FredAirland

Hi, I am Fred from www.hovercontrol.com, I am the coder behind Helicopter Total Realism (HTR) an FSX physics add on for helicopters tested and used by several real pilots. I am releasing modified flight dynamics files based on HTR parameter calculations and adapted to Rotorlib. Here's my first release for the "light" helicopter based on the FSX MD Helicopter. I mostly worked on the moments of inertia and rotor reaction, I also tried to change the velocity envelope parameters, those are currently commented in the XML files, but you can check those too by uncommenting by DragDueToAoA part and commenting the default one... just unzip to your TKOH root directory, it will update/add files under your Hsim folder (maybe back it up before unzipping my files) https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7457035/Fred_HSim1.zip I plan to add medium and heavy in the next few weeks. EDIT Here's the link to the medium profile, see page 2 of this post for detailed info https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7457035/HSimMedium.zip if you downladed this before february 3rd, redownload the updated version, the old version is still there as an "old" file Unfortunately there's no way to change some beaviours like translational lift, vortex ring state, translating tendency, retreating blade stall, blowback, tail rotor stall etc... but I believe the "pleasure to fly" and realism is really improved... Let me know what you think EDIT NOV 12 2017 UPDATED LINKS LIGHT https://www.dropbox.com/s/55hzdxts3uak4q0/Fred_HSim1.zip?dl=0 MEDIUM https://www.dropbox.com/s/wghmq5xdqvu99we/HSimMedium.zip?dl=0 Bye Fred

Hi, After having succesfully modded the flight models for Take On Helicopters I would like to improve the rotorLib parameters in Arma 3 to see if I can replicate the behaviors I have reached in Microsoft FSX using my own helicopter physics addon (Helicopter Total Realism or HTR) In TKOH it was quite simple as I just had to extract the XML files from the PBO's and put them in a specific Hsim Directory. I am not an expert in Arma 3 editing (but would like to become one) ,but I am pretty sure that with some help from the people I can get very realistic and improved flight dynamics. I actually would like to split the work in 3 steps: 1. Edit and publish the improved dynamics editing parameters from the Rotorlib XML files. 2. Change the config files of the helicopters to see if I can improve the behavior 3. More of a long term project, port my HTR library to Arma 3 for a completely realistic helicopter flight experience... Thanks Fred

Hi Kju, your discord suggestion is a good one I will definitely join... The main question is really how to do step 1 in the easiest way possible, I hoped I did not need to pack data but so be it... devbranch and diag.exe is a good starting point thanks ! Fred

Hi guys, I have updated the dropbox links as requested, I am now looking to load the files in Arma 3... any help appreciated ! Fred

Hi, After TKoH was released I did my best to improve helicopter handling fixing RotorLib XML files, and I believe this was much appreciated by the community.... I wondered if there is a way to access the beta product in order to have better dynamics before it is released. No problem for me in prebuying the product and working for free as long as dynamics are right from the start... Bye Fred

I probably depends on the sim quality, HTR is being used extensively by pilots for training. I also had a canadian student who told me a story: This student had been practicing htr for fsx before his first lesson. The student was soo good at his first lesson his instructor drove 60 miles to his home to test HTR and really liked it a lot and encouraged him on practicing more....

thanks RIE, I am looking forward to the dev branch release... and will be glad to help ! If anything changes in the new rotorLib, do not forget to update the wiki, makes things easier !

Hi Arma 3 uses a completely different aerodynamic system, youo will find the xml files in the pbo's but they are not used. the parameters to change are mostly mass and moments of inertia, then it is a lot of trial and error, the mass you can get from the web, the moments of inertia are more complex I suggest using the same as the A3 and increase them if the helicopter is too sensitive, and viceversa...

Hi, no I did not finish the heavy file and the last update was many months ago as I see the interest in TKOH helicopter plummeting.... Modding the XML files per se is easy , it is the numbers to put in that are difficult to find right... also I do not know if you can do a tandem helicopter with the physics engine....

yes we posted way back in the feedback section but no news to date... http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15211 http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=12273

vrs is there and is bad, I will ad an option to disable it as I believe most users will find it too difficult. also I partially fixed the velocity problem, there are more issues that I initially thought, the original model aerodynamics might have to be tweaked. Also the flight until setVelocityModelSpace and setRotationModel are implemented, managing vehicle physics from script is very limited, I hope they add this soon...

If you wish additional manpower for this I think I can help..(free) I am already working on an advanced FM using scripts, see here but if needed I can go way deeper than that... Fred

@brainslush thank you, I was thinking more about displaying my own values in the gauges, i.e. I will make the calculation and send the value back to them... do you think it is possible ? This weekend I worked on a beta of the script, I currently have implemented: - ground effect - vortex ring state - translational lift I would like to know if there is a way to read the input values for cyclic, collective and such, this would help a lot. Also I believe there is no easy way to set helicopter angular velocities (i.e. pitch, roll, yaw velocities) Please vote THIS on the feedback site as it would greatly help. Also I am currently facing a problem at high speeds since the script seems to slow down the update, maybe it is due to the script running too slow ? (it is less than 50 lines so it shouldn't) anyway I'll publish a beta mission in the next few days... Bye Fred

I think ARMA helicopter flight model is spot on for the purpose it serves, i.e. use by non expert helicopter pilots, flying at low level in a battlefield. Implementing a realistic autorotations is no easy task since it involves several calculations (as I did in my Helicopter Total Realism FSX extension) which are IMHO way too complex for the above purpose. I will be doing some advanced helicopter aerodynamics in ARMA sometimes in the future, then you can have fun! I bet it will be way better than TKOH....

theoretically yes, practically due to floating point errors any terrain above 16km x 16km is not usable... I have been there many times and there are several posts... here's one of the most recent. http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=355&t=86359

I believe that the FM of Arma 3 is not that bad, especially for modding, it is easier than TKOH... I am currently working on a series of "effects" to make it behave very much like HTR, nothing as complex as HTR but from the user perspective you should hardly be able to see the difference... then if Bistudio releases some more access to Physix I could do better... still digging in the wiki and such... I was wondering if there is any gauge documentation anywhere. As I understand in Arma Gauges are 3d objects with animations, but how do you control them ? (still a newbie)

Many of the posts above relate on how paid mods would affect the community and such, but, maybe due to the fact that many contributors are not modders themselves but mod users, I think one aspect of mod creation is greatly missing from this thread (it might be there in the 14+ pages before my post, sorry): What does it take to make a really good mod ? I mean a mod with original 3d assets, sounds and music, terrain, configs, scipts and tested to a production level ? Since a mod is basically a game in the game you will mostly need a team similar to the one needed to create a full game, except for the graphics and engine programming. look at those post in the unity Forums (Unity is a very popular game engine) those are all people and teams looking for specialistic skills. Well the issue is most of those people will work for you for money or revenue share, not for free. you can obviously search skilled specialists within the community, but then each one will have his ongoing project, work family and almost inevitably many projects will get stuck and never happen or get continually slowed down by single members. Now everyone is happy when bistudio comes out with a paid add-on, why can't it be the same with 3rd party add-ons and mods ? An indirect effect of this would be that since bistudio is a company and has to pay employees, outsourcing mods and getting a % of them, can secure a continuous flow of cash to pay salaries and employ the very same people in more productive activities such as improve the existing engine...

Could you please elaborate more? How does ambient occlusion affects flatness?

I am working on an HTR version that works with Physx in Unity, and see no probems, maybe if the open up the flight model as DCS does ( adding an HelicopterX template and exposing the Physx headers) I could do something, I believe in any oher way you will end up fighting between your physics and the default ones...

Being a pro developer I believe most of the people underestimate the complexity of a game engine such as Arma, I think it has a great potential. If I were Bistudio I would open up more parts of the engine to allow to create C++ plugins and shaders, not only using scripting, and professionally made mods or full games (such as the take on series). Given the sheer size of the community they could not only decuplicate their number of developers at no cost and possibly hire the better ones (Unity3d has 2 million users), but also pick and chose the best works to integrate in future releases....

they way I solved this in my HTR library (for FSX) is to implement an AFCS (Automated flight control system) on top of real helicopter aerodynamics, which is what is present in larger helicopters. So basically the aerodynamics are true but you have the AFCS taking care of making the helo do what you want.

very nice please go ahead !

So Rlib files are not used at all ? Do you know where the HelicopterX dll is or if there is a way to create your own VehicleX dll ?

Ideally I would like to implement my own helicopter physics engine but this would probably require some direct Acces to Physix headers to make a clean job. There's probably some headers hidden in the PBO's but I have no clue where to find them.... If the engine is still Rlib I can probably make the changes quite fast....

I would personally love to pay for quality mods, if you get my money you owe me quality. Also before publishing a mod, there could be some quality check and review from bi or volonteer testers very much like download.com does.... I believe this will end in a world of free and paying mods each competing with the other for quality and downloads, very much like FSX is... Fred