PedroTheGoat

Yeah, I've been working hard to figure stuff out so I can play with you guys online! Now all I need to do is work on my ABRIS skills and Datalink, then I'll be confident enough to come online.

Okay, so after the fine folks on these forums woke me up to how trimmer and the AP works I feel as if I want to share some of my input on what I have learned over the past week. Despite popular belief, the autopilot channels DO NOT equal automatic death. Just think of the AP as your local friendly workload reducer. It will keep you going in a specified direction at a specified speed when you let go of the trimmer. Even though you do not want to release the trim when your helicopter is not stable... (Banked too far one way or the other, rudder trimmed too far in a certain direction, nose tilted down at 30 degrees, etc) because the AP only has 20% control over your heli... So if your Heli is cocked and wonky whenever you release the trim... The AP can fight to keep you going in one direction only so much. The way that I think of Flight Director mode is like this... It's like holding the trimmer down when FD is off. So during a transitional stage of flight like going from a hover to forward flight it becomes extremely useful. So, I activate FD whenever I do not feel like holding the trimmer down for 3 minutes or so. Whenever I become stable and get in the direction and speed I want to be going... I just disable FD and the AP takes control so this goat doesn't have to worry about flying at all. (In mother Russia... Helicopter flies YOU!) FD is also EXTREMELY useful when you need to fix your cannons and rockets to boresight and get DOWN AND DIRTY. (Which are some of the most exciting parts of the game) And for the truly lazy... (Like me...) Simply press "R" on your keyboard and watch your helicopter do ALL the boring stuff while following waypoints. (This allows me to play with my countermeasures and look at pretty scenery along the way to the action) Just make sure to press R again and disable route mode whenever you're getting close to your desired location... I forgot this once... And it lead to me being a grounded and roasting goat. If you are NOT holding down the trimmer when using AP and are trying ANY kind of maneuvering, the helicopter will fight you to keep it in it's trimmed location. So if FD is NOT on... Make sure to hold the trimmer down whenever your are changing direction, rudder, bank, etc. Autohover is awesome! Just make sure to AP trim your way to close to a stable hover before activating, otherwise things can get really wonky. Also, whenever I deactivate Auto Hover, I always disable the Alt Hold that comes on automatically. Just my thoughts after a week of working with AP. And once again, thanks to the posters who opened my eyes to AP NOT being Satan.

THAT'S IT!!! What an oversight I had!!! Now AP makes perfect sense!!! Holding down the trimmer is all I have to do! You guys are so freaking awesome. I have no idea how I missed this. This sure will make landing easier now. Just awesome.

So... Am I being a really bad Black Shark pilot if I use Flight Director mode a lot? Fighting with the autopilot channels is becoming the bane of my existence.

Thanks, my gripes are minor. It is actually a bit hard to get Black Shark to get a bad FPS on my system. Just noticed a bit when a lot of explosions are on screen. I'll take the loading stuff into account too. It's awesome to see people who actually created the game interacting with people in here. This is by far the coolest sim and the best community I have ever encountered. (And I tend to be a forum junkie) :thumbup:

Wow, so I feel as if I have a bit to say about this simulator... First off, it is the most impressive sim I have had the chance to play ever. I just got a brand spanking new gaming rig almost solely so I could play Black Shark. My 1200 dollar investment was not too bad in my opinion. This is an awesome game. I was really intimidated by these forums at first. So many people had HUGE issues flying this beast. I put in my study time though, studying these forums up and down and reading through that BEAST of a .pdf manual to become as knowledgeable as I could before I jumped into the cockpit. (Plus I had a week of anxious waiting for my computer to arrive.) My study time paid off... I was able to fly Parabellum;s tutorial mission all by myself. Including a cold start that I did from memory. (I could NOT believe I could remember all of that procedure, and I wonder if I could do it again.) Flying the helicopter was not AS bad as I thought. I still have major issues with proficiency as far as handling her like a feather. I seem to feel like I'm fighting the Auto Pilot Channels a bit... I fly better in Flight Director Mode... But I do not think that real Black Shark pilots are allowed to fly in FD mode all the time... So I try to stay away. The tanks blew my poor butt away on my first flight. But after I figured out where they were, they met the business end of my Vikhers on my second flight. Then I made my way to make fodder of infantry with no issues. Then... To my EXTREME surprise, I made a successful hover landing when I made it back to base. Simply awesome. I do have a few disappointments though. Mainly with the graphics engine. I have a Quad AMD running at 3.8ghz, an ATI Radeon 5830 with 1g, 4g DDR3 running at 1600, Win 7 64, and it seems to me that I still can't pull AMAZING frame rates from the game. When I shot those rockets at those infantry... I saw a nasty creep in frame rate. This was AFTER doing EVERY tweak to the LUA files and such. It's also odd that I need to get D3DOveride for Vsync and Triple Buffering. This game almost desperately needs an overhaul for multiple cores and newer graphics cards I think. Maybe I am doing something a bit wrong. I'll turn down my AA and AF a notch or so and see if that helps tremendously. I guess I'll make sure I have up to date Directx drivers too. Plus the sound... I'm not going to go on about the sound because it will be updated soon. So there's no point. Also..... And this is going to sound COMPLETELY stupid... When I shot those infantry with my 30mm cannon... I REALLY wanted to see them fly... Or maybe just a pink spray... But they just fell over... I was such a sad goat. And FINALLY... Thank ALL of you so much for your countless useful posts that I have been studying almost every free moment I have had for the past week. If it wasn't for you... This game would have been A LOT more of a frustrating experience. I simply CANNOT wait to fly with some of you guys online. I really feel as if I need to complete a few REAL missions before I jump into a game with some of you. I'm working on it though. I REALLY want to join a cool squad some day. I've been studying almost all of your squads... And they all seem COMPLETELY awesome. So it is going to be a tough decision. I'm leaning a tad towards the 104th Phoenix because it seems they have an awesome cadet program. We'll see though. And that's all... Goat. :joystick:

Will do!!! I graduated with my BA in Business Administration from UTA. (I'm back in school for a Computer Engineering degree) I now live in Kerrville, Tx. Now here is for my dumb question... If I play with people in the UK am I going to experience horrible lag like I do on consoles? (We don't really have "servers" in console games) Or will it all be dependent on my ping to the server? Do a lot of you guys play with people overseas with few issues?

Wow... I can't believe I didn't think of this. I was truly worried about the tutorials not being interactive... But I'll just set my netbook by me and do exactly as you did. Brilliant!!!

Sweet man. Once I get my flying a bit up to snuff I will start researching squadrons thoroughly. To be honest, the reason why I brought this thread back from the dead is because it was a reactionary thread that would allow me to gauge what the current mindset of the community is. Game communities change moment by moment. It seems to me that Blackshark has been out long enough that some of it's players may be ULTRA veterans that are complacent just the way they are, which leaves little room for rookies. As I suspected, the Blackshark community as a whole seems inviting and extremely intelligent. I've been pouring over these forums for almost 2 weeks now going back to posts that are nearly a year old. Almost NO threads strike me as aggressive or plain dumb. It's probably the best forum community I have seen in my lifetime. (The main exception I've seen is the brashness of the OP of this particular thread) I'm truly not that worried now that I will be kicked from a room because I am not capable of shooting enemy helicopters out of the air at 3km with only using boresight.

Wow... This strikes me as such a great community. I suppose the fact that this sim is such a study beast that it weeds out most bad apples out there. I can't wait to jump on and play with some of you guys. I get the feeling that when I finally jump on some MP scenarios, everyone I play with will probably use a lot of teamwork and tactics in order to accomplish the mission. Which is something I have been dying to have almost as much as I've been dying to jump into a truly realistic simulator. The nature of this game seems like it would weed out the feint of heart and the dimwitted. This Goat is REALLY anxious for FedEx to arrive with my computer now...

I'll probably only be flying the KA-50 for a few months. It seems like Black Shark is going to have enough depth that I doubt I will stray to Lock On for a good long while. I'll check you guys out ASAP. I need to get a bearing on how to fly a bit of single player before I start trying to hot dog with some of you aces. I just don't feel like being treated like crap for the first 20 games or so I play like some console games. Console gamers tend to be A#$ holes though... For no apparent reason sometimes. If I happen to wander in a server like that I suppose I will just blacklist it and move on like you suggest. :thumbup:

I'm bringing this thread back to life because it really scared me. I AM a console gamer who finally has the scraps to buy a gaming PC in order to play my favorite genre: Realistic flight sims. It's been so long since I have been able to play a good flight sim due to the fact that console is about all I could afford. The last REAL flight sims I played were SU-27 Flanker (The FIRST one), US Navy Fighters, and Janes Longbow. I am NOT a lazy console gamer though... I have read all 500 + pages of the .pdf manual... Cover to cover... I also have watched all 10 producers notes NUMEROUS times... I really do feel like I could start that bird manually the first time I play the game. What scares me is... What about my first few online experiences? If I'm not "up to snuff" because I am brand new am I going to get kicked over and over again? Are there any active servers or squads out there that would take a newbie in? Call me a weiner... But it would make me a sad Goat if I was trying my hardest and just got kicked because I am not doing mad funnel maneuvers and might be struggling a bit with the Datalink or something. (By the way... My computer is in the mail... That's why I haven't started up my own beautiful Blackshark up yet)

Awesome! Thanks for your reply. I'll see if I can hunt down 2 more 2 gig sticks to throw into my other slots. Shouldn't be too expensive I imagine. Are you able to play the game in maxed out settings? Is my vid card going to be okay?

I also just bought a new computer almost exclusively to play Black Shark. I just also wanted some feedback as to see if my computer will run Black Shark smoothly. I've been a console gamer for a very long time now, I kept praying that a decent flight sim would come... And it never did. So I just went ahead and took matters into my own hands and put together a gaming rig at CyberPowerPC.com My specs: Phenom II Quad Core @ 3.4Ghz 4 gigs of DDR3 @ 1600mhz ATI Radeon 5830 1GB DDR5 Win 7 64bit Home Premium Is my RAM going to bottleneck Black Shark??? Will it run smoothly? Do I need to disable ATI Catalyst? (My computer is in the mail right now BTW)