Advanced Helicopter FDM Feedback

[da12thMonkey 1943]

It's not about feedback but on the 3rd gauge there is a white point moving around a cross. What does it represent ?

Centre of balance. It's basically a spirit level showing you how the aircraft is tilting from the top-down perspective. When you're hovering, you're trying to keep the white bubble in the middle of the cross.

[Guest]

Centre of balance. It's basically a spirit level showing you how the aircraft is tilting from the top-down perspective. When you're hovering, you're trying to keep the white bubble in the middle of the cross.

Ok, Thank you :)

[x3kj 1247]

A thought, to have an On Board GUI as well. I like it i can see what my heli is doing. But i think it'd be cool if i could disable the overlay, but see the same thing in the cockpit. Example, a throttle to see how much power i'm putting, and a few gauges for signs of failures, lights inside the cockpit. This would be a major improvement, and boost immersion ten fold. Also, i just really don't like the massive circles on my screen, so yeah, this would be SO much more helpful.

If you dont have trackIR it's hard to check the modelled gauges, and they are pretty small. So unless you have a really big monitor you won't see crucial information when you need to have it. Adjusting view with possible joystick coolihat or mouse is not quick to do. Also the resolution of the gauges isnt always as good as you may need it for accurate reading.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Also, it'd be nice to have clickable cockpits. Maybe a simple start up process for each helicopter. It feels plain with an Advanced Flight Model, and all i do is press Q.

[nerdwing 13]

It feels plain with an Advanced Flight Model, and all i do is press Q.

Speaking of which... pressing Q rather than turning on the engine in the Mi48 causes instant explosion of the helicopter :(

[KeyCat 131]

Adjusting view with possible joystick coolihat or mouse is not quick to do. Also the resolution of the gauges isnt always as good as you may need it for accurate reading.

I've bound zoomin to a button on the joystick so when pressed I can clearly read the available instruments in the cockpit. I do have a TIR5 but the zoomin button is quicker, something to try....

/KC

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

If you dont have trackIR it's hard to check the modelled gauges, and they are pretty small. So unless you have a really big monitor you won't see crucial information when you need to have it. Adjusting view with possible joystick coolihat or mouse is not quick to do. Also the resolution of the gauges isnt always as good as you may need it for accurate reading.

I believe in TOH there is a physical model of the Throttle. That is good enough for power input of main TRQ. However, i fly mouse/keyboard, and i have no issues with looking at my gauges and back to whats in front of me, as for the resolution, i'm sure something can be worked out. I can see my gauges clearly.

[raven_jj 1]

When I gently land on buildings without rough landings on, my heli tends to explode, although if I landed on ground nothing would happen. When I turn on rough landings, most of my systems go red. Sometimes, when I'm really inching my way towards roof, I manage to land, but starting, as soon as I start to slide, I get damaged.

[worldsprayer 0]

I believe in TOH there is a physical model of the Throttle. That is good enough for power input of main TRQ. However, i fly mouse/keyboard, and i have no issues with looking at my gauges and back to whats in front of me, as for the resolution, i'm sure something can be worked out. I can see my gauges clearly.

The TRQ that keeps lighting and dimming is not related to throttle, but the torque, or rather how hard the engines are having to work to accomplish their current power demand. Go into a dive and pull back, you'll hear the rotors spool down and the torque lights up because the engines are straining to maintain Nr (rotor rpm), during which your torque is skyrocketing. Honestly, I think we should eliminate torque from Arma 3. They've already stated they don't want to deal with the maintenance issue, and torque is ultimately just a gauge to tell how hard you're pushing the aircraft, primarily the transmission. If we don't need to worry about any of our maneuvers causing us to come apart mid-flight, I would rather torque be replaced with either a rotor icon, or even better a larger Nr gauge so we can see our rotor speed, which is a much better indication of whether or not your maneuver is going to drop you out of the sky.

[dslyecxi 23]

Some thoughts on the current dev flight model, including comparisons with TKOH and DCS, complete with a list of suggested improvements to help pull everything together.

[Feint 137]

I found the new features to be a lot of fun and a good challenge. I miss the startup sequence of starting up the helicopters via in-cockpit switches though. To me, it's somewhat strange to have a more advanced flight model, but moving the collective up starts up the aircraft. Maybe this feature can't be brought over from TOH, but it's one of the things I most want to see (along with helicopter maintenance). I'd also like to see animated collective and rudder pedal movements; not because they are pretty, but because they help indicate what is happening between my inputs and the inputs received by the game.

Also, I'd like to say that my own personal experience so far has been very influenced by the setup of my joystick, throttle, rudder pedals and mouse. As each of these items is configurable inside and outside of the game, it's difficult for me to say, "This is awesome!" or "This needs more work!" Frankly, I'm still playing with it to see if I can get it to where I want. But small changes in my peripheral settings gave me a very different impression of the new flight model. This is also true of the old (original/standard) flight model of Arma 3.

A few things I did were to greatly reduce the sensitivity of my rudder pedals and throttle/collective in the game. This made a big difference in my enjoyment as controls were way too sensitive out of the box when I first enabled the new features. Once I could have more "gross" hand and foot movements in order to make fine corrections in my flight controls, I had a lot more fun.

I've also found the landing sensitivity to be a little too sensitive, i.e. exploding when landing on roofs. This could be me being not used to the new flight model though.

Either way, thanks for additional content! Looking forward to tweaking on my end and on yours.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Feint

[KeyCat 131]

When weight is calculated does it add up each invidual passanger equipment or is it a "generic" weight added for each? I mean, is 6 guys equipped with AT heavier for the heli than 6 riflemen?

Also does it dynamicly calculate weight so heli is lighter after you fired all the rockets in the AH-9 for example, I know the fuel is but unsure about ammo?

/KC

Edited August 6, 2014 by KeyCat

[vicx 10]

Dslyecxi nailed it ^^ Hits everything on the checklist and said it with style.

I was just in DCS Ka-50, TOH and the A3DEV and it's exactly right. I also did some silly buggers testing in the A3DEV editor. I dropped a Mi-48 (it's the most balanced) from 5000m, pulled 5G at 500m and leveled out going 800kph. I could pass an A-10C doing that.

Edited August 6, 2014 by vicx
typo

[mordeaniischaos 3]

The helicopters seem extremely sensitive to purely vertical landings, but landing on the move is very easy. Probably too easy on the tarmac without wheels, friction doesn't seem to exist at all. But I've BARELY tapped the ground or buildings trying to put down softly, and it all just went to shit, breaking most of my stuff.

[hoizen 18]

I would like to chime in by simply reinforcing all the points Dslyecxi discussed in his first impressions video. After spending a few hours in the dev branch with a few of the pilots in my unit, none of us are all too excited for its release if it generally remains in its current state.

The current dev branch flight module looks like this in my head:

-dev-branch flight module (we'll call him Steve) is on his way to his new home: Arma 3.

-Steve is carrying a number of boxes of the stuff from his old home.

-Oh no! Steve remembers he left a few boxes behind! (Boxes containing the points Dslyecxi touched on)

-Steve quickly puts full force on left peddle and tries to 180.

-Steve falls and breaks his nose; bleeding everywhere.

-A pedestrian finds Steve and drags him under a neighbor's awning (Also known as the A3 Dev build) because it's really hot out.

-The pedestrian calls EMT(BI devs) and hopes they come fix up Steve so he can bring all his boxes to his new home.

This is where we currently stand. I have no idea if the EMTs will fix up Steve, help him on his feet, and make sure he makes it to his new home with all his boxes or just give him a band-aid and a pat on the back. Here's to hoping.

[worldsprayer 0]

Some thoughts on the current dev flight model, including comparisons with TKOH and DCS, complete with a list of suggested improvements to help pull everything together.

Well it feels good to have the pentulmate helo pilot in arma to say much the same things I did after a single session in the editor. Heaven forbid BI asking real pilots about a flight system. These are things so quickly picked up its kinda embarrassing they're present.

[Kemeros 1]

Poor Streve ...

Can always count on Dslyecxi to bring great feedback. :)

+1 for exploding if you touch anything, this is not only not fun but unrealistic in many cases.

For the rest, i can't comment much as i'm no ace pilot so i don't have much meaningful feedback past this last comment.

Thank you for the new features. :)

[BL1P 35]

It looks like the difficulty settings are currently in the same area that would allow the player to select the difficulty used in the FM.

Am I correct in thinking that this means a player can select the difficulty no matter what the server is set at, or will the FM come under the same category as all other server difficulty settings ?

So that the server dictates the level of difficulty not each individual player on the server. Server side setting in my mind is the only real way this would work.

[EricJ 724]

Poor Streve ...

Can always count on Dslyecxi to bring great feedback. :)

+1 for exploding if you touch anything, this is not only not fun but unrealistic in many cases.

For the rest, i can't comment much as i'm no ace pilot so i don't have much meaningful feedback past this last comment.

Thank you for the new features. :)

Yeah that's one major reason I don't fly TKOH. It's cool it expands the flight envelope but the sensitivity was way too high compared to A3. While it's great TKOH introduced more ways to improve the flight model, the sensitivity (even after trying to tweak the settings) was way too high and the exploding on contact with anything turned me off from it. It seems strange that when you tell somebody how things really work, mainly gamers, that they dismiss it as not fact and that's what I hope they realize that you don't have to change the damage modelling to get a better FM.

[b00ce 160]

Despite all of the bugs and the fact that you have to apply the opposite cyclic movement to counteract translating tendency, I am quite pleased to see that the hover attitude is pretty close to a real life BlackHawk. (Slightly left wheel low) Really the only change needed is that the tail needs to be lower. (The rotor head should be level, approx. 3 degrees nose high on the H-60) This is true for all of the other helicopters; the proper hover attitude, the effects such as wind or translating tendency notwithstanding, should leave the main rotor shaft/head straight up and down.

Its the little things that make me happy. :o

I have a question about using the Rotor-Lib in an addon, namely for helicopters like the UH-60 where the tail-rotor is at an angle. In real life when you give left/right pedal input you'll actually see an increase/decrease (Respectively) of lift. Is it possible to model this behavior?

[quickvenge 10]

A little more constructive criticism.

• Collective power seems off with respect to speed. It should not take the full collective, and heavy pitch to hit the max speed on most of these helicopters. Depending on helicopter specification max speed is Velocity not Exceeded(VnE), not max speed where the helicopter can't physically go any faster. It's the point you "shouldn't" go over due to stresses on the helicopter, or rotor events such as retreating blade stall are likely to occur. The amount of collective required is really high just to hit level cruising speed. Sad thing is own the pawnee, and humming bird you can actually see the cruising speed mark on the airspeed indicator, but it is really hard to get to.
  
• The inertia, and momentum models seem off on most helicopters during forward flight. A helicopter should behave mostly like a plane at speed in forward flight. Yes it's an over simplification, but I'm trying to convey the actual feel, and how it is wrong currently. Currently most helicopters resistance to yaw, the loss of speed during a bank, and the radius of the bank all seem off. The rotation of the airframe seems off too given the control input at speed. It doesn't seem fluid is all I can say.
  
• There is heavily pronounced yaw even at high speed straight and level flight on the Ghosthawk, and Blackfoot with neutral pedal.
  
• Orca torque seems really low and barely requires any pedal to counter.
  

[armored_sheep 56]

When weight is calculated does it add up each invidual passanger equipment or is it a "generic" weight added for each?

Also does it dynamicly calculate weight so heli is lighter after you fired all the rockets in the AH-9 for example, I know the fuel is but unsure about ammo?

/KC

Weight of crew is 100kg each (generic). Weight of ammo is defined in weapon config (magazines).

[Guest]

it could be usefull to allow multiple key for an action with external controller, because with one hand on the lever and the other on the joystick it's hard to set the manual trim with Right CTRL+4 [NUM]; +

6 ; + 8...

For exemple, a keybind like btn. #1 + axe Z- to set the manual trim (left) will be simpler, but we can't do that currently.

[metralla 19]

Some thoughts on the current dev flight model, including comparisons with TKOH and DCS, complete with a list of suggested improvements to help pull everything together.

I liked your video and see specifically when talking about the explosions and how this affects the damage of helicopter. I also flight simulator DCS and good comparisons with TKOH on DCS seems very exaggerated and unrealistic. Hardly this flight system may approach the AFM of DCS and its level of realism, but to have an opinion on this flight system there will be more reasonable to wait for the stable version.

[suiside 95]

i don't know if this should be in this thread or the dlc thread but i'll post it here because it is development i guess.

since we do not have the simulated start in the cockpit as was done in TOH can you at least animate it ? so it takes more time to get off ground and shows you an animation of vehicle start rather than just engine start ? make that guy use the cockpit if only animation ?

this would at least for me and maybe others give some feel of actually seeing what should be done and does not get you in the air in 10 seconds which kinda sucks.

(like you have your escape and you lift off in no time ? as if everything is warm and ready in a static/parked helicopter, just takes the edge away if you are chased by some guys trying to kill you)

would be nice like mentioned before to have the collective and foot pedal animations as well.

thanks and sorry if this should be in the other thread.