Neon Samurai

Hmm never had any problems with cliffs myself, but I will pull more then 10° nose up. Also I would point out that some military helicopters can have difficulty gaining altitude. The Apache for example can be a real bear to get airborne when fully loaded in a hot environment like the desert. It can hardly get off the ground and will only really be able to gain much altitude when moving forward. In mountainous/higher elevation environments you have to be careful with it and hot weather as it won't be able to maintain altitude in a hover and will start to sink

Most combat helicopters as far as I'm aware of will not typically gain much altitude at 0 collective when doing the maneuver I previously described other the they may bob up a few feet when transitioning. Civilian helicopters however are more likely to be effected as you say for the simple reason that they are not as heavily loaded down as your average combat helicopter (even the scout helicopters are weighed down by armor, weapons and electronics). Also several helicopters are capable of negative rotor pitch. ArmA helicopters however gain massive amounts of altitude at 0 collective and medium to high upward pitch. As for planning approaches, of course you do, I guess I glossed over that too much to make a point. but you don't need to plan to start slowing down 30km from a LZ or target to make sure you can stop there. Realistically you would need no more then a km to come to a safe stop with out bobbing up, if needed you can stop a lot quicker then that. In ArmA you need to plan several (at least 2-3) km before you reach your objective if you want to slow down in time with out doing a skid maneuver or gaining far to much altitude.

Same way they avoid IR missiles (they don't give warnings either). Good combat pilots are constantly looking around for bogies & missile trails and never fly straight and level for very long at low altitudes while over a combat zone. I still think the vikhr would be next to useless against fighter jets, I don't think it has the turning rate & circle, or speed/momentum needed to hit a maneuvering fighter. Plus by the time the pilot locks it up the jet would probably be long gone (or the helo blown out of the sky by a sidewinder or similar).

Hey neon nice to see someone in XDC give a damn about arma I think if you go to zero throttle at speed and flare (nose up), the rotors would be ripped off by the extra resistance if they rotated to the zero-throttle position. Zero-throttle doesn't mean the same in a real helicopter but for the game... When I flare for a landing, I keep the throttle high (usually actually increase it) and flare left or right like a handrake turn. The higher the throttle, the greater the braking effect. Uh.., that sounds dumb but it's what you actually want in the game. It's like Asteroids in that respect . Hmm think you have me mistaken for someone else.. XDC? As for throttle, thats more an ArmA reference then a helicopter reference (generally you don't touch the throttle on a helicopter in flight unless you need emergency power or similar). I only included it in case people did not know what i meant by collective. The maneuver I'm describing is the standard one used by helo pilots when they need to stop in a hurry, first used by Huey pilots in Vietnam when dropping troops off at an LZ. Its not so much a flare as it is almost standing the helicopter on its tail (ie going 50+ degrees climb). Now to do this in most sims you would flatten out the collective to about 20% or so and pull up hard and hold for a few seconds, then pitch back down and bring the collective back up. Experienced pilots can do this maneuver from high speed, and come to a hover with out loosing or gaining any altitude in a few seconds. The problem in ArmA is you can't do this maneuver with more then 20-30 degrees climb with out gaining altitiude, even with the collective/throttle at 0. If you try you will gain a couple hundred meters in altitude (which is very bad when trying to terrain mask). ArmA helicopters should not gain altitude no matter the angle of climb if the collective/throttle is at 0 (this is what i want changed). Skid stops you describe are right now the only way to stop in a hurry, but its a much more dangerous maneuver at low altitude, then the one I described above (do you really want to pull a skid at speed when flying in the tree line?). They are a maneuver you can do in reality also. As for planning stops 10-30km from the target, right now thats the only way to do it if you want to stop when flying 5m or less off the deck at speed. But completely wrong, you should not have to plan that far ahead, or at all beyond basic waypoints. I sure as heck never once planned any "i need to start slowing down here" points when playing any high fidelity helo sims, especially when acting as a transport pilot. The maneuver I'm describing is one of the most basic combat helo 101 maneuvers there is. Between this and the mars like atmosphere (Where things take far to long to loose speed in the air), ArmA helo's are very slippery to fly, far too slippery. In fact other then the collective (ArmA very much simplified this) the helicopters in Janes Longbow 2 are easier to fly then in ArmA.

Yes that was one of the nails in the coffin of the golden age of simulations. As for F4 I agree, it took a couple of years but it ended up as "the" ultra high fidelity fighter sim (imho anyhow). Btw I still fly LB2 from time to time, its still one of the best helo sims ever made (Enemy Engaged has gotten really good too, Its also been modded to heck like F4)

Ya that is true with regards Longbow 2, though the Hellfires tended to be better at downing big choppers like the Mi-24 Hind, They rarely missed unless it was a smaller fast moving helo. The stingers however frequently got decoyed by flares, and even when they hit they often wouldn't bring down a Hind or similar. In LB2 and Enemy Engaged I personally tended to use hellfires against other helicopters and save the stingers for fighters. Also the point you bring up of the US refitting dedicated AAMs like the stinger on the apache would be true if they were in a war where they did not have complete air dominance (they probably got removed in the first place because the US figures it is done with fighting wars where they don't have utter control over the sky, thats also why AtA/GtA variants of the hellfire were not developed (why bother when you really don't need them, and there are existing systems which function sufficiently like the stinger). Oh and as a general statement, the sims Longbow and Longbow 2 were indeed from Janes.

BF2 helicopters fly nothing at all even remotely like a real helicopter does, they fly (physics and feel) more like a harrier jet in that they are balancing on vertical thrust (ironically the harriers when hovering feel more like helicopters in ArmA). This is why BF2 helicopters become more and more unresponsive as you tilt, something you don't find in a real helo. I could go on and on and on (and on) about whats wrong with BF2's helicopters, but this is about ArmA. BF2 helicopters do not even approximate in any sense how a actual helicopter flies (ArmA at least does). As for ArmA if I really wanted to, I could sit down and write a very long post on almost every little thing wrong with the ArmA flight models for helicopters and aircraft... Like how ArmA helicopters are overly aerodynamically efficient and take way to long to slow down when flying level. Are rather unresponsive, more so then they should be, particularly the AH/MH 6 helicopters (they feel way to ham fisted). How the KA-50 doesn't fly at all like a tandem rotor helo should. How all the fixed wing aircraft do not generate sufficient lift particularly in turns (helo's also drop far to much when banking). That the jet engines seem to be either on or off or in reverse with no in between (making cruising in one very difficult). Then I could attack the oversimplified controls for the collective, and dive right in to all the smaller problems with the flight modeling. But all the same its not too bad, aircraft just need to loose the ham fisted feel, handle like they are flying in an earth atmosphere instead of mars, and some other tweaks.

Well I figured I would add my opinion... First off I would say that the helicopter flight modeling isn't too bad for a low fidelity ALS (air land sea) battle sim (certainly light years ahead of Battlefield 2). There are some things wrong though as people have pointed out such as loosing the ability to use the tail rotor past 50. It should start to get steadily less responsive though as you pick up speed, other then 8the KA-50 which thanks to its dual main rotors can still whip around pretty fast while going in any direction. The other thing wrong is that you can flatten out the collective (0 throttle), pull up, and you gain altitude making it impossible to do rapid stops without climbing a hundred feet or more. Strangely though you can do sideways stops with out the altitude gain. 0 throttle/collective should not cause the helo to gain altitude regardless of pitch. As for the damage they can take (and them blowing up on impact) I agree that they are way too fragile in that regard. The other thing that really drives me nuts is how the engine dies when ever the helo takes the slightest bit of damage. They are actually more fragile then airplanes in the game, you practically look at them and they fall out of the sky. Most combat helicopters are pretty well armored and can even take multiple 20mm and 30mm rounds (most attack helicopters anyhow). They also have 2 engines in case one fails due to combat damage (or other reasons). They are certainly tougher then any of the jets in the game other then the A-10 (A-10's are notoriously tough in reality). They are also near immune to infantry caliber weapons (5.56, 7.62, etc). Now obviously I'm mainly talking about how vulnerable the attack helicopters are. Transport helicopters are fairly well armored as well but cant take the punishment that an attack helicopter can. As for the scout helos, well they have virtually no armor, they survive by being quick and nimble and staying out of sight. Anyhow I strongly suggest the damage system on helicopters should be reworked. The engine realy shouldn't fail until the helicopter is down to around 1/4hp (if the engines don't fail on jets, and jets are on average more fragile, why should they fail on helicopters?). The damage from rough landings also needs fixing too (happens way to easily as it is).

Well having read through this thread I have to comment that though the vikhr can attack aerial targets, it would probably be very ineffective at anything not moving slow and straight. For one thing it is not a dedicated air to air missile, it is a anti armor missile. The Russians however love to make their equipment as multi functional as they possibly can and added a secondary ability for it to engage aircraft. However it does not have any of the key design features necessary for a good AtA missile. Its a bit slow for a short range AtA missile, most AtA missiles do mach 2.5 or higher. The slower speed of the vikhr means that it will drop out of the sky a lot sooner against a maneuvering target then a stinger or similar would. Also the 2D control surfaces would give it very poor maneuverability. For the weapon to hit anything in a 3D world it needs to have its characteristic spiral flight profile. However the problem with 2D controls is that it can only turn towards its target at absolute best half the time (when the control fins are almost lateral to the target). Now this maneuverability is sufficient for engaging moving ground targets, but completely inadequate for engaging fast moving air targets. Those two things along with a good guidance system are the most important things for a good AtA missile. It needs to be able to completely outrun and out turn its target to succeed in hitting it. So in summary though the vihkr can indeed hit air targets (at least bombers flying less then 300 knots while wings level). It stands almost no chance against a jet fighter unless the pilot is asleep. It would probably also not be very effective on a maneuvering helicopter going at full speed as well. If it was such an effective air to air missile, why would the KA-50 also mount the AA-11 Archer and Igla-V? Now on to the Hellfire.. First off lets look at if the AH-1Z can target aircraft using its avionics. The answer is it can, but it would have difficulty with fast moving jets. FLIR is more then capable of targeting and tracking helicopters (I'm going to ignore jets for the simple reason that a hellfire would never hit a jet unless it was parked on the ground) day or night and even against ground clutter. Helicopters produce more heat then a running tank and easily show up on FLIR which would allow the system to lock on and track the target. As for the comment that it would be difficult to pan FLIR on a moving helicopter to lock on, its very easy to do if you slave the FLIR to the helmet mounted sight. Also I would point out that virtually every single high fidelity helicopter sim to date has allowed FLIR to track other helicopters. As for lasing the target, if you can track it in FLIR you can lase it (how do you think the gun is aimed with the correct range in air combat? Its done using the laser to range the target, and the target is usually locked up in FLIR first unless the pilot is making a snap shot using the helmet sight). Ok now the Hellfire itself. The Hellfire is not an AtA missile, It was never designed to be even as a secondary purpose, so of course it's not listed as being an AtA weapon. This does not mean that it is unable to engage helicopters, just that it was not designed to do so. For an anti tank missile its fairly agile, it's flight envelope (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/hellfire-trajectory1.gif) would also let it engage targets higher then it, and it is fast enough to catch helicopters if fired close enough. Helicopters do reflect enough laser light for it to track the target (lots of vertical surfaces and painted metal, plus it would be difficult to range them for gun shots if they didn't reflect laser light). Personally I think could defiantly engage helicopters, but would not be super effective vs fast moving ones. It could only be done in LOBL (lock on before launch) mode, LOAL wouldn't work well due to the flight profile it uses before locking on. Most true helicopter sims (Gunship series, longbow 1&2, Enemy Engaged series, etc) have also thought the same and allowed hellfires to engage and destroy helicopters, and they presumably have done far more research into the subject then any of us here have. FLIR can defiantly lock on to helicopters and lase them, and the missile's flight profile in LOAL would allow it to lock and track the target. Only question is if the missile can reach the target, and maneuver enough to hit it. Anyhow this post is getting long so I'm going to wrap it up. IMHO the hellfire should be able to engage helicopters in ArmA, as should the vikhr. Both should be very inaccurate against fast moving targets with almost no chance of hitting them (anything going faster then 250-300kts), quite accurate against slow moving helicopters, and moderately accurate vs fast moving helicopters. The argument that the vikhr is an effective AtA missile just because its has the sub designation, has a proximity fuse, etc plus it shot down a bomber which was flying straight with its gear down (and from the video I've seen was flying close to stall speed) does not prove in the slightest that its any good at all in that role (heck I could have shot that bomber down with folding fin rockets if i was close enough).