Fuggzy

I'm working on feeling right-home at night and use this tune to give me an effect my brain is ok with: Preflight: Render in both eyes Don't show the reticle sight Fire the bird up, then get the cockpit dim as possible... Flood off, turn down instruments/MFD's/CMWS lamp, all of it to a level that seems too low at first. Go with it for now, eyes will adjust like RL while you setup Fiddle with the IHADSS symbology so that it's bright enough to see clearly into the dark night, but dim enough to optically disappear on the instrument panel (cockpit lights are slightly brighter than symbology Repeat the previous concept for PVNS brightness, FLIR, etc I have a collective button mapped to turn IHADSS on/off entirely, as my bail-out for if my brain forgets where the focal plane is again...it still happens. A couple seconds off, take a breath, and then brain works again. The idea is I reduce the visual conflicts between cockpit and head display by offsetting their brightness to make them distinct from each other. And in general, getting everything quite dim at night, eerily dim, then letting my night vision come in makes the VR experience quite believable. Crazy good.

!0 days with Apache, an Update: I love the way the chopper flies, it seems very realistic with different loading weights, altitude density, etc. I'm crashing less now as my list of "don't do that again" grows. George, as much as I praised him initially, is a psychopath that likes killing our own tanks as CPG and is a terrible pilot. "Like, I know I simultaneously told you to stop, climb, and change heading -- but goddamit George you knew we had 16 hellfires, 80% gas, and it's 116 degrees here in Someblahmadad today. We didn't need to die like this." He's new, nervous, doesn't say much, sucks at his job, and makes guys feel awkward in the barracks, but he's trainable and I'm looking forward to more and better from him. In SP I'm deadly now. I fly fast and aggressive and low AF ingress as pilot, and when I figure out where to peep n shoot from, I get her stabilized and switch to CPG. H+B into firing position... (Microsoft Xbox controller is THE TITS for CPG btw) Slide a little left, George Slide a little more left, George. More. More. More... quit coming back so much you retard. Ok, there I can see em. Hold here, George. George, stop drifting, you're drifting ever so slowly right. Slide one more time left long time.... ok laser on, SHOOT 5 4 3 2 1 SHOOT 5 4 3 2 1 SHOOT 5 4 3 2 1 Dead thing, dead thing, dead thing. Yep, they designed this weapon for Army users lol. OK Egress. I stop to consider where all my controls are set before hitting 1, because I can't even count the number of times that THIS transition is when I spiral into the mountainside like a drunk cougar because my collective was flat or something was unprepared. Fly back to base as dangerously low and fast as possible, sometimes do a barrel roll accidentally and scream like a little girl, and always try to hotdog the landing. I'm up to about 60% success on the combined phase. MP? I did it exactly once so far with some super cool dudes on Rotorheads server, and THIS is what I want to do. Flying human crew in Apache is just the effin most greatest thing I've done in my decades of flight simming. It is where I'm headed after I'm sick of all the SP missions. Why not immediately? I like flying most, and need to practice enough to never crash from idiocy... it is such a bummer for anyone to be CPG and your pilot crashes by pure error. TL;DR I want to get gud at Apache and play Army with guys online soon. So so fun

Stiction and/or over-center "bump" in rudder pedals, if there is any at all, really does suck with helis. It doesn't bother me at all in jets. The TFRS pedals are just all-around bad for the Apache. I was fine with mine until this bird, now forget it...they're junk. Even if I Nyogel the stiction away and remove springs etc the pedals are simply too damned close together to get any proper control. Real heli torque pedals are wide-set for that specific reason...fine control. I also want to add an extension on my Warthog for the same concept with cyclic. in summary, the Apache is so incredibly good and I love it so much that I'm preparing to smash another piggy bank for better controls.

This is just the absolute coolest solo play dynamic I've experienced in online flight sims. The George AI is fantastic, sure there's a few bugs with it here in early release, but I am overjoyed with what it does now. I love cold starting her, super easy. Boresight the guys, and get flying. On the way I hot dog it through breaks in the trees, flying as low as necessary to give the natives the sh*ts. Pull up on BP, slowwwwwww down, get almost settled, then like magic pop a 2, I'm CPG, George hovers. I proceed to rain Hell fire and destruction, peeking over cover with H/B. Once the targets are sufficiently smoking, pop a 1 and I'm hotdoggin' back NOE. I love the F-16 but holy smokes this Apache is just adorable, and I need an online friend. LFG apache clan

Bad. Ass.

I noticed the same thing in the only replay I've watched. I ran it directly after ending the mission, from the debriefing page. Didn't use any fast forward or anything. I'd just flown the Target Practice instant action, and flew orbit around the Fuel truck convoy that's on the move. Beat them up pretty good with the door gunners, was feeling proud, so I watched the track. Started out pretty good watching from one of the stationary house objects, but I noticed with each firing pass my fire was hitting further and further away. By the time I stopped watching the track, my chopper was laying down heavy fire in empty fields nowhere near the trucks, I'd guess at least 1km away. Weird. Is that because I didn't save the track and call it up from the Replay viewer?

Yeah, it does have a lot of dampening. Too much for my taste, actually. I ran it in Game mode for a good long session and it helped me get a feel for the chopper with less crash risk, but I went back to Realistic mode once I felt ready -- and because I couldn't stand the giant green "Lifemeter" or whatever the hell that annoying thing is in Game mode. I also made some breakthroughs with my controller, and now I'm fully enjoying Realistic mode. But if I could only add in a wee tiny bit of Dampening... somewhere in between the almost none in Realistic mode and the too-heavy dampening in Game mode, I'd be one happy dude.

Practice is coming along and I'm definitely getting better, but this is a wishlist -- and I wish I could add a little more dampening.

Mine, for example, is a stock Cougar HOTAS that's old and abused -- lots of spring slop around center, and a little bit of pot spiking in the first 1/4 of throws. Trying to get to an acceptable level of control has been a real summabich, but gents... I believe I've arrived. Here's how I got there: First off, after much struggle I found that I had to get my Cougar calibrated correctly at a base level using the Cougar HOTAS utility. Bypassing putting in the time to do that properly only means frustration. I first did as careful a calibration I could to get all the raw values in accurately. Then I set NO curves (all linear) in the Cougar, and then carefully set Center deadzones on X and Y axis so that movement of the stick would only affect input at the precise moment I begin to push against the spring tensions -- in effect, I made all the mechanical slop at center null and void for input. This was probably the biggest gain for good control, as now I can really feel when I am inputting. My deadzones ended up being 15% on Y, and 12% on X. After doing those two things, carefully calibrating and setting deadzones, I am able to visually see a substantial increase in smoothness and precision in the Utility's Input Viewer. Pot spikes are way less noticeable too, for whatever reason. Victory! After much playing around with Axis curves in the sim, I saw mentioned on here that reducing the Y Saturation on the pitch and roll axis could be helpful. I set all axis back to straight linear (0 curve values), and then set Cyclic Pitch and Roll both to 70% Y Saturation. VOILA! Amazingly solid control of the Huey now, it's like a different beast altogether. :) Granted, lower saturation values reduces the max throw available, but the way I figure it is if you ever find yourself wanting for more max deflection, you're doing it wrong in the first place! Reducing Y saturation effectively reduces sensitivity along the whole axis travel, while avoiding all of the weirdness that comes with curves. Anyways, hope this might give folks with crappy controllers like me some things to chew on and try. There is hope, keep at it.

Axis dampening slider for Realistic (Sim) mode. Doesn't have to be much, just enough to give those of us with short throw/sensitive joysticks a fighting chance at flying pretty. :)

Try switching to "Game Flight Mode" in the options. I know, I know..."RUBBISH!" you say, "I DEMAND REALISM!". Just try it and see what you think. One of the Devs mentioned it in another thread, and stated that the FM in both modes is the same, only dampening was ratcheted up in the Game Flight mode. The extra dampening was exactly what I was looking for, and is something that all the axis curve tweaking in the world couldn't compensate for. Now the Huey flies exactly like I anticipated it would. It still flies just like a chopper from the era before fly-by-wire and computerized stabilization should, it simply stopped fighting me like a badger on meth every second of flight.

EvilBivol, Thank you for that suggestion! I spent my first 6 hours tweaking, re-tweaking, and tweaking again all of my axis curves and anything else I could come up with to get better control of the beast with my Cougar HOTAS. After watching the very helpful youtube videos on how to fly right and using the Controls Indicator panel to finally absorb the fact that I was massively over-controlling, I finally got to a state where I could manage to takeoff, kinda hover ok, and land without breaking anything once in a while. But even then, I was dismayed at the sheer amount of work and concentration it takes just to fly ugly but without crashing. I was beginning to think that the severe difficulty was going to take the shine off the sim for me. I switched to the Game Flight Mode just to see, and WOW! :worthy: The flight model is just as complex and satisfying as it was in Realistic mode, but the extra dampening does wonders to make it ENJOYABLE to fly! Now it flies quite exactly like I had imagined it should, where all of the physics effects and forces are still in play as they should be on an old school chopper without flight stabilization computers, but the feeling like I'm constantly trying to balance a golf ball on the head of a pin is gone. A couple of smooth flights around the base later, I went to bed and slept well and happy. Can't wait to dive into the sim now. Thank you so much for the suggestion to try Game Flight mode. I'll admit that it hurt my soul to even click that choice (I'm a realism snob in every sim, so this act felt like heresy), but once I tried it I realized I'm just going to have to stifle my own ego and keep it that way. It really does fly sweet and I swear it feels even MORE realistic to me than in Realistic Flight mode.