert31178 100]

Tribute or tribune?? Unless you're blazing your own trail I'm pretty sure it's the latter!

[shadowhunter123 76]

I'm in love! Please post on reddit :3

[The Flying Gasmask 2]

Will you guys simulate more advanced damage? Like if you had an engine fire where you would need to pull the engine cutoff and press a fire extinguisher button?

[yax 597]

Thanks for the kind words everybody. We've got some people helping us out with testing and feedback now, and we'll hopefully be showing off some more progress later this month. We're largely satisfied with the start up procedure and are moving on to building some more useful functionality for gameplay, along with generally improving the usability of the mod.

 

On 7/6/2019 at 2:27 PM, The Flying Gasmask said:

Will you guys simulate more advanced damage? Like if you had an engine fire where you would need to pull the engine cutoff and press a fire extinguisher button?

 

While we're not quite sure yet on the level of detail we'll model the damage with, we do intend to expand the damage system beyond what is implemented in vanilla arma.

[yax 597]

Progress update

A large part of our time has been spent tweaking what we have, we've also managed to implement altitude control autopilot modes, and we've started work on the intercom system.

Parallel to the technical implementation effort, the overhaul of the exterior model has begun, and today it has reached a state where we feel comfortable sharing some initial footage of the new exterior model:

 

 

[ski2060 167]

Awwww yeah.  Can't wait!

[Foxone 1044]

That looks great. Amazing work