Helicopter CG

[vortex3d 0]

Try this from the chase view:

1. Fly a Blackhawk or cobra at cruising speed in level flight

2. Bank Left and Right with the Cyclic (no rudder)

Notice something odd? the chopper swivels from a pivot located above the main rotors. This pivot is supposed to be the Center Of Gravity (CG). I fly choppers in real life and I have never seen the CG there, LOL.

You can actually put this beast on a 360-deg roll in a matter of seconds (just be sure to reduce collective to 0 while inverted and back to full when upright). This however is very far from the claims of realism. Who developed the flight model?  I do have some Vehicle Dynamics books you guys can borrow. Just playing, I don’t lend my books out. :P

I love the game, just PLEASE, PLEASE move the CG where it belongs.

[max power 21]

This has been discussed at length in other threads. If you use the search function you can find a few military pilot accounts on this forum that support the notion that under a range of circumstances, helicopters move about their aerodynamic centre, which is located at the main rotor hub.

[vortex3d 0]

A range of circumstances do not apply to the entire envelope, specially at slow flight or hover.

[max power 21]

a range of circumstances does not apply to the entire envelope, specially at slow flight or hover.

I don't know, I'm not a helicopter pilot. Use the search function to see what the actual pilots said. I had the same argument. But, if the centre of rotation is dynamic, then you can clog up your runtime with animation vs. speed calculations or you can choose one centre of rotation for all envelopes.

BIS has heard this stuff before and they haven't changed it yet. I'm not sure they're going to suddenly decide to change it one day.

[maddogx 13]

This may be a war simulator, but any sim can only go so far when it comes to realism. Some things just have to be simplified for the sake of gameplay.

[kestrel7e7 0]

This may be a war simulator, but any sim can only go so far when it comes to realism.

ArmA is NOT a simulator (nor OFP), it's a war sandbox that tries to do too much and ends up not doing any of it very well. If you want a helicopter simulator you should consider FSX, the upcoming Lock On v1.2 or the old but worthy Jane's Longbow 2.

[max power 21]

This may be a war simulator, but any sim can only go so far when it comes to realism.

ArmA is NOT a simulator (nor OFP), it's a war sandbox that tries to do too much and ends up not doing any of it very well. If you want a helicopter simulator you should consider FSX, the upcoming Lock On v1.2 or the old but worthy Jane's Longbow 2.

That statement assumes that the objective with arma was to simulate everything as closely as possible to the real world. Good being realistic, in that sense. I don't know if it meets or fails its design parameters, but I'm pretty sure that being a helicopter simulator isn't one of them. It's like saying that Need for Speed isn't a very good moose simulator. There were mooses in it, but they weren't modelled very well. Clearly, accurate moose simulation wasn't in the game's design in the first place. The moose did fulfill a purpose, though, as the helis in arma also fulfill one.

[4 IN 1 0]

This may be a war simulator, but any sim can only go so far when it comes to realism.

ArmA is NOT a simulator (nor OFP), it's a war sandbox that tries to do too much and ends up not doing any of it very well. If you want a helicopter simulator you should consider FSX, the upcoming Lock On v1.2 or the old but worthy Jane's Longbow 2.

its a war sandbox yes, but they aint trying to do too much, they are trying to do as much with a reasonable level of realism, and with that they have pass that line, what the problem is: we want more

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

@ vortex3d:

Drive a tracked vehicle fast in 3rd person view over a bumpy area so that only one or the other track runs over a bump.

You will see that a tank behaves like a chopper, the pivot is located above the turret and if the is a huge bump on one side it seems that the tank swings to this side by sliding sidewards with the tracks. Totally weird.

With the copter try this: Make out of high speed a sharp turn and pull the nose up by still turning. You could bring the copter easily into a position of 30-45 degree left or right hanging in the air for 3-6 seconds without sliding from the airbeam to that side and without loosing height immediately.

There is still a LOT to do for BI.

[vortex3d 0]

You really have to be in some serious denial to not understand that if you're going to represent any vehicle in any profitable game, it needs to behave in a manner humans are use to. If it's merely a sandbox, then why add so much eye candy?

Flight was not improved from OFP1, it's heading in the wrong direction. Stay away from the Battlefield 2 flight model that even a caveman can do.

The game should respect the laws of physics at least.

Just imagine if heat rounds bounced off your helmet without killing you. I'm sure you would be ranting, even though is supposed to be a "Sand Box".

[max power 21]

@ vortex3d:

Drive a tracked vehicle fast in 3rd person view over a bumpy area so that only one or the other track runs over a bump.

You will see that a tank behaves like a chopper, the pivot is located above the turret and if the is a huge bump on one side it seems that the tank swings to this side by sliding sidewards with the tracks. Totally weird.

With the copter try this: Make out of high speed a sharp turn and pull the nose up by still turning. You could bring the copter easily into a position of 30-45 degree left or right hanging in the air for 3-6 seconds without sliding from the airbeam to that side and without loosing height immediately.

There is still a LOT to do for BI.

This is again assuming that BI is interested in developing a more complicated collision and physics system, which I don't believe they are. I wouldn't expect many future improvements with the physics model, not with the way this game performs. Optimizations aren't magical things that a programmer can do to make the code faster. Usually they involve cutting down the complexity of things and cheating. We can all see the optimizations that took place in the last patch. Some general visual quality declined, and some new options (such has having no post processing on the grass layer) were introduced. Having vehicles not have such a complicated model as to include multi-axis roll-overs I think is a good thing in this case.

That said, I'm sure I've adequately expressed my feelings on the flight controls in other threads!

[vortex3d 0]

Do you really need post processing in this game? Give me a break!! You don't even need antialias unless you're going to play a combat photgrapher.

Gameplay is what makes or breaks games, not fancy laggy graphics which leave no room for the real deal. A game with good physics, freedom, and vast terrain will outweigh one that looks photorealistic inside a tiny area.

It really has to do with development cost, advisors and/or talent. One or more of these are missing. It can't possibly be ego!

:P

[4 IN 1 0]

You really have to be in some serious denial to not understand that if you're going to represent any vehicle in any profitable game, it needs to behave in a manner humans are use to. If it's merely a sandbox, then why add so much eye candy?

Flight was not improved from OFP1, it's heading in the wrong direction. Stay away from the Battlefield 2 flight model that even a caveman can do.

The game should respect the laws of physics at least.

Just imagine if heat rounds bounced off your helmet without killing you. I'm sure you would be ranting, even though is supposed to be a "Sand Box".

i think i get confused now, are you trying to say that the FM should be BF2ish?(no! not i a billion year)

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

@ plaintiff1: ???

For tanks it is a step backwards compared with OFP/VBS1, they messed something up which they can fix for sure later. The collision is detected correctly for the example I described for the tank, just the reaction is wrong.

For the copters I would try to tweak with the abilities the current engine has as far as it goes, and for game 2 I would employ some devs with real experience in flight-sim physics. It is the king-class, if you made this, you can do the physics of all other vehicles with one hand.

@ 4 in 1: I guess he tried to express the opposite: BF2 flight model is sh...

[max power 21]

Do you really need post processing in this game? Give me a break!! You don't even need antialias unless you're going to play a combat photgrapher.

Gameplay is what makes or breaks games, not fancy laggy graphics which leave no room for the real deal. A game with good physics, freedom, and vast terrain will outweigh one that looks photorealistic inside a tiny area.

It really has to do with development cost, advisors and/or talent. One or more of these are missing. It can't possibly be ego!

:P

LOL you sound angry... angry and sort of out of sync with computer entertainment trends. You might garner immersion from technical minutia like centre of rotation (although you sound sort of ill-informed about the whole thing), but I think that most consumers would like a nod to the graphics criteria as well.

Also what you're describing, as in the resolution of the physics engine, has nothing to do with gameplay... so you're sort of not making much sense there. And ArmA has quite good gameplay in my opinion... just not great physics.

Quote[/b] ]

Innocent and Clueless

For tanks it is a step backwards compared with OFP/VBS1, they messed something up which they can fix for sure later. The collision is detected correctly for the example I described for the tank, just the reaction is wrong.

I thinkt he only difference is that in arma, the centre of rotation is inside the vehicle. How many times did you see a bmp blast off, spinning through the air (LOL) orbitting as it spins through an axis that is not even inside the bmp? I don't think much has changed in that regard, except that there is more acceptible behaviour when something is hit by a huge blast. You get less of the APC rocketry...

What I was getting at in terms of collision was that in order to have a vehicle roll-over properly, you'd have to have it first rotate aroudn the axis of the inside tire and then around the c of g and then around some axes dictated by the shape and friction of the hull.. :/ If you don't want to do it realistically, I guess you can just choose some axis to rotate on that seems to work as you begin to roll up hills and stuff. It also might have something to do with where the camera is placed..

BTW the suspension on the abrams seems spot on. I really like to watch that thing. When it stops hard it sort of looks like an old lady tripping over its skirt... it's not all bad.

[icebreakr 3156]

I'm 100% with vortex3d here... we have RL chopper pilots in our squad and they are complaining over the same thing, too.

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

@ plaintiff1:

odd physical behavior = less gameplay fun

since you try to utilize all like in reality

If something is to far away from RL it gives a bad taste, but overall I still have fun. But if you do a serious league thing and some participate a lot from unrealistic physical behavior (überwaffen, copter still alive after crashed down...) it disturbs the gameplay like hell!

Why do you think mods like WGL are used a lot by RL freaks? Even if they could not heal everything.

[max power 21]

@ plaintiff1:

odd physical behavior = less gameplay fun

since you try to utilize all like in reality

If something is to far away from RL it gives a bad taste, but overall I still have fun. But if you do a serious league thing and some participate a lot from unrealistic physical behavior (überwaffen, copter still alive after crashed down...) it disturbs the gameplay like hell!

Why do you think mods like WGL are used a lot by RL freaks? Even if they could not heal everything.

Yeah, I used to play WGL almost exclusively. WGL designers were designing WGL, though, not ofp. Fortunately, they had most of the programming done for them.

I agree that helcopters surviving after crashing is crappy. However, having a physics model with a prohibitively high system requirement when in combination with the rest of the scope of the program is MORE disturbing.

I do hope they take those bugs out, too, but I hope they don't increase the complexity much in order to do so if that's what they need to do (if > complexity = < performance).

Quote[/b] ]

I'm 100% with vortex3d here... we have RL chopper pilots in our squad and they are complaining over the same thing, too.

You should get them on here.. they can take on the other helicopter pilots in a debate.. a sort of whirly-bird driver battle royale. Once you get enough conflicting opinions on the subject I'm sure that the complexity of the situation will sink and we'll realise how awkward the situation really is. For the record, I feel the helicopters would be more natural rotating from some cog too. Some pilots maintain that the flight of a helicopter is likened to a pendulum hanging from the rotor disc, though.

[4 IN 1 0]

i also have the same complain even i have only been on a chopper backseat 2 times(one time i am laying on a bed)

but i think BI still have no idea on what we want, thing is, unless we came up with a agreement on what we want in the FM, we wont be able to have any improvement

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

Right, I do the agreement for all:

We want

http://lockon.co.uk/index.php?lang=en

Lockon Black Shark + ArmA engine integrated

MINUS!

everything that we have to throw away to reach 40 FPS again

so maybe exactly that what we actually have

[bravo 6 0]

Notice something odd? the chopper swivels from a pivot located above the main rotors. This pivot is supposed to be the Center Of Gravity (CG). I fly choppers in real life and I have never seen the CG there, LOL.

BIS has heard this stuff before and they haven't changed it yet. I'm not sure they're going to suddenly decide to change it one day.

Agree with vortex3d.

@plaintiff1 Sure they have and they didnt't change yet, but that doesn't mean they woun't change it in future...

If they want a realistic simulation game they better change as veterans suggest ortherwise they will never fulfill their ambition's and wishes.

[maddogx 13]

There is a big differene between A: what the whole community wants changed, B: what a small part of the community wants changed and C: what BIS wants or needs to change.

I think there are bigger fish to fry right now, apart from some modifications to the flight model that a few people are crying for. We don't even know how severe these changes would be - it could be just a minor config tweak, a medium severe model adjustment or require a major change in the engine.

Don't forget that there are a lot of people who are happy with the flight model the way it is, and some of them are pilots. If BIS just went ahead and changed things as soon as someone starts moaning about it, they would have other people moaning about the changes. They really can't please everyone, so the decision about what to do is ultimately up to BIS.

That's what plaintiff was trying to say, as far as I understood him, and I totally agree with his opinion.

If you think the flight model is bugged, file a bug report in the bug tracker and see if they agree that it should be changed.

[bravo 6 0]

If they want a realistic simulation game they better change as veterans suggest ortherwise they will never fulfill their ambition's and wishes.

by saying this im not afirming that they will or not change it.

Im just remembering what BIS team leaders already said about their feelings, wishes and ambitions.

From what i know and heared they want to make it as realistic as possible, independant if people are pleased or not.

They want to portray the realistic feeling to the game.

Im only saying if BIS want to acomplish their ambition's they have to hear vets and experience opinions/ suggestions and not people who like the game as it is with so lack of realism about that subject.

[vortex3d 0]

Plaintiff1,

LOL, and you sound clueless as to what I mean. It's ok I don't expect much intelligence after your previous replies.

[vortex3d 0]

MadDogX,

  Are these FS pilots or real pilots. No real pilot will sit back and ignore unnatural flight characteristics.

That's a "Who cares how it gets there as long as it gets there" mentality, lol

"Who's side are you on son, don't you love this game. How about getting with the program? Why don't you jump on the team and come in for the BIG WIN!"

LOL