Favorite Gazelle Flights or moments

Mine so far,

1. Release!

2. Midnight full moon flight over Vegas, getting to know the controls, with Pink Floyd playing on the fm.

(no shot were fired)

3. Sunset tour of the Caucus mountains, using Starways black sea terrain, while Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe plays on the fm.

(again, no shots fired)

Magical !!!

4. Small practice ME mission, three tankers and a couple of artillery. Still early in the learning curve.

First four attempts ended in a burning helicopter and letters of condolence being sent to family.:mad: (always liked this feature in CFS2)

Fifth attempt came in hugging the tree tops and managed for the FIRST time to transition from forward flight to a hover.

Got off four shots, all which hit! (missed one tanker)

Flight ended back at base with a broken tail rotor (bounced the tail:cry:), Elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, and a huge GRIN:thumbup:

More to come.....

Please post yours, Thanks for listening.

Over 180 views and no stories to tell?

Not even good VR tales?

No comments good or bad? hummm.

Thread to lame?

Back in a Janes forum we used to exchange "war stories" which were great fun, and informative. Always learned something new to try.

I'll add more anyway, soon.

Have a Rift coming!!!

As the L-model came out, I created a test mission, first with 5 infantry and 5 unarmed APCs. The mission was basically flying low through a village, with some trees as cover in the end and then popping up behind those trees and running in aggressively with guns blazing and rockets flying. Great fun, especially with Oculus Rift.

Later as I got a bit more confident, I thought I'd try a little more challenging target and changed two of the APCs to BMP-1 and BMD-1.

On the next run I again flew around the village, skimming the ground and finally going to my final hideout behind the trees to check that everything is ready.

As I start my pop-up, a Sagger missile (which I had completely failed to expect) comes screaming from behind the trees and as I'm gaining altitude just misses me from below. All this in glorious 3D with OR. As the missile went underneath my helicopter, I for the first time understood literally and very physically the term "pucker factor".

I have so many I wouldn't know where to start.....

First Rift Flight

To start, anyone who is on the fence about getting a rift, all I can say is

OMG!!!!

I spent the first 10 minutes just sitting in the cockpit, looking around and playing with the controls.

Its surprising how SMALL she is!:smilewink:

The feeling of "being in the cockpit" is unbelievable!

I can see most of my sim pit controls may go unused for a while.:D

First flight a little shaky, need to get used to the rift!

Be back with more, stay tuned.......

"I have so many I wouldn't know where to start....."

How about a cool VR flight?

Ok ok...I'll give you one.

So I just started working for polychop and was learning the ways of the code. Lots of different things you need to learn in order to code modules. So after one lesson Pat, our main coder, asked me if I wanted to fly the Gazelle. I said sure, would love to. Keep in mind this was around February.

So I got the Gazelle for Nevada back then and started learning to fly her. As many of you found out, she's a bit on the agile side. So I found myself flying very crazyingly around Las Vegas structures. A thought then occurred to me - this would be super scary in VR. This was back in the DK2 days mind you.

So I get things all setup. I also decided record the flight for the Polychop guys to show them the coolness of the DK2. Keep in mind this would also be my first experience in VR with the Gazelle.....so I start it all up.

The first thing I remember is looking around the cockpit and thinking how small everything is. The Commander was right next to me and making me feel very uncomftable. I joke around that I could smell his bad body odor. I also remember discovering things in the cockpit I hadn't seen before - like the thermometer and the fuel gauge at the top of the cockpit. Then the flight started.....

Now I get motion sickness in cars easily, so I had a bag set aside just in case. I also has a fan on me to provide fresh air. As soon as the Gazelle took off, my mind tricked my body into beleiving it was real. My flight was really crazy around Vegas and at some point, I might have even rolled her...the whole time, my body was thinking it was real. It was scary, terrifying, and the most exhilarating thing all at the same time.

So there....a VR story. If I can find the original video of it I'll see if I can post it.

"I have so many I wouldn't know where to start....."

 

How about a cool VR flight?

I think mine was sometime during release on stable version.

I've created a slightly sadistic mission to use both Gazelle and the Huey.

A village, deep inside in a valley between some fairly high altitude mountains, was filled with lots of infantry, some 23mm positions, a BMP, a few BTRs and BRDMs and a T-72.

Sadistic part is, weather is completely overcast, and the helos start inside the cloud cover already.

I would first use the Gazelle to take care of more dangerous targets, and then move in with Huey for mopping up what remains.

While it isn't necessarily sounding all that exciting so far, it has been rather enjoyable for me, using instruments keep helo in "not trying to die" attitude with what seemed like a crazy wind inside cloud and zero visibility, descending and seeing terra firma slowly materialize under me and flying towards navigation point trying to mask myself from BMP and it's ATGMs, popping up and howering right on the edge of one of big hills to scan the village with Viviane, having to dodge a couple ATGMs in process, shifting position and killing 4 dangerous targets with 4 HOTs felt rather nice. Huey mop up operation didn't go as smooth, though this was before gunners on ground units finally got "severed from their connection to the Force" in a patch or two later :).

Aside from this flight, it was also fun just flying around nap of the asphalt in cities, and landing on top of high rise apartments etc.

Oh and I also enjoyed the training mission where we pick up a soldier using ADF homing on him. It was some simple fun :).

@Poly_Roie:

Haha, if you post a video of yourself, flying around with the DK2, laughing like a maniac and vomiting into a bag at some point during the experience, that would go viral! :D

Shame I just deleted the video I had of my first Rift flight in the Gazelle. Didn't end well :(

Well, I didn't puke on the flight - but was prepared for it just in case. Because I keep the fan on me when I fly in VR, I find that helps keep the nuisa down quite a bit.

Only times I've come close to puking was when playing games on VR that weren't really designed for VR but made to work on it, like GTA 5.

@Poly_Roie:

Haha, if you post a video of yourself, flying around with the DK2, laughing like a maniac and vomiting into a bag at some point during the experience, that would go viral! :D

Try playing Omega Agent - Spying For Britain. I was fine for 20 or so minutes, then a single spin on the spot and I was left feeling pukey for a couple of hours!

BTW, here's a video of the test mission, before I changed the APCs to BMP/Ds:

Nice video Pitbull, I agree completely with your comments about improved pilot skills. It was like they improved by 60 to 70 percent!

However....

VR

Set-up, one on one Sa342 vs KA-50, 5 km separation, rockets and guns.

I came in low, hugging the roads and rivers trying to stay concealed. Found myself leaning into the turns.:)

Also slight vertigo during more aggressive maneuvers while looking down. Great Fun!

I popped up hoping for surprise and the surprise was mine! He was coming in fast to engage. S**t.

We both get off shots which miss, and he strafes me while passing low and to my left.

I hop into the copilot seat and turn my head to see where he's heading.

Now, with track ir, this results in instant view changing. But with VR, you have to really turn your head to get the same results.

So while my head was turning, the main alarm goes off and before I've looked back, there was this awful crashing sound.... then blackness.

I really don't know if he got me or i just nose dived:D

Need to relearn how to do a few things it seems in VR.:music_whistling:

On a side note, When I say Blackness, I found I could not esc out of the mission. F2 would show grass but esc still did nothing. No options at all.

I had to task manager kill dcs.

I guess more than my pilot died in that crash!!!:megalol:

I find VR flights a lot more physical because you have to move your body to look behind you in many aircraft. It's a lot more realistic as well. Since you say when you looked away from the cockpit, an alarm went off you missed.

I think I may have found the video of the Vegas flight I did....will see if I can get permission to release it.

On a side note, When I say Blackness, I found I could not esc out of the mission. F2 would show grass but esc still did nothing. No options at all.

I had to task manager kill dcs.

I had to do that yesterday, too - bit of a PITA, because I couldn't get the mouse to work outside of the DCS window on the monitor and ended up having to do a forced log-off, which closes everything.

The cursor would appear out of the window with Alt-Tab, but I had no control over it and it pulled itself back into the window, which was frozen on the in-sim view.

So whether it's an Oculus, DCS or Windows thing, who knows... :huh:

I started a thread here,

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=170296

for this issue. Post your logs there to help dev's fix the problem.

Thanks