buznee

I was curious as to any hints the devs can provide on how winch ops will be performed in singleplayer and in multiplayer. I was hoping in multiplayer you would have a player controlled winch operator who will have a fantastic view peering down over the edge and have control of the winch. This would work great to give the pilot some feedback as to where to position the helicopter. "Move forward, left... steady... hold your hover, hold your hover. Man on basket, winch coming up... hold your hover, hold your hover..... Man onboard, lets go!". If the person being rescued is injured we can even have a rescuer that comes down on the winch to carry the injured man onto the basket or sling and comes back up with him. This would be great teamwork fun and would involve 4 players in 1 operation. Pilot, Winch Operator, Rescuer, Rescuee. For coastguard missions this could allow the rescuer to be a rescue swimmer that can swim over to the victim and drag him back over to the basket. For singleplayer we can have different modes depending on difficulty. For the easier modes the pilot can have a crosshair view or a picture in picture that pops up showing a view looking down as if you were the winch operator that will show where he has to fly to get over the desired point for pickup. Other aides could be limited authority control to the winch operator of the aircraft position over the ground. In full scale helicopters this is actually common when in auto hover. The winch operator will actually have a pendant control that will allow him to tweak the position of the helicopter to get the winch line in the right spot. For advance/expert mode we can have the AI winch operator give you instructions just like what i propose would work well in multiplayer. I can see this being quite fun if executed properly. Lots of team work between crew in helicopter. We can even add failure modes such as the winch getting jammed up or broken as well as pulling too much load, or getting the line tangled on a mast on a boat which will break the line on the winch. Imagine having this happen while you have the rescuee on the line. If it jams up you will have to raise the aircraft to avoid any obstacles and drop him off in a safe location. For external loads like the winch or block there should be a speed limitation before the load/rescue becomes unstable and the line breaks or rescuee falls to his death. Not sure how difficult this could be but adding a drag coefficient to the external load such as a block or rescuee will add some interesting dynamics such as the external load swinging with wind gusts or increasing speed. There should be fatalities if a person touches the tail rotor as well as loss of tail rotor control. Who knows, maybe the winch operator can even have a timed function that can be used to fix the jam on the winch. Some aircraft are even equipped with a dual winch setup just for these reasons. If the winch line gets stuck on something the winch operator should be able to cut the line to help avoid the helicopter getting tangled up and crashing. Modern winches have this very safety feature. While taking the injured man back to the hospital there can be a timer or life signs meter that will give you an idea if the man is going to die soon and how much time you have to get to the hospital. Meanwhile the rescuee and winch operator can try certain things to keep the man alive depending on the equipement that you purchased, such as oxygen, morphene, and defibrillator. This will give the crew guys something to do and not get bored. Ofcourse it would be simplified, like if life signs start to drop off, use this equipement and the life signs will improve and give you some more time to get to the hospital. Very exciting!

bump? :confused:

bump. I would still like to hear some input from BI on future plans for SAR ops.

Not sure what you are talking about there. The 3 helicopters in TOH are modeled off of the MD500, Bell 412, and EH101/NH60. None of which have any link to the Bo-105. The MD500 has a fully articulated rotor, the Bell 412 has a flex beam for flapping, and the EH101/NH60 rotor heads I believe are fully articulated as well. Bo-105 is considered a semi-rigid rotor design in which the feather, flapping, are not hinged, not sure on the lead-lag portion. Also the aircraft flight dynamics have the basics quite well modeled. The models need tweaking mostly with respect to power, drag, and stability characteristics which can be best enhanced by comparing to real world flight test data. I have no issues doing loops and rolls with the MD500 model. Half the battle is setting up the controls so that the sensitivities are realistic and performing the manuever under the right flight conditions. I would mess around with your dead zones and sensitivities and practice a bit more with energy management and piloting before knocking on the flight model. Also... trim is your friend.

amen.. brother. People need to understand that there is a balance between features, release date, and a finalized robust product.

Here are some ideas I had posted with regards to SAR ops. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=125993

The problem I have with the GPS is that there are no zoom controls so I can't zoom out and see where the next waypoint is. Kinda defeats the whole purpose. Please add a zoom in and zoom out feature for the GPS map! Also enable the option of allowing you to keep waypoints on screen for expert mode. Right now I have to keep hitting escape to getting the waypoints to keep reappearing.

Having issues with the install. Can someone tell me which bin file holds the following file so that I can redownload just the corrupted bin file? I do not want to redownload everything again since it is quite a large set of downloads. \Take On Helicopters\AddOns\south_asia_h_data_layers_01_03.pbo

I was downloading the files manually.

thank you! Also noticed that they explain this in the downloads section.

would I be able to compare them to yours? I can provide the md5 checksums for my files.

Another game play mode I just thought of. Imagine a large boat wreck or fire and multiple injured people that need to be rescued. You have teams of 2 or 3crew in a helicopter working together to rescue people and take them back to the hospital / specified helipad. You will be competing against other helicopters with their own crew. It would be a race to save as many people in a certain amount of time. Your team gets points for different things. For example. 5 points for getting a man on basket. 10 points for getting him on board. 10 points for keeping him in above average health state while transporting back, and 20 points for dropping him off at your helipad. I can see this being really fun and intense. Imagine 3 helicopters trying not to run into each other while hovering near the boat and picking up people in the water. Rescue swimmers everywhere. Helicopters hauling back people and then coming back for more. This can totally be done. We should push to get this in a future patch.

bump... waiting for input from BI.

I may be a little retarded because I can't find the link to the patch. Click on spoiler and doesn't seem to be a link. Help :confused:

Thats correct the load should be subjected to drag. Should be simple enough. Apply a drag coefficient let the sim figure out the frontal area which will allow you to calculate the flat plate drag which can then be multiplied by dynamic pressure and bingo, drag force. This is then added to the sum of the forces on the object and the load should now lag behind the helicopter. If wind and gusts actually go into the physics model this can also affect the dynamic pressure on the load and therefore cause the load to bounce around due to wind and turbulence.

Mine are at default and it still crashes once in a while.

Setting up the controls correctly is crucial. minimize deadzone on the joystick and i would add a bit of added sensitivity for the cyclic control. I would then focus on flying the aircraft with minimal control input but focusing on anticipating all aircraft movement. You then have to be picky about landing site and approach. Find an open location that is on level flat ground. Be patient when coming in and try to get yourself in a 5 ft hover over the spot you want to land. Do not touch down until you have zero relative horizontal movement between the helicopter and the ground. Its better to have forward movement than side movement since that tends to tip the helicopter over. Once you are in a 1 ft stable hover over a point on the ground lower the collective and plant yourself on the ground. Initially this may be a bit rough but you'll slowly get to the point where you can soften up the landing.

I hope BI takes the initiative because there is lots of potential here.

I think these kinda of features will definately attract a larger audience and increase playability. I strongly urge BI to adopt these type of features, especially for multiplayer.

This seems to be a common problem. Happens less frequently once I lowered the graphics. View distance and object detail. I think the beta is just not very stable right now when loading up the sim with too many things to do.

Another New Ticket http://dev-heaven.net/issues/25485

oh thats what you meant. :) Doh! Yes I agree VNE decreases with airspeed. This is primarily due to blade stall as you go higher in altitude. Thinner air means you need more pitch for the same thrust output. Higher pitch means higher blade loading which inturn translates to getting into blade stall at lower and lower airspeeds. I think the FAA regulations also has a minimum VNE (40 KCAS) as well which at the end caps the altitude capability of the aircraft. Just in case your curious, FAR Part 29 has all the certification requirements for rotorcraft. Reference FARS http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=0c4e8600c494747fcf42b1528f3afa05&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:1.0.1.3.14&idno=14#14:1.0.1.3.14.7.360.3 I appologize for the geeky math and references since I am a helicopter flight test and design engineer. Doh! =)

Did some flying last night with the beta and just wanted to give my first impressions. For a beta I believe this is a great start. I have played the ARMA series of games and the menu screens and interface definately show the roots. Although there seems to be lots of left over stuff from ARMA that should be removed to avoid confusion. Too many control assignments that seem redundant and can add confusion to the player. There are some issues I believe should be addressed though with regards to aircraft handling. Helicopters by nature require active input by the pilot to keep the aircraft in a controlled manner. Because of their unstable nature they are designed with good controllability for precision flying. This is what we call direct stick to head control. You input a deflection into the cyclic control and you see the result right in front of your eyes. Similar to a bicycle, it should feel very intuitive and instant. The aircraft in the beta seem to have control sluggishness and delay/lag which is extremely aggrevating in an aircraft that is naturally unstable. I understand that the joystick axis sensitivity and deadzone can be adjusted, but this does not fix the issue. I beg the TOH development team to address this very issue because it is a deal killer for this sim. For some reason the pedal controls do not seem to have nearly as much of this sluggishness / delay as the cyclic and collective. Collective should also be instant since the pilot is controlling blade angle directly. The only thing that should be delayed if any is rotorspeed response based on engine fadec control dynamic engine response and FADEC controlled engine limiters for the more expensive twin engine helicopters. Also because the collective is instant, that means the torque on the rotor should change instantly with a change in collective. This does not seem to be true in the sim. With regards to aircraft performance The power required may be off as well, especially for hover. Most helicopters hover at around 60-100% torque depending on many things such as weight, altitude, and temperature. Most pilots are therefore looking at the torque gauge especially during hover because of the great deal of an incredible amount of power required. Sometimes an aircraft is loaded so heavy that it has to do a HIGE (hover in ground effect) and then transition into bucket speed in order to have enough excess power to climb out. There should be a considerable amount of collective/torque required to hover as compared to bucket speed in trimmed level flight (Vy, best rate of climb speed or best endurance speed) of ~60 kts for an MD500. At Vy the torque should be minimum. It should then increase rapidly as you approach Vne (Never exceed speed.) This should all ofcourse vary with aircraft weight and operating altitude but the relation is the same. Engine power available should also vary with density which can be derived from temperature and pressure altitude. Anotherwords, as you go higher the engine gets less oxygen and produces less power. This means that you may not get to 100% torque at high altitudes and start drooping the rotor speed sooner. These are all very real effects that I believe should be included because it effects pilot operations. Just like how you guys are trying to implement pre-flight walk around to make sure you don't have a bird's nest in the engine compartment, you should also have the pilot do a quick check of the aircraft center of gravity plot and weight to make sure you can actually fly safely and have the capability as well as have enough fuel to go and do what you want to do. This can all be simplified and integrated in a userfriendly interface so it is a little less of a hassle. Overall I think the team is heading in the right direction but I plead on getting the helicopter feel to be more direct. Pilot should feel like he one with the helicopter, remove all sluggishness and lags. If you need something to compare to, go take an intro flight in a real Robinson R22 or download the Dodosim Bell 206 for FSX and you will see what I mean. It is very sensitive and instant but yet highly controllable. Not sluggish / lagged / muffled. Other issues. I tried doing the single missions and there definately needs to be some work done with the scripting and triggers as well as the briefing. Landing in one helipad vs the other will trigger or not trigger the waypoint to go talk to the guys who are waiting for you. If that is the case it needs to be clear in the briefing or through the radio that you need to land in the north or south helipad etc. Also when the mercenary guy tells you to follow the road it would be nice to know if you turn left onto the road or right onto the road as well as what speed and altitude he wants you to target. Having him tell you headings to fly or being more clear without you having to turn on the waypoints would be great. Also at the end when you go to drop the guys off at the shooting range there definately is issues with triggers for them to disembark. Missions need to be well briefed and clear in what needs to be done or it will add frustration. I hope for a polished release and if not initially I hope that the team strives to continue to support the development because this sim has tons of potential if done properly. I wanted to thank you guys at BI for Take on Helicopters. Lets get this right!

I figured I'd create a post and post bugs as I find them. Feel free to post here as well. -Cruise ship at the dock near the city is half submerged in the water. -When trying to land on ships the aircraft starts to bouce heavily sometimes causing the ship to submerge. This includes large frigates. -Tail Rotor and Main Rotor spin at the same RPM. This should be between 4:1 to 6:1 ratio, not 1:1. -Walking into a tail rotor should kill you. -Game slow down and crash. After a while game begins to lock up a bit and eventually crashes.

The other important part is knowing when you get on tension. I think the foreman or someone should tell you something like, forward... forward... left.... steady steady.... 10 ft slack, 8 ft, 3 ft, 1 ft... you're on tension. Knowing how much slack you have is pretty important so that you know to come up slowly onto tension. It would be neat for the rope or cargo hook to break if you get on tension too hard.