blave

Good post. However, at this point I'm wishing I *hadn't* been an early adopter of this game/sim. To be kind, the flight model is unfinished, and I'm tired of researching all of the tweaks and such to make it Feel Right (many thanks to the folks that have been working hard on this stuff - it's just that I'm kind of Done spending hours trying to get it to that point). I've been through this with multiple iterations of X-Plane and Flight Simulator (for at least 10 years), and frankly I'm tired of waiting for a fully-baked helicopter flight model, let alone being a beta tester for same for months or years on end. I had high hopes for this based on the press content but I'm pretty disappointed to be honest. Now, I'm off to go play Skyrim . cheers, Dave B. San Jose, CA

I am mystified about this. I messed with all aspects of cyclic and pedal sensitivity and dead zones, and I still can't fly this flight model. I find it very easy to get into what I'd describe as Pilot Induced Oscillation, although I could swear the FM seems to go into gyrations all by itself sometimes. The only thing I can figure out is that my machine isn't up to this game. I'm running a P4 3.4gHz with 4GB RAM and an NVidia 8800GT. I have some of the graphics options turned down quite a bit (visibility and terrain draw distance), to the point where I get a very smooth framerate in all but the most complex sceneries (e.g. downtown Seattle), where it starts to chop a little bit... Regarding your climb rate -- I don't use the HUD but try looking at the climb indicator on the instrument panel (third gauge, 2nd row) and set the collective to make the needle on that instrument point to 9 o'clock to maintain altitude. BTW since you're using the HUD, do you have Difficulty set to Trainee, or to Expert with the HUD turned on via customization? cheers, Dave.

Being completely new to the ARMA ecosystem, I spent well over an hour yesterday morning trying to sort this out. It seems there are two ways to change things like the flight model -- (1) do the pbo unpack/repack thing (and everyone seems to have their own favorite tool for this), or (2) drop an HSim directory tree into the TOH root directory, which will override the default FM. Someone posted an HSim zip file (I forget who as I was looking at about eight threads at one point) and so I unzipped that and edited the xml file to make sure that Nightstalker's parameters were in there. The HSim directory hierarchy is: <TOH root>\HSim\Air_US_H\Helicopters_Light\Light-GenHeli600-DesktopSim.xml (the xml file is the only thing in the HSim tree btw) I keep a copy of the HSim tree elsewhere on my system so that I can quickly enable and disable the modded FM. Dave B.

I tried the revised flight model today. I find it almost impossible to fly; it's as if I'm in gusty winds coming from constantly differing directions. I can see some of the improvements intended, such as less "ground fear" (ground effect) and a more realistic descent rate when the collective is lowered all the way, but straight and level flight is waaay more work than it should be. I think I'm going to revert to the original FM. It's not that I don't appreciate all of the hard work 8^) but I can't even land the thing the way it's flying now. I wonder if it's something particular to my system/setup? My flight controls are CH Combatstick/Pro Throttle/Pro Pedals. cheers, Dave B.

Thanks.. For the record, it bugs me. I'd sure like to know the thinking behind this -- it's not like the MD500 hasn't been modeled before in games. But -- I'll suffer through. The flight model is far far more important. cheers, Dave.

... why the MD500-style helicopter appears to have a Bell 206 tailboom? Is this "Artistic License"? I did a quick Advanced Search of the forums and did not see a mention of this, but maybe I missed it. thanks, Dave B. San Jose, CA