Helicopters

[dendino328]

I know I'm not the only one to thinks that helicopters in this game are pretty bad. Not only are they absolutely indestructible, but piloting one is pretty much impossible. You can tilt your nose down by 5 degrees and you're sent zooming through the map at 200 MPH in under 5 seconds. And landing is hard as ♥♥♥♥. Personally, I think it would be great for the helicopters to control similarly to RS2 Vietnam. So please just fix these damn helicopters devs

[Killerskulls15]

I haven’t played in a few months but looking to get back in. When I played the Heli’s were very tanky, Heavy AT rockets didn’t even scratch it. Piloting is extremely difficult, but I like that aspect of it since it has a high skill cap and makes things more challenging and interesting.

[Dakota]

I fly pretty often often in-game. From my experience, they're not indestructible, they're strong enough that you can survive if you wave off the moment you get hit usually, and they are quite spongy for small arms fire.

As for the flight model, I have flown in many games, and while others may disagree, I find Squads flight model to be the easiest to learn (it took me less than 10 minutes in the trainer practice to get good at it). The only thing that makes it difficult at times is the wonky physics, and the recent bug causing it to lag occasionally

[Rektor]

squad is one of the easiest games to fly in. once u get the controls in the right spot (for me that translates to inverting the pitch axis) its pretty much battlefield with less reliable physics. i'd obt for the arma 3 advanced flight model but would go for arma 3 vanilla flight model (without autohover button) for better accessibility.

having said that, helis are still pretty bad. yes that rocket propelled foreward accelleration is real, the recent lag - fake momentum build up, that changes ur flight direction in just the time of a microlag is a real bummer (had one pushing me foreward, was going at 160 knots without descending) and the damage model that doesnt make any sense in any direction only for the sake of some game balance. but this would only be the start of it.

do a proper controls setup, give us joystick support, while ur at it, we need different loading mechanics for helicopters (like the old logi ones) so ppl can still control the craft while loading and unloading .... yeah ... but flying itsself is super (like 'far to') easy and not hard at all

[RecklesFlam1ngo]

Messaggio originale di Dakota:

From my experience, they're not indestructible

Then explain why multiple rpg hits, even a tandem shot doesn't even make em flinch. They also have horrible desync issues atm too

[mapamapa]

I don't know how helicopters work IRL but it's so much easier to control the Battlefield 2 ones where if you press down you go down, if you press up you go up, none of this putting the collective at the right percentage to not crash into the ground.

[Maki Nishikino]

Messaggio originale di mapamapa:

I don't know how helicopters work IRL but it's so much easier to control the Battlefield 2 ones where if you press down you go down, if you press up you go up, none of this putting the collective at the right percentage to not crash into the ground.

In reality the collective doesn't have to be moved all the time.

[␎816∴TRiPLΣ∴i=芫==-∴]

helis are literally so easy to fly in this game, its all about not flying at only 100 and 9% collective at all times and the pitch sensitivity settings you use. the hardest part is mastering the landing portion of it without breaking blades or something, personally i think the helis in this game are damn near perfect yeah theyre a bit tough but they also have no offensive weapons that the pilot can control while flying, its balanced perfectly.

[Onimaho]

Messaggio originale di dendino328:

I know I'm not the only one to thinks that helicopters in this game are pretty bad. Not only are they absolutely indestructible, but piloting one is pretty much impossible. You can tilt your nose down by 5 degrees and you're sent zooming through the map at 200 MPH in under 5 seconds. And landing is hard as ♥♥♥♥. Personally, I think it would be great for the helicopters to control similarly to RS2 Vietnam. So please just fix these damn helicopters devs

Helis this patch are weaker than ever, takes about a magazine or two of small arms to take out the engine. Tail rotor's are prime targets now as well, easily broken. Problem is just there is a lot of game lag causing hit reg issues this patch, so it might seem that you got hits on target but it didn't happen.

[Ahroovi]

Heli controls are still pretty dumb, in the sense you still cannot rebind them properly in the ingame menu.
I want to use the same controls I use for other games. WASD for pitch/roll, keys for rudder, mouse for finer movement/Right click and look around for freelook, mouse 4/5 for throttle.
Setting it up in the ini is a pain too cause the controls aren't listed as rudderleft/right and all that. Just rudder/rudder/rudder, etc.

The git gud thing is a ♥♥♥♥ argument for it, cause I know someone will bring it up. I don't use default binds in any game, why would I start now? I do what works for me, and this games heli controls have been bad for a long time now.
The flight model is a completely different story... Pretty bad too. Gains momentum way too fast.

[ChiMaster4]

PR flying was way harder to master but made more sense, flying is Squad.... IMO is not enjoyable, feels clunky and just doesn't feel right at all, even arma 3s flying feels more fluid and rewarding than squads heli flying scheme, also as OP above states saying "get good" isn't a very valid argument for this.

[Ahroovi]

I disagree with PR/BF2 flying. It has the same issue since the underlying engine has issues with keybinding. If you tried binding a key in one menu, it wouldn't work randomly in some others. Can't bind something to crouch and helicopter throttle at the same time? Ok then... Cause I can totally crouch while flying.
I can get around a bad flight model, if I can use my own controls. If both are fixed, even better.

[Wiehelm]

I can agree very stongly on this. It's a game I know, but for real pilots it becomes really confusing and a lot of the movement is not close to realistic. The contolinputs respond very slow, if you bank or pitch 5 degrees as said, the helicopter gains speed, which it should. But, when you pitch up 15 degrees nothing happens. If you increase power nothing happens. So you do is to add even more power and it starts to climb. The pitch and the power have too little impact on the speed.

[Klav]

You could have just bought the helicopter mod rights and everyone would be happy

[Fox]

I'm happy the way it works now.

[PootDispenseHimHere]

I know this is an old thread, but yeah this guy pretty much has it down. Been trying to learn to fly in this game for a long time now since its a lot of fun in Arma, RS2, Battlefield, etc. but this game's flight model is just beyond confusing.

Messaggio originale di Wiehelm:

I can agree very stongly on this. It's a game I know, but for real pilots it becomes really confusing and a lot of the movement is not close to realistic. The contolinputs respond very slow, if you bank or pitch 5 degrees as said, the helicopter gains speed, which it should. But, when you pitch up 15 degrees nothing happens. If you increase power nothing happens. So you do is to add even more power and it starts to climb. The pitch and the power have too little impact on the speed.

If you've never flown a heli in other games before I'm sure it's not that bad and might even be pretty quick to learn, but I'd say for most it's pretty clunky and nigh impossible. I wouldn't consider myself an expert even if this is what I'm studying in college right now, but the physics are unbearable to me. If they used battlefield, GTA, or even Just cause's helicopter physics I think that would be fine. If they used ARMA, or Rising Storm 2's model I think that would also be fine. All of the options presented have varying difficulty to learn but they all make some level of sense and are easy to control once learned. The helicopters in this game (especially since the new updates) play an even more integral role in the combat scene, yet I rarely see people fly them because they're either too difficult or not fun.

The primary physics issue that I see is that the helicopters don't create lift from airspeed, the collective and pitch functions pretty much act as a force modifier to the vehicle, i.e. it doesn't matter how fast you are moving the forces on your aircraft are always the same. Which is what makes landing, turning, and other maneuvers quite odd in this game. Low speed or high speed the aircraft accelerates the same which is why if you tilt too far when landing, the aircraft just immediately accelerates to whatever speed cap they gave the aircraft. It's also why the aircraft has trouble gaining or dropping altitude at higher speeds, when you pitch up, the aircraft doesn't act like a plane and flys in the direction you tilted, it just changes what was previously your forward force to rearward force and makes you stop.
I may not be a COMP-SCI major but if offworld wants to hire me for like a week I could probably fix this issue myself and make the helicopters fly at least somewhat more realistically as it seems like that's more towards what they want.