malcheus

Ah, thanks for clarifying! I was testing with the mission editor, so I just plonked down some tanks, but then I guess they are cold.

I remember being able to see targets with the IRMAV, but like in the example above, now I really don't see anything anymore just a dark green field. Is there some way to improve the contrast, or go to white-hot mode?

That's curious, and then they fly home with several potentially damaged missiles that then have to be disposed of? Or would they break them open to see if the propellant is still good?

For helos the spring tension on racing pedals may be a bit high, and probably different between the left and right pedal. I have the VKB pedals, and they are very light to move, I can fly without rudder trim. With racing pedals I think you will get cramped feet/legs if you want to do that.

Regrettably, Petrovich still doesn't know about VRS.

Interesting. Though I suppose the Mi8 had no cargo or weapons loaded? Empty transport helos have a lot of spare power.

Exactly, I would expect the whole thing to roll over, or at least tilt off the right wheel a lot sooner. It's quite a tall and narrow machine. Thanks for the advice, although drifting it around the airfield also has a certain appeal.

You can enable rudder trim in the "special" menu (accessible from main menu settings). Then trimming also trims the anti-torque, then you can release it so long as you keep going at the same attitude.

Also if you have rudder trim disabled?

So.. apparently it's working as intended, but here are two shots of what I meant: It's actually kind of fun to try and do it on purpose.

I noticed just now that there seems to be very little grip (or little weight) on the rear wheels. Even with collective fully down, you can skid/drift the rear wheels, moving to the side rather than straight ahead and turning with the front wheel. It seems unrealistic, as there should be a lot of weight on those wheels. It's obvious in the startup training mission when you taxi to the runway and are not careful with the controls.

I had some initial weird behaviour with the "special options" in the main menu; it would trim the anti-torque, even though I disabled that option, and it showed the control helpers despite disabling them. I think checking and unchecking all those options a few times fixed it for me. oh, yes, and I pulled a very sharp turn just now, and that spun the whole thing out of control

Thanks for the advice. I don't have trouble flying, but I do have trouble getting it trimmed to fly straight without constant input using the same method as the hip.

Humans aren't machines, sometimes we misjudge things for inexplicable reasons. Most of the times I parallel park my car in one go, and sometimes I end up wrong, and I have to correct.

If a real life targeting pod has 100% hit rates, then I want the targeting pod to have 100% hit rates in the game. And weapon operators, I want to perform as closely as they can to human operators. I have no idea how well the real Petrovich's performed in the field, but I know that the existing AI's in DCS vastly outperform humans in terms of observing and aiming. As for operating within the limits of the sight, I think you can get a god-like performance while still operating the sight within its limits if you let an AI control it. Basically we have only two relevant axes, pitch and yaw, that the operator has to compensate for. Humans will take some time to detect movement on an axis, and then always over- or undercompensate to some degree. Not due to the limits of the sight, but due to the limits of human cognitive and motor function. An AI can always compensate perfectly within a fraction of a second (as you can see in targeting pods). Again, I don't know how real-life operators performed, so perhaps the human limitations are negligible, but I don't want a superman in the front seat that always hits, no matter how rough we are flying.

AI sounds fancy, but usually it's just a lot of if-else statements. In the case of Petrovich the most important function is "does he hit or miss witht he shturm". I think you could quite easily mimic human imperfections, if you are able to put some numbers on them. Put a number on the "steadiness" of the flying, and you can feed that number to an RNG and make Petrovich's hit-chance sort of a diceroll. Completely simulating his movements of the targeting sight would be more complicated and would lead to almost the same effect. Spotting may be a bit more tricky, as this is already a problem for static units in the game with their godlike spotting abilities. But also here you could use an RNG, that takes into account range and lighting conditions; rather than giving the list of all units in a 5 km radius. So in principle you could have a spotting chance of 100% when LoS is there, minus a penalty for range, a penalty for lighting and a penalty for steadyness of flying.

Also useful if you quickly need to decelerate I suppose.

Would be epic for the immersion if he talked English with a Russian accent, and started swearing in Russian when things go wrong (or when guiding a missile or something else that requires too much attention from him to speak a non-native language).

I know what the collective is, but it's not what I'm talking about. The twist grip on the collective is what I'm talking about, are you supposed to change its setting during flight at all?

I'm sure this is explained somewhere, but for the life of me I can't seem to find it. There is a corrector (I think that's the official name, but also referred to as a throttle) that controls the rotor RPM. Other than making the most epic sound when spooling up during the start-up procedure do you ever use it? Do you ever use it during flight, and if so, how and why? I always put it at maximum RPM during startup, which should engage the auto-corrector, and then never touch it again.

Before or after lunch?

Again, if servers implemented limited resources and consequences for crashing, I completely understand the need for a human petrovich. Maybe it can also help to have the option to request a human petrovich, in which case you can takeoff and transit with the AI, and when things get interesting ask for a human in the front seat. For the humans in question it's then also more of an active role.

Just my two cents: It's not just the precision of the collective, it's also the extremely short interval between the shaking and full-blown VRS, and the delay in lift response when pulling the collective. It's very possible to get into VRS before the (non radar) VSI shows a dangerously high vertical speed due to it's delay. It's also possible to enter VRS before the radar VSI becomes active due to the nose-up attitude when braking too fast. In other words, it's possible to enter VRS without any of the instruments warning you for it with enough time to respond. If you add wind to the equasion, it's also possible to reach 0 airspeed while having some groundspeed, which means that simply looking outside also isn't a foolproof method. After crashing a few dozen times, us desktop pilots know how to avoid this, but if it were like this in the real thing, I think there would be less Mi8's in the world. If it's implemented the same way with the hind, we will also adapt to it, but the implementation of VRS is one of the things I'm most curious about for the hind. But even something as small as a shorter delay on the VSI, and a bit higher VSI precision or a wider radar VSI range can make a big difference.

I understand the spotting/situational awareness part. But I assume the weapons officer can only be played by players who own the module. In that case, the vast majority of servers will allow them to spawn in their own chopper. So assuming we have two players, willing to play and communicate together: What is the advantage (or added value) of them playing as a pilot and gunner in one hind, versus playing as two pilots in two hinds?