0xDEADBEEF

I am very much aware of the whole story, it still does not make the FM more realistic. Sorry. I have also provided the devs with as much feedback as I can, I did so from day one. At first I did not feel taken seriously at all. Felt like: "You are not a real Gazelle Pilot, we wont listen to you". At least now they said "we will look at it".

I never read about that. But it was/is being advertised as "as realistic as possible", and I disagree. There was even a video where Roie said: "we are happy with the FM and apart from a few tweaks we consider it finished", that was before I went deeper into my investigations and tried to explain myself in better detail.

It is indeed *very* present on the Huey, which is mainly due to the bell-hiller mixer on the rotorhead (if you look at it, the control-links dont go directly onto the blade-, but first on the paddle, then down again to the blade, which makes it very easy to control). It is much less present on the Mi8, but it's there, and even if you try the Ka50, it noses down if you lower collective just as well as it lifts the nose with increasing speed. Polychop is looking at it, but at the moment they are focussing at multicrew and the mistral, which is good as well. Also those testpilots are not available all the time. They did promise to look at the things I have reported, and I am fine with being patient. After all, I don't want that chopper fast, I want it to be good, and this is the only reason I am speaking up. Please let me also emphasize that I do not blame anyone, I am just trying to provide constructive feedback. If I ever become emotional in my response please accept my apologies, I've just pointed this out many times, and I have heard "I can fly it fine, you only need to practice" too many times. After all, I think Polychop does a great job, and I am sincerely looking forward to the day when both Gazelle and 105 are finished, apart from the FM they did an absolutely incredible job so far, and even the competition needs a couple of tries till the FM is right, so this is NO blame at all towards Polychop.

You are misinterpreting something. I never ever ever claimed it is hard to fly. I always claimed: "it does not fly like a helicopter". It simply does not do things a helicopter does, like nosing up with increasing airspeed, nosing up when lifting collective/down when dropping collective, adding a roll component when you press pedal in any direction. It does not do those things at all, despite them being fundamentals of helicopter-flying. In fact, I find pitch and roll is exclusively controlled by cyclic-input. I am still waiting for a helicopter-expert to confirm this is how the gazelle behaves IRL and why, because I am really willing to learn something new, but ever since the gazelle is out and explained my view on this, nobody has stepped forward and brought up an explanation (it is not due to its size, the fenestron or the SAS, yes the SAS would make these effects lesser, but not even the super sophisticated systems in the EC-135 reduces those effects to zero). IMHO the gazelle is defying physics. It is great that you are able to takeoff, land and fly a circuit, but please understand that this does not mean the flightmodel is accurate. Please let me emphasize this again: I NEVER EVER complained about it being hard to or me being unable to fly, it is no problem to adapt to the quirks and fly it, but this does not make it more realistic. I just happen to have spent a lot of time investigating how helicopters are controlled. I learned it in sims, and I got to confirm my findings in real helicopters on the controls, and I can tell you, it is fascinating to sit in the real thing the very first time, take off without help of the PIC and fly away, and you see your hands moving by themselves due to the things you learned in simulators. Taking off the gazelle every time is the complete opposite experience. I just recently got to fly co-seat on a R44 on a photo mission, on the way back the pilot let me take the controls, had to decend 5000ft into a tight valley, I reduced collective to start sinking, put cyclic aft to prevent a complete nose-down attitude (you dont want that in a robinson/low-g pushovers prohibited) while making sure the rotor would not overspeed, performed two circles to bleed altitude and line up for final, as speed decreased I gradually added more collective and eased out the sinking, Once at about 25kias I had to apply forward collective in order not to stop, as the landing spot the pilot wanted me to land at was still 50m ahead. It was not much, a couple of millimeters, barely feelable. Now I expect people to step up and say: "dude, you are comparing a Robinson to a Gazelle!". Yeah you're right, but guess what, the first helicopter I flew IRL was the Bo105, and I think there's few helicopters with a more similar rotorhead to the gazelle. Admitted, it's not fitted with SAS, but: IT WAS THE SAME PROCEDURE! Sure, the Bo is way more direct on input, any input on the stick gets DIRECTLY translated into attitude, very fascinating. But still: Doing an approach works the same, collective down, cyclic aft (the more aft cyclic the faster yo bleed speed), before you come to a hover a tiny little bit cyclic fwd. Now please go and try in the gazelle: Approach at full speed, apply a little bit AFT cyclic to slow down, and hold it there, now to prevent the nose from rising slowly drop collective (this is how you do it in real helicopters, all of them). You will be surprised you will find collective NOT having ANY effect on your nose moving up, even though your cyclic is just a tiny little bit aft. Oh and btw, in the Bo105 if you rise collective, the helicopter will also roll a little to the right, as a result you cannot get out of a high-bank right turn without bleeding massive amounts of altitude, while a 90°-bank left hand turn is no problem (see crash of Siegfried Hermann, on youtube incorrectly labeled as Charly Zimmermann)

Just found a bug in the PLAYER_LEAVE_UNIT event. It seems during this event.iniator:getPlayerName() would return an empty string "" instead of the players name, on a BIRTH event it is correct, if I go specators and trigger the LEAVE_UNIT event it returns "". Edit: tested it for clients, clients don't event trigger the event.

Finally I can also share some praise on the fm, what you are describing is what the Gazelles FM does best, much better than i.e. the huey. Apart from the SAS doing magic, it is the vertical stabilizer on the tail generating enough force to counter the torque from the main rotor, easing the power required of the fenestron. I really like how the Gazelles FM simulates this effect. I can confirm it is basically the same in the Bo105 which I got to fly IRL once, pedals not exactly centered at cruise speed, but more centered than not, and I consider it very much plausible that the SAS does the rest to keep it exactly centered in forward flight.

Do me a favour and ask him if the EC-135 will pitch up if you pull collective in forward flight while keeping cyclic in place. Ask him when he presses full pedal either direction at about 30 knots if the EC-135 helicopter will roll or if he can keep cyclic in place (apart from the obvious yaw). Ask him if applies slight aft cyclic at about 80kias and keeps it in that position, if he is able to stop the helicopter from nosing up by lowering collective until the helicopter stops, or if it will keep nosing up until you put cyclic fwd again. Ask him to repeat the same process in the Gazelle and let us know what he thinks.

I have said this from day one and spent quite some effort via PM explaining why I think the FM very off, the more I look into it, the more off I find it. The last answer I got was they are busy with the mistral and multicrew, and after that is finished they will have a look at the stuff that I have pointed out in quite some detail. The explanation was: "our testpilots did not point these issues out". Basically in my humble opinion, the gazelle tries to fly like a helicopter but fails. The only input affecting pitch and roll is cyclic, where in a real helicopter any input affects pitch and roll. You pull collective, nose goes up. You press a pedal and you will introduce roll (less than yaw of course, but it will roll!). You gain speed your nose will pitch up. Nothing like that is happening in the gazelle, and I am 100% sure this is not because of the semi-rigid rotorhead, the SAS, the fenestron or the gazelle being different. After all it has two spinning disks that are bound to physics. This is just because it is not modeled. If you wanna slow down you apply aft cyclic and hold attitude by lowering collective accordingly, if you do this in the gazelle it will not stop pitching up with aft cyclic no matter how much you lower collective, actually collective seems to have absolutely no influence on pitch attitude AT ALL, which is plain unrealistic. Sorry Polychop, I have been pointing this out since the initial release, and I will continue to point this out until you at least acknoledge there is somethign wrong or explain in a reasonable way why my assumptions are wrong (I am always happy to learn). So far all you said is "there is only tweaks necessary to the flightmodel" and "we cannot simulate the rotorhead 1:1" and "our testpilots are very happy, and they flew the real deal thousands of hours".

But at the same time you give up max deflection, which you can only overcome by using the trim function, which I personally don't on helicopters. I prefer modding my springs to give little to no friction, as trim in a non-ffb stick is just unrealistic and gives away the possibility to actually feel the attitude of the helicopter via the actual stick deflection off center. If you want realism, get an extension to match the throw you are looking for. Especially in helicopters I would not use any kind of curves because of the way they work and are piloted.

As far as I know you need the farp. But it seems like even this is not quite working the way it seems to be supposed to. I've had a case where the farp would only activate if I add a OSA unit (may not be specific to the sa8) in addition to ATC (Humvee/SKP11), Fuel Truck and Ammo Truck ... I would truly appreciate some official word on how the logic works. Beef

I've done that through CTLD-Callbacks, I basically safe the groupname along with the pilots name/ucid once something is unpacked to a table. I then intercept Shot/Hit/Kill events and safe them to another table. Whenever I get a kill event on the Client side (as they dont appear on mission side) I transfer it to the Mission side by saving it to a file, load it on mission side and check if it correlates to an earlier hit, which has all necessary information saved. I do not use SLMod though, but so far I manage to safe scores for a player-deployed sam reliably.

I am so glad I am not the only one who speaks up!!!!!!! This issue is a complete dealbreaker! I have explained it lengthy both in threads and via PM with Roie, last status I got was they are finally looking into it, and it was only not taken care of because the real-Gazelle-Pilots failed to report it ... That said! Yay multicrew! More Yay Mistral!!! Good job Polychop! I am sincerely looking forward to the finished Product! :joystick: :)

I'm afraid you will have to accept to relearning, because the current flightmodel has some quite huge flaws (cyclic being centered in most flyingstates), it is actually currently impossible to fly standard helicopter procedures due to this very fact. I've spent quite some effort explaining this to the devs and I think they finally understood. For instance, decelerating a chopper works by moving cyclic aft and reducing power. If you apply aft cyclic to the current gazelle, it will continue rolling backwards until you stop applying aft cyclic/return to neutral, completely independent of the power setting, which is not how helicopters work. A real helicopter would only continue rolling backwards if you keep power applied, but as airspeed reduces during the following climb, this effect would lessen fast, thats why it is so hard to do backflips with helicopters. I have no reason to believe the gazelle is any different to all other helicopters, and so far nobody has stepped up and explained why the gazelle would be so much different to every single other helicopter (neither SAS nor fenstron would be an explanation). I've tried my best to explain this to the best of my knowledge in a constructive manner. That said, the OPs question on how to use magnetic trim can only yield a valid answer for the current version of the gazelle, and I currently would not even feel a need to use trim at all due to the reasons explained above (cyclic basically centered in all flightphases, unless you command an attitude change).

I agree! It even locks headon now, and the motor is pretty much smokeless too. All those migs accustomed to no head-on offense are super surprised now :megalol: :joystick: :pilotfly: But to stay on-topic, I always uncage. Mapped it to the brakes-in switch on the warthog hotas, so I dont have ro hold it. Had good results, even with the old Aim9, got a bunch of kills off boresight, but the lead solution had to be spot on. I was quite excited when I first saw the missile take off, felt like twice the speed. Dont know how fast it really is, but noticeably faster.

Dear ED, The new introduction of closing the chat by holding Tab makes me wanna write some feedback on the mp-chat function, I'll do my very best to make it as constructive as I possibly can. - the chat window deactivates *all* buttons, on keyboard and joystick. I can very much understand the keyboard, but the joystick must be a product of code, rather than intention. It would be great if you could not block joystick presses, when the chat-window is active, which would make some faster reactions possible, if you accidentally decide it's smart to type while in combat and you find yourself in the need to press a hotas-button NOW (which currently would not do anything unless you close the chat first) - closing the chat by holding Tab makes you loose valuable split seconds in a wrong situation in multiplayer because you need to press a button NOW, but the chat window is open for a likely not so smart reason (typing in combat, i.e., I dont recommend it). I would strongly suggest against it. To be fair, I found it quite entertaining to watch people in the MP-Chat when they try it the fist time and are completely lost (it was at least 15 ppl in the first hour i played after the patch came out), like I was myself. However, I don't see any benefits from this method, but I see a number of drawbacks. If there's a benefit I don't see, my ears are wide open. - the biggest problem is see with chat is that ever since the introduction of 1.5 the text is completely unreadable on certain backgrounds. Think blue-text and blue sky, white text on snowcovered mountains. The gaming industry repeatedly came up with nice ways to deal with this in the past 15-25 years, and honestly DCS is the only "game" where this is a problem. For instance a black outline, or some kind of shadow should do the trick. Really no rocket science, I would sincerely appreciate if you guys could make the chat readable on all backgrounds, as ever since the first release of 1.5 I find myself looking anywhere with trackir to actually be able to read the chatmessages. - last but not least: not being able to distinguish between team messages and global messages is something that I initially didn't feel like reporting, but since it still has not changed ever since 1.5. came out I really feel a strong need to point this out. I do understand you guys have other priorities. I do however also have enough knowledge about Game-Development and Coding to be aware that coding a simple yet effective chat-system is not something that will keep a decent coder busy longer than a couple of days, where other tasks may take months or even years. I would sincerely appreciate a fix of the things I mentioned above. Thank you very much! beef

turn up the missile seeker volume nob.

Hello! I think I've read that the AA1-AA2 modes are broken in the initial release, however i do not know how broken they are. I seem to get AA2 Mode working just fine if I manually lock the target in search mode. I still find it incredibly hard to hit the target because of the rather wide spread of the guns. A precision burst feels quite impossible even if 50m behind the target and pipper on. And the second thing I found, even if I visually see 3-4 hits, the plane (mig21 in mp in this case) keeps flying with no visual damage. While I am not entirely sure if this is the case, the Mirage2000 had a similar problem, where shells carried too little explosives to be actually harmful. I think it's possible that this is the case here. Maybe you guys can have a look. On another note, I kinda bought the F5 during pre-purchase bonus-time kinda impulsively, much more because I wanted to support the Devs than because I wanted the plane. Now that I've spent a bunch of hours on it, I must say I'm extremely suprised by how well it already works and how much fun it is to fly, especially against mig21 in MP. Big thanks and lots of respect for that, Belsimtek :)

you want the seeker uncaged once you got a lock. If you dont uncage the missile, it will loose lock as soon as you move the target off missile-boresight. If you uncage the missile before you have lock, the missile will look randomly but not boresight, making it hard for you to get a lock. So: aim to missile boresight, get lock-tone, uncage the missle, aim for some lead to dramatically improve hit probability, after you launched the missile you can release the uncage button.

I really can't wait till Sling-Loading will finally become stable in Multiplayer, the Forestry Operations are SO MUCH FUN!!! :pilotfly: ${1}

I can feel your pain, I had about a similar frustartion when the change was introduced, but to be brutally honest. Ever since my flying style has changed and I'm not looking back. My turns are way more concious, I manage to preserve my energy much better and yes, I still wrecked two wings in the past month, and everytime I hope it's gonna be the last. To give you a tip on the way: I found that the ACS manages the Gs nicely when below subsonic, as long as you pull symmetrical Gs (only stick aft, no aileron input), what usually breaks my wings is when I'm already high G, and start rolling, creating asymmetric load on the wings. Be concious about when you pull gs and when you roll and how much or not you mix those two components, and your wings will break a lot less!

I just noticed that in DCS 1.5.4.54855 update 1 there is no place information in the event when taking off from a FARP. When taking off from an Airport the place is being dispatched in the event, also when landing on Airport and FARP, but NOT when taking off from a FARP. I also noticed the LAND and TAKEOFF events are now triggered anywhere when a chopper lands, which I think is a very cool thing, thank you for this addition ED! If there is a need for the mission file for testing please let me know, but I think this should be easily reproducable. beef

i fired 6 R73s yesterday on a head on A10a from 5km in a burst and all 6 missed (had to create a kill event for script-testing in mp environment, AI vs Client #1). I noticed missile weakness in MP as well, it is definitely a lot worse than before 1.5.4. On a positive note: I sincerely enjoy the rapid and severe increase in turning fights!

try a repair on your installation: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2548018

While I do understand your frustration JSF, it does not particularly fill your request with sense. From the year I've been here, I understood that ED makes the missiles fit into the information they have about their performance. While this indeed creates some discrepancy, I have no reason to believe that I have the ability to collect better or more reliable information than ED has, who have been working in this industry for decades, and I would frankly assume the same for you. Yes I agree, in terms of gameplay-balance the Su is not exactly on par with the F15, the Amraam is out of question superior to the 27 and its variants, and probably the same will happen with the Mirage in the hands of a capable pilot. But DCS is not a game per se, it is a Simulator, it's primary purpose is to simulate RL as best as it can based on the Information available, which is - with all due respect - quite thin. That said, from my personal experience especially in the past 6 months after I got some practice and tried a bunch of different tactical approaches, I find myself to have a PK of about 70-80% with 27ER missiles. I have learned which kind of shooting solution works and which one doesn't, and I usually fire only when I am certain I am not wasting the missile. Yes, I usually fire from within 10km or less, and in 50% of the time the enemy is unaware of my presence and/or location while I am aware of his presence since 50km or more. The point I am trying to make is, it is not about what kind of weapons you carry, it is about how you employ them. This goes along with the fight-report you are quoting. We do not know about the experience of those pilots (a russian mercenary might be an experienced retired combat pilot or someone who dropped of the airforce soon after he got his badge with no experience). We do not know what kind of solution they had and what their intentions have been when they fired. The only thing we have is those numbers, but we do not have enough information to judge about the quality of the missile, as there's more factors in that than how many hit and how many missed.

Earm. I am confused. Did you just say you guys will settle with a flight model that is good enough? Nobody is expecting you create perfection. But I am indeed expecting you to make it is a good as possible, I would be hugely disappointed if you guys would settle for good enough. :huh: No offense. But an honest reaction.