Sylle

After the tips found in THIS topic and inspired by the fabulous screenshots of the upcoming MD600 for Xplane and FSX, I decided to start my first TOH repaint. For the time being it simply overwrites the default 'Digital' livery. I would like to add it under its own name at a later stage while keeping all the default BIS liveries. Still a LOT to do/align/check/discover... consider it more like a proof of concept right now. :D Hope you guys like it! Cheers, Sylvain PS: Any chance BIS could provide us with a simple BLANK texture file (all white livery) in the future for the three different models? I couldn't find one in the pbo's (although you can create a completely white heli with the custom color picker in game) so I created one myself but it took quite some time... EDIT: Liveries can be found for download in this post.

Hi Karl, did you try to get in the chopper and turn the battery on? Weak battery is also one of the items that need to be checked. Also check if the flight controls can move freely be moving the stick and pedals to full deflection. Regards, Sylvain

Hi Fergus, The developers keep a close eye on the community issue tracker (you'll have to register) https://dev-heaven.net/projects/toh-cit/issues?set_filter=1 Although I agree with the issues you mentioned above, before submitting a ticket over there to address the flight dynamics, I think it would be good to have a few extra opinions coming from real world helicopter pilots. This will give better guidelines to the developers about the (amount of) correction to make. Any chance you could convince some of the guys at hovercontrol to take a look at it?? Cheers, Sylvain

Hi BIS, Congrats with the release of your first DLC! I updated my ToH install to version 1.05 tonight and I would like some clarification on following points. Compatibility with Take On Helicopters: Hinds What does this compatibility encompasses?? Does this mean for example that someone without the Hind DLC will be able to fly a light helicopter in MP against someone (that bought the Hinds DLC and) that is flying a Mi24?? Retractable Landing Gear System support added Is this also valid for the heavy helicopter? I tried but didn't manage to raise the gear. I also noticed the torque instrumentation for the twin engine helicopters now shows identical values for both engines. Thanks for fixing this! Regards, Sylvain

Thanks Fergus... That's twice more yaw rate than I experience on the light helicopter. Seems something went wrong with the updating in that case... I will re-download and install from scratch as soon as I find the time. I'll keep you posted. Regards, Sylvain

Having been involved in the development of some aircraft addons for FS I can relate to what you say Dna. In order to meet the expectation of its customers I think that a company needs to stick to its values. With Take On Helicopters BIS promised us (amongst other things): - Playability for kb & mouse players all the way up to complete hardware helicopter controls Offering this choice of controllers needs to be continued and it's good to see you do exactly this for the Hinds DLC. - Authentic flight model Meaning that certain customers will expect all kind of odd behavior like the torque induced yaw, settling with power, etc that make flying a helicopter challenging (even without anything to shoot at). I understand that marrying these two concepts together can be problematic but... why would you guys want to accomplish this with only one flight model and limited options?? Not knowing the possibilities of your game engine, I don't know if it is possible but I guess the ultimate answer will be to have more realism options regarding the helicopter behavior. In Flight simulator for example you have sliders to change the effects of P-factor, torque and gyro on your aircraft. Why not look into integrating stuff like this in ToH? Good to know you guys are not simply settling with what we have right now. As I said above, there are a lot of things I like in the new version 1.05 too. Looking forward to further developments! Bedankt voor uw antwoord. Regards, Sylvain

Exactly what we heard from the real life heli pilots on the forum. It was also the case with community update 3 in the begin days of ToH. Problem is that it is hard to compare the amount of pedal deflection required in game as they can be dependent of hardware and sensitivities settings. We need the guys that say to be very happy with the flightmodel have a look at the yaw rate with no pedal input on their setup so that we can at least compare numbers. Just follow the procedure I described above and report the time it takes for the light heli to turn 180degrees without pedal input with collective at 45%. At least we will know if something is wrong with our setup or not. I don't know if it is normal behavior or not but I do see exactly the same issues here hon0. It's worse than the light. It would be cool to have some feedback of the developers on this as I'm not really tempted to uninstall, re-download 13Gb of data to reinstall 20Gb on my HDD to notice nothing has changed... I wouldn't have any problem doing this on the other hand if I knew something was wrong with my install. I think I'm going to hold off the purchase of the Hinds DLC until we know what direction BIS is taking with the authenticity of the flight models in general. It's a pity as I was looking forward to it to be honest :( As I know they listed the following feature on the Hinds page: Pick-up-and-pilot controls - Designed to be played with mouse-and-keyboard, gamepads and joysticks I'm worried the kb & mouse players will get it their way again in the end. For the time being I simply feel my pedals are not being put at good use in ToH... The thing is there are a lot of things in 1.05 that I enjoy. I like how they have been working at implementing more realistic engine behavior and the relation between torque and N2 for example. As I said before, if they want to cater for the whole market they should offer an new option in the settings that offers realistic torque induced yaw. Dumbing down secondary aerodynamic effects cannot be the ultimate answer from BIS! Dear BIS developers, please share your point of view on this issue... Regards, Sylvain ----------------------------------------- EDIT --------------------------------------------- I just had a look in the general ToH forum This very topic is in the top 3 threads both when you rank the topics per views or when you rank them per replies. This reinforces my belief that the promise of an authentic flight model attracts (or at least has been attracting) a big part of the ToH customers... I personally think that dismissing this issue as irrelevant would be a big mistake...

Thanks Dna & Dwarden for the clarifications! All clear now ;-) Regards, Sylvain

Sorry to bring this up one more time. I do need left pedal input in a hover put it is so small that I'm wondering if I have a problem too. As it's difficult to compare result for different hardware I tried a hover without any rudder input to allow us to check if the FM behavior we see is the same on our different setups. Could you guys check the following results please: - Light heli - 1 person on board - collective pulled at 45%, hover at around 3-5ft above ground - maintain speed close to zero with cyclic only I noticed a heading change of 180 degrees over 25 sec in the situation above. How does this compare to the yaw rate you see on your install?? Cheers, Sylvain

WOW! That model is stunning... Did you have any modeling experience before your 8 months with 3DSmax?? I know first hand (when struggling to make some repaints for the light heli) that there are great talented people here on the forums who are most willing to help. I really, really hope you'll manage to get this baby in the sim. :cool: Keep it up! Cheers, Sylvain

After reading the recent Hind developer Q&A interview it seems we won't get a fully developed campaign but rather a limited set of different missions to illustrate the various roles the Hind can perform. Better than nothing but I would have loved a full campaign even more! :o Cheers, Sylvain

Excellent! I was about to post a movie to illustrate this problem I experienced myself today as well but I see it's no longer necessary... Thanks guys! Having never flown a helicopter myself in real life I cannot tell for sure but it seems to me that the ground effect in 1.04 is really minimal. Taking off from a rooftop (pinnacle) does not result in a drop in altitude or v/s when crossing the edge of the building. Could you guys try to get some heli pilot input on this issue too together with the tail rotor efficiency at higher speeds mentioned by AlmightyGrain?? Regards, Sylvain

Great! Now we'll need a Ferrari 308 model too to replace the Chevy Suburban SUV at the heliport... Cheers, Sylvain

Hello BIS, One thing that struck me when trying out X-Plane 10 was the varying sound the engine makes when you change the position of the collective. Really, really immersive and very different from the constant/steady engine sound we get in ToH!! Looking at various youtube movies, I think there is indeed room for improvement with the engine behavior and related engine sound of the ToH choppers. Have a look at .Hopefully RLIB4 will make it possible to implement these improvements. Cheers, Sylvain

OMAC, I think we all know by now that it is very important to you that you keep the possibility to play ToH with kb and mouse - at expert difficulty level... You have been very vocal about this on different occasions in the past. I also think that no-one of the other community members here wants to take that away from you. On the other hand you should try to realize too that - just like you find this kb/mouse thing a major issue - others on the forum here may have been moved to buy ToH based on completely different criteria than yours. In the same url you posted above Jay states: Speaking for me personally, the promise of an authentic experience of flight is what convinced me to spent my hard-earned money to a software company I never heard of before (BIS)... Noticing that the torque induced yaw is no longer realistically simulated in the beta patches to accomodate kb/mouse users is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. Why should other BIS customers/flight simmers owning a joystick, a collective and a set of rudder pedals have to deal with a less realistic behavior of flight in a future patch?? We should really avoid falling into this discussion over and over again and instead try to get BIS to cater for everyones needs by showing some understanding for each other wishes and intrests in ToH. As stated in the other topic of the beta forum, we need to convince BIS to include more realism options as far as the simulation of the helicopter flight is concerned while keeping these independent from the general difficulty options of the game (beginner, trainee and expert). Hoping we can all get along in the future... Regards, Sylvain

Hon0... After all these low level flights, I think the neighbours in Chernarus are starting to complain about the noise by now ;) Great movie! Sylvain

Excellent suggestion! :) I'm a flightsim-nut myself too (read: I was not familiar with Arma or other FPS games before I bought ToH). I bought ToH, curious to discover this mix of first person shooter, realistic helicopter simulation, MP and the campaign. These 4 elements together are never seen before in a flightsim game, neither in an FPS game. I must say it's a very enjoyable recipe... but in my opinion, we need ALL the ingredients I listed above to keep it attractive, also in the future! I'm confident BIS will come up with a solution for us, fans of a realistic FM, as they state the following on the ToH website Authentic Flight Model - Incredibly realistic piloting experience. For me personally, an accurate flight model really is the biggest requirement to keep on enjoying this game. It's also what brought me here in the first place! (I did some MP tonight but quitted early as the server had the autotrim feature enabled... no real fun for me!) Regards, Sylvain

I understand the guys using the keyboard need to be able to control the chopper as well. This being said, I find it very disappointing BIS would dumb down the flight model because of this. We all know ToH is not a procedural sim where you get a kick from flicking switches and going through real-world checks and procedures. A big part of the thrill in this game should come from a realistic handling of the helicopter... Therefore I would rather much prefer BIS to work on a flight model that is as accurate as possible. I read posts from real pilots stating you can need up to 90% pedal input during the hover when pulling a lot of collective. I want to experience this as well in ToH!! A new option 'torque-induced yaw' could be added in the options so that pilots using a keyboard can opt to deselect it to have this effect less pronounced, making keyboard control easier. Would make everyone happy I believe... Cheers, sylvain

Thanks Scott for the detailed step-by-step explanation in your write-up above! It's amazing how much I learned about helicopter handling just by reading posts like these on this forum and the hovercontrol website. It would interesting to know what you think of the FM changes of the beta version BIS released a few days ago. I remember your input on FM stuff of TOH has been huge in the past... Cheers, Sylvain

I agree with hon0, most immersive would be to hear the wind going around the chopper indeed, especially at higher indicated airspeeds... Sylvain

Hi guys, I searched on the forum but could not find a definitive answer from the developers... If on trainee mode I set following options (all related to the flight model) as follows; - allow rough landing disabled - Wind influences dynamics enabled - Auto-trim disabled - Stress damage enabled Will these settings now provide me an identical handling experience of the chopper (Flight model) as with the expert difficulty or are there further flight model differences that can NOT be changed via the difficulty menu?? Same question popped up before in this thread...http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=125692&highlight=trainee Regards, Sylvain

Wow! This is very cool to see one of my repaints in action. I ndefinately eed to review your post on recording and replaying your flight path... Thank you for making this movie! Cheers, Sylvain

Thanks Blake! :bounce3: I uploaded 4 of my liveries to Avsim. Click here to see the liveries and download links. A (free) registration is required once to access the files. For those amongst you who do not know this website, avsim is one of the biggest online file libraries for the Microsoft Flight Simulator titles. Especially now that some other well-known hosting websites are being closed by the authorities, I thought it would be a good idea to upload these on a website with a somewhat better reputation... :D I also hope that uploading at avsim will give this title more exposure to the 'civilian' simmers and maybe bring some more players in the end. The Avsim library managers have been so kind to create a completely new 'Take On Helicopters' sub-division to accomodate these repaints. Now that BIS released paint templates for all the models I expect more repaints and missions will pop-up over there! Enjoy, Sylvain

Hi guys, First of all, I'm really enjoying TOH! After a few weeks of playing this sim here are some things I'd like to see improved in the future... - Working annunciator lights For the time being the annunciators only work in the 2D HUD gauges. It would be great for those of us flying in expert mode to get functional warning lights in the 3D cockpit too. On top of that... some colorful lights on the dash will give a Xmas feeling which is suitable for the time of the year! - Link the instruments correctly to the helicopter electrical system. Fuel level for example should not be indicated as long as the battery is turned off. Amp meter for example should show heavy discharge when starter is activated. DISCLAIMER: I know this sim does not intend to be a procedural trainer but a little bit more functionality for those who wish would be welcome (expert level for example), especially as this does not detract from the core focus of this game... taking on helicopters. - Add Generator switch and start pump switch Make the GEN switch functional so that the battery further discharges as long as the switch isn't set correctly. Make it a requirement to put the GEN switch in OFF before engine start ( )Also make the start pump switch functional. - Split N2 & Rotor RPM needles Model the dual needle in the N2 and Rotor RPM gauge. Especially interesting . Could also be an interesting instrument when experiencing damage during combat.- Nav lights Nav lights are visible throughout 360°. This is incorrect. Nav lights are only visible from certain angles. Green nav: Should only be visible from 0° till 110° White nav: Should be visible from 110° till 250° Red nav: Should only be visible from 250° till 360° - Improved Panel lights Further improve the cockpit panel flood lighting and gauge lighting to make it more useable during night flight. - Better defined runways on the Seattle airports Runways are blurred. Some overlayed runways/taxiways on the sat picture at all civilian airports would be nice to keep the runways sharp and detailed. - True VORs and NDBs?? Looking forward to further developments of this game! Regards, Sylvain

Hello Raxlly, That's strange :confused: Did you manage to install other addons succesfully before? (Arma 2 terrains, mission made by the community members like Thromp or Jedra) I don't have the steam version but installing these skins should be no different than installing any other addon... Some Steam users here having an idea what the issue could be? Cheers, Sylvain