Advanced Helicopter FDM Feedback
Flight Experience - behavior and handling of helicopters
GUI- layout customization, lucidity, informativeness etc.
Controls - schemes usability, customization, controllers issues and related
I actually joined the forums to comment on this Advance Helicopter Flight Model. A little background on my experience, Playing in ARMA I , II , and III + VBS 2 and About 7 years and 2,000 hrs flying UH-60s for the U.S. Army. So now my review of the new advanced flight model.
Flight Experience in the new build.
AH-9 - Flew about 2 hours, an hour in the pattern and an hour in the mountains of stratis. Flight controls at a hover, Cyclic was very good, tail rotor responsiveness and pedals felt very realistic and I appreciated the vibration that the new flight model adds to the helicopter. The collective / Toque needs work. I feel like the inputs to the collective is extremely delayed. Taking off was good, I feel that Effective Transnational Lift takes a little to long to take effect, should be about 10-24 knots (also too lazy to do that conversion since the gauge is in KPH :( ). Cruise flight was ok, lots of issues with turn and slip i.e. trim and turn coordination. I had a hard time keeping the aircraft in trim in turns and maintaining altitude in turns. Landing the helicopter is not so solid, My rudemetery VSI gauge that was given to me has no number display so I'm looking at a bar sliding up and down to determine my TQ setting for landing, I have no idea what my OGE or IGE hover power is. I had an issue with the fact that if I came to an OGE hover while landing and reduced the collective slightly the damn aircraft settled with power.
ISSUE 1: Now I know you guys recently added vortex ring state to the flight model but I really think that it is exaggerated. I felt that the AH-9 and the 60 flew similar which pissed me off.
ISSUE 2: There was entirely way too much vibration in the Ghosthawk which should have some form of active vibration dampening.
ISSUE 3: The aircraft roll too easy on the ground and as we all know, once it goes over, it explodes.
ISSUE 4: Aircraft rotor droops if I pull too much power, I like that, but I need to know how much TQ I'm pulling. What is my Max TQ?
ISSUE 5: When trying to decelerate the helicopter, aircraft climbs even with a reduction in TQ.
GUI- layout customization, lucidity, informativeness etc.
ISSUE 6:Units for airspeed and altitude are incorrect . Aircraft airspeed gauges are in KNOTS, nautical miles per hour NOT KPH. Altitude is in Feet, either Barro, gps or radar altitude its always in feet, non meters.
ISSUE 7:There is no Torque gauge, If I had a torque gauge I could set my hover torque for landing. The information in the GUI is good, but it would be better with the popper units and the addition of a TQ gauge.
Controls - schemes usability, customization, controllers issues and related
I only used a keyboard for flying, ill get a joystick and try it out.
ISSUE 8: The collective, it's slow to respond, I have no idea my TQ setting and I have no idea where it's position is, unless im looking at it my cockpit.
Overall I really liked the new model, Thank you for adding it. I found it much harder to fly in Arma then I do to fly in real life. I feel as though you guys modeled the aircraft after the input you received from your ad visors that fly very light single engine aircraft in the traffic pattern only. Please take into consideration that the more advanced multi-engine air-frames like the 60 and the 47 / 46 have a lot more power and a lot more systems to reduce pilot workload. If the aircraft are going to be harder and more realistic to fly. give pilots more avionics to help them complete their mission like FLIR and terrain following radar and Auto pilot. After all, it is the future.
