Choppers paradise

[geloxo 2]

Hi all,

Are you a chopper fan? Are you tired of trying those chopper formations in Arma with unrealistic results? Mmmmm, yeap..., me too

Take a look on this:

Not a mod but I´m working on a set of handy tools (scripts) for better performance of choppers in game, including:

- really close formation flight without crashing, allowing spectacular coordinate raids

- choppers follow a single set of waypoints exactly as they are, instead of following leader and turning when he does but doing it exactly at the waypoint location (usefull for large column formations)

- easy way to create custom formations and possibility to set an additional one only for landing purposes, allowing simultaneous landings

- improved spins and turns and constant flight (instead of those "pitch up and down" we see now when unit updates its target position)

- accurrate landings

- a bonus: air cam (attached to vehicle) and manually controlled to get impressive cutscenes in an easy way

Check this demo video (by the way..., it´s my first one). It may be quite dark but I hope you enjoy it

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EDIT: Demo mission released:

http://rapidshare.com/files/32238963/HandyToolsDemo.Sara.zip

http://www.armed-assault-zone.com/news.php?readmore=346

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EDIT: available videos (feel free to upload them to your servers)

http://rapidshare.com/files/29505840/littlebird.wmv

http://rapidshare.com/files/29552847/chinook.wmv

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IU8RKAMI

http://www.armedassault.info/index.p....tart=32

http://www.armaholic.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=711

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I´m preparing another one with chinooks to show the formation flight functionallity

Cheers

PD: We urgently need better tracers in Arma...

[scubaman3D 0]

cool cool I like the concept

[JanMasterson 0]

looks great, keep it up the good work!

[Jimboob 0]

Video looks impressive, was looking for something like this for planes as well, think it would work with them? Or atleast keep them close enough together.

[Callsign 128]

looks fantastic, is there any way to lock on the camera to a selected target such as when firing miniguns ud be able to see the target being shot while u can carry on flying?

bootneckofficer

[geloxo 2]

As promissed, here you have the old lovely chinook from Marco-Polo-IV (thanks for exporting it to Arma ) in action. This cutscene I prepared today shows 9 chinooks flying most the time in close stag column formation to the LZ, where they will change to 3 sets o 3 choopers in wedge formation to simultaneously land so accurretly that the standing soldiers on the LZ are not damaged Notice how choppers turns are smoother and formation is never lost as they fly the same path to the target. This custom formation adds 5m height steps to the standard stag column, but we can create as many formations as we want and use as many choppers as your system can handle. Speed for all units will be similar and we can set it to slow of fast depending on our needs. Some choppers in the video will land slowly while others will do it using a more agressive pattern:

http://rapidshare.com/files/29552847/chinook.wmv

Hint: both videos use 100% of Arma AI. My role during gameplay was only to control the camera with the mouse and joystick.

Feel free to upload the vids to your servers as rapidshare hosting won´t last forever

Enjoy!

Regarding your comments this "should" work with any kind of vehicle in game, even jets, although it was designed for choppers. Let me experiment a little bit to see how it behaves... Camera on a target while you play? "Everything" should be possible but I´m not so familiar with the new scripts in Arma to answer this yet, sorry

Cheers

[swtx 42]

I can't wait for this one

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Fabulous. One thing - what's the song played in the video? I'm in the market for more like it. Ta.

[the_shadow 0]

can someone put the vids anywhere ELSE then rapidshare?

i cant download since rapidshare sais i have reached the limited number of free downloads and has to register... wich isnt free....

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Wow, that "hard" chinook landings are looking great!

Like a landing in a combat zone!

Amazing, good work!

MfG Lee

[warpuppy 0]

All i can is WOW this is the best

I really take my hat of you mate, this script wiould help idoits like myself to accompish many things !

Cant wait to try it out

Once again i want to say thanks it people like yourself that make arma most enjoyable

thanks

[txalin 2]

I love you.

Seriously. I love you

Thats the kind of things that from my point of view BIS must include in an official patch....

[Yossarian 0]

Fabulous. One thing - what's the song played in the video? I'm in the market for more like it. Ta.

Sounds like the music from the movie Black Hawk Down to me...

[JanMasterson 0]

Fabulous. One thing - what's the song played in the video? I'm in the market for more like it. Ta.

Sounds like the music from the movie Black Hawk Down to me...

Right, it's the song 12, "Tribal War" from Black Hawk Donwn's soundtrack, a great one.

cheers,

Jan

[omadmartigano 0]

Can someone put the vids @ Google Video

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Thank you.

[bootleg soldier 2]

Fabulous work nuff said really looking forward to it.

And yes i agree if it's as good as it looks BIS should swallow there pride and come grovelling.

[mattxr 9]

this kind of thing is awesome.. why couldnt bis add this into the game themselves pu'sht..

Keep up the good work mate.

[wolfsblut_ 0]

In the little-bird-vid I think especially the coordination of music and video was well done. Bravo.

Let us know when your scripts will be launched.

[william1 0]

the video looks quite impressive , have you achieved a fast insertion in hot zones ? (no the default BIS i-have-to-wait-forever-until-the-helicopter-lands)

[geloxo 2]

Thanks for your comments!

Indeed the insertion is the issue I´m trying to solve now: when troops are assigned as cargo the chopper seems to execute a separate Arma script with higher priority than my custom script and my orders are overriden. I managed to fix it yesterday but it needs a little bit more to look fine

Regarding the dates this is currently a "pre-pre-pre-beta version". Lots of things are still pending so no dates available, sorry. Anyway I think I could have something stable in a few days and you could check it

It worked with jets too (somebody asked...) but as they are faster the performance needs some more adjustment

Cheers

[anoik 0]

And with the soldiers? so they don't run around like clones?

[Scrub 0]

This is one of those little gems that will greatly change the feel of ArmA (for the better). If you put it into a mission or mod it, and someone that hasn't seen this plays a chopper mission, they'll be thinking 'this is cool', maybe not even knowing why. The coordination is awesome. Good job!

[Sedarine 0]

This is some good looking stuff! The scripts look to greatly improve the chopper behavior...and your videos were very well done. I don't suppose we could get you to post an AH-64 or Hind video, I'm curious to see how the would work with this.

[charliereddog 9]

Looking great. As someone who's looking at a chopper script of my own, I might have some ideas for you.

One thing, the chinnook's seem to slide forward a hell of a lot on landing, good job you picked an open field!