My concern about the hind....

[CrazyGman]

9 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

 

 

  Yeah, everytime I see somebody complaining about something being underpowered they invariably fly around like this :

 

actually I can't find the picture now, it's a photoshopped F-18 with TERs and Mk82s on every hardpoint.

 

  Most people seem to not understand MTOW literally means ''more than this and it can't fly''. They load to MTOW (or a little beyond) then seem shocked they have trouble @@

Yeah love it when they strap as many bombs or missles as possible to a F-16 and or F/A 18. You guys realize that in no realistic engagement would you be expected to use all that, in the timeframe of your mission, and be able and come back and land safely without risking danage to the aircraft. Why do you think you only ever see no more then 2-4 bombs or ag missles on a multirole fighter?

 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by CrazyGman

[SparxOne]

2 hours ago, CrazyGman said:

Yeah love it when they strap as many bombs or missles as possible to a F-16 and or F/A 18. You guys realize that in no realistic engagement would you be expected to use all that, in the timeframe of your mission, and be able and come back and land safely without risking danage to the aircraft. Why do you think you only ever see more then 2-4 bombs or ag missles on a multirole fighter?

 

 

 

This makes me laugh, not in the sense that you're wrong, i'm totally with you on this matter, but it makes me laugh thinking of the airquake guys finding the most creative excuses to allow those loadouts to be perceived as realistic -> Taking off in their F-18's loaded with 10 Amrams and 2 Sidewinders for a combat sortie. When i fly on multiplayer server and see those kind of planes take off, i become sad and feel like i'm playing Ace Combat, while they are imagining themselves as Top Guns raking as many kills per sortie...

 

[Mars Exulte]

3 hours ago, CrazyGman said:

Yeah love it when they strap as many bombs or missles as possible to a F-16 and or F/A 18. You guys realize that in no realistic engagement would you be expected to use all that, in the timeframe of your mission, and be able and come back and land safely without risking danage to the aircraft. Why do you think you only ever see more then 2-4 bombs or ag missles on a multirole fighter?

 

  Yeah, normally you'd be hard pressed to use them all in one sortie before having to RTB for fuel, but they take care of that with ripple fire ;) Course, the other guy is doing the same... I wonder how many online encounters end with mutual kills? If 4 guys fire 3 missiles apiece at each other, close enough to pitbull....... the odds of anyone surviving is probably near zero. Actually, this makes 10-12 missiles even more odd, since the likelihood of dying before using them all is probably like 80-90%.

[SparxOne]

Back on topic for an actual question regarding a concern i have.

 

Knowing that helicopters have an added control to fly the heli, not sure how it's called, maybe the cyclic or something linked to the power lever or so.

 

I've always flown planes and having a joystick i have all the axis necessary to fly them. The roll axis, the pitch axis, the yaw axis and the thrust.

So if i were to compare the helicopter axis to the plane, you would have all the above stated but the added cyclic if i'm not mistaken. No joystick unless specificaly buying one for simulating a helicopter has that remaining axis needed.

So my question is, how would i come about properly flying any chopper in DCS while missing that axis on my joystick ? How do people deal with this issue ? I'd be very curious to know how it is first of all handled by the sim (DCS) and second how players use it when they have no proper hardware representing it ?

 

If i can give an exemple that is modeled in a way that really doesn't make it feel any problematic at all, it would be the way helicopters fly and are handled in Arma game, of coarse the game is far from being called a heli simulator, but nonetheless it is the only game i've played that represented well enough to me the feel of a heli without having proper hardware to use all axis properly. 

 

I hope you guys understand my concern and know what i'm talking about

[CrazyGman]

2 hours ago, SparxOne said:

 

This makes me laugh, not in the sense that you're wrong, i'm totally with you on this matter, but it makes me laugh thinking of the airquake guys finding the most creative excuses to allow those loadouts to be perceived as realistic -> Taking off in their F-18's loaded with 10 Amrams and 2 Sidewinders for a combat sortie. When i fly on multiplayer server and see those kind of planes take off, i become sad and feel like i'm playing Ace Combat, while they are imagining themselves as Top Guns raking as many kills per sortie...

 

Not to mention the fact that with the taking off with around 10 Amraams your bringing up 10 million dollars worth of missiles that your going to need to justify the use of, which also severly limit the flight characteristics of the plane.

 

That's why I like the Mirage 2000 and the MiG 29. Yeah we are only going to give you enough misslies to shoot down 1 maybe 2 planes, anything more and you went into a tactically bad situation to begin with and mistakes were made.

 

Even F-15s bringing 7 amraams and 1 heater is more a show of force then anything. No Eagle pilot wants to get to the merge with more then half of that hanging off of them likely. You only ever see Su-27s with 4-6 missles top in real life, and most tomcats brought 2 AiM 54s for most situations. 

[SparxOne]

44 minutes ago, Desert Fox said:

If you've got a stick, throttle and rudder (pedals or twist axis on the stick), there is not much to worry. Roll and pitch are on the stick. Yaw is on the rudder (called "anti-torque pedal" in the choppers). The collective basically controls your Z axis (as in ascend/descend) and is put on the throttle lever (50% throttle setting = no ascend or descend, throttle forward = descend, throttle backward = ascend).

 

Something like a throttle or thrust like in a fixed-wing (aka airplane) isn't really used in a chopper during normal flight. The collective got a twist grip and there are the ECL (engine condition levers) which control engine power (idle-normal-max). But to my knowledge these are more of a thing on the ground (max for a hover (check or takeoff), especially when a bit heavier, then back to norm once airborne). The twist grip can be put on an axis but it's not necessary for normal flight.

 

The Mi-8 manual is accessibly via the downloads section and got a nice chapter about helicopter controls if you want to dive deeper.

 

 

Thanks a lot for the cool explanations ! Makes it much clearer to me  Makes me feel reassured knowing it will still work properly without a special set of controls  I was indeed confused with the collective and that twist grip thinking it was called the cyclic  I understand it all better now  

 

Will check that manual out if deeper questions come to my mind or if i'm feeling like doing some more reading  

[Mars Exulte]

Very few people use an actual cyclic and collective. If a HOTAS is ''niche'', then an actual helicopter setup is an albino unicorn.

 

A regular stick can function as a cyclic well enough, excepting that a stick centers and a cyclic does not. This is why the helo modules have a trim mode where you ''click, then center the stick'', effectively resetting the center. The cyclic changes the rotor mast orientation, effectively your aircraft's pitch and roll.

 

A throttle for all intents and purposes will work just like the collective, except it moves back and forth instead of up and down. The collective changes blade pitch, increasing or decreasing lift. This has the effect of increasing or lowering your altitude, or increasing speed if pitched forward (or some combination of the two).

 

Rudder pedals work more or less normally, except again, the helos do not center normally, whereas they do on a plane. This is rectified with the same trim control mentioned previously that resets the center.

 

As for the ACTUAL throttle, you only touch this during startup and any manipulation is done automatically when you move the collective, but for practical purposes a helo engine runs more or less full throttle the whole time. You need that power whether you're moving at speed or a hover, so you don't ever really ''throttle down''. Therefore you do not need an axis for this function anymore. It is set, and then not touched again except in emergency.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Mars Exulte

[Rick50]

Many serious simulator helo pilots are taking existing joysticks and adding stick extensions to them, making the Cyclic have more precision, for hovering and such.  Also, some are even making their own Collectives, many are starting from scratch, but a growing number are starting with an inexpensive "USB handbrake".

 

What's a USB Handbrake you ask? Well, it's a PC gaming peripheral that was made for race car simulations, specifically for rally cars or pro drift / drifting. See, both these driving styles lend themselves to a specialised use of the brake system to stop the rear tyres rolling, for a moment of the driver's choosing, to initiate the back end of the car to slide out of normal grip... it's usually done as the car enters a very tight corner in rally, or as the drifter wants to initiate the drift itself. It grew from regular cars having a center handbrake, but the problem was the factory handbrakes usually had a button to lock the park brake, and... well pro racers and drifters don't want the parking button, and would rather have a vertical lever to pull, so modifications have become fairly standard. And sometime in the last couple of years, the PC virtual racers now have a bunch of options to replicate this!

 

The upside to using a USB handbrake as the starting point for the Collective, is that it already has a handle, has the sensors (some say 14 bit resolution, kinda overkill but no one's complaining!), it's got the mount and mechanism, all for a pretty low price, about that of a budget joystick. So then take out a spring or two, and you have a high resolution "collective". Or at least the starting point to making a truly sophisticated Collective with as much customisation as you want to put into it. A few just add an extension to it for better precision, but others will add a rotating throttle, and a button box with hats and such. See the first post in the thread below, you'll see a blue device, that's a USB handbrake being sold that I'm talking about.

 

 

 

[CoBlue]

On 4/4/2021 at 8:19 AM, Fri13 said:

Shturm missiles has ~5 km launch range when launched from stationary vehicle, and little further if you give it slight boost at high speed flight and extra altitude.

 

But you are free to fly +/-60 degree from the target in Hind after launch, giving you a plenty of maneuvering capabilities as you are not restricted to hover like with wire guided missiles.

 

This gives you a lot of flexibility to be a hard target and approach target area quickly for rockets if so wanted.

 

The Mi-24 was first true attack helicopter, designed to be multipurpose helicopter, so capable be used as dedicated anti-tank, transport, anti-infantry and even anti-helo.

The anti-tank was one of primary features, why Shturm system was really important for it.

Shturm & maneuver +/-60 degree from the target sounds impossible. They will be a hard to deploy effectively.

 

Lead developer's own words. https://stormbirds.blog/2021/01/09/new-dcs-mi-24p-information-translated-from-russian-interview/

Q: How is the Raduga-Sh sight modelled?
A: The person in the front seat, after the switches are set and the system warm-up is done, approaches the periscope which will cover the screen. The person can choose the zoom level between 3x and 10x. The sight is steered with either mouse, keyboard, stick buttons or axes. A big difference is that the operator does not control angular position but rather angular speed. This is a big difference. If you move the mouse left for example, if you move it a bit the sight will move slowly to the left. If you move a lot it’ll move faster. If you stop giving additional inputs, it’s going to keep moving until you give a right input to nullify the angular speed. The sight moves 45º to either side, with 60º line of sight accordingly, and +15º/-20º vertically with the same LOS result. The sight will stay on target only if the helicopter is stationary, otherwise the operator has to continuously update its position. Doing so is an art, you can’t just place the pipper target and go drink tea like the Ka-50. It’s a semi-automatic system. The missile will go wherever the sight is set, regardless if it’s a tree, a tank or a bird, it doesn’t care. You have to keep the sight on target. It’s still stabilised and drifts very slowly so there are cases where the mark won’t move. If the pilot manoeuvres with more than 20º of bank, the gyroscope hits its limit and that’s it, the sight will jump away. That’ll be modelled, it’s not in there right now but it will be.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take the Mi-8 or Ka-50 put on rockets & heavy guns. Place moving soft targets with "dispense under fire off". You won't destroy much coz of splash-damage. Add a Shilka, AAA-truck or manpad & you're dead. This is what Hind will be like, minus the Shturms, but with all-seeing sniper-AI you're dead either way.

 

Splash-damage & all-seeing sniper-AI are a game-breaker in DCS for helis gameplay.

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by CoBlue

[Hiob]

6 hours ago, Desert Fox said:

If you've got a stick, throttle and rudder (pedals or twist axis on the stick), there is not much to worry. Roll and pitch are on the stick. Yaw is on the rudder (called "anti-torque pedal" in the choppers). The collective basically controls your Z axis (as in ascend/descend) and is put on the throttle lever (50% throttle setting = no ascend or descend, throttle forward = descend, throttle backward = ascend).

 

 

Very much true, except for the last part. Obviously it's the logical thing to do to put your collective (which adjust the angle of attack of your rotor-blades, and therefore give more or less lift) on the throttle. But don't bother finding the point of "no ascend or decend", because that will vary wildly, depending on weight, speed, wind etc.

Just put it to zero throttle = collective completely lowered and you're done. The rest ist practise, practise, practise. You will need a lot of that. Learning to fly a Helo is much more demanding than learning a fixed wing - but that's the reason it's so rewarding!

[Fri13]

3 hours ago, CoBlue said:

Shturm & maneuver +/-60 degree from the target sounds impossible. They will be a hard to deploy effectively.

 

https://youtu.be/JZ5je96v8H8?t=1483

 

3 hours ago, CoBlue said:

The missile will go wherever the sight is set, regardless if it’s a tree, a tank or a bird, it doesn’t care. You have to keep the sight on target. It’s still stabilised and drifts very slowly so there are cases where the mark won’t move. If the pilot manoeuvres with more than 20º of bank, the gyroscope hits its limit and that’s it, the sight will jump away. That’ll be modelled, it’s not in there right now but it will be.

 

 

20 degree banking means 20 degree rolling. So you can not perform a barrel roll and maintain the stabilization. 

So you are free to fly in maneuvers as long you do not bank over 20 degree to right or left to make a hard quick turn. 

 

The sight stabilization is like a gunner for a MBT, you can already experience its controls (as in tanks or SAM) with the Combined Arms by using the middle mouse button (wheel) to get the arrow. Further you move the mouse from the center then faster it will move to mouse direction. It is not so difficult when you have trained for it. It is actually easier when target moves or you move as you can maintain constant speed with variating it as required. 

 

To get a good gunner position in a MBT/IFV one would need to use a Yoke as controller, the azimuth would be great by rotating yoke left or right, but instead tilting grips forward/backward you would pull/push the yoke. 

 

But if wanted anyone can buy example BMP-2 controller: https://www.afvsim.com/products/ (I wouldn't be surprised if they would make a AH-64D gunner controls for DCS...)

 

 

The mouse is bad controller for such operations, as is a joystick. Such devices like that makes it easier and it becomes natural thing to do.

The Steam Controller has a gyro option, it makes good one for its use as you hold and use it correctly. But to make it easier you need to mount it to a fixed axis so you don't wave it in the air. 

 

Stabilization is not different from just announced update to A-10C Maverick use where holding TMS UP maintains the vector (azimuth and vertical angle) while you fly. 

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, CoBlue said:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take the Mi-8 or Ka-50 put on rockets & heavy guns. Place moving soft targets with "dispense under fire off". You won't destroy much coz of splash-damage. Add a Shilka, AAA-truck or manpad & you're dead.

 

I have such missions, avoiding a ZSU-23-4 is often too easy as the gunner is idiot and will perfectly match your flight vector on moment firing, instead your flight path you want to do and deny your flight as you are flying at the shells. 

 

3 hours ago, CoBlue said:

This is what Hind will be like, minus the Shturms, but with all-seeing sniper-AI you're dead either way.

 

It is currently very challenging to attack as has been discussed, just avoid placing LAV-25 on the area and you can succeed. 

 

 

3 hours ago, CoBlue said:

Splash-damage & all-seeing sniper-AI are a game-breaker in DCS for helis gameplay.

 

It is, what has been discussed. 

[Fri13]

12 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

There definitely is such a thing as "too complex", but not with regards to gameplay, but performance. Every single thing you simulate will take CPU cycles. This is something that DCS already uses a lot of, and it also doesn't increase exponentially anymore, indeed, single core performance has lately stagnated. Given the scale, DCS missions involve a lot of units, far more than you'd usually see in Theater of War. This means everything that you do, for a single unit, multiplies in impact the more units are on the field. On top of that, in multiplayer, aggressive optimization is often not possible.

 

Problems in current code is that there is not really a prioritizing that what needs to be calculated and when. If AI launch rocket volley 20 km from you and they all explode at once around a unit, your aircraft takes performance hit because on the moment they impact they are all calculated. Totally wasting processing as it has no concern of you that rockets did blow up 20 km from you. it is all (except sound) running in same priority, all the time. You put sudden badly written calculations suddenly between everything and everything will take a bump. 

 

12 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Above all, the new DM shouldn't bog down the sim much more than the current one does.

 

Using cheats, parallel calculations and prioritizing what needs to be done and when it would be opposite, everything would ease down as handling everything as real-time processing is just crazy. When a bomb explodes, there is no any requirement to caclulate its affects in those cycles it happens. You can delay it by 15 ms or by 100 ms even for real time processing. For a replay purposes you can render everything in more precisely on the correct moment when slowing down. Same thing is with play moment if player slows down the time, as the simulation does slow down, not the processing speed capability. 

 

12 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Same goes for ground vehicle AI. Complex crew AI is nice, but if you've got three "brains" per tank, as opposed to one, you've got three times more impact on the CPU. As such, I'd prefer to treat the crewmembers as subsystems of the vehicle. Every update to AI that is made needs to be coded with an eye on performance, because when you've got enough area to potentially support brigade level operations, chances are there will be scenarios involving precisely that. If you want Combined Arms to be a good large-scale RTS, you can't get bogged down in ArmA-level individual soldier simulation.

 

You forget cheating. You are again thinking things as real-time processing. That everything needs to happen all the time realistically etc. No. Forget all that and cheat. 

When something is not required to be done - don't do it! Sleep! You will ignore the tasks that are not relevant for the moment. 

 

Let's say that you have 100 soldiers attacking 100 other soldiers on open field. 

At this moment it is catastrophic situation as on the moment the units are activated, everyone is checking LOS to everyone. They will react that what is enemy unit and start firing. 

Every single unit will check what they can shoot at. They calculate what is the selected target and start animations and each bullet they fire will be calculated for ballistics and did they hit another unit or not. 

 

A average PC can easily run a such completely unrealistic scenario. 

 

In the first couple seconds rendering drops some frames as everyone is doing the checking of targets, but after that is gone it is just firing until they run out of ammo or they kill target and switch to another. 

 

Such a engagement to happen in modern combat is not really going to happen often as that is a assault to other defensive positions.

But on the moment when it would happen, it is easy to fix - cheating. 

First of all you do not have everyone shooting bursts and waste their ammo. You have them firing single shots.

You don't have them all firing at once.

You don't have everyone at open/visible. 

 

Secondly you will alter their reaction times, their objectives and behavior by implementing logic and commands from basic training and moral system.

In that scenario the BLUFOR is actually retreating more until they are out of the REDFOR engagement ranges and they stick there. That leads to situation that units are scattered far distances from each others and it is a stale situation. 

 

In reality a such engagement would not be over in a minute or two. It would easily go for days. As neither side want to die so they can have last man standing.

And all that extra time that is saved from changing the rules of engagements, will and means to engage, you get to spend for totally other things between and actually do the combat more realistic manner. 

 

DCS World tries to be a realistic Digital Combat Simulator (Air, Ground & Sea units and gameplay). But there is one flaw that all of us will utilize. And that is infinite lives! We use infinite amount of vehicles, resources, weapons, lives! In real world you have only one live. If you die, that is it! 

Pilots are not idiots who go flying around and shooting things down with stupid risks to get killed while doing so. They don't go risking their F/A-18C to be shot down by some MANPADS guy on the enemy territory because they were so fixated to chase a Mi-24 somewhere in the area. 

 

Players are morons in this sense. There is no risks, no penalty to be shot down. To eject from the aircraft and to get to "Win" the fight, because they will never lose the war - because they never run out of lives, equipment, weapons and means to win. 

 

That is where the RTS element should come importantly that you have limited resources, you need to protect each and every live there is on the map. Every expensive high utility like a fighter or attack helicopter needs to be defended and taken care that it doesn't get shot down while it is trying to be used for its purpose. 

 

How many has played a Air campaign online with friends where there is series of the missions and if you die, it ends there from your part? Meaning that example 7 missions and every night you and 9 other friends are flying, and if someone gets killed, they don't participate anymore to the campaign. If they eject and survive, someone needs to pick their pilot up and they get to back only on the next or one after that mission - if there is aircraft available. 

 

It adds tremendous fear and risk that is whacking players back of the head that if they fail, they can't anymore participate to play with their friends. Suddenly no stupid things are done, no idiotic risks are taken, no fooling around "Hey, let's see who of us can fly below the lowest bridge on the map on way home!".

 

At this moment in DCS the helicopters can not be utilized as they should be. Because the AI being way too all seeing and way too accurate and precise and trying too well. 

The most terrains don't support ground units capabilities and performances, that will affect directly to helicopters as you can't fly NOE so well, but you don't either be limited to spot and engage targets. The Combined Arms suffers from this flaw that we don't have a sub-terrain elements to make possible advance in larger open areas that are not prepared farming fields. We don't need to use roads, railways or air transportation because terrain would be difficult or challenging to move. What leads to situations that there is no need for ambush, defensive positions and missions to destroy/defend bridges and crossroads and harbors etc. 

 

Like add on the mission below a Mi-8MTv2 with rockets and 23 mm gun pods and of course KORD door gunner and you can support your troops very well, as long you do not fly too close and especially over the units. 

 

When the Mi-24P gets out, you can do it much better as it is more stable to fly and faster to get around for re-attack. But still that is idiotic example as such scenario would not happen where you have 100 vs 100 + just couple support vehicles (like half a dozen instead dozens). 

The M113 are the danger ones, they will snipe you down if you get too close. And placing couple good S-8 rockets on them is possible but you can't easily take all of them, and you are just one helicopter instead proper support element. 

Infantry Engagement.miz

[Dragon1-1]

1 hour ago, Fri13 said:

Totally wasting processing as it has no concern of you that rockets did blow up 20 km from you.

This line is everything that's wrong with your great big wall of text. No, in a multiplayer environment you can't assume that sort of thing. Your solution would lead to desync even in single player. Consider a simple situation: an arty rocket hits a SAM 20km from you, moments before it launches at you. However, due to delayed calculations, the damage isn't applied until after the rocket is out. Even better, what if clients and the server all have a different ideas of what transpired? How do you deconflict multiple delayed calculations? How do you even decide what to delay, when an MG might have a range of 500m, a SAM of 50km, and aircraft weapons everything inbetween? 

 

And no, whatever crock you'd propose to get out of this specific situation likely won't work on a myriad other ways your "cheating" could go horribly wrong, possibly causing insidious, hard to diagnose bugs (especially if the track replay would act out differently, that would result in an utter nightmare for devs and users alike, and even more so for dedicated testers). How this is actually done is streamlining calculations and "shutting down" AI units that don't need to think at the moment (itself tricky to determine, but possible, ArmA3 can do that in SP missions). 

 

Here's a hint: short posts help. Long posts don't. Tangents, like the second half of the post, actively work against you. Nobody reads that crap. You're lucky you made your cardinal mistake in the first few lines.

[Fri13]

10 hours ago, SparxOne said:

Back on topic for an actual question regarding a concern i have.

 

Knowing that helicopters have an added control to fly the heli, not sure how it's called, maybe the cyclic or something linked to the power lever or so.

 

I've always flown planes and having a joystick i have all the axis necessary to fly them. The roll axis, the pitch axis, the yaw axis and the thrust.

So if i were to compare the helicopter axis to the plane, you would have all the above stated but the added cyclic if i'm not mistaken. No joystick unless specificaly buying one for simulating a helicopter has that remaining axis needed.

 

If you have a joystick that has rotating grip and small throttle axis, then that is all you need as the throttle is your collective. In the helicopters you have governor that will automatically adjust your engine RPM to maintain constant rotor speed so you don't need to have that (nice to have sometimes but not really). 

The question is more about how you have those controllers set up. If you have a spring loaded (centering) joystick, it will be hard for helicopters as you need to constantly move and hold the joystick in various positions depending flight condition. 

If you have a rotating joystick, you can use it as pedals for anti-torque rotor but you need to hold it in proper position all the time and change its amount.

What comes to example small throttle, it is really easy part as you are not going to adjust collective as much as joystick or pedals. You get use to its movements so it goes OK'ish. 

 

 

10 hours ago, SparxOne said:

So my question is, how would i come about properly flying any chopper in DCS while missing that axis on my joystick ? How do people deal with this issue ? I'd be very curious to know how it is first of all handled by the sim (DCS) and second how players use it when they have no proper hardware representing it ?

 

First check example this video: 

 

 

Especially from 4:24 forward. 

 

There are some assisting features for normal centering joysticks, no-pedals and so on setups in KA-50. 

ED has implemented unrealistic (but required) "Center Trim" function for players with normal joystick where they need to move joystick to attitude they want to fly, and then press TRIM button (realistic one) to command autopilot (realistic systems) to maintain helicopter in that attitude. In a real helicopter the cyclic would have magnetic brake that will lock the cyclic in that position (you can move it around but it returns to that new trimmed position) so you can let go of it. But with that assisting feature once you press trim, the simulator stops reacting your joystick movements until you return it to center by its spring. Once the joystick is returned to center, it is like in trimmed position and you can start moving joystick again and input is received, until you again trim and need to return it back to center.

 

In a non-centering joystick you would just leave the joystick where it is as you trim. You can let go and systems work right. If you have Force Feedback joystick then it will try to recenter to trimmed position where ever it was. So it works much like a real cyclic does with the force feedback.

 

The lack of pedals is problematic IMHO. You don't gain the muscle memory same way and you can't do same adjustments on all controls (Cyclic, Collective and Pedals) as you have two of them (Cyclic and Pedals) combined in one, and the throttle is very close to your cyclic as well. 

The key thing really is that real helicopter controls positions. Collective is at the left and raise/lower vertically. The cyclic is between your legs so you can rest right arm on leg and just use it with finger tips on most of the flight in relaxed manner with small movements. The feets are on the pedals all the time, constantly making small adjustments depending helicopter attitude and your other controls.

All the time you use both hands and feets to fly. If you set your normal joystick (+throttle) in the common manner on table, it will be fighting against you. you can learn to fly all okay, but not without assisting features. 

 

10 hours ago, SparxOne said:

If i can give an exemple that is modeled in a way that really doesn't make it feel any problematic at all, it would be the way helicopters fly and are handled in Arma game, of coarse the game is far from being called a heli simulator, but nonetheless it is the only game i've played that represented well enough to me the feel of a heli without having proper hardware to use all axis properly.

 

I hope you guys understand my concern and know what i'm talking about

 

The ARMA has a relaxed flying. IMHO the best way to fly in that game is to have ADSW and mouse. Change the default bindings so that mouse movement will change roll and pitch. A and D will operate anti-torque (yaw) and W and S will control torque (collective). 

I would never take joystick to ARMA helicopters as it makes them just more difficult to fly. 

 

Comparing ARMA in that sense to example Mi-8 in DCS, it will be challenging. You are going to fight against the controls. Not sugar coating it. 

They likely will bring the unrealistic assisting features to it as they must, so that normal joystick players can fly them. So your worries about that should be unwarranted. But it will require you learn to fly with what you have. 

 

One of the another challenges in flying helicopters is if you don't have VR. The VR will make flying helicopters like...  Well it is just so much easier. It is impossible really to tell how much you get information about flying with VR. it is not exactly so big deal in fighters, but in helicopters it is.

But even with VR, you need the proper control setup (positions) to start handling it easily. 

 

But that is icing the cake. That is why it is great that ED adds all kind assisting features to game that gameplay experience wouldn't be bad because player doesn't own a $1500 worth of equipment to fly. So what if one needs to enable a assisting features and such to fly and enjoy? You can even enable a GAME FLIGHTMODELING to get the same feeling as in ARMA. 

I have once tried it like when KA-50 got out and if I remember correctly, you couldn't flip over. It limited like your roll/pitch to 30 degree or something and then it didn't drop you on the ground instantly but started to fly in that direction etc. So pretty much like in ARMA. Once a friend wanted to start flying and I suggested him to enable that and he declined to do so. I watched maybe 2 hours of him crashing the KA-50 in first minute, until he started to get it. Then he wanted to jump straight to shooting the Vikhr missiles and crashing started again. 

And KA-50 is very easy to fly compared to traditional helicopter. 

[Fri13]

https://youtu.be/eXR1olg_I0w

20 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

This line is everything that's wrong with your great big wall of text.

 

That line is totally correct, so everything you say is totally wrong. 

 

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No, in a multiplayer environment you can't assume that sort of thing.

 

Yes you can. You render everything on the client side, not on the server side. 

It is idiotic that one server would need to calculate every single thing with 50 players and 15 000 units on the map. 

No, it is server-client thing here client calculates, simulates what is happening in their side, registers it to server and server checks is it possible (anti-cheat purposes). 

 

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Your solution would lead to desync even in single player.

 

Again, you are thinking in real-time processing not in dynamic calculations. There is no such problem what happens on other side of the map as everything works with the server time stamp. 

 

If you fly on the south of the map, it doesn't matter a bit to you that did your computer receive a information that unit #21421 has been destroyed in 12:04:12.1224 or does it receive the information 200-300 ms after that.... 

 

IT DOES NOT MATTER. The only thing that matters is that information you receive is correctly registered by the server so it can tell your machine that at 12:04:12.1224 happened X.

 

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Consider a simple situation: an arty rocket hits a SAM 20km from you, moments before it launches at you. However, due to delayed calculations, the damage isn't applied until after the rocket is out.

 

Not a problem. Again, server does the checking, your client anyways sync is the launch done or not. Server checks that Rocket hit SAM unit before SAM launch, cancel the SAM.

The damage modeling is not required to be real-time processing that WHAT happens to unit, but it doesn't mean that unit is not affected. The hit is registered > Delay the unit actions for 50 ms extra > Calculate the Damage > Return the unit back to function 60 ms after hit registration. 

 

You don't even notice anything being delayed, difference is that nothing irrelevant is required to be real-time processing. 

 

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Even better, what if clients and the server all have a different ideas of what transpired? How do you deconflict multiple delayed calculations? How do you even decide what to delay, when an MG might have a range of 500m, a SAM of 50km, and aircraft weapons everything inbetween? 

 

Syncing. These has been solved long time ago in turn-based games where clients calculate the actions, send the changes to server that collects them from all, checks them and sends results to all. 

 

DCS World is not a FPS shooter game where a claimed 50 ms ping is too much compared to 20 ms ping. We are talking about real time simulation where closest possible thing really for a real-time processing calculation is that two soldiers shoot each other at the same exact moment and only other dies. In the same FPS shooter desync problems. 

 

But we are talking about tens of milliseconds desync here, not tens of seconds. 

 

 

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And no, whatever crock you'd propose to get out of this specific situation likely won't work on a myriad other ways your "cheating" could go horribly wrong, possibly causing insidious, hard to diagnose bugs (especially if the track replay would act out differently, that would result in an utter nightmare for devs and users alike, and even more so for dedicated testers).

 

Okay. If you do not accept the fact that these things has long time ago already solved, fine.

 

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How this is actually done is streamlining calculations and "shutting down" AI units that don't need to think at the moment (itself tricky to determine, but possible, ArmA3 can do that in SP missions).

 

Did you even read what I wrote?

 

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Here's a hint: short posts help. Long posts don't. Tangents, like the second half of the post, actively work against you. Nobody reads that crap. You're lucky you made your cardinal mistake in the first few lines.

 

Okay, here is a short posts for you from now on as you have difficulties to understand anyways as you are so disrespectful and you wanted so:

 

NO, YOU ARE WRONG IN EVERYTHING. 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Fri13
-In

[Dragon1-1]

1 hour ago, Fri13 said:

Okay. If you do not accept the fact that these things has long time ago already solved, fine.

Then explain (concisely, if possible) why this technique you propose isn't used anywhere in the wider gaming industry, including other flight sims. Because the ones I know don't do that.

 

Oh, and yes, DCS is comparable to a twitch FPS when it comes to missile-unit interaction, because missiles just fly that fast. A HARM can go about 600m/s, which translates to about a meter every two miliseconds. Introducing an unpredictable delay in calculations to smooth things out could lead to edge-case bugs that would be rather hard fix without doing this in real time.

3 hours ago, Fri13 said:

Did you even read what I wrote?

Yeah, do note that while "aggregating" units is used, such as in certain other F-16 sim, it happens whether combat is occurring there or not. Basically, there's a bubble around the player where physics and AI work, and the rest of the world is handled with a very simplified, RTS-like engine. It's the only way to go if you want a map of the whole Korean peninsula to run on a 1998 computer, but these days, the major inconsistencies this introduces simply aren't acceptable in a modern sim.

 

At best, your approach would lead to similar results, no matter how much you insist it wouldn't. We don't want inconsistent results based on whether the player is looking or not.

[Mars Exulte]

Ah, the gen warnings? Yeah that doesn't mean much except you shifted blade pitch too fast and rpms dropped. It should stabilise after a few seconds, although ideally you should be a little more gentle. I can see why you'd think that

 

-edit

I apparently lost track of the thread. I was directing that to the comment about the generators

 

Btw, Yak-52 does the same thing if engine RPM drops

Edited April 10, 2021 by Mars Exulte