While ARMA II's flight and helicopter physics usually work well enough in the context of the entire battle environment, they are quite unrealistic for the pilot. The best solution for this is to defer all flight related tasks to an external simulator which outputs the results of its flight model to ARMA, which is still responsible for graphics and and some aircraft systems, like weapons. Since I'm familiar with X-Plane and have a little experience with its plugin API (google, I can't post links), it will be the simulator used. In addition to having a versatile and well-documented API, X-Plane is a good choice because of its highly realistic helicopter physics.
What is planned:
Use X-Plane's flight, avionics engine to drive ARMA aircraft
AI aircraft remain controlled totally by ARMA for simplicity's sake
XP exports aircraft vector, instrument data to ARMA @60hz--this drives the vehicle position / velocity ingame, also instruments as necessary
ARMA tells X-Plane whenever the player boards an aircraft as pilot, and what kind of aircraft he boarded. Events like engine damaged should also be sent to X-Plane. Flight control is relinquished (to ARMA) upon disembarking or crashing the aircraft, and not actually instated until the engine(s) are spooled and ready.
Send passenger / cargo load / unload events to X-Plane to modify weight and balance dynamically
Revise all important instruments in ARMA aircraft to be more clear, readable and functional.
Goals:
Substantially heighten the authenticity of flight in ARMA II.
Implementation Details:
X-Plane requires its own geometric model of whatever aircraft is to be simulated. The content is not a problem; all aircraft in ARMA II, or very similar versions of them, are freely available for X-Plane. For the mod to work conveniently, it will be necessary for X-Plane to take as dynamic input the aircraft type whenever the player enters one so it can load the appropriate flight model. It should be possible to make this is a (near) seamless experience as the aircraft file for X-Plane can be loaded very quickly when optimized and untextured. X-Plane should also take damage / systems events from ARMA to modify the flight model appropriately.
Everything so far mentioned is possible to implement in X-Plane. Still, I have a lot more learning to do with ARMA. Feel free to contribute your thoughts on this post. I'm particularly interested to know whether anyone else cares as much as I do about having realistic flight physics.
