UH-1 Upgrade : Open Letter to BELSIMTEK

Dear Belsimtek Manager, M.Podvoyskiy and associated developpers.

I am one of the day one users of your first Helicopter. As a Huey lover for as long as I can remember as well as an industry pilot , I’ve been enjoying a lot for the past six years your fantastic module and appreciated to the best extent all the hard work and dedication you put into this one.

Now this UH-1 is six years old and starting to show it’s age. I think it would be the occasion to fix old issues, especially around geometry of the 3D model, as well as bringing it to today standards in term of geometry details and texturing with current technology ( PBR, 4K textures ... ) like it has been done for the Mustang, Ka-50 and A-10 to say the least. At launch I noticed a lot of little diverging things from the real bird and while it's obviously only a game in the end of the day, it's the most advanced one ever created so hats off to you !

One of the most noticeable one was the incorrect orientation of the rotor mast/main gearbox ( see https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=112194 ) and I needed lot of energy back in the days as well as input from Bell engineers to prove this, that was eventually fixed by you guys ( and thanks for that ).

Through the years, I carefully noted a list of things to improve it even further. I’ll try to be as precise as possible and really hoping you’ll include all of this in an eventual UH-1H 2.0 Upgrade.

As far as I’m concerned, I used to develop a bit by means of 3D modeling and know that what can seems " small improvements " can actually represent significant ammount of work and so human ressources. For this, I would personally be OK with a paid upgrade. Let's have a look :

The Tail Boom :

The tail boom size is currently way too short. It’s closer to the first UH-1D with short tail but certainly not a Hotel model. That is why I always felt like it was a bit plump and fat looking, while the real Huey is very thin and elegant looking. See below :

The Landing Skids :

There are very high skids for firefighting ops , high skids for production 205A/A1++ and standard series « low » skids. For the UH-1H, it was standard skids and they were a bit lower than this. Current DCS : UH-1H sits a tad high on the ground.

Rotorhead animation :

At the beginning when it was released you did a bit of mixed animations with rods bending around the swashplate balls and scissors and the whole rotor was responding to the cyclic input, at rest, like a seesaw… you then corrected this by locking the hub around it’s axis below a certain RPM and then above this RPM re-activating the cyclic to rotor disc animations. It would be amazing if you could go a bit further to improve rotor visual phsysics by creating a real teetering hinge logic that would physically be free around that axis, freely move up and down on the ramp according to wind gusts etc, and react accordingly to the aerodynamic forces on each blade. A bit like you did for the Mi-8 universal joint rotorhead : this one feels and looks like it’s rigged the correct way.

Also, the lenght of mast and various rods should be adjusted a bit, see below. In average cruise flight with averegage pitch and typical ship loading, the two pitch horns shouldn’t be so upward like this :

But more like in this sketch :

Generally speaking, the positive pitch of the blades is a lot exagerated visually and it looks like the blades are almost 40° of pitch in a hover. The whole relation between visual animations and physical model may need fine tuning to reflect the real deal.

Rotor blades :

They are currently a tad shorter than their real counterpart, and could be a bit smoother than the current three straight lines. The blade pitch twist of these blades are -11° from root to tip, it could also be implemented to give the real rotor look ( made a quick 3D modelling to illustrate how it should look )

For the spinning rotor animation, would be nice to have a more blurred texture like the Huey was known for when shot in 24 FPS camera ( so basically, every movies/documentaries that made her reputation, giving a false look of a four bladed helicopter like on this footage ) :

Cockpit :

Amazing piece of modelling ! Not much to say, except hoping for 4K PBR textures and improve a lot the back cabin ( roof textures, details, screws, roof soundproofing carpets, hooks etc ).

Flight dynamics :

Of course I think I don’t take too much risks by affirming we are all waiting for the new engine modelling. Better performance regarding EGT temps in relation to Torque and N1 is a must for any realistic helicopter simulation. Also, when will we have a realistic start up procedure with Idle Release detent and properly simulated hot start ?

The rotor dynamics itself is a bit strange. The way you physically modelled the stabilizer bar is a bit like an « auto return to neutral » big actuator that gives the whole ship very squirelly moves to bring it back to a given attitude, even in cruise around the cyclic equilibrium position. The real deal is very stable and precise ( like the Bell 47 and 206 but much heavier and with more inertia ), and doesn’t have this tendency to yo-yo around center so much , it just hold the cyclic position with surprising stability. Adding this kind of extreme unstability doesn’t necessiraly add realism.

On startup/shutdown, the real rotor really has plenty of inertia. It takes a while to takes its RPM at initial movements when the gas generator starts to blow thru the powerturbine, veeeery slowly and heavy .. Currently it looks very abrupt at the very beginning like if you clutch a Bell 47. Same at shutdown, without rotorbrake ( which is not present, correct ), it should sool down up to some minutes until complete stop while it's actually quite fast now.

That’s it guys, I took a bit of time to make this big request to improve your already astonishing product and get it closer to perfection. I really hope you will read all of this and eventually give your Huey some love.

Yours faithfully,

Hueyman

Great info Hueyman. Those are all great points and will make the DCS Huey even better.

I'm all for a Huey 2.0 - and am willing to pay full price for it.

Thanks guys,

Hope it will be heard by the team ;-)

Happy flights everyone !

I would pay for an upgraded Huey 2.0 module, like I will do with the upcoming Warthog 2.0 module. :)

I hope it'll be heard too.

Just a quick up of this topic

I see the DCS world community is all dying for new faster and more deadly jets, a bit afraid us old helicopter fans will be a bit forgotten.

Soon the KA50 will be fully overhauled and the Huey will be the oldest helicopter of the sim, closely followed by the Mi-8 which really show their ages compared to the latest BST/ED marvels such as the F-16/18 and Mi-24.

The Huey definitely needs some love, as a real engine management and start up procedure we never had. An alternate Bell 204/UH-1B would be great too and it's really extremely close to the 205/UH-1H.

Just a quick up of this topic

 

I see the DCS world community is all dying for new faster and more deadly jets, a bit afraid us old helicopter fans will be a bit forgotten.

 

Soon the KA50 will be fully overhauled and the Huey will be the oldest helicopter of the sim, closely followed by the Mi-8 which really show their ages compared to the latest BST/ED marvels such as the F-16/18 and Mi-24.

 

The Huey definitely needs some love, as a real engine management and start up procedure we never had. An alternate Bell 204/UH-1B would be great too and it's really extremely close to the 205/UH-1H.

Please see my answer in another thread here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4322888&postcount=4

If you like to get more response you should post all this in the dedicated Huey forum:

https://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=263

True !

Asked a moderator to move it and he did it ( thanks Bignewy )

True !

 

 

Asked a moderator to move it and he did it ( thanks Bignewy )

Thanks for your effort Hueyman!

great sum up!

+uh1

I'd hope with Huey 2.0 they'd give us a UH-1N, twin engine helo.

Funny, I got into this SIM for fixed wing aircraft, and have found myself drawn to the Huey more than anything. I would gladly purchase an upgrade.

Great sum up Hueyman, may I add that having an option for the FULL axis range on the collective Throttle to allow those of us with either collectives or who just want a realistic range of movement on the thottle to be able to roll down past the flight idle to idle stop and likewise roll the throttle up to flight idle on startup.

Basically full control of the throttle without having to use the page up and down keys.

nice topic!

Would these kind people make sure that we can get all the missing audio files that the DCS.log keeps flagging as Errors which state that DCS cannot find them in the pathway specified?

An alternate Bell 204/UH-1B would be great too

This :thumbup:

Thanks for the feedback, the team will see it.

 

We are currently testing multicrew for the UH-1H, but I have no information to share about any other planned improvements.

 

With that said it does not mean it might never happen, as you are aware we are already updating our A-10C and Blackshark modules with new textures and improvements.

We will of course share any news with you about the UH-1H if anything changes in this regard in the future.

 

Thanks

i am also a Day 1 uh1h owner, and i own two copies.

i am appreciating your reply of multicrew testing..

i hope you guys have seen my post on the uh1h wishlist...

but thank you for acknowledging that multicrew is not forgotten

and thank you Hueyman for calling attention to this great bird of much potential

Thanks for the feedback, the team will see it.

 

We are currently testing multicrew for the UH-1H, but I have no information to share about any other planned improvements.

 

With that said it does not mean it might never happen, as you are aware we are already updating our A-10C and Blackshark modules with new textures and improvements.

We will of course share any news with you about the UH-1H if anything changes in this regard in the future.

 

Thanks

thats half a year ago...some new Infos about MultiCrew would be nice

Great write-up Hueyman!

I would gladly pay for a big update like this, the way they did for the Blackshark at the time.

And think many people would do so too.

Great write-up Hueyman!

 

I would gladly pay for a big update like this, the way they did for the Blackshark at the time.

And think many people would do so too.

I‘d be in for a paid update as well!!!

Although I think this version is quite good, it would also pay for a graphic and technological update. We need RWR and although the crew animations are good, I think they still look like dolls. For me it is very important that the crystals have reflections, scratches and dirt, it really seems that there is something between the pilot and the exterior.

EDIT: I forgot to say, please remove the glow from the fuselage of the combat UH-1H and keep the brightness on the Civil UH-1H.

good job, hueyman! i am confident the huey will be updated at some point.

id say beyond external model and internal cockpit 3d upgrades among the various things huey man mentioned there aught to also be some systems additions and changes due to some inconsistencies

namely the correction of the unhistorical reflex sight , and addition of APR39A RWR ( the airframe does have unused sensor mounts)