Cobra Vs. UH60 -- Controls.

[Guest RKSL-Rock]

RockofSL could you possibly get your friend to try out OFP and comment??

I already know his opinion of OFP's flight model. "Arcade".  We used to play OFP together alot. Every time he got in a helicopter in OFP he said it reminded him of those coin operated kiddie's rides outside supermarkets... cartoonesque helicopter with flashing lights etc.

OFP's flight model wasn’t realistic.  ArmA's engine while not fantastic is at least heading in the right direction…maybe with a few more tweaks he’ll say something good about it

Anyway…back to the reason I came back to this thread.  Ive been playing with the mass distribution in the geo lod of several of my helicopters.  Just as I though it has a huge difference to the way the models handle.  So it may well be possible to correct the AH-1’s handling very easily.  It’s just going to take some experimenting.  If you dig out the RKSL thread you'll see a new vid of the RAH-66 ive been playing with.

By changing the mass and CofG of the model ive been able to get everything from a sluggish profile to a super agile one.

[BDamage 0]

Hello all, i had the urge to register to forums just to be able to comment on this helo FM issue.

First i must say, im not a pilot, nor a skilled sim pilot...

But, i sincerely like the way that ArmA is going with this FM.

I found OFP´s FM very boring and very arcade (as someone mentioned allready)

I´m sure, that with tweaking this FM will be the ultimate one in combined forces combat sim´s

(Let´s exlude the comparison to flight sims, shall we?)

Let me tell you my story of the rocky road to helo FM:

The first time in mpdemo i tried to get up in the air with mouse+keyb controls, to find that the FM was indeed changed after i was hanging upside down in a tree near the spawn point...

Ahh well, no dispair... if you fall down from a horse, just climb back in.

After a few (make that 10) tries i finally gave up on the mouse+keyb combo and started looking for my flight stick.

With the stick i was able to get up in the air instantly, with fair control of my heading and altitude. Talk about rodeo ride there, eh ?

I´d say, that after 3-4 nights of training i started to get hang of the UH-60 and was able to actually land on a target.

My mates think im nuts, because only thing i did during that week was fly fly and fly... but i really wanted to learn that FM.

When i (finally) got my copy of the game, i started testing with the different choppers ingame.

I also noticed how the Cobra was less responsive than Blackhawk with the tail rotor, but still didnt find that chopper to be hard to fly at all.

There are issues with the FM, as stated allready here, and i also would like to see them changed in future patches.

[Pierrot 0]

I found a video in which a camera is set in the cockpit of Cobra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrzFEWMDT7g

Can you tell differences between Cobra in ArmA and real Cobra? Sensitivity, stability maneuverability and etc...

p.s. Cobra Vs. UH60

Blackhawk wins!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpD0D35O2IU

[Radic 0]

Thanks RockofSL - I'm a little disappointed to hear that - but point taken - I personally felt that the climb/dive tradeoff against forward/aft cyclic positioning was much better represented in OFP which to me makes OFP helos seem more correct according to my experience as a passenger in helos and in line with my technical knowledge of helo control systems and aerodynamics.

Thinking more about it - the collective is most definitely porked especially in ArmA - keep in mind we are not given power control so evidently the "collective" is a combo collective pitch + power control - I don't know which follows the other in ArmA's flight model or how they both separately relate to the player's "collective" input but however it's done it's not right.

And back to my first para above I'd much rather have the definite climbing and descending effect with collective change as it's represented in OFP - IMO the way you have to really pull up collective as you pitch forward and accelerate and conversely push collective down when you pitch back and decelerate feels more real to me - not to mention is exactly the way I've WATCHED pilots fly in the real thing. I know this effect is indeed there in ArmA - just not as pronounced as I think it should be - in all the collective is really watered down and weak as well as just not working right.

[frederf 0]

Comments on the AH-1S video vs ArmA AH-1W:

1. Recoil from the chin turret pushing the helo is cool.

2. Very small inputs from the real pilot, most of us are doing far more extreme stuff. I wish there was a non-linearity setting for the joystick in ArmA... the really useful part of the joystick range is so small in ArmA that it's hard to operate in.

3. Pull-up stops are far easier in real life than ArmA. In ArmA you have to point the nose at the sky to get the thing to stop in your lifetime.

4. Throttle seems way more responsive in real life. This is probably the biggest difference between real life and ArmA. Pulling the power in ArmA takes forever and has really weird behavior, in the video it seemed that they had much more direct control over their rotor thrust.

5. In the video the AH-1 easily flies like a fixed wing aircraft with bank-n'-pull-up turns. In ArmA such turns are a struggle.

[max power 21]

6. In the video, the pilot is a trained, professional military aviator who was trained by another professional military aviator over the course of hundreds of hours in flight and on the ground studying and practicing the theory, mechanics and techniques of airborne warfare.

[4 IN 1 0]

very nice read Rock, thats what i through of the FM, but your friend is the pro and nail the problem perfectly

now lets hope BIS will tweak the FM just right based on such comment  

[bravo 6 0]

as i said in the other thread, im, waiting bis to fix the force feedback on the joysticks when we pilot a chopper or a plane.

Hope they put more realism and feeling on the fly simulation among other realistic aspects.

[Radic 0]

hmmm - well I'm scratching my head now.... - I've just played thru all the helo missions in OFP (ECP) and RockofSL's friend's comments notwithstanding I really think the OFP flight model is pretty much spot on / what I'd expect the real thing to be (except for the collective being more like a height control rather than lift control).

I guess the cyclic "mush" in ArmA is worth keeping as a salve for the masses to make them at least think there's some skill involved and stop just anybody from being a good flier straight up (arguably a good thing - shrug). Tho it'd be better to have hard option (with excessive mushyness) or easy option (just like OFP) IMO.

[EDcase 87]

The helicopter flight models are wrong, with the Cobra being the worst. Why can't BI consult an aeronautical engineer...?

YAW(pedal/horizontal rotation) should NOT affect banking at all.

The effect of YAW should reduce with forward speed untill about 80knots where it will act like a rudder.  BUT IT NEVER AFFECTS BANKING  

[peterj 0]

6. In the video, the pilot is a trained, professional military aviator who was trained by another professional military aviator over the course of hundreds of hours in flight and on the ground studying and practicing the theory, mechanics and techniques of airborne warfare.

True, here's a pilot with no training:

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga....ht).wmv

[Scrub 0]

Now THAT is what a new ArmA flyer looks like! lol. Poor fool almost lost his life. And yes, the collective needs a bit more firmness, the rudder a bit more ability at speed, and softening the joystick action in helo mode.. Just tweaks. It's close.

[max power 21]

hmmm - well I'm scratching my head now.... - I've just played thru all the helo missions in OFP (ECP) and RockofSL's friend's comments notwithstanding I really think the OFP flight model is pretty much spot on / what I'd expect the real thing to be (except for the collective being more like a height control rather than lift control).

I guess the cyclic "mush" in ArmA is worth keeping as a salve for the masses to make them at least think there's some skill involved and stop just anybody from being a good flier straight up (arguably a good thing - shrug). Tho it'd be better to have hard option (with excessive mushyness) or easy option (just like OFP) IMO.

I completely disagree on all points. OFP's flight model was fun enough but terrible in terms of its simulation of flight. The helicopter would basicly fly itself, and the player pilot's only job was to recommend to the helicopter where to go. The collective mush in ArmA does not make it any harder to fly.

edit: Now, the strange aerodynamic center/CG... THAT makes the things difficult to fly. Landing something that first moves in the opposite way of where you want to go begs you to over control it.

[HellToupee 0]

6. In the video, the pilot is a trained, professional military aviator who was trained by another professional military aviator over the course of hundreds of hours in flight and on the ground studying and practicing the theory, mechanics and techniques of airborne warfare.

Dosnt mean he could make the ingame helecopters fly like that :P

Training dosnt mean they become super mean at the stick, just means they will land alive more often than not.

[Radic 0]

mmm - well I still stand by what I've said - OFP helo flight feels and acts much more like the real thing - that INCLUDES the general stability. Methinks some people overestimate how difficult it really is. I've been told by a helicopter pilot that it's a "physical imprinting" process (that's the term he used) just like skating or riding a bike - seemingly impossible to do at first but once you've "cracked" it you don't even think about it anymore - the helo "just goes where you want it to".

You cannot successfully duplicate for someone sitting at a PC the real sensation of actually flying a helicopter - the next best thing is to present the capability of duplicating helicopter flight (there is a BIG fundamental difference between the two) - to me it appears that in ArmA BIS is trying to give us our cake and let us eat it too - and it has simply not been successful - very frustrating as they had already in OFP VERY cleverly managed I think the best that could be done so it's painful for me to see something already done so very well to be undone so very badly!!.

My final statement on the subject is: IMO ArmA has it all wrong - OFP had it quite acceptably correct - I personally would prefer ArmA to simply have the same as OFP (or at least the option for those of us who want it to have it).

[Maddmatt 1]

My final statement on the subject is: IMO ArmA has it all wrong - OFP had it quite acceptably correct - I personally would prefer ArmA to simply have the same as OFP (or at least the option for those of us who want it to have it).

Are you by any chance a US Army pilot or something? OFP choppers were far from realistic, you could tilt the chopper to the side a bit and it would still hover in place.

[RedStorm 0]

ArmA helicopters are FAR more realistic than the helicopters in OFP were. They both feel and act in a more realistic manner and they are probably one of the better game-representation of helicopters I have seen.

[wamingo 1]

Helo's in arma no longer automatically follow the curvature of the terrain. That is why in ofp helo's felt like they could fly themselves. So yeah, the flight model is greatly improved simply by that. Basicly you need to power up and down to follow the terrain which is more realistic and makes piloting more interesting.

I agree there are some things to be ironed out, like the yaw and the keyboard sensitivity is a bit crazy.

[monty67t 0]

I'm a UH-60L crew chief in real life. I have over 680 flight hours in a hawk, almost all combat. You are never gonna see flight controls that are like the real thing. The faster a helicopter flies, the harder it is to manuever. The best example I seen of this was when we would have Apache escorts in Iraq. We would have to fly slower so the Apaches could manuever in case something happened. We only had Cobra escorts once. It was a fubared mission from the get go and we never got commo with the Marines. The flight was from Fallujah to the "Green Zone" in Baghdad which is about a 12 minute flight. In that 12 minutes we completely lost the Cobras. They couldn't keep up. Anyways, the cobra can manuever well, just not at high speeds, which is the same for any helicopter.

Getting ready to take off from LSA Anaconda

[Dallas 9]

Getting ready to take off from LSA Anaconda

Luke, I am your father.

monty67t any oppinions on the current flight model? I've got no problems with it, I don't fully master it, but then again I haven't given it the attention it needs.

[Baff1 0]

Imagine my suprise when, whilst hovering, I attempted to spin round my helicopter on the spot, using only the tail rotor!

And then nose dived into the ground.

Please fix this nonsense. That's not fun to play. That's not realism. That is just broken.

[Radic 0]

Helo's in arma no longer automatically follow the curvature of the terrain. That is why in ofp helo's felt like they could fly themselves. So yeah, the flight model is greatly improved simply by that. Basicly you need to power up and down to follow the terrain which is more realistic and makes piloting more interesting.

I agree there are some things to be ironed out, like the yaw and the keyboard sensitivity is a bit crazy.

- My OFP doesn't automatically follow terrain - at a CONSTANT AIRSPEED I have to use collective control (which doesn't work correctly in OFP either BTW - but near enough and better than ArmA) to maintain a fixed height above terrain.

I think you're mistaking the way OFP helos will climb (airspeed decrease) when you pull back on the stick / raise the nose and conversely will descend (airspeed increase) when you push the stick forward / lower the nose - this means that you can follow terrain much like a normal plane using the cyclic and without messing with the collective (can leave it locked inplace with the friction adjuster) - and having ACTUALLY DONE THIS in a Squirrel helicopter in real life I can assure you that is indeed how helicopters behave in forward flight.

In ArmA this relationship / effect is NOT modelled correctly - in OFP it's represented quite decently.

And in fact the real thing - like most aircraft - DOES pretty much fly itself unless maneouvering at low speed - ie. hovering / taking off / landing. I was allowed several years ago to take the cyclic in a Squirrel for a few hours - we were island hopping so between takeoffs and landings I flew us to the next island in turn - the pilot initially took me thru climbing and descending using just the cyclic (as well as banking of course - but that's just like a normal plane in forward flight) - he was on the pedals of course tho didn't seem top be having to do much with them - and he left the collective and power control locked and didn't even touch it for the whole time. Once he'd got me used to the relationship between nose up / climbing / losing speed and nose down / descending / increasing airspeed then my task was to keep us at 2000 feet and on the correct heading.

As I KEEP on saying - harder does NOT mean more realistic!!! - people keep focussing on the fact that you cannot just immediately fly ArmA helos decently because of the ridiculous mushiness and calling this realistic - whilst ignoring the fact that the broader flight dynamics and control responses are pretty much completely screwed.  I've got to say that the UH60 actually isn't too bad in ArmA tho the yaw control just isn't right and the collective is too soft - and maybe the MI17 really just is a total PIG to fly IRL

As I've said - you want to experience what flying a real helicopter is like - in relation to handling the aircraft and without having to learn the physical process of "flying" it (impossible in front of a PC as I've said before - so time shouldn't be wasted even trying) - then except for the collective control acting like a height lever rather than a lift control - OFP is the place to go.

Loss of yaw control with higher forward speed makes sense but it's too sudden in ArmA (in fact I'd suspect IRL that yaw would pretty much disappear in the direction of main rotor rotation but still be reasonably decent in the opposite direction as main rotor rotation?) - the effect is quite decently modelled in OFP so once again I have to say why didn't they just leave it be.

Oh, just as I posted I remembered hearing of a case in North Western Australia where an oil rig chopper - one of the big Sikorki's - S-76 perhaps??  - lost tail rotor drive - he was able to fly to an airfield and successfully land - but to do it he had to do a rolling landing (ie. much like a normal plane) at I think 120 knots or something like that?  This gives an insight I guess into how forward airspeed takes load off - and possibly removes authority from - the tail rotor.

[ThudBlunderQ8 0]

I'll add my two penn'orth if I may. Having been a happy OFP'er for 5 years, and having been flying helicopters since 1977 (instructing since 1984), I've had a chance to make a few observations on the heli-flying threads over on the older game's boards.

Lots of good points being made here. RofSLs mate (who, if he ever 'did time' at Odiham I will surely know - my first tour there was in 1978 and my last in 1998) has made most of the observations that I have found in 3 days-worth of play.

Putting it into context, ArmA (and OFP) was never really going to be sold as a helicopter flight simulator so why push it in that direction? Flying helicopters involves skills which take a few hundred hours to get firmly fixed in the long-term memory; no gamer is going to want to make that sort of time-investment just to make a sim workable. BI don't assume every user is an expert infantryman or tank driver, so they simplify the sim to make those roles accessible. Why shouldn't they simplify helicopter flying so that it gives just a semblance of reality?

To enable real-life heli skills to cross over to the sim, players would need to do some work of their own. For example, they would need to configure their controllers so that the stick could be manoeuvred by finger-and-thumb while the forearm rests on the "pilot's" thigh. In real life, any pilot trying to "stiff-arm" the controls will just go from one pilot-induced-oscillation (PIO, or porpoise...) to the next - to damp-out a fugoid you need a base-reference (such as a specific stick position relative to a given point on your leg...) that you can aim to return the control on completion of the applied correction. Most helis these days - certainly the Blackhawk and Cobra - have trim systems to reduce the pressure against the pilots' hand while holding the aircraft at a given datum - not possible with most game joysticks, I'm afraid (although I'm constantly moving the FOV switch when in-game in a vain attempt to trim. Some habits are hard to break). Collective and yaw controls can successfully be modelled using game joysticks, so they're not so much of an issue here. BI don't know what each individual player is using as a control set-up (I still use the mouse when playing on the laptop..) so how can they be expected to produce a "one-size-fits-all" solution?

Test pilots use a grading system for assessing the difficulty of a particular aircraft's handling, where 1 is "yer grandma could do it", 3 is "your standard, low-average, inexperienced Squadron pilot could do it" all the way up to 6 ("an uber-god TP can do it but he'll need spare underwear"). At the moment, my subjective assessment of the aircraft in ArmA is that the H60s and the Little Birds are 3, the Mi17 is 4 and the Cobra is 5 going on 6. Back on OFP, the difficulty on all types including community addons was never higher than 3.

As regards faults in the ArmA model, my subjective opinion is that the greatest failing on all types is their "collective lever" response. My current types are all relatively small (Bo105, EC135 and my favourite, the MD902), but 9 years and 3000+ hours on Chinooks did give me a feel for larger helicopters. In all these aircraft, if I'm in the cruise and I want to descend, then within a very few seconds of lowering the lever all the way to the bottom I'll have a rate-of-descent of at least 1800 fpm. In real world terms, if I want to see where the aircraft's trajectory in this sort of descent is taking me, I need to look just over the top of the coaming/instrument panel. In a 902 I need to be looking just above my toes on the pedals! However, in ArmA (and even more so in its predecessor), lowering the lever would give me time to undo my straps, run to the back of the aircraft, return to my seat and buckle-up once more before the aircraft has even thought about descending. Very frustrating.

Not sure what the cause of the vastly-exaggerated yaw-roll coupling on all ArmA types (but especially the Cobra) might be. Contrary to what one poster said, putting in yaw does have a secondary roll effect (easily and usually automatically compensated-for by the pilot). However, it's so extreme as to make the Cobra ridiculous at the moment. Someone has pointed out that the position of the aircraft C of G relative to the centre of lift (not always under "the" rotor hub - remember the Chinook...) seems wrong - I would suggest that the pendulum be made a lot longer by moving the CofG way down.

One last heli-related comment - one contributor suggested earlier that the Kamov heli doesn't yaw. Oh yes it does! Same system as is used (for pitch control! on the Chinook - differential collective. Anyone who saw the Helix demo at Redhill a few years ago will remember watching the aircraft fly along the crowd line at approx 50 kts, put in a bootful of pedal so that the aircraft yawed 90 degrees in about 3 seconds while maintaining ground track, then held that for another 3-5 seconds before resuming balanced flight. A Hokum that couldn't yaw would be totally ineffective as a fighting aircraft - bringing the gun to bear in hover flight wouldn't be possible.

Right, I need to get some sleep before tomorrow. Meanwhile, I look forward to many hours ArmA practice on shift, awaiting my next air-ambulance/ police heli callout. Life's not bad, really - eh?!

[whisper 0]

I don't quite get these yaw-roll coupling complaints. I don't seem to have this issue. Is it Cobra-specific for you guys?

[Midhaven 0]

Anyone who can tell me if the cobras agility is anywhere near accurate? I'm always having a realy hard time avoiding mountains in high speeds.. Say I'm flying with a speed of 200 and I want to fly through an S shaped canyon.. Even if I start turning 300 meters away I keep crashing into the wall.

So, at a speed of 200, whats the distance required to get to 0 speed with the cobra?