Standalone and Helicopters.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

I have tried a few things mentioned. Manual trim, auto hover, and while auto hover did correct my flight path as soon as I took it off it was like I was flying without a tail rotor. I am not exactly sure what went on, and I might have to experiment with the manual trim.

As far as landing, again I might have to experiment more with the manual trim (is it just a on/off setting and nothing actually manual?) but I did try a few methods. Sticking it on auto hover, and landing, and doing it all manually. It seemed no matter what level I had the thrust it would either barely lower or not at all. Helicopters have the ability to land very fast/accurately. So I don't think lowering at like 2 inches per minute is very realistic. I would also bounce the thrust up, but again it felt like the only way I could lower the thing was to put it at zero.

As for the engines, there really isn't any options... Off, idle, full. So those aren't important I don't think until you land.

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Digging this thread up from the grave to relay my experience yesterday because of its relation to this discussion...

I logged on Sunday morning, my character near death on Namalsk, with just 6 or so other folks on the server, when a guy I had seen the day before and knew was friendly agrees to meet me, administer a blood transfusion, and ends up driving me to a UAZ I could have. We teamed up for a few minutes then went our separate ways. Fast forward 8 hours to last night. I still have the UAZ and am raiding A2 with another guy I had randomly teamed up with when my savior logs back on, this time on TS with about 4 friends. It turns out I'm playing on their server. He tells me where a heli is because in his group of 5 friends, none know how to fly. Even the guy I had teamed up with, who was an Arma vet, said he hadn't flown in 6 months and didn't recall the key bindings. So out of 7 people on a server, I was the only one who could fly.

I told them I was an amateur with just a few hours of practice, but that was better than everyone else, so we drove to the heli and I pulled my flight stick off the shelf. What followed was the best 3 hours of DayZ I've had yet, and I just broke the 200 hour mark this weekend according to Steam. I ferried them from place to place, picking up new friends as they logged on, dropping folks at vehicles, hitting their hidden tents, spotting heli crashes, looking for warm clothes, etc. We were playing at night, so at times the cloud cover would make things so pitch black I was flying completely blind (even maxing gamma and brightness didn't help). No one ever complained, even when I flew slow as hell and took 2 minutes to land because I was being so cautious (not only was I contending with the darkness, but the heli wasn't the Huey I'm used to, but some modern one, and you couldn't see jack from the cockpit, so I had to fly 3rd person, which I hate and haven't practiced with). By the time I logged off we'd hit just about every point on the map, killed about 600 hundred zeds, and had everyone well geared.

And this, albeit belatedly, brings me to the original point I was making. While it may take just a couple of hours practice to become adequate at the Arma flying mechanics, the majority of players still haven't put that training time in, and with helis being rare and people not wanting to die, even amateur flying skills are still at a premium. If you take that away by making the controls exponentially more complex, you take away a large facet of the game that people enjoy.

Stories like yours would be more common if the controls were more difficult. Guys like you and me might not get to fly often but meeting someone who can fly, like you in the story, and not being a complete bandit to them might lead to more interactions involving fewer bullets. Everyone would have something to gain from not blowing each others heads. You had a skill and it was in demand, that led to an awesome time. If anything, we need more in-game skills like this that take time to master.

Right now, any Joe can hop into a chopper, press Q, fail to take off and explode in a tree. This leads to less helicopters, less chances to fly, and less fun. Even just a few extra steps to fire up the engines, and maybe removing auto-hover, would make things more challenging, more authentic, and increase the value of other players.

Alright, so my impression of first hand experience on ToH... Wow. Amazingly... not so good. I really don't understand it maybe.

Oh wow, Dreygar not liking something related to ArmA2. What are the odds.

[russthewomble@gmail.com 5]

I'm starting to think that maybe linking the ability to fly helis to experience/skill levels acquired in game may be a good move forward. ie you can only repair heli's if you have the books to learn how to do so, or have carried out repairs on a certain number of vehicles. Having those skills will make dying all the more painful if you're close to being able to fly a heli.

[echo38 4]

Dreygar, you might want to do a little bit more research on how real helicopters work. If you don't understand why you've always got to be jockeying the torque pedals, then you don't have any idea of how helicopters work.

[walrus2517 27]

Stories like yours would be more common if the controls were more difficult. Guys like you and me might not get to fly often but meeting someone who can fly, like you in the story, and not being a complete bandit to them might lead to more interactions involving fewer bullets. Everyone would have something to gain from not blowing each others heads. You had a skill and it was in demand, that led to an awesome time. If anything, we need more in-game skills like this that take time to master.

Right now, any Joe can hop into a chopper, press Q, fail to take off and explode in a tree. This leads to less helicopters, less chances to fly, and less fun. Even just a few extra steps to fire up the engines, and maybe removing auto-hover, would make things more challenging, more authentic, and increase the value of other players.

...

I respectfully disagree on both points. It was a great feeling to be the only one on that server who was comfortable flying so that I was of great use to everyone, but those stories would be far less common if flying becomes more difficult simply because there won't be nearly as many capable pilots to write them. For instance, I had another great flying experience last night on the same server, but if the ToH controls are implemented, I won't have these opportunities.

As for the difficulty of flying, you are correct that anyone can go into the armory and figure out the controls fairly quickly, but when you are actually in the mod, you better know what you are doing or else you will crash, destroying however many hours of work you put into that character plus the work anyone flying with you lost when you killed them because you didn't really know what you were doing. Last night I was flying an Mi-17 around trying to load it with medical gear but wasn't used to how much bigger it was. I not only crashed and killed myself trying to land, but crashed into and destroyed the grocery at Vorkuta on Namalsk, which if I'm not mistaken is one of only two groceries on a map where food is rare.

EDIT: I misread the point you were making in regards to amateurs wasting the helis because they don't know what they are doing. This is a problem, but even if you add in a take off procedure, they'll just press buttons or look it up on youtube really quick to figure it out then definitely end up crashing because the flight controls are much harder too.

The main thing I've noticed is how reluctant people are to piloting. We've had ample helis on the server I've played on the last few days yet no one wants to fly. I keep telling them just to take an hour in the armory to get the basics down but it isn't the controls. Most seem unwilling to take on the responsibility of another character's life. When you snipe someone from 800m then laugh as he whines in sidechat about losing all his gear, it's just part of the game. But when you have 5 players in your heli each with 10+ hours invested in their characters, suddenly those landings that seemed so easy in the armory are a bit tougher.

Finally, getting back to the ToH controls, controlling the thrust or whatever it is when moving vertically to land was my biggest problem too. I had the same issue where my kb would seem unresponsive at times then suddenly I'd go slamming into the ground. It felt like an inconsistent 2-3 second delay in the controls and was the biggest frustration I had (and why I haven't had any desire to play the demo again).

Edited November 13, 2012 by walrus2517

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

Dreygar, you might want to do a little bit more research on how real helicopters work. If you don't understand why you've always got to be jockeying the torque pedals, then you don't have any idea of how helicopters work.

Maybe you misread something. I know quite a bit about helicopters, thank you. However, the pedals would not work to provide the anti-torque of their design to stabilize the main rotor. It felt like I had no control of the tail rotor.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

Finally, getting back to the ToH controls, controlling the thrust or whatever it is when moving vertically to land was my biggest problem too. I had the same issue where my kb would seem unresponsive at times then suddenly I'd go slamming into the ground. It felt like an inconsistent 2-3 second delay in the controls and was the biggest frustration I had (and why I haven't had any desire to play the demo again).

Agreed, I fiddled around with it a lot and I will mess around with the game more out of curiosity. The Arma 2 helicopters were more responsive in throttle response, if descending too fast you could give it more collective/thrust (I really dislike they combine these two features) and save yourself from smashing into the ground. On ToH you couldn't make many adjustments, in my experience.

[ruecanonrails 24]

Using the collective does have a delay in a sense as it should. You are not actually slowing or increasing your rotor speeds. when you are flying the throttle is opened at full and the rotor maintains a steady speed.

Instead to what you are doing is changing the angle in which the blades are sitting.

When the collective is at absolute 0, the blades are flat which does not give you any lift. As you increase the collective you change the angle allowing more air to be pushed below the helicopter providing lift. Adjusting this airflow allows you adjust your altitude. The reason it feels laggy is because as you are adjusting the angle of the blades the helicopter has to cancel out opposing forces reach a 0 G of movement before it can change from going up or down.

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2+ 3+ 4 +5

If you are gaining altitude at a speed of say +4 and you want to land. Before descent can happen you need to bring the helicopters lift to -1. If you push the collective right down to 0 it will go from +4 down to -5 fairly quickly and while it will bring you to the ground fairly fast however the descent speed is far to fast to land safely and you risk damaging the helicopter by putting too much toque on the engine if you have to bring the collective back to full to stop the descent.

What you want to do is slowly decrease the collective to gently bring the lift from +4 down to +3 then +2 and so on until you get to a near hover then decrease a little more until you reach your desired descent speed, never bringing the collective to 0 unless in an emergency. The closer to 0 you keep your lift, the easier it will be to make adjustments to your altitude speed and prevent crashing. That's not to say you must take 20 minutes slowly inching it to the ground from 200 meters.

The key to remember is when changing your altitude you must give the helicopter time to cancel out the opposing forces before you make further adjustments to your collective. If you slam the collective to full it takes time to cancel out the descent speed but once it does you will launch into the air almost uncontrollably then likely you will slam the collective to 0 and repeat the process never leveling out at a stable hover.

To help out a little bit more with the spin and the feel of no tail rotor. It sounds like you're setting your collective to high, try lowing it to about 50-60% just enough to generate the lift required to stop from crashing. The lower the collective, the less force being put onto the tail which makes you spin.

I have never tried to use the keyboard to fly in TOH, so I'm not sure how precise of adjustments you can make. You simply might not be able to fly in expert with only a keyboard and mouse I know it's possible in lower difficulties.

One last thing to keep in mind is the size and weight class of the helicopter you are trying to fly. They all handle different finding the one that works for you is just as important as getting a good key config. The light helicopters for example feel like they hover even with 0 collective and feel light on the skids while on the ground. They also are very susceptible to cross winds and over correcting making the controls feel a lot tighter than others with every movement feeling exaggerated. The heavy class require about 60-70% collective just to stay airborne and will drop like a rock if any less is applied. However the rotor wont cause spin nearly as much if the trim isn't set correctly and all the controls feel a lot looser and sluggish taking more time to adjust altitude and basic maneuvers.

[walrus2517 27]

@painfulleap1 - Thanks for the detailed info. You learn something new everyday. I recall trying to slowly descend multiple times, literally tapping the "s" key gently, waiting a few seconds, tapping it again, rinse/repeat, with no luck, but perhaps now that I understand the mechanics I can figure it out. That is, if I can force myself to try it again. The 90 minutes I spent in the demo was not fun.

@Dreygar - Even in Arma I couldn't fly with my mouse because from 1st person view the adjustments were too slow and from 3rd person they were too quick (although admittedly I have a cheap mouse). However, I plugged in a $20 flight stick I bought 3 years ago and it worked great without even having to calibrate it.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

Let me point out one thing about my demo experience. There was just something. "off" about it. I would go into free flight (it starts you off in the air already) as soon as the game opens up the helicopter makes a bee line for the right, like it has a mind of its own. So it's not like I adjusted the collective in any way. Any attempt to use the pedals failed to respond.

It didn't matter if I was in expert or trainee. I do know that it started in trainee and I was flying much like I fly in DayZ, so I decided to try expert and that is when the game just stopped to work correctly, even when I switched back to trainee thinking maybe it was just an expertise issue it was still flying like that. So might be something with the demo itself.

My major gripe is the lack of throttle, it replaces throttle and uses the collective to compensate for both throttle/angle of attack.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Dreygar

[buster0083 1]

My major gripe is the lack of throttle, it replaces throttle and uses the collective to compensate for both throttle/angle of attack.

Get past that, it's not a dealbreaker - the throttle, especially in turbine helos, is almost a "set once" device. In ToH it's not combined with collective, it's just got three positions - OFF, IDLE and FLIGHT. It's available in the key mapping. Turbine helos generally use a governor to maintain constant RPM - like a CSU in a fixed wing aircraft. I believe piston engined helos have a linkage from collective to throttle to achieve the same goal but I can't speak from experience - I'm a fixed winged pilot and my helo flying is limited to a little stick time with mates on a few occasions.

[ruecanonrails 24]

hehe, I always try to help. And it honestly is once you understand how the basic mechanics work on the helicopter you start to know what needs to be adjusted without thinking about it.

The trim is never correct when you start in free flight. You will almost always be spinning to the right the moment you load into the game by easing a little on the collective you will slow the spin enough to regain control. If you find you are starting out to close to the ground and crash before you get a chance to recover turn on auto hover and gain a bunch of altitude before you try to gain control without auto hover.

I know what you mean, there is no twist grip method of controlling the throttle which is why I have set it to a couple toggle type buttons on my hotas controller (of course only used in take off and landing). However turbine and many piston helicopters use a governor or electric system to maintain the rotor speeds so the pilot does nothing other than adjust closed, idle, and full.

The throttle is used to keep the rotor spinning at a safe speed it is never used to help maneuver the helicopter. If the throttle is lowered to much you will stall and the engine will shut off, if you over throttle you risk damaging losing stability and control At least that's what I have been led to believe but not being an actual pilot nor the money to go for courses I can't say for certain.

Having the governor or some electronic system to control the throttle speeds is one less thing for the pilot not to worry about.

Walrus2517, Don't force yourself to keep playing if you don't like it. I'd recommend for anyone who has tried the demo and doesn't like it to wait for the dayz standalone to be released. At which point we will know for certain how the flight mechanics work and at that point decide if you want to try to become a pilot then come back to take on helicopters. The dev team may keep the current flight mechanics no one really knows for sure. If they do end up keeping the current flight mechanics and you just spent several hours forcing yourself to play a game you didn't like for no reason well that would just suck.

[walrus2517 27]

Honestly, just reading these posts and learning the basic mechanics has inspired me to give the ToH demo another shot, as you said, regardless of what mechanics the SA ends up using. It isn't that I hated it as much as it was just a very frustrating experience. Even after getting to the point I could maneuver mid-air without stalling, being unable to land just really pissed me off. It probably didn't help that I made things worse by working up a rage continually telling myself "If Rocket makes it this hard in the SA I'll quit!", which of course isn't true. If he does end up using the ToH mechanics as they are, well, I'll just suck it up and practice until I'm confident enough to fly in the mod.

[hawc 63]

I generally have helicopter commands mapped so the collective is W and S keys, and tail rotor is A and D. Then you have either mouse,joystick or arrow keys for cyclic. It works in arma but in take on you really need a analog control for collective.

But i only have a standard joystick with the small throttle control and if i map that to collective i can't use tail rotor.

I'm thinking of buying another joystick and map the x axis to collective and y to tail rotor hehe. The only other option i see is to buy the expensive saitek something that also has pedals.

[echo38 4]

as soon as the game opens up the helicopter makes a bee line for the right, like it has a mind of its own.

This is normal, realistic helicopter behavior. In order to maintain altitude at any attitude*, a helicopter must have positive collective. Positive collective means torque, which will cause the helicopter to yaw if anti-torque pedal is not correctly applied. Applying anti-torque pedal will also cause some sideways drift, by the way. Also, due to gyroscopic effect, any change in pitch will also result in a rolling motion (and vice versa), which will then require an additional adjustment of collective to prevent altitude loss or gain, which will then require more torque pedal adjustment. There's also things like P-factor, propwash vortexes, and other things which can cause lateral instability under various conditions. And I'm not even going to try to explain things like retreating blade stall and vortex ring state. You really need to do more research, at the very least, before trying to say that something's wrong with ToH.

Real helicopters are inherently unstable, and so flying a real helicopter is extremely difficult and complicated. It takes, at the very least, dozens of hours of practice to get the basics. Thousands of hours to master. It isn't altogether unlike trying to balance three plates on three sticks while riding a unicycle on a tightrope.

I'm not going to say that TOH is 100% realistic. There are a few things wrong with it, by several expert accounts. But, it's a fairly reasonable approximation. You may want to examine your control bindings to be sure that your controls aren't part of the problem.

* Actually, if you're inverted, I think positive collective would increase your altitude loss. But you generally shouldn't be inverted in a helicopter anyway, of course.

My major gripe is the lack of throttle, it replaces throttle and uses the collective to compensate for both throttle/angle of attack.

In real life, I've only flown fixed-wing aircraft, so I'm not an expert on helicopters. With that disclaimer: as I understand it, modern helicopters use mechanisms not altogether dissimilar to the constant-speed propeller, only in reverse. A CSP's governor automatically adjusts prop pitch to match the RPM set with the propeller lever. I believe that modern helicopters have a similar governor which adjusts thrust to match desired blade angle or RPM--I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I don't think that modern helicopters require throttle movements in normal flight conditions. The only time I can think of that one adjusts the throttle during flight is while practicing autorotations. Again, not a heli expert, so don't take my word about the throttle.

P.S. See this rather well-known video of a real helicopter noob having some difficulties rather like what you seem to be having: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfvqdIPJVsk

Edited November 14, 2012 by A. Darkthorn

[Firewarrior64 69]

I appreciate the point you make but I think flying a heli is difficult enough as it is. I haven't played TOH but I did watch that tutorial video and it shouldn't be that complicated just to take off.

It isn't that hard... you just need to learn the steps, that's it. I got the TOH demo and could do it after just one failure. If people don't want to buy TOH or the demo, you can watch the tutorial online- just as you did.

but I want to see someone land their first time without crashing.

I could land my first time without crashing :P

I tried it in ArmA2 free. I just was very careful because everyone said that they would be so hard to fly- and I didn't crash :D

(I did crash trying to take off again though :D)

I just don't see the need to make it so complicated only a small handful of TOH/Arma expert pilots can actually enjoy helis. I think the vast majority of players still aren't full time clan guys who can have a few pilots readily available whenever they need.

I tried it in TOH demo and could fly them good enough to not crash after just an hour (with auto-hover though). It's not like it would be a hardcore simulation.

Oh, and I know that this thread is pretty old, but I don't think the topic is dead. Of course the mods may feel free to lock it if they think it's no longer needed.

[Argamore (DayZ) 110]

THE MORE COMPLICATE, THE BETTER.

INB4: Not sarcasm. I really like helicopters, and I enjoy them being harder to play with.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Argamore

[RJTurneR 112]

I'm down with the OP, one main reason for that as well. It will stops idiots and noobs finding choppers, 'Thinking' they can fly, taking off and crashing it 10 seconds. The problem with games that include aircraft is that they are very easy to fly i.e. BF3, ArmA. Some people can't fly but do anyway, or are just plain stupid and waste aircraft thinking its fun.

If it takes 1 minute to even get the thing going, and is much more complex to keep it in the air, I can see that being minimised, given how some people won't even go into the ArmA tutorial to learn how to shoot, let alone fly..

[Firewarrior64 69]

THE MORE COMPLICATE, THE BETTER.

INB4: Not sarcasm. I really like helicopters, and I enjoy them being harder to play with.

lol yeah, I agree. I really enjoyed ArmA2 helicopters at first, but once I figured out how to fly them it got boring. It's even worse in ArmA3, where they react wayyy to fast. TOH however is still fun for me because it's a little bit of a challenge.

I'm down with the OP, one main reason for that as well. It will stops idiots and noobs finding choppers, 'Thinking' they can fly, taking off and crashing it 10 seconds. The problem with games that include aircraft is that they are very easy to fly i.e. BF3, ArmA. Some people can't fly but do anyway, or are just plain stupid and waste aircraft thinking its fun.

If it takes 1 minute to even get the thing going, and is much more complex to keep it in the air, I can see that being minimised, given how some people won't even go into the ArmA tutorial to learn how to shoot, let alone fly..

Keeping it in the air isn't hard, but landing is. Hopefully the noobs won't even be able to start it up so players who can actually use it can find the helicopter and fly- It's just stupid that a noob can find a helicopter, repair it, fly it, crash it and make the other people on the server wait until it respawns, taking their chance to use it properly.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Firewarrior64

[jovial 17]

I'd like to see more complex vehicle mechanics in general, but things like forcing 1st person should be left in the server admins hands.

[SilverDude (DayZ) 1]

Me, as very good Arma pilot, for 5 years exactly.... would want to have the controls harder and something like a startup sequence, because i've seen tons of noobs turning on auto-hover and flying foward. for the highlight, i was with one that tried to do a LOOPING at 200m hight, of course we crashed...-.-

*cough* such a moron ...

 

as highlight for me would be some crash physics, instead of this exploding and wrecking on ground with broken windows...

something like the lootable UH-1Y wreck, crashing a chopper would be alot more fatal and would cost more metall pieces to fix (or not at all fixable)

 

and planes can (lose wings?) wreck too, if crashed hard (survivors or not)

[m_mitchell 27]

Helicopters have no place in DayZ, they are far to powerful of a tool

Well there is the idea of having helicopters where almost nobody can fly them safely or they are just much harder to anyway :P

 

Lol If they make it happen then TOH will be at the top of steam sales. I really hope it does though and if they could do something with cars so people can't jump in and drive away in .5231 seconds.