homepage Forums Read Only Forums Read Only Forums Take On Helicopters The most frustrating sim ever..?

Yeah..the view system is pretty odd. The lack of a preset flyby view was disappointing.

I appreciate all the suggestions in this thread, but my time is so limited that I just gave up on trying to work through the issues. I'm not a big fan of spending more hours configuring than flying.

I just replayed the Career. It was better the 2nd time around! If this is frustration, I want more of it.

I really looked forward to this Sim, but after almost two weeks worth of tweaking I got a refund...

The flight model update from this post on the BI site goes a long way to making this a playable sim...

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?145171-Advanced-Flight-Model-based-on-HTR

It does a great job to reduce the poor inertia model.

Worth a try. Been having much better luck flying with it installed.

Rmako

With the dcs sale on right now, I'd personally just get the huey.

Ha, I thought so too. Picked up the Huey in the sale looking for a Vietnam vibe. Whomping along the tree tops with some period tunes banging away in the back ground. Stones, Doors, Hendrix, Jefferson Starship etc.
How cool that would be.

Sadly the Huey is not so easy either.
Not sure if it the fact I've been flying prop based combat sims for the last 15+ years makes me a rubbish Helio pilot,but, Flying the Huey in DCS is always a one way trip for me
Mastered getting it off the ground. Putting it back down has proved a challenge.

A real helo is difficult to fly, especially if you've learned in fixed wings, but is definitely manageable and rewarding!

I had the opportunity some years ago for a flight in a chopper that was having a test flight. After 20+ years of fixed wing simming and not a little Jane's Longbow, I was well up for some stick time.

I was given control at about 1k altitude and bowling along was a breeze.
'Ok bring her into a hover' the pilot said. So gently pulled back on the cyclic whilst dumping collective and trying to keep one eye on the horizon and the air speed and it all went tits up.
The pilot laughed his head off but he did admit I did all the right things, just not in the right quantities at the right time.
Sod flying an Apache at night in the driving rain at 20ft with people shooting at you... ^^

To get back on topic. I don't think its frustrating at all... Try the new Advanced Flight Model you should check the TOH forums. As rmakowsky Said.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?145171-Advanced-Flight-Model-based-on-HTR

I too highly recommend it & Rudder Pedals to get the full experience, but nothing is like the real thing.

p.s.

I realize this was started back in January but in April the Flight Model was Introduced, so i feel its relevant to anyone reading about this sim.

I might revisit it and check out the new FM. That said though - it was more than just the flight model - the whole interface borrowed from Arma is a bit awkward. When you are flying along and you go to the mouse to do something and one of the options that is easy to click on is TURN OFF ENGINE (or whatever it was called)..that can ruin your day really quickly.

I love the concept..but just wish the sim had broken from its roots a bit more. I'll still check it out again and if I think things have changed I'll be sure to post my impressions..

BeachAV8R

Yes, that's the main problem with Take on Helicopters: It ends up being more of an ArmA "extended mod" (with all the bad and awkward parts of ArmA) instead of being a new game/sim that it should have been. And on top of that BIS seems to have completely abandoned this game/sim.

Well, maybe we'll eventually get "Take On Helicopters On Mars", after they get a massive terraforming mission worked into "Take On Mars".

While going through Advanced in flight school, one of the other "less than optimal" students in my class was doing a Basic Instrument hop over Mobile Bay one day. It was common practice for the instructor to roll the twist grip to idle which allowed the student to recognize the emergency and then practice an instrument autorotation. Apparently on this day, this student's first instinct was push the lock button and roll the twist grip all the way to OFF. Oops. Maybe she needed a scroll menu.

Fortunately the IP was quick and rolled it back to idle in time and the engine re-lit and he recovered the aircraft.

I decided to try this one again, and I am enjoying it much more this time around. It performs much better now on my newer hardware, and I spent some time tweaking the graphics for smoothness (critical for flying helo's in a sim) but more importantly the flight controls. I tweaked the control curves to be flatter closer to the cyclic center which allows finer control with a short joystick.

The most important find was the trim functionality (I never realised that it was implemented). Very few sims get this right, and this implementation is probably one of the better ones I have experienced. There is a command for trim engage, and a separate one to disengage. I assigned these to my Warthog Hotas. Once one has taken off and translated into the cruise, one may find that it needs a set force on the cyclic and yaw keep the helicopter to fly straight. Pressing the Trim Engage allows one to relax the pressure on the controller. This makes cruising and overall flying a lot easier.

Although not perfect, I am finding TKOH a lot more satisfying this time. The game would benefit considerably from using the ARMA 3 engine instead of a modified ARMA 2 one. I have started flying the single player campaign, and I am enjoying it a lot so far. One gets to inspect the helicopters for faults, arrange repairs (Pleasantly surprised), and the missions are well thought out (if you can ignore some of the cheesy dialogue).

Folks should realise this is not strictly a helicopter sim, but a helicopter centered "adventure" with plausible realism and missions that one will most likely not be able to experience in FSX/X-Plane/DCS etc. BIS should probably have focussed a bit more on hiding the ARMA interface and making it easier to set up for everyone.

The inverse is also true. Nearly everyone expected ARMA 3 to borrow from the TOH engine. What we instead have is a helicopter model that is worse than ARMA 2. Hopefully that will change and players can chose between a dumbed-down WASD/mouse and the far more satisfying TOH level of fidelity.

Perhaps that expectation was a bit unrealistic. The helicopter flight models for vanilla ARMA 2 & 3 is in line with the rest of the game, and realistic flight models falls outside of the scope for a game like ARMA. ARMA is about accessibility, not the ultimate realism.

As a side-note, I loved the first ARMA 3 Alpha, but it became boring as BIS turned up the "realism" to satisfy the die-hard fans.

I actually love the idea that BIS with Take On - a story driven helicopter adventure. But the borrowed menu/controls from the ARMA series make it clunky. I'll give it a whirl again I'm sure..hopefully my perceptions will change..

BeachAV8R

BIS stated that they planned to eventually migrate the Heli flight model from ToH into Arma 3. I'm actually a bit ticked off it's taking so long.

Me too. But in the meantime I am doing it their way. Toss the stick to the side and fly with the mouse. It just works so much better with the current model than attempting to make real something that is so obviously not.