Helmut Duregger

Great job BIS, keep it up!

+1 for leaning out the door. Would be nice if it only works with open doors, or special bubble window doors.

Would be nice to have the option (no HUD, HUD with gauges, military HUD with hover indicator).

From the video it looks similar to what people have criticised in X-Plane for some time (don't know if it has been fixed now). If you approached an oilrig there, the helicopter would also suddenly climb, triggered by a single raycast it seemed. Quite annoying, and according to some, not the real experience. Would be nice if the effect in the video could be lowered, maybe even controlled gradually by multiple raycasts. Please improve the two behaviours pointed out in the videos, even if only in a patch. EDIT: Or maybe make it a config option, if the current behaviour should remain available.

CarlGustaffa I continued the discussion in the other thread http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1993561&postcount=33 as that might be more appropriate.

This is in response to http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1993073&postcount=8 in the other threat, but I think it is more appropriate to continue the discussion in this thread here CarlGustaffa I didn't mean the map's mesh resolution, what I don't like are flight sim maps using satellite images as textures. Too many sims used flat buildings on ground texture in the past. This is a pain in the eyes to me when flying low. Sometimes they try to improve it by putting 3D buildings on top of those maps, but often they are repetitive and don't make it much better. If it can't be done in a reasonable way then I'd rather prefer more wood covered areas and smaller towns like we have seen in past Arma/Ofp maps (or something like in the old SAR3 game, but in one map). That's why I meant it might be better to just create an artificial environment instead of trying to replicate a huge area like Seattle that might come with compromises in the level of detail at ground level. But if they can do it in a way so that it looks nice even when flying through the streets or approaching a rooftop then this would be heaven of course. And I think, because this is a game (even though a simulation game, hopefully), everyone should be free to either fly very low and/or stick to real world flight regulations. After all that's what games are about, you can try to be like real world people or you can try something different. This is all just my opinion and I am mostly only releasing the frustrations I had with past helicopter simulations. For instance, DCS and X-Plane are on a high level with their flight dynamics (at least I believe that as a gamer), but I just can't enjoy low level flying with the coarse graphics.

I never had problems with the manual startup sequence in DCS: Black Shark but I fear such a detailed simulation would require too many resources and therefore BI might not want to do that. As with other points of concern I hope BI includes a means for modders to implement it themselves. For instance, I am also not happy with the low detail of the Seattle map from what we could see so far. In relation to Arma2 maps (which are smaller but that is fine) nap of the earth flying might be as bad as in other sims (DCS, X-Plane 9), from a visual standpoint. In short, I think they should focus on getting the flight dynamics spot on, after that they should provide an API to the modders so that we can add any instruments, helicopters and maps we like. The graphics is where the engine currently really shines, we only need a decent flight model and rope physics to get some SAR missions on. The render to texture, we already get. Huge maps is something that other sims already provide but for helicopter flying repeating landscapes or rough textures are no fun for me. This is where they can score. Just a small artificial map with a hospital, an area covered by sea, a mountainous area, maybe a dam, but I got carried away...

put me on the list, and I don't mean the beer :-D

Thanks for the interview with all the information. Oooooh that sounds awesome! edit: and the nice screenshots

Unfortunately I don't intend to enhance this release now. Please read the original post, I've added information about 'copyright' etc., so you could just add these features yourself. Sounds interesting. Never tried it. But I think it will not work right away. I believe you would have to update orientation of the attached object based on the four attachment points. And also invest some more to bind the 4 node ends to the 4 positions on the load. Haven't really thought it through though. ---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 PM ---------- I think the rope is not really suitable for this because the node joints can rotate freely in all directions. You would have to use different joint constraints for this. There is an aircraft tractor addon that might already provide that functionality.

cool thanks! ---------- Post added at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:45 PM ---------- Didn't know about these features and details. Sounds great. I'm pretty new to Arma2 editing. But if someone wants to try this they are free to do so. I just updated the original post to make this clearer. I think I don't understand what you mean. All the nodes are likely to be in motion all the time. Unfortunately I hardly know anything about network synchronization of objects in Arma2. The distance between the nodes is being restricted. There is a part in the update loop forcing the nodes into their intended distances. Without this they would bounce around like on a rubber band. One would also have to make sure that the simulations don't drift apart somehow, if it is required for the intended purpose. I guess this might be quite complicated. Maybe synchronize every now and then. ---------- Post added at 06:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:56 PM ---------- I just updated the original post. Everyone is free to use the whole or parts from this release and re-release etc. You can just use the scripts. But you will have to change the instantiation script to create node objects of the type you want. It currently creates the objects in the HEDU_Rope.pbo. These objects have animations that are used to update the visible length of the rope. There is also the source files included in the package and information in the scripts about how the visual length of the rope is updated with animations. You can also exchange the node objects at runtime with your own objects and just keep the original objects around. E.g. you can replace single nodes by barrels or something. But mind that objects that have gravity applied by the game engine behave bad. On the 'positive side' Arma2 will not give an error if the object you use for your nodes does not have the animation. You can also specify the animation name. All the details are in HEDU_Rope.hpp.

The addon basically is only the rope. As shown in the example script and mission you can quite easily simulate a winch by just changing the length dynamically. It is possible to attach the rope to any object you like. Since you can attach multiple nodes of the rope to objects, it would be possible to create thing like power lines and then simulating some wind movement on that. You would have to compute and apply the wind force yourself though. But my imagination is carrying me away. As a starter for your winch you could just try to use the setup in the example script and remove the rotation being applied to the man on the rope. Yes you could call that script in any vehicles init. Mind though that the current example script uses some global variable names ("chopper", ...) that the involved objects have. You would have to change that to make sense. Best practise might be to pass the objects you want to affect by your winch directly to the winch initialization script. The key mapping in the example script to the flaps controls is also just an example, there is no rule on what key you use to control the rope's length. You don't even have to change the length if you don't want to. It's just that your script has access to the length if you want. I used the flaps keys for testing because I did not use them for something else and it would be unpractical to lower the rope in steps of 10 cm by repeatedly selecting an action. Of course for things that you don't do repeatedly per second, like attaching the rope to some object, actions are fine. The rope physics are far from perfect and also depend onto the performance of the game on your computer. This comes from how often the postion a rope is attached to is updated by the game engine, or how often gravity is applied to them etc. I fear there is not much we can do about that, and it is maybe also the reason I could not find another rope addon for Arma2. If someone was to create a model of a person that is to be attached to a helicopter rope, then it might be a good idea to create a copy of that model that has no mass and gravity applied, so that the rope behaves better. But you can tweak the parameters on the rope to your use case. For instance there is a value called damping that just generally makes the rope, or just individual nodes, slower. There is also the spring constant and the air drag value. Please read through the documentation in the HEDU_Rope.hpp file. The parameters of objects influenced by physics calculations always have to be tweaked. That is the case in any game and any computer physics simulation as it will never be accurate. Unfortunately Arma2 script access currently makes it a bit more difficult for us to get usable results. In short yes. You can check the distance to the end node of the rope to a person for instance. If the person is close enough you could add an action to their action menu and remove it if they move away again etc. If some things I said confuse you, then don't worry. Look into other addons and scripts to get an idea of how things can be done. There is also a lot of documentation here in the forums and on the web. Usually there is multiple ways of how you can achieve something. I myself have a background in computer games and programming, but this is my first Arma2 addon. And the last related mission editing and scripting I did for this series was for Arma or the original Operation Flashpoint years ago. So I had to learn too.

I am no pilot but in my opinion DCS: Black Shark has the best helicopter flight model and damage physics on the consumer market. DCS: A10 might be the same for fixed wing aircraft, haven't played it. What killed my interest in DCS: Black Shark though over time, was that the scenery is not enough detailed for low level flight. This is where helicopter flight in Arma2 already is more fun, even though the flight and damage models are not of equal detail. I wish we'd see a hybrid of DCS: Black Shark and Arma2 soon, with civilian or law enforcement (even coast guard) scenarios. In this mind the Arma2 engine is already very good graphically but I agree that a physics update would be nice. Maybe the two firms could team up and share technology *keeps dreaming*

@murtoo, I'd also started work on a Coast Guard and civilian SAR helicopter addon. This gave birth to a physics rope http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=117656 maybe you can use it for your addon.

Sorry for the hotlink, forgot to check the rules again before posting.