Gimpster

xnodunitx, I did fully read and understand your post. I was just trying to make the point that you were compairing a fluidly moving field of view to a non-user-friendly akward way of moving the field of view. The one is not in equality to the other in terms of ease of use and benifit despite serving the same basic function. Personaly I like that the flight model is more complex then the one used in OFP. Its still a little rough but not too bad. Once the input lag is reduced and the persion increased it will be fine. I do find it odd though that some people would choose to vastly limit their peer base by disallowing features that mean a large part of the comunity will only be able to serve a limited function on their servers. But its there server so I really can not complain.

No its not part of the training. They have a headmounted display they is linked to an movable TV/IR camera, so they see where ever they point thier head. With out a similar headtracking ability, i.e. the $150 Track/IR Pro it will be dam diffacult to fly in cockpit view while in combat below tree top level using the hatswitch for view movement. The flight model is not as borked as I first remarked it to be.

Its interesting how the northern troops get the experimental never been fielded KA50, while the southern troops only get an aging AH1Z. Doesent really seem fair. Now if the South had a Comanche things would be different as it has a similar performance envelope.

Helicopters are not that well protected from either large caliber weapons or missiles. The ones used in ArmA are not the most current hardened Attack Helicopters. Nore are that all that manuverable. If attacked from the side to aft you will stand little change to evade a AA missle without intervirning terrain or countermesures. You just do not have the ability to out turn them. Head on you might stand a change as the closure rate is higher and the missle mnot be able to correct its line in time to counter a fast evasive move.

Why would I choose to play on a server where 3rd person view is disabled if i don't have headtracking ability. Â The restriction to situational awarness is not worth it. Would you ask a real helo pilot to fly with the side windows of his helo blacked out with out his helment mounted display? Â Hell no he would be at such a disadvantage it would be a risk to even fly. You have to remember that Armed Assault is a simulated world in which we do not have as much external input and with a limited viwpoint. Â As suck some consessions need to be made to allow people to compensate for that lost input and visual awarness. Â The 3rd person view is one such conession. Oh and yes a Hellfire is an expensive weapon, but loosing an attack helo all its ordinance and two highly trained pilots is even more so. Targets that are a risk to me, will always get the preferential treatment of a guided missile if I have one.

Why would you not use a guided missle to take out a piece of armor? Its a one shot one kill solution. Rockets are not a sure thing and will using them will often take more the one or two to ensure a successfull hit. Rockets are great for slow moving or stationary groups and convoys. The chin gun is great for unarmored targets. Personal I equate the Tactical view to being equivilent to the missing avionics and fire control systems. I will not appiligise for using is as such.

Free mouse aim is still there but its part of the new command interface called the Tactical View. Â The key combo (2xEnter) will enter the view where you have free look and mouse targeting abilities. Â The view will allow you to move the camera about centered on your position. My tactic for flying an attack helo and assignig targets is to do it from third person view and the new tacticle view. Â This allows me some increase in situational awarness which I lack for not having head-tracking ability. Using this method I will manuver to the target zone. Â Find a suitable masking location and then engage hover hold. Â I use hoverhold to free my right had to work the keyboard and mouse to facilitate aiming and comand while using the left to control elevation and popup. Â Rise to just before you unmask and the targets should become selectable then select a target in the Tactical view, unmask and order the gunner to fire and then remask as soon as the weapon clears the terrain. Â Then move to a new location and repeat. Using my Realflight controler I can fly around quite well so long as I take my time and do not try to do anything with haste and maintain a smooth and light hand on the controls. Â I still feel there is too large a deadzone in the contols, even with the float slider to the far left. Â The tailrotor is vastly underpowered and cross coupled with the roll for some reason. Â And the collective is slow, underpowered and seems unpercise. Aside from that, now that I am flying with a more percise controler I an not having nearly as much diffaculty as I was in the begining. Â The old MS Sidewinder is just not sensitive enough anymore. Its still nowwhere near the BAS helos or Franze's Apache. Â I would take a video if fraps did not make games unplayable on my system.

plaintiff1, You are right on all those points and at the time I just could not find the right teminoligy to describe the concepts I wanted to convey. It was not my intention to mislead or misrepresent the concepts. Now I took the oppertunity to reaquaint myself with flying RC helo's in my training sim. The new version has improved physics and I now understand some on my previous assumptions are indead wrong. I now see only a few small issues: 1) Helo's in ArmA can accelerate like a bat out of hell but take a long time to slow down. Acceleration and deceleration shoud be the same in any direction because the exact same mechinism is used in doing so. 2) Translational lift does not appear to be modeled which might be the cause of the odd accell/decell traits. 3) Throttle/Collective inputs have little effect on altitude or speed and there seems to be some sort of auto throttle modulation designed to maintain speed. I noticed this in the ground vehicles and the two fixed wing aircraft as well. This leads me to believe the throttle is just a relitive speed or in the case of the helos, relitive altitude selector. 4) There are two different sets of contols for rotating the tail. One is called Pedel and only workes as very slow speeds and will never induce roll. The other is Turning which will cause yaw below 50 and will cause roll over 100. My crapy joystick was also adding somewhat to the twitchy contol I was experancing prior to this. So basicly the lack of tranlational lift, not having direct control of the throttle/colective and a inconsistant or confused tail rotor control solution combined with severly hampered ability at speed combine to really throw off the helo flight model. It should really be its own model and have its own contol config seperate from fixed wing.

They are quite different but the same principles apply to either despite the size differences. But we don't need to argue that point. The AH64-D you produced for OFP was a dream to fly and was a great overal-all package. Do you have any plans to release the same birds for ArmA in the near future? At least then I would have a direct compairison between the two engines.

I have been trying to do just that. From what I have experanced in ArmA the helicopters feel wrong, very different from the ones in EEAH/EECH, different from Longbow 2, different from the last version of OFP, and vastly different from the closest thing I have to a true simulator Realflight 2 & 3 (Profesional RC Sim used for Training). In the current version of ArmA the reactions to cyclic input are very quickly translated to pitch and roll of the airframe as if it has no weight. It also does not attempt to right itslelf when the stick is re-centered. Now once the helo is tilted it kind of hangs there, slowly starting to move in the direction of the tilt. So the reaction to cyclic is too fast and its effect on movment is too slow. It is also very easy to get the helos moving too fast for them to respond to normal input for manuvering, which is part of the issue. When moving about at 50-75 mph they fly very well if you have an extreamly light touch or the ability to reduce the controlers axis sensitivity which I do not. The problems start when the vehicle starts to react too quickly to input and you find yourself traveling at far too great of a speed. I am also having alot of trouble effectivly controling the throttle/colevtive to a fine degree. The AH-6 for example will not leave the ground until I have advanced the trottle to 50% at which point it climbs to about 50ft-75ft. The reactions to throttle modulation seem very muddy and slow. It is quite posible that my old joystick is just about at the end of its life and in need of replacement as some of the video I have seen shows that these helos can be flown with more control then my stick is able to. So until I rule the input device out i will have to take a back seat in this debate.

BF2 did the best they could given the limitations of the physics engine they had to work with but the end result was somthing short of user friendly or realistic. The add-on makers for OFP such as BAS have proved that the basic pieces needed to make a moderatly realistic helicopter are there in the engine. Armed Assault's basic physics for helocopters was not changed that much if what we have been told is correct, they say its been improved to some degree. I can only surmise that the current helo's handeling wierdness is a result of small errors bugs in their stats or design rather then a flaw or limitation in the physics engine.

Hillslam, You are correct in that the lift is generated by the rotor plane not the downwash. Â I was mearly using that description to help people visulise a concept. Â In reality it is a weight suspended below a spinning disk. Â That spinning disk is not flat though. Â Rotor blades are a little flexable and will under load develop a slight upward curve towards the ends and the resulting lifting plane becomes slightly bowl shaped. Â This combined with the suspeneded weight makes the helicopter a fairly stable platform when ballanced and in stable air. Â But a helicopter is never perfectly ballanced or in stable air so constant small corrections are needed to maintain a stationary position. Franze, While a 5lb RC model helo may seem vastly removed from a full scale military helo, they both use the same mechanics and conform to the same laws of physics. Â Flying the model is more diffacult as you do not have the benifit of your inner-ear's ability to tell you what the model helo is doing. Â Models are also more affected by wind and because of the much larger power-weight ratio, they have exagerated rotor torque effects. Â Which make a RC helo more manuerable and allows it to perform well beyond a full scale helos envelope. 3dom, You took off turned 90 degrees to the right and took out a stationary BMP after flying less then 100 meters and used half your rockets. Â I woud llike to see you engage a moving convoy of 5 trucks at least 1km away from where you took off, which are traveling down a not so straight road. Â Then give then an hostile armed guard, perhaps a BMP or two and do it again. Â Then I will be impressed.

Smiley_Nick, There was only one area I felt was wrong with the BF2 model. Â It felt like the helo was trying to ballance on a tip of a pin. Â The downwash of a helos rotor moves down and spreads out like a cone. Â The weight of the helo is not ballanced on this spreading cone of air though, its suspended from the top of this cone in the downwash. Â So its weight acts as a damper on any input give to the vector of the cone and at the same time tries to move towards the nearest edge of the cone if that makes sence. By pushing the control stick forwards you are shifting the vector of the downwash cone backwards and moving the center of mass closer to the front of the cone. Â This then makes the helo move forward as its center of mass is now forwars of the center of lift and since the center of lift is not pointed at the center of gravity acting on the vehicle it starts to drop as well. Â This is the basic concept of a helicopters ability to more in forward, lateral or backward flight. BF2 messed up this basic princible and as a result the whole model felt close of overly sensitive to input as it lacked the input damping effect of the weight and lacked the small self centering effect that is also there. In BF2 you have to manualy cancel every little input to maintain a stable hover when in reality the counter weight of the helo supended under the top of the lift cone and your narutal sence of ballance allow a real helo pilot to more easily sence and cancle movment.

I have spent a few hours trying to find the right settings to get the helicopters in ArmA to act somthing close to a real helicopter. I had a friend that was a Helo instructor and have talked at length with people who fly both real, RC and Virtual RC helicopters and they all tell me the same things. Its more diffacult to fly a RC helo then a real one, and more diffacult still to fly the RC simulator then the real RC helo. Personaly I have many hours in learning to fly on the RC Simulator and can hover in all but head on perspective and can fly around passably but am not nearly ready for 3D flight. What i do understand is the basic concepts that allow a helicopter to opperate and how to control them. Some things are universal some are magnified or dimished based on relitive size and power. RC helos have a masive power to weight ration, much higher then any real helo. But they do follow the same laws of physics and use the same controls, Cyclic (Pitch and Roll), Tail Rotor (Yaw), Throttle/Collective (Lifting Force). I am however absolutly positive I understand the concepts and some of the physics at work. Even an RC helicopter with its masive avalable power to weight ratio is not super twitchy. At this point i can not say what is wrong or missing in the helo physics model in ArmA. It is that different form everything I know to be true, but the basics are there. Giving the stick a cyclic input will roll or pitch the helo which will inturn cause the helo to loose altitude and slide off in that direction. Re-centering the stick will stop adding to the pitch or roll but I am not sure yet if the now offcenter weight of the fuse will drag the helo back to a flat and level plane. The tail rotor stops being usable above about 50mph, it should be reduced but never loose all function. The lighter the helo the less this effect should be. About about 150mph using the rotor will induce roll, which is not physicaly possable in reality, in addition at these speeds pitch and roll togeather also do not seem to ba able to turn the helo as it should. The helos can achieve speeds far greater then they can in real life. All this leads me to believe that the physics model is not based on reality at all. Its somthing completely different trying to mimic the look and feel of helicopter flight but failing badly. I can not claim to be an expert but I feel I know what I am talking about and can explain the priniples or tell you what should happen and why for a given situation.

Personally I am not very impressed with the current implementation of the helicopter physics in ArmA. They appear to be little more then a modified fixed wing physics package. I can't even say they are as good as BF2 with was vastly inaccurate. A helicopter is not nearly as unstable as many people believe, with proper trimming and balancing an RC helo can be made to hover without any input just fine and will auto correct for small cyclic inputs because of its design. Most games and some so called Sims mess up the basic principal of what a helicopter is. At its most basic level a helicopter is a weight suspended from a rotating disk that is the source of a diverging cone of air. The spreading of the downwash acts to stabilize the rotor in level flight and hover and the fuselage acts as a counter weight to resist input to the rotors and acts as a damper against the inputs. This is why the heaver the helo the slower and smoother its motions are. In a helicopter you fly the rotors not the fuselage. Applying left stick causes the cyclic to increase the pitch of the right side of the rotor path and lower the pitch of the left side of the rotor path. This increases the lift on the right and decreases the lift on the left causing the helo to fall to the left as the divergent cone of lift shifts to the right and off center of the center of gravity. At this point if you center the stick and restore the cone of lift under the center of mass relative axis of lift, the helo will stop increasing the angle banking and slowly start to right itself as the weight of the fuselage seeks to find its balance point under the center of the source of lift, so long as you have banked so far as to move the center of mass outside the divergent cone of lift. You will continue to loose altitude and accelerate in the direction of slip but given enough altitude the helo will finds its center of balance and level out at which point the helo will enter in to transitional lift and gain altitude at the cost of speed. Helicopters are relatively stable in a simulated environment so long as you keep the center of mass under and within the divergent cone of lift, or are in directional flight where the rotor can act some what like a wing. Helicopters are difficult to fly in the real world not because they are unstable platforms but because in the real world it’s impossible to balance a helicopter and air is a chaotic media which is constantly changing in density, and flow thus necessitating the need to constantly provide input to find the new balance point. In a Sim we remove the chaos that is the air because with out the use of our own scene of balance this would be a nearly impossible task. The final version of OFP was better then ArmA is now in this regard and the BAS add-on helicopters for OFP were far superior to either the OFP or ArmA models. A proper helicopter flight model with a heading hold gyro would be flyable with a mouse and keyboard, but you would need a proper 4 axis control to extract a decent amount of performance from it and a 5 axis if you eliminate throttle/collective mixing. In ArmA the helo physics are wrong or missing key elements on a fundamental level which is affecting the things that they may have right. If rotor craft were as unstable as most people thing they are, then the gyroplane would not be such and easy craft to fly.

One thing most people are not considering is the development path this piece of software has taken.  It started as a game aimed at gamers.  It aimed to be more open and a little more realistic then the average game of the time, and it hit its mark and did well. This then attracted the intrest of the military and other peace keeping groups.  Its became a training tool and where form follows function and realism is more important then flash or speed.  Most people can not reliably aim and fire a gun while moving at more then a slow walking pace, thats how it is here too. Now its comes back to the game market and its more realistic less twich, which is exactly what the majority of us wanted and what alot of the mods for OFP tried to do.  It needs some work, there are a few things that could be added such as dropping from a dead run to prone but all in all I think its an improvment over OFP in the important areas as far as the on-foot potion of the games is concerned. As for the Helos, BAS please get to work on those, they are completly atrocious.  They are wrong on several levels and are not what I would call anything close to realistic or simplistic arcade.  Nothing like an RC Helo, nothing like a EEAH/EECH helo and nothing like a BF2 helo.  They are at the same time overly sensitive and unresponsive, the are not coaded as weights suspended from a vectorable diverging cone of downward thrust as they should be and as a result feel disconected from the controls, the air and gravity. Why in the hell does applying tail rotor input at speed cause roll and no yaw?  Why in the hell can a helo reatch 300mph and not tumble out of the sky due to rotor stall?  Why in the hell does the throttle/collective have such a slow and delayed effect on  lift?  To me it feels like they use a modified fixed wing physics and control system which just does not work for helos.

Well at least you know until when you are getting screwed. Some of us are still in the dark as to how long the screwing will last.

You are not the only one who has been dreaming of a platform where the best milsim applications from each genre can be linked in to a single gamespace. Armed Assault (Primary application), LMAC Fixed Wing), EEAH/EECH (Helo), etc... It has been a dream of mine for some time as well.