I can't rotate the helicopters it's when moving?

[LeftSkidLow 1]

Quote[/b] ]Why oh why did they have to change the flight model since OFP? Definitely didn't follow the rule: If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it!!

I think you have a gas leak in your house. The OFP flight model was most assuredly broken.

The OFP flight model was freaking terrible, ArmA has come leaps and bounds since OFP. ArmA's isn't realistic or perfect, but it isn't that bad, for the most part I can get the helicopter to do what I want without noob restrictions. I have a feeling that most of the guys that say OFP had a more realistic and/or better flight model are using a keyboard and mouse. There are tons of players out there online that can fly great in ArmA now, but there are still a few incompetent ones that are pissed because they use to be the shit in OFP, now they crash all the time because there is no more noob-by-wire flight model.

[max power 21]

Quote[/b] ]Why oh why did they have to change the flight model since OFP? Definitely didn't follow the rule: If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it!!

I think you have a gas leak in your house. The OFP flight model was most assuredly broken.

+1!

[4 IN 1 0]

i am using both keyboard and mouse and joy stick and i dare to say that OFP flight control is rubbish

[Hunin 0]

Well since I've actually flown helicopters for half my life I believe I can give some advice on the situation.

First of all, when a helicopter is in forward flight using your right or left pedals just to turn, (just pressing the x or c button to turn around) this would cause an instant stall. OR If you were flying in a MI24 Hind just applying too much pedal would cut your tail boom in half.

Im not saying its impossible, usually the tail rotor is used to counter the main rotors natural torque. Usually when your hovering or in a slow low forward speed, like 15mph and 20 feet from the ground, you would yaw using the pedals.

So BI is probly trying to simulate more accuratly what it would be like to fly a helicopter.(To me they are no where close, its more like flying a gyrocopter)

Hopefully yall learned a little more bout helicopters.

P.S. To many of you that think flight sim games for the computer are realistic and you think you know how to fly a helicopter now should go steal a helicopter and I'll visit ya in a hospital or your grave. The ONLY sim game that is anywhere close to flying an actual helicopter would be the flight simulators the military I've been in and helicopter schools use.

So tail rotors are just to counter intertia ( through airpressure on the tailboom) ?

I'm just sceptical because it is very common procedure to use the tailrot for creating inertia without banking ( and therefor loosing v.thrust).

And because it is simply impossible to use yaw only in near hover situations.

I don't want to implie that you have no real experience in helicopters - but I have the strong feeling that I missed your point.

[max power 21]

Inertia is the property of mass that resists forces acting upon it.. You can't really create that, per se..

Anyways, the tail rotors are to counter the torque of the main rotor. By varying the angle of the blades, they can induce rotation in either direction, either by creating less counter torque or more.

[Punisher5555 0]

As a former Army helicopter pilot I have been watching this thread and laughing the whole time. Would it not be easy just for you to google the answer? BIS has done a ok job. But it is just a game and it would take a super computer to correctly sim a helicopter. No game/sim has ever come close to the real thing. I will give you one example: ETL (Effective Translational Lift). Look it up. No game/sim has ever modeled that and that is a basic helicopter flight principle. BIS has done a ok job with using the pedals at slow speeds and using them to trim at high speeds.

[Hunin 0]

Inertia is the property of mass that resists forces acting upon it.. You can't really create that, per se..

Anyways, the tail rotors are to counter the torque of the main rotor. By varying the angle of the blades, they can induce rotation in either direction, either by creating less counter torque or more.

Don't you think your post contradicts itself?

[Hunin 0]

As a former Army helicopter pilot I have been watching this thread and laughing the whole time. Would it not be easy just for you to google the answer? BIS has done a ok job. But it is just a game and it would take a super computer to correctly sim a helicopter. No game/sim has ever come close to the real thing. I will give you one example: ETL (Effective Translational Lift). Look it up. No game/sim has ever modeled that and that is a basic helicopter flight principle. BIS has done a ok job with using the pedals at slow speeds and using them to trim at high speeds.

Valid points - but thats not what the topic is about ultimatly.

It's about getting the maximum possibilitys out of the game by trying to give the ingame pilots the same means ( in terms of controll) that a real pilot has.

[max power 21]

Inertia is the property of mass that resists forces acting upon it.. You can't really create that, per se..

Anyways, the tail rotors are to counter the torque of the main rotor. By varying the angle of the blades, they can induce rotation in either direction, either by creating less counter torque or more.

Don't you think your post contradicts itself?

Nope.

[Hunin 0]

Nevermind then.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Quote[/b] ]Why oh why did they have to change the flight model since OFP? Definitely didn't follow the rule: If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it!!

I think you have a gas leak in your house. The OFP flight model was most assuredly broken.

The OFP flight model was freaking terrible, ArmA has come leaps and bounds since OFP. ArmA's isn't realistic or perfect, but it isn't that bad, for the most part I can get the helicopter to do what I want without noob restrictions. I have a feeling that most of the guys that say OFP had a more realistic and/or better flight model are using a keyboard and mouse. There are tons of players out there online that can fly great in ArmA now, but there are still a few incompetent ones that are pissed because they use to be the shit in OFP, now they crash all the time because there is no more noob-by-wire flight model.

As I stated before, the helicopter flight model I can live with, except for the rudder issue, but the PLANE FLIGHT MODEL, as it currently exists in ArmA 1.08, is way less realistic than in OFP, besides being almost useless because of that!!!

[Hunin 0]

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Is the plane flight model in any bug tracking number acknowledged by BIS and awaiting to be fixed? Does anybody know?

[Baff1 0]

I think the best current flight model for helicopters is Enemy Engaged Comanche Hokum with all the community updates.............

Until Black Shark comes along  

The trouble is, all these helicopter flight sim games are for gunships only.

They are boring.

The primary role of a helicopter is troop support.

Armd Assault may not have the flight model, but it has the enviroment model.

It's my helicopter simulator of choice. (Or maybe Flashpoint is). With the Battlefield series coming in second.

One thing I noticed on picking up Enemy Engaged 2, is that they offered a variety of flight models. Including settings very similar to those found in OPF. With auto adjustment to make it easy to fly if you wanted.

I would definitely enjoy the option for an OPF flight model in Armed Assault.

I think it would be a big step in the right direction.

For myself, the "realistic flight model" is the least important part of the simulation.

I want controls I can easily master, so that I can spend my time mastering the enviroment and the tactics required to complete a scenario rather than enjoying "fighting the controls" for the sake of "fighting the controls".

Learning to fly may take many months or years of practise. But so does learning to walk.

I don't want to simulate that bit. .

[Hunin 0]

The problem with that aproach is, that it would cause what is allready happening on servers now - everyone thinks to be some kind of pilot and ( of course ) systimaticaly turns the maps helo and plane stock into a junkyard.

I'd rather have it a switchable option on the server side, so you could have dedicated servers were dedicated pilots can deliver the kind of realism that ( IMO ) creates the real immersion.

[redberon2003 0]

as far as the PLANE model goes. i feel it is also unrealistic. i fly the 172's witch is nowhere close. but even at speeds of 110KIAS(generally what i cruise at), the Yaw becomes considerably less respondant. the point where yaw becomes a large factor for Prop driven aircraft is at landing. however i would imagine it's quite different in a Turbofan as the engines dont give off the kind of torque that a prop does. making yaw somewhat of less used function and more just to keep you on course during light windshear on final.

[jdski 0]

With the Battlefield series coming in second....

I think I loved the ability to haul things around the most in BFV with the choppers. That was more fun then killing the enemy for me. Shame they never implemented TrackIR support. Plus there were just too many gunships in BFV making life a drag for the grunt sometimes.

[fantnet 0]

Why couldnt they just have made the flight model as simple as joint operations? I think they should have kept it simple. i would love to fly the copters but they are just to difficult.

I hope they make it better in the future. Do you think it could be modded?

[Gisen 0]

The trouble is, all these helicopter flight sim games are for gunships only.

They are boring.

WRONG.

EECH lets you fly all of the helicopters, transport, air assault, whatever in theatre.

And it's certainly not boring.

Quote[/b] ]=It's my helicopter simulator of choice. (Or maybe Flashpoint is). With the Battlefield series coming in second.

Armed Assault is not a helicopter simulator; the lack of fidelity in helicopter modelling is exactly what this thread was about. I agree that flying transport helis can be great fun, especially in multiplayer, but the flight model in ARMA pretty much ruins it.

Quote[/b] ]I would definitely enjoy the option for an OPF flight model in Armed Assault.

I think it would be a big step in the right direction.

I agree, more options are good.

Quote[/b] ]

I want controls I can easily master, so that I can spend my time mastering the enviroment and the tactics required to complete a scenario rather than enjoying "fighting the controls" for the sake of "fighting the controls".

That doesn't sound appealing at all. What I'd like is something like EECH in which someone with some basic flight knowledge - from playing games like arma, OFP and *shudder* BF - can fly around, take off and land. But someone who's really got the practice and the skills can do it better.

Quote[/b] ]

Learning to fly may take many months or years of practise. But so does learning to walk.

I don't want to simulate that bit. .

Rubbish, flying isn't that hard. It's learning to fly well that's difficult, you can do the basics after simple instruction.

[Baff1 0]

Ememy Engaged may let you fly transport helicopters, etc. But they have nothing to do.

You can't pick your mates up and ferry them places.

Extract them from missions or Medivac.

Stealth insert or act as a close air support or a spotter.

Infact you can't interact with the infantry at all. Except perhaps to shoot them.

When was the last time one of the soldiers you were sent to pick up verbally guided you in to a tight landing space in EECH?

Or threw smoke markers or secured your landing area.

Armed Assault is a helicopter simulator, fidelity of controls alone doesn't define simulation.

It's not even the intresting part for me either.

I agree with the guy who mentioned Joint Ops.

The flight controls are totally simple.

And even so there are pilots who with more practise are far better than those without. The same for Battlefield.

The difference is you are fighting the enemies tactics not the games controls.

I'm more intrested in choosing the most strategic flight path to my objective and understanding the role of the specific equipment on the battlefield than I am trying to practise for my pilot lisence.

Personally, I don't care if other people can do it better with more practise, what is important to me is that I or the people I am playing with can do it well enough to be enjoyable for us.

I don't want to spend 15 miuntes in a multiplayer game only to get shot down and the party wiped before my team even manages to deploy.

Imagine how much fun that is for the other 8 guys sitting in the room next to me. Woot! They get to do nothing for another 15 minutes all over again.

And no, I don't have time to practise incessantly. Nor do I ever want to have.

The game is either easily accessable or we will load something else that is.

For the life of me I can't get behind the "make this game so difficult to interface with, that only people who spend 20 hours practising can compete in multiplayer".

If it isn't intuative to use there isn't going to be anyone in multiplayer.

Flying better than the other players isn't all that impressive when you are flying alone.

[Gisen 0]

Ememy Engaged may let you fly transport helicopters, etc. But they have nothing to do.

You can't pick your mates up and ferry them places.

Extract them from missions or Medivac.

Stealth insert or act as a close air support or a spotter.

Infact you can't interact with the infantry at all. Except perhaps to shoot them.

Have you actually played it? Because the answer to each of your statements is 'yes, you can' and the main point is that you CAN fly other helis in EECH if you want.

Quote[/b] ]When was the last time one of the soldiers you were sent to pick up verbally guided you in to a tight landing space in EECH?

Or threw smoke markers or secured your landing area.

Humans can't play as infantry in EECH, unfortunately, but can't you imagine how good it would be if Arma had the same level of flight modelling? (It's almost a decade old, it really wouldn't cause any CPU problems)

Quote[/b] ]Armed Assault is a helicopter simulator, fidelity of controls alone doesn't define simulation.

It's not even the intresting part for me either.

No, it is not a helicopter simulator. A simulator is "A device, computer program or system used during software verification, which behaves or operates like a given system when provided with a set of controlled inputs" - Arma helicopters behave NOTHING like real helicopters when provided with similar inputs. Don't know what you think a simulator is, but you're misinformed.

Quote[/b] ]

I agree with the guy who mentioned Joint Ops.

The flight controls are totally simple.

And even so there are pilots who with more practise are far better than those without. The same for Battlefield.

The difference is you are fighting the enemies tactics not the games controls.

I'm not sure if you just didn't read my post, but I agree that helicopter flying shouldn't be incredibly difficult to learn. The idea of having simplified controls (by having AI assist features like cross coupling the rudder) is good- there should just ALSO be the option to fly at a more responsive, more advanced level if the pilot wishes to. And yes, it is a shame that arcadey games like the aforementioned have better modelling of helicopters than ARMA.

I won't respond to the rest of your post because you are attacking a strawman: nobody said that flying in ARMA should be practice for a pilots licence. It's not much to ask for better helicopter controls, is it? You seem to be arguing for the sake of it.

[Gimpster 0]

I must admit that this is one of the things I dislike about ArmA. Its a Combined Armed Battle Simulation, yet most of the core functionaly is focused on the infantry level. My question is this.

If ArmA is at its core a very modifiable engine whould it not then be possible for a smart coder to extend the core functionality of the engine to allow for the added bits needed to bring vehicle physics up to a point where they are closer to a simulation then the arcadish physics that aew what we have now?

Even if it has to be done with custom scripting I think it is possible to build a heli that conforms closer to reality. Personaly I would love the ability to have a realistic collective/throttle axis function instead of the increase/decrease button functionality we have now,(Yes I know it can be assigned to an axis but even then it is still -5% to -100% = Decrease +5% to +100% = Increase and -5% to +5% = No Change). As far as tail authority goes as other have said its a complex thing which involves tail length, tail rotor size/pitch range, heli profie area and main rotor/tail rotor RPM ratios.

Basicly the longer the tail lever length is the less power is needed to turn the heli about its axis, but a longer tail also has farther to move and will have a larger profile both of which reduce its effectiness. The higher the RPM and larger the pitch range are the more thrust the tail can generate. As such a heli like the Blackhawk which has a long tail with a large vertival and horizontal stabilizer will have very little tail authority once in forward flight or in high winds. It will want to weather vain and will fly more like an airplane once moving. On the other hand the MH-6 Littlebird with is not so long tail but very small profile will have much less tendancy to weather vain and will have a much more authoritive tail. The higher head speed of both its main rotor and tail rotor also allow it to generare a greater force then the Blackhawk's rotors.

At this point I do not think the physics engine has all the componants needed to model this correctly, but I think it could be modeled in more detail then it is now though. Some basic things that could be improved now are:

Throttle / Collective Improvement

Seperate throttle and collective fuctions and give then the ability to be Perportional with setting hold feature. In a heli the throttle is spooled up to Mil power and generaly left there during flight under most flying condition and the collective is used for altitude adjustment. I personaly would always have the setting hold enabled on the throttle but woudl have it disabled for the collective if assigned to a control axis and enabled if assigned to a key set. One step beter would be the ability to setup throttle/Pitch mixing curves but that might be a little too much. Having a true collective also allows for the ability to Auto-Rotate and safely land a heli with an engine failure, somthing that is not always possible in the current implimentation.

Tail Rotor

The tail rotor cut-off speeds need to be looked at and set to speeds that are more realistic for the individual heli's as every heli is unique and this individuality. One step better woudl be to accaualy model tail rotor thrust and resistance.

[Gisen 0]

In modelling the helicopters it's not necessary to actually have the engine do the calculations about the amount of torque due to the length of the boom in real time, that could be measured beforehand and then used as part of the helicopters config.

[Gimpster 0]

Gisen, sure they could and then you could use a simple curve to model their thrust % vs input as its not a flat curve. Just like much of the other bits of the current physics engine where static values are used in place of dynamicly generated ones and you can still get a passable end result. The only draw back is that it becomes more predictable then it is in reality where there are many things in play that affect the final numbers.

Balistics is another hood example of this, where the flight path of a bullet is determined via, gravity, air dencity, humidity, wind, drag and muzzle velocity. If static values are used for everything then the bullets flight path is very predictable and long range shots become very easy. If some of the values are dynamic and changing from moment to moment that the long range shots become more and more diffacult and it takes more skill and practice to learn how the different dynamic elements affect the ballistic path.

I would hate to see heli's become so diffacult that only the most practiced and dedicated players are able to fly them, but on the other hand I would like to see them opperate in a more realistic way.

[twisted 128]

I must admit that this is one of the things I dislike about ArmA. Its a Combined Armed Battle Simulation, yet most of the core functionaly is focused on the infantry level. My question is this.

If ArmA is at its core a very modifiable engine whould it not then be possible for a smart coder to extend the core functionality of the engine to allow for the added bits needed to bring vehicle physics up to a point where they are closer to a simulation then the arcadish physics that aew what we have now?

Even if it has to be done with custom scripting I think it is possible to build a heli that conforms closer to reality. Personaly I would love the ability to have a realistic collective/throttle axis function instead of the increase/decrease button functionality we have now,(Yes I know it can be assigned to an axis but even then it is still -5% to -100% = Decrease +5% to +100% = Increase and -5% to +5% = No Change). As far as tail authority goes as other have said its a complex thing which involves tail length, tail rotor size/pitch range, heli profie area and main rotor/tail rotor RPM ratios.

Basicly the longer the tail lever length is the less power is needed to turn the heli about its axis, but a longer tail also has farther to move and will have a larger profile both of which reduce its effectiness. The higher the RPM and larger the pitch range are the more thrust the tail can generate. As such a heli like the Blackhawk which has a long tail with a large vertival and horizontal stabilizer will have very little tail authority once in forward flight or in high winds. It will want to weather vain and will fly more like an airplane once moving. On the other hand the MH-6 Littlebird with is not so long tail but very small profile will have much less tendancy to weather vain and will have a much more authoritive tail. The higher head speed of both its main rotor and tail rotor also allow it to generare a greater force then the Blackhawk's rotors.

At this point I do not think the physics engine has all the componants needed to model this correctly, but I think it could be modeled in more detail then it is now though. Some basic things that could be improved now are:

Throttle / Collective Improvement

Seperate throttle and collective fuctions and give then the ability to be Perportional with setting hold feature. In a heli the throttle is spooled up to Mil power and generaly left there during flight under most flying condition and the collective is used for altitude adjustment. I personaly would always have the setting hold enabled on the throttle but woudl have it disabled for the collective if assigned to a control axis and enabled if assigned to a key set. One step beter would be the ability to setup throttle/Pitch mixing curves but that might be a little too much. Having a true collective also allows for the ability to Auto-Rotate and safely land a heli with an engine failure, somthing that is not always possible in the current implimentation.

Tail Rotor

The tail rotor cut-off speeds need to be looked at and set to speeds that are more realistic for the individual heli's as every heli is unique and this individuality. One step better woudl be to accaualy model tail rotor thrust and resistance.

this would be very damn good.