Flying in ArmA

[Sniperwolf572 758]

...I believe AA will have the tail rotor failure effect...

It was there in the GC build. Was really surprised when I saw a littlebird with a static tail rotor, although I didn't notice it affecting the AI pilot as much as it affects the human pilot.

[meyamoti 0]

AI pilot was probably coded to compensate as best they can while a human player would have a slower reaction time and have a bit trouble lining the aircraft up,I found that if I tilted my joystick on OFP:E just enough I'd spin worse,then I found an angle where I could kind of fight the spin but I was leaning alot.

As for the barrel rolling in aircraft,you can already do that in OFP IF you have a joystick,having a joystick makes aircraft so much more maneuverable and so on,the handling is much better,like helicopters,though you get no auto hover unless you tap a keyboard key.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

You can do barrel rolls with the keyboard too - if you're suicidal, and like holding one key down while moving with the mouse.

And that D.Bleck guy looks suspiciously like an employee of some company...

[Scrub 0]

Someone mentioned that there is no HUD in any vids or pics.. I believe it's a setup for a great surprise, since the wiki shows the functions for vectors and bones that are needed for such a thing. My belief only.

[frederf 0]

I hope it's possible to crash land without 100% chance of dying.

[meyamoti 0]

....BWHAHAHAHHAHAH Usually when OFP players crash its because they slammed into a tree or mountain while looking at the M key,however there are too many variables,if you crash its usually due to speed and due to that I don't think the human body,much less brain could take the trama of the impact.

[MAGPIE 0]

I am personally looking forward to advanced controls and using my SAITEK X52 joystick, Saitek Flight rudder pedals , and Track IR to make me uber pilot of devastation. Look for me to be Powning tanks with extreme pin point accuracy .

Good BLess SAITEK and Bohemia Interactive!

why don't SAITEK just make a chip that you can insert into your neck and with a couple of glove's that control you and a treadmill for your walking you'll be rocking oh and I'm sure you want it made by SAITEK    

Question :- will the choppers come with chaff?

MAGPIE

[monkeyb 0]

I am personally looking forward to advanced controls and using my SAITEK X52 joystick, Saitek Flight rudder pedals , and Track IR to make me uber pilot of devastation. Look for me to be Powning tanks with extreme pin point accuracy .

Good BLess SAITEK and Bohemia Interactive!

Slighty OT, but DERRICKLBECK, did you just register to this forum to promote Saitek? Cause it does look that way.. In other threads too, you talk about how good Saitek is..

Have to say that I think he must work for the company.

Uber pilot??? The game isn't even out yet and people are calling themselves uber. Oh dear.

[urbanwarrior 0]

aslong as the harrier can do everything a harrier should do and there is good ejection anims then i'll be happy

[whisper 0]

I heard somewhere what's about flying it wouldn't be sim,but would be like Battlefield (an usual control)

I hope, hope this is not true. Worst chopper flightmodel ever, totally unreallistic, just "hard" for the sake of it.

BIS had few changes to add, mainly effects from 1 command on others (typical helicopter flight model), and "specials"

1st thing would be to stop having "power at X% = fly at X altitude". This is wrong. Your "power" (not power at all, called "collective" in a real chopper) controls your rate of climb/descent. To hover, you usually have to gently go back and forth around the "neutral climbrate" position

2nd, we need inter-command effects. For example, on non-contrarotative choppers, pulling the collective effects your nose position, your chopper turns if you change your collective. The only effect currently present in OFP is the cyclic effect on collective, you lose climbrate (in fact altitude, because in OFP collective relates to altitude and not climbrate) when you push nose down, for example.

With this 2 changes, ArmA would already be very good. Special effects only would be missing (transitional lift, vortex, retreating blade stall, ...)

Any feedback from demo testers? I hope really it's nothing near some BF flightmodel!

[urbanwarrior 0]

sorry but no game in the universe would model things like that, retreating blade stall? if you were going to do that you might aswell include the effects off yaw angle on the swept wing of a harrier which we know will cause it to drop a wing. all your going to do is annoy people because they want to drop troops somewhere and they cant because they dont have time to actually get their private pilots licence so they can fly in Arma.seriously though, there comes a point when you can go to far with this sort off thing

[whisper 0]

I didn't say they need to be there I said they would be missing, so no, no real need to put them, I agree.

But there ARE games featuring these. Namely, helicopter flight simulations EECH and such. It's just not the point of ArmA to be a chopper flightsim so it's not needed to go too far.

Now, people claim OFP flightmodel was too easy. If we want better flightmodel, I was just saying a big NO to BF-like FMs, that are totally unreallistic, and made "hard" just because devs wanted something relatively difficult to master. Not because they are near real chopper handling or behavior.

They're more like UFOs sliding around than choppers, tbh. The sliding may be difficult to handle, but that's about all. And that's NOT chopper proper behavior.

I only listed 2 points that would, imho, make the handling 1) follow normal chopper behavior, 2) propose a good challenge without being too difficult and annoying.

Anyway, it's too late now (well, I already wrote something about FM in ArmA few months ago, basically saying the same), it's just my wishes to avoid BF FM

[cain2001 0]

i find OFP flying Realisitc. I havnt flown a plane in real life but i guess im not alone. Maybe a real pilot could share their thoughts? Its really hard to fly a plane in OFP, if you dive to drop some bombs and try to pull out of you barley make it. Other Flight Sims you can dive down, make 10 spinns, drop a bomb and then go vertical in like 2 seconds. A plane like that in OFP would own everything. Kinda like In BF42. So i dont think it would be realistic using that. Some planes are made to be air fighters, others to be tactical bombers. The tactical bombers do not have the same quick turning abillity as other planes. So hopefully OFP air planes will be air support only, strike out Convoys, tanks and bomb areas.

[urbanwarrior 0]

i agree the flyin in ofp was a bit crappy, but you still need to be able to fly in a fun way. in and out quickly without everyone hating you cos you crashed with 10 guys onboard killing everyone! i read somewhere that wind will affect you especially while hovering, now that would be good

[MontyVCB 0]

The helicopter flight model was good enough, maybe needs the odd tweak, but i liked it. Though the aeroplane flight model in ofp was just plain 'odd' and i do hope they have updated it

[Average Joe 0]

It wasnt so much the controls but the usage of jets in OFP flying at over 1000mph, I mean in all honestly it was almost useless unless you pulled some serious Gs in stall turns so you could line up. I just hope the aircrafts speeds are changed so maybe we can fly our harriers and laser guide a 500lb bomb onto Guba's grandmas house.

[madrussian 347]

I didn't mind the OFP flight model a bit... seemed realistic enough to me for its purpose.

For ArmA, I hope it's at least as realistic as OFP in terms of the speed and responsiveness of things... and that goes for all aspects of player control and AI.  Too many games (like BF2) speed everything up and call it "fun".  

They speed up things like... vehicle top speed, acceleration, and responsiveness of control.  They let you "warp" into vehicles and pick up weapons without delay (or appropriate animation).  They speed up the AI reaction to the players to unbelievably unrealistic levels.  Case in point on all this: Ever played Rome Total War without the realism mods?  Zoom in and watch an individual soldier.  He runs at least twice as fast as Carl Lewis!  

The scary thing is that games that actually do favor realism in this regard tend to bear sequels that make compromises to the contrary.  All too often, the mass market wants things to be easier... to be "quicker".  They like "simple controls".

To me, having the movements of the sim as close to real life as possible is essential.  That goes for the flight model, but for ground vehicles and foot units as well.  To date, OFP is the only game of it's kind that got all of this right.

Sure, the flight model for OFP wasn't perfect, and it could use some improvement here or there.  However, for ArmA, I certainly hope they haven't dumbed down anything. (i.e. I hope they did NOT speed things up at all from OFP).  

[meyamoti 0]

One of the things about OFP AI that I like is how you can catch them off guard just as you can a human player and they will take a moment to respond. When you shoot at somebody,even if they have surround sound,they won't know directly where the shot came from,they will only have an idea due to the sound which would give them a radius of possible positions.

The AI in bf2 if they get close enough will either pull out their shock paddles or knives and charge you

I hope they keep the pending vehicle speed too,as shown in the US forces video with the abrams,I think they did. I loved how OFP had the option for fast,medium or slow vehicle speeds,unlike pretty much all games where theres just the "W" speed. Plus it responds to some joysticks for vehicle movement making the movement even smoother. Such a thing in most vehicles on games is useless due to their one speed and thats it.

[Rumsfield 1]

Here is a screenshot I took of the Cobra cockpit:

Screenshot

Based on that image it appears ArmA is using the same old radar system as OFP. I was wondering if anyone is disappointed in this? I would have liked to see a more realistic targeting/radar system. Below are my reasons why.

Reasons:

1. First and most importantly, I feel it is too easy and unrealistic to simply allow the all-knowing OFP radar to identify an object/vehicle as friendly/enemy/or unknown(white). Then just select a red rectangle on radar and fire your weapon of choice.

2. I believe in real life objects on radar do not simply show up as red, white or green rectangles indicating whether an object/target is a threat(red), unknown(white), or friendly(green).

3. I believe in real life your radar will know if an object/target is friendly only if that object/vehicle/etc. has an IFF device (IFF means: Identify Friend or Foe).

4. I do not believe a vehicle such as a jeep/uaz has an IFF device in real life, so in my humble opinion certain vehicles/objects should never show up on radar as a green or red rectangle. Perhaps a vehicle such as a M1 Abrahms or M2 Bradley has an IFF device which friendly aircraft radar will recognize, I do not know for sure.

5. I am NOT an expert in this field, however I do have a reasonable/limited amount of knowledge in military weapons, everything above is my opinon and best guess.

I believe ArmA is done and finished so, I am NOT at all suggesting changing the game now. I just wanted to know if anyone else is a little disappointed in ArmA's radar system because it seems to be identicle to OFP's? Anyone agree that radar should be more challenging/realistic than it was in OFP, or am I alone on this? I could think of suggestions, but that is for another time and another thread.

P.S. Military veterans, please correct me if I am wrong on any of the information I provided above, it is to my best understanding.

[MAGPIE 0]

You raise some very good point's although after reading not just your post but alot of the forums over a period of time. I'm starting to wonder if we will ever be happy with the expectation of this game! I don't think we will picking and ripping into some pic's or vid of the game has been going on for some time, I know we all have been realy waiting on this game for 4/5 yrs but we were all told that this game will be a updated version on the 1st. And ofp was a fantastic game and we did'nt poo poo it at that time.

This post was not just directed at the above post it's just my feeling's towards our expection's on the game!

MAGPIE

[frederf 0]

There are modern sensor systems that attempt to tell that it's a T72 or an F-15 by the shape of the sensor return, but for the most part you are of course correct; a radar/sensor object shouldn't neccesarily come with friend-or-foe info, especiallys on unsophisticated targets.

Better avionics and sensors was the subject of another thread not too long ago, to which I agreed that not updating the old OFP system was disappointing. There is a decent chance that that screenshot was taken from an old beta-ish copy of the game.

[max power 21]

The thing with the radar, though, was that it wasn't intended to simulate a radar.. it was simulating the teamwork and situational awareness of the crew and the rest of the forces in contact with them, if anything. I think it was really just to help the player play the game, without any real real world analogy.

[whisper 0]

The "radar" on top is in fact a symbolic representation of all the onboard sensors, and what the crew knows from these sensors. It shows what has been seen (and how it is interpreted by crew), be it seen by radar(ground and air)/IR detector, laser detector, or eyesight, if the target is configured to be "reportable" on radar.

I guess the exact representation of the sensor could be done, but that would be quite a task

[frederf 0]

As long as you had a vector info to the sensor target, it's a very simple matter of running that target data through a set of transformation equations and have it appear in any manner of radar display you wanted (round, strip, square, ect)