How real flying ?

[Carbone 10]

Hi, how I could change the flight mode to make it realistic. Because I find that the flight model of helicopters is very disappointing.

I looked in config.cpp, modified values joystick but it does nothing ...

thank you.

Edited April 6, 2010 by Carbone
The physics of flight was much better in Arma1 and OFP !!! Damn

[UberSloth 10]

What's disappointing about it?

[Carbone 10]

The physics of flight is arcade ! :mad: I feel that the trim is constantly

I would like to make an addon that helicopters would approach the physics of flight-type Ka-50 Black Shark, FSX or X-Plane (Physical only, not the cockpit, no instruments :D:D:D)

Because the mission editor Arma and the map vegetation etc .. are excellent for fly hélicos !

OK?

Edited April 6, 2010 by Carbone

[[aps]gnat 28]

The physics of flight was much better in Arma1 and OFP

Really?

I actual believe its the opposite, and I've briefly flown a real helicopter!

Sure, its not "real physics" in this game, but its not what I would call bad.

[UberSloth 10]

uhhh... OK. I guess. :D

I haven't played FSX but my dad's really got into FS09 after I bought it for him couple of years back for his 60th. I've played the choppers on there, the little commercial ones, can't really say I felt it any the more "realistic" then those in ARMA2 but I do agree with the map geography and vegetation. Lot's of fun to fly a chopper down a river canyon. Until I've flown a real helicopter, which isn't likely to be any time soon, I won't really know what one handles like so I can't help you.

[Master gamawa 0]

well the thing is that even if anyone knew how to modify the config you still didn't define what is realistic for you...

In fact I think the majority of people here couldn't tell the difference between realistic or arcade helicopter handling.

Maybe you should be looking for a helicopter simulator.

[Carbone 10]

I already have a simulator, the best : DCS Black Shark KA-50

I just want to try to approach this simulation, with an addon for Arma 2

Sorry for my english, I use a translator

[Homer Johnston 0]

Sorry Carbone, but it's pretty simple: if you want a helicopter simulator, you must play a helicopter simulator. ArmA is not a helicopter simulator, it is an infantry simulator.

You could try going and posting on the DCS forum that you want DCS to have as accurate infantry movement and simulation as ArmA... same concept. :\

[Carbone 10]

Yes I know this, but I wanted to enjoy the owerful editor Arma 2.

OFP & Arma for me are the best "FPS" or infantry simulator with the power of the editor almost infinite possibility, I am aware.

I just wanted to know how to change the physical helicos because there is a guy who has done this for the A-10 for Arma 2.

Thks.

[Gen_Protection 10]

You make the addon and I will use it :)

Arma 2 Heli is not worse than arma1 or ofp, go back and remind yourself;) Much more predictable and less "twitchy" at the very least when compared with OFP.

I too have had numerous intermittent real life heli lessons, also owned for many years a glider(sailpane) (SHK vtail, glide ratio 1/36)

This "milsim" has to cover driving, flying, swimming, walking, seagoing, parachuting etc etc. Limited resources to allocate to heli I assume.

As prev poster said you want a heli sim, er.... buy a heli sim.. (which you have)

When you make this addon please include ground effect, blade stall, working turn and slip indicator, ability to effectively side slip, attitude trim switch, squawk box and furry dice .. ok no furry dice. Some thermals, ridge lift and wave would be cool too, and to do this properly we need thinner atmosphere as height increases, don't forget lightening strikes, bird strikes, icing, fuel management. I'll need wind sheer, jet turbine wake interferance, downdraft on downwind sides of mountains, thermal turbulence over correct crops and factory chimneys (with wind strength and direction taken into consideration). Also need weather that is so bad that I can't fly mission sometimes and have to sit learning morse code for the whole mission till cloudbase lifts. Obviously we will need full working atc, and fully trained operators with working radar, air corridors etc. Please include a preflight briefing, with option for filing flight plan etc.

Currently not arcade physics, somewhere in between I estimate. Currently predictable outcome to controls, smooth response, repeatable. For a non heli sim thats pretty neat? But bring on your addon I absolutely would use it as would others I am sure... See you in 6 months + (unpaid) ;) in fact I will give undertaking to be official tester for you!

Regards.. I write in good humour ;)

Gen

(I wonder what translator will make of this lol)

Edited April 8, 2010 by Gen_Protection

[kremator 1064]

I have absolutely no problems with flying in Arma2. Both fixed and rotary wing are extremely functional and all they need for a pilot to become great is PRACTICE !

If I wanted to flick a switch, move a knob, tap a dial, trim the elevators etc etc I would NOT be playing Arma2!

[Chumba 10]

IMO helicopters in OFP handle more like they really should - which is NOT to say REALISTIC - just that the player can make them behave and feel as one would expect them to.

ARMA Helo FM is actually quite similar to OFP and with regard to low speed and hovering is actually much more true to life - but in forward flight the tail rotor effectiveness doesn't feel right and banking/turning is somehow "off" as well as collective being very "soft" - again, that's not to say it's wrong or unrealistic but that it's not as fun to fly as OFP.

Like the OP I'd be a happy camper if collective effect, tailrotor effect and banking were set to the same as OFP.

.... and I'm talking about flying in OFP with PROPER collective control (as proper as the game gets anyway - ie. it's still auto-throttle style but that's better than nothing) - ie. joystick slider mapped to thrust inc / dec - NOT terrain following dumbed down OFP flying using keyboard "height inc / dec" . If you're using the proper collective control scheme in OFP the helos do behave basically correctly (ie. similar to ARMA games) - if you want to go take a pee and leave your machine winging toward it's destination then tap the KEYBOARD "height increase" key and she'll lock into the current height above terrain and not fly into rising ground etc. - then to take PROPER control again you jiggle the joystick slider and you have collective control back.

[ryguy 10]

I've been playing Microsoft FS for 8 years now and Arma 2 since it came out... the helicopters are indeed quite realistic, and flying the two in either one really isn't much different. I really don't see what you mean, unless you're talking about trimming the airplane in which case someone needs to make an addon for that.

[Chumba 10]

i've been playing microsoft fs for 8 years now and arma 2 since it came out... The helicopters are indeed quite realistic, and flying the two in either one really isn't much different. I really don't see what you mean, unless you're talking about trimming the airplane in which case someone needs to make an addon for that.

OK - second edit - having spent a few hours messing with ARMA2 choppers I stand by what I've said before about OFP flying much more like FSX - and my own limited experience of the real thing - than ARMA2.

So again I agree with the OP - who BTW clearly states he's NOT talking about switches and knobs "fidelity" OR "Nth" degree accuracy - but the broad dynamics of the model.

ARMA2 has a very "soft" collective - which may be my joystick and is not too big a drama - but the real bugbears with it are:

1. the wierd way that changing heading with the tail rotor above a certain speed doesn't result in a change of flight direction - the aircraft will crab on the same original heading and "snap" back when you let the pedals re centre - I don't think this is right - there might be some degree of "skid" at least initially but the thrust vector is along the axis of the aircraft so changing the axis heading should change the thrust heading which should (eventually) change the direction of flight - this could be offset with the cyclic I suppose - so does this mean ARMA2 "autopilots" the cyclic to maintain the original heading?.

2. the decrease and increase in lift respectively with fore/aft cyclic movement (along with the changes in airspeed) is just not right - it's there, but it's not right - ie. having messed with the cyclic of an AS350 Squirrel helicopter in forward (cruise) flight with collective and power locked, I found that to behave much more like OFP in this respect (pretty damned identical as a matter of fact) and so too does FSX. ARMA2 does not behave like that RL AS350, OFP or FSX in this respect.

Edited April 25, 2010 by Chumba

[mrbinkels 10]

Helicopters do not porpoise with the collective down(zero pitch) when the cyclic is pulled back. That's the only thing I would change about the helicopter flight model. I can deal with the T/R issue.

[Fuzzy Bandit 10]

I'm sure you could quite easily change things like handling, speed and acceleration. The physics system though...

[Chumba 10]

Okay - finally had an opportunity to discuss the flight models (and helo flying in general) with a guy I work with who it turns out is well into learning to fly choppers. He's a qualified private pilot with quite a reasonable amount of experience - he uses FSX to backup and practice his fixed wing flying and in that respect he says flying from point A to point B in FSX is amazingly similar to doing the same flight IRL - but he isn't impressed at all with how unstable FSX choppers are in hover - he says IRL hovering isn't anything near as "crazy" as that and OFP actually sounds more correct in the way it behaves (this has surprised me). From my descriptions he reckons OFP sounds spot on with respect to general flight dynamics but ARMA seems to indeed "have issues".

He's never seen or played either OFP or ARMA but from descriptions he agrees that the collective sounds completely off (again I qualify this by saying it might be my controller - I don't really think so but I have to admit that it MIGHT be) - ie. changing collective pitch should result in the response we get in OFP, NOT what we see in ARMA - and he also agrees that OFP chopper response to changing heading with the pedals sounds more like the real deal as well. He points out that if you keep it "flat" in the roll axis the aircraft will "skid" to some degree - much like a fixed wing being "ruddered" to change heading - but unless you manually use the cyclic to do so, it shouldn't just fly sideways the way ARMA does - ie. direction will change to match the vector of thrust (of course).

The point isn't really how accurate / inaccurate ARMA or OFP are per se - the point is that OFP seems more correct / accurate than ARMA.

We're going to get him to have a fly of both games and see what he thinks.

This is all conversation I've had previously about 3 years ago with a Commercial Chopper pilot from New Zealand with experience flying Hueys and Jetrangers etc. who said all the same things and also agreed that OFP "sounds" much more on the money than ARMA - but I never got him to try the games.

To be honest, I've been thrown a few times by people "claiming" to be actual helicopter pilots who have bagged out OFP and said ARMA is much closer to correct - but by contrast I have THREE cases which contradict that: 1. My own "limited" hands on experience; 2. Commercial Pilot feedback based on descriptions; 3; Pilot learning to fly choppers feedback based on descriptions (which matches 2 perfectly) - so I'm wondering if there's been some bullshitting going on. 2 and 3 are granted going by my verbal description of the games, but I'm just relating what actually happens in X situation with Y control input.

When all is said and done I can still get my chopper flying "fix" in OFP but it would be fantastic to have that same fun in the wonderful environments of ARMA2 instead of that whole part of the game being.... "YUCK!" - in which respect I still back the OP 100%.

[mrbinkels 10]

I flew the cobra in OFP years ago but I don't remember the flight model. The most recent one I have is DCS BS and although it doesn't have a tail rotor, it's flight model is spot on IMO. My background is in aviation although I do other stuff now.

With that said, I agree with what your saying. I wonder is OA will have a different flight model...

[Chumba 10]

I flew the cobra in OFP years ago but I don't remember the flight model. The most recent one I have is DCS BS and although it doesn't have a tail rotor, it's flight model is spot on IMO. My background is in aviation although I do other stuff now.

With that said, I agree with what your saying. I wonder is OA will have a different flight model...

edit: just realised you weren't referring to OFP FM as being spot on, sorry about that. I'm keen to get BS too and give it a go - tho again I'm not sure what difference the tandem rotor config makes (there's KA50 in OFP Resistance but I haven't flown it yet - didn't realise it was there until just the other day which is embarrasing as I've been playing the game for years).

The thing that upsets me is that three of the things in OFP that were just "right" and I simply didn't think twice about were weapon recoils, chopper flight models and car/truck control with mouse - yet in ARMA1 and still in 2 all three are different. In OFP, car/truck control with the mouse feels intuitive and natural - ie. the vehicles behave as they should and as strange as it seems, even tho I'm using a mouse I really feel like I'm "driving" the vehicle - but in ARMA games the rates of control are so far out of whack I have to resort to tapping the left/right keys and leave the mouse alone - the whole experience is nothing short of horrible.

Added to that is the frustration of how OFP's helo FM has been almost universally bagged right from the beginning - which I fear is what actually led to ARMA FM being borked - ie. if BI actually HAD it right, yet "everyone" was telling them it was wrong, well it's no wonder we've ended up with what we've got... It's just so annoying when things that are not just ok but are actually really really GREAT in OFP have been undone in the new games!

Edited May 2, 2010 by Chumba

[max power 21]

The developers claim that actual helicopter pilots who have given them feedback on the transition of the flight model from OFP to ArmA say that the flight model of ArmA is much improved. The flight model for ArmA 2 is very similar to ArmA 1 but seemingly easier to fly. There was lots and lots and lots of discussion on this in the ArmA 1 forums.

[Chumba 10]

Yep, I remember the discussion about ARMA1 flight model. I always wondered how those statements about actual pilot feedback came about when as far as I could tell, OFP had it pretty spot on already. I have to say I did find the challenge of ARMA1 hovering to be great fun - my comments at the time were that if they could have that + OFP FM it would be perfect (it's surprised me that the actual pilots I've spoken to have said the hovering in ARMA2 and certainly ARMA1 sounds way too unstable).

The silly thing is that from memory I actually think ARMA1 initial FM was closer to OFP than later ARMA1 patch versions and certainly more so than current ARMA2 ones (I must dust off my original ARMA1 disc and reinstall it to check). The original ARMA1 helicopter FM had issues with collective being somewhat soft - but that was better than being virtually non existent as it is in ARMA2 - and the tailrotor control in ARMA1 original FM diminished drastically with speed which was really annoying - but at least it worked properly as far as it went - ie. same as in OFP except that in OFP you do get response to tailrotor at any speed. In ARMA2 they seem to have just made T/R above a certain speed swivel the heading without actually having any effect on the flight dynamics.... - IMO it would be better if it was made non existent above a certain speed like original ARMA1.

In ARMA1 V1.0 if they had simply made collective more sensitive/responsive and taken away the tailrotor fade as speed increased - both quite simple things to do one would have thought - then the helicopter FM would have been nailed as far as I'm concerned. As it stands, if I could just get that original ARMA1 initial helo FM into ARMA2 I'd be a happy camper.

I'm dying to get that guy from work to try both OFP and ARMA2 out and see what he thinks!! - and I'll add ARMA1 V1.0 to the list now too.

[killerwhale 1]

it's not just helicopters, all aerial vehicles in the game suck. they fly close to the tree lines and crash. jets have to dive to drop a bomb this sucks.