Normandy & Helicopters: How it changes the way we fly

For nearly a decade, trees in DCS were a nice little eye candy for helicopter pilots who happily flew through them without much thought. It was giving a huge advantage to the ground AA units which could see and fire through them while remaining totally invisible to the pilot. Trees were also a (disputable) way in PvP servers to escape visual detection from other players. At that time, only buildings were effective to conceal from a AA unit.

When Nevada came out, trees finally became collideable and usable for concealment, but since they were pretty scarce in this region, except near towns where building could already be used, this didn't have such a big consequence on the tactics used by the DCS choppers pilots.

Normandy is a chopper map (hope you don't mind me saying this). Its size and level of details make it ideal for helicopter warfare. And it's a map with lot of trees, and a lot of tree lines! Helicopters with roof sights like the Gazelle or the upcoming BO105 will definitively be at home (well, the Gazelle is already :smilewink:) )

After running some MP tests (and many crashes and tail losses in trees), it appears that the way to use trees for concealment is a bit more complex that what we thought and will change forever the way we fly choppers.

After a few tests, we think there is actually significant differences between treelines (depending on the density of trees) that I summarized in this picture:

Another point that needs to be tested is the capability to burn trees. It leaves them without a single leaf and I wonder is this actually changes something in the tree properties from a concealment point of view.

I would love to hear other rotorheads about their thoughts and experience on this new map.

Thanks for doing some testing on this! :)

Looking forward to flying the gazelle around later to try it for myself