Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 109
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Re: Piloting Helicopters
Also, I found a bunch of good stuff at ... errr... dang... not planetbattlefield. Dang, I'll go through my history file, I know I found a bunch of good explanations.
Two things that stuck out:
1) Imagine your helo is sitting atop a soccer ball, and you want to keep it there. Any movement you give the controls, forward, backward, left, right(for the main rotor) must be accompanied by an equal and opposite movement in order to stay on top of the ball.(Pros, I'm purposely ignoring the rear rotor and ways to compensate that are not equal and opposite.)
2) Imagine your helo(well, the rotor, really, but that's not important) is a plate that you are spinning atop a broomstick. If you want to move in a given direction, you allow the top of the stick to lean in that direction and the bottom of the stick must follow to keep the plate there. To stabilize, you have to give a little movement in the opposite direction(again, pros, ignoring the more advanced use of the tail rotor).
These two things took me from a crashprone parachutist to a fairly confident transport (point a to point b, hover/land, point b to point c) helo pilot in 3 hours last night.
If you use a joystick with a throttle, in your practices, keep the throttle between about 40% and 60%. I've read(and noticed) that at 100% throttle, the helos are a bit too responsive and too easy to lose control of. Too low and you just leave skid marks across the map. You won't be moving very fast at this throttle(ok, collective?) setting, but the point is to practice getting from place to place in one piece, right?
I recommend starting with the transports, personally, because they are a bit tougher and due to "sluggishness" a bit more forgiving when you oversteer, at least if you observe the throttle suggestion above.
Stay low. I find it much easier to approach and land/hover where I want to if I don't have to fight my limited FoV due to altitude as well as the physics of a spinning plate on a stick. Plus, I think it'll force you to take things a lot slower in the beginning, which gives you more time to get "the feel".
Ok, lemme go check my history file. (And I know it's annoying to hear, because it bugged me before my 3-hour solo tour last night, but practice is the key. Practice and patience.)
One last newbie-to-newbie comment I'm going to steal from, I dunno, Kevin Harvick(NASCAR) I think.
"Smooth is fast. Slow is smooth."
Edit: Here's a fair thread. That's where I got some of the info. Here is another, but I think he's up to 1.3 or 1.4 now, and doesn't do very well explaining hover. Well, doesn't really explain it at all. Still some of the other folks provided good input.
This post in particular helped me, IIRC.
Quote:
1) If you slide your mouse too far to the right or left you'll start rolling your bird. If you roll it too much, you'll lose control and crash. Make sure you stay level side-to-side. Rolling is similar to side-strafing if you are hovering. If you start rolling too much to one side, a really quick way to correct it is to turn your nose in the direction of the roll using the A or D key and that should stabilize you side-to-side, but will also put your nose down and into a dive. Pull your nose up to correct the dive.
2) Don't look up into the sky. This means that you're flying backwards and losing altitude and will probably run into something (like the ground, for example) and crash.
3) Think to yourself, "I am the conductor of this roller coaster." Keep chanting that while you fly, for confidence.
4) Until you gain confidence, stay away from any vertical obstacles.
5) When you've got the confidence to fly below the tops of vertical objects, KNOW where those vertical objects are in relation to your bird, even if you're not looking at them.
6) Fly in cockpit view. You'll lose lots of peripheral vision, but you'll always know your position in space in relation to the ground.
I've been getting lots of compliments, lately, while flying helos.
The attack helicopters are the easiest to fly. The slow, lumbering cargo helicopters are sluggish and unresponsive in comparison. Gain your skills on the attack helicopters. (Wish we had Little Birds.) After you have confidence on those, then switch to the larger birds.
I've only got 9 total flight hours on helos in the BF2 full version. Add a few hours from the demo, I guess.
It's tricky, at first, but with practice you'll soon swooping, spinning, diving, and hovering with the pro's. You'll also gain a sense for what speeds you can collide with objects without crashing. This is useful for when you start using a helo to capture flags.
I've been playing helo flight sims since Gunship! on the Commodore 64/128. I was in an Air Cavalry squadron in the Army and had the opportunity to get a few rides in helos. I love 'em! They're the most fun of any kind of aircraft, in my opinion. (I haven't tried a hot weather balloon, yet.)
The flight control model of Desert Combat, BF:V, and BF2 is the closest to realistic helo flight, in my experience. Operation Flashpoint was nice until the Desert Combat mod.
Enemy Engaged was good, but largely lacked the ground clutter you need to make helo flight really fun.
I surprised myself, the other night. There was one guy on my tail with that explosive chain-gun on the Havoc. I was swooping, circling, diving, popping-up, anything to try to get back to my base for repairs. I was going around poles, through bridges, under bridges, skimming ridges, etc. Every second I was amazing myself that I hadn't crashed. I was definitely stressing the bird's airframe with all of the contortions. He eventually whittled me down to nothing.
It is good to have a gunner, especially in the Havoc.
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As well as this one.
Quote:
At the risk of repeating some things that have already been said, here's some tips that I've picked up on flying the helicopters.
First of all, some basics about flying a helicopter. You have three controls in a helicopter - the cyclic control (joystick), the tail rotor (similar to a rudder, controls yaw), and the collective, which controls the angle of attack of your main rotors, the higher it is set, the more lift is generated. The main rotors on a helicopter move at a fixed (or at least a target) RPM regardless of the collective setting, so it's inaccurate to describe it as a throttle control. Although this analogy will probably make real life pilots cringe, I found it useful in understanding how to control a helicopter - flying a helo is kind of like spinning a plate, where the plate is the main rotor. If you dip the plate forward, you'll have to angle the stick (the cab) back to maintain a more or less 90 degree angle with the plate. When this happens, you'll also have to keep moving the stick forward so that the plate doesn't fall off. In a helicopter, the main rotor is generating lift, so when you change the angle with the cyclic, it also generates lift in the direction that it is dipped, thus propelling the helicopter forward, sideways, or backwards. Your tail rotor allows you to move the cab of the helicopter around the axis of the main rotor, so you can face the cab around 360 degrees while controlling the direction of the helicopter independantly. To go forwards in a helicopter, you simply dip the main rotor forwards, and increase the collective, because the forward lift that is being generated is taken away from your vertical lift. Practice will give you a feel for how much collective is appropriate depending on how hard you dip the rotor. Contrary to what many have said, it's completely possible (in fact easy) to increase your altitude in a helo while also increasing your directional velocity, you simply use the collective to generate more lift than is being taken away from your vertical by your forward motion. Ultimately it's practice that will give you a solid and instinctive control of the vehicle, though I found that reading about how a helicopter actually works helped immensely. I'm sure that a real life pilot could explain it better, and possibly correct me in one or two places, but hopefully this info will be helpful to some.
The first point that I'd like to bring up about flying helicopters in the game - fly the helo according to its function. The Blackhawk, the Z-8, and the Mi17 are transport helicopters, they are not designed to go toe to toe with combat aircraft. Don't hop into one of these and take off on your own while a group of people sit on your base shouting at your for not waiting. The more people you have in the helo, the better defended you are, the quicker you can capture flags, and if you have a good combination of engineers and medics, it can keep you flying for a long time. Few things are more annoying than running behind someone to a transport chopper, only to have them hop in and take off without you, despite your repeated shouts of "Hey, give me a ride". When faced with an opponent with AA ordnance, your best chance is to make a run for it. With other targets, it's important to remember that your gunners face out from the sides of the aircraft, so if you're directly facing the enemy, your gunners won't be able to get a shot, use your mouse look if you can (for those of us who use joysticks, it would be nice if a future patch provided support for using the hat switch to look around). Also note that for your gunners to get a shot, you want to keep the helo as stable as possible. Bear in mind though, being stable also makes you an easy target for unguided projectiles such as tank shells and TOWs, always try to be aware of your surroundings.
The Cobra, Mi28 and WZ-10 are essentially mobile gunnery platforms. The pilot's primary function is to get the gunner where he's going, and give him as good a shot as possible on any targets. The cannons on these machines will quickly make puddles of any infantry, so if there's a UAV in the air showing a lot of infantry, it's always a good show. I find that the best way to use these helos is to zoom from base to base, keeping a low and stable flight while my gunner mops up any enemy infantry or vehicles. If you have ever read about or seen how these helos are used in real combat, you'll know that the best technique is to use buildings, or hills for cover, and pop up for a few seconds at a time (preferrably in a different place each time). This will give your gunner plenty of time to deal with any targets, while minimizing the chance that any AA gets time to lock onto you, or that any tanks or TOWs don't have time to aim and fire. You want to be close enough that it's easy work for your gunner, but not so close that targets can find cover underneath your or to the sides where your gunner cannot fire. Always keep the helo facing towards the concentration of targets. This will give your gunner the optimum field of view, as well as minimizing your target profile to anyone who wants to take a pot shot at you. I think that the use of the unguided rockets at the pilot's disposal has been adequately covered, just remember that these are really a secondary (maybe tertiary) weapon, and if there's nobody in the gunner's seat, you're just tying up the helo and wasting one of the game's most valuable resources.
When your helo becomes damaged, head back to base. If I have over a third of the bar left, I'll generally finish what I'm doing, then head back for repair and rearm, but if I have less than that, I'll usually drop what I'm doing, and opt to stay alive and get the helo fixed.
When dealing with any AA opponent, knowing their location is often the difference between life and death. Drop flares when you hear the tone change, and break hard either up, or better yet to the side. Facing either directly towards or directly away from the threat will minimize your target profile. If you can engage in a high speed evasive maneuver close to your foe (any direction but away from), the missiles can't turn too hard, and will shoot right by you. If you're in an attack helicopter, get your gunner to take out any AA with top priority. If you're in a transport helicopter, a good gunner can make quick work of AA, but good gunners aren't in the majority, and often your best option is to simply avoid. Enemy jets equipped with air to air missiles can be a real pain. When faced with this threat, it's wise to consider the attributes of both aircraft. If you try to outrun the plane, you will not only fail, you will also give them a larger window of opportunity to fire upon you. As a helo, you don't have to be moving at all, where as they have to maintain a certain speed to avoid going into a stall. Again, dodging to the side works here, and if you don't move away from the plane, you will minimize their window of opportunity to attack you. I find that when attempting to attack helos, the pilots will often go as slow as they can, which is good news for you. Once they slip past you, their low speed will prevent them from performing any fast maneuvers, and will give you a good chance to fire some rockets on them. They will be very hard to hit, but three rockets will reduce a brand new jet to ashes.
When attempting to hover, use the artificial horizon line and crosshairs. When the crosshair is sitting level with the horizon, you're level, and will quickly lose any forward or backward momentum and go into a nice hover. Keeping the artificial horizon line straight will minimize any sideways movement.
The final thing that I'd like to moan about, and I see a lot of otherwise skilled pilots fall into this - altitude. Military helo pilots employ a technique they call NoE (Nape of the Earth), which means damn close to the ground. Flying along the ground will make you a hard target (plus it's great fun). Not only this, but should someone attempt to lock onto you, or fire an AA weapon, you will be able to find cover behind buildings, trees, fences, dirt, anything that will get between you and the incoming missile. A lot of pilots will fly around so high in the air that half of the map could get a missile lock on them. Watching for this technique will show you the difference between a skilled pilot, and a knowledgeable one (and generally, if you're trusting your life to the flying skills of another, it's preferrable for them to have both).
Hopefully some of this will help you towards falling into the category of "knowledgeable pilot", but all the knowledge in the world isn't much use without the skill to back it up, and this can only come with practice. The best way to get practice with your basic maneuvers (take off, landing, hovering, evasive maneuvers etc) is to set up a local server. Set max players to 1 and password it so that you don't get others trying to join and interrupting your flying session. I really enjoy the FuShe Pass map for this. It has all types of US and Chinese helicopters, along with some very challeging terrain. Flying through the canyon and under the bridges at high speed is great practice for your evasive maneuvers, and there are some flags to practice hovering over that are located in the midst of many trees/buildings/cliffs, which makes it a challenge. Once you're confident in your skills, the single player maps can give you some great combat experience. If a bot hops in before you, calling the "Bail Out" command from the commo rose will send him packing, then you can hit f1 to take the pilot's seat, and tell him to get back in.
Just a quick reply to Uziyahoo - I found the opposite to be true. The attack helicopters are very touchy and fast. The larger more lumbering beasts are a lot easy to control and learn on.
Again, I'm sure a lot of this has already been covered, but I hope that some people find it useful.
AJ
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Last edited by duckilama; 07-21-2005 at 12:34 PM.
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07-20-2005, 12:38 PM
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