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I would guess that it also would require loads of more CPU to model that for every unit, so it's probably a optimization as well :thumbup:

Thank you for many of your answers, I think the posts by sobek and also the link in the last post from Frederf (http://www.start-flying.com/new%20site/how_gyros_work.htm) made me understand the concept. That link points to the only page I have found that actually mentions the differences in rotational direction in autorotation and a slow moving rotor. :thumbup: My summarized version of autorotation (please correct me if I'm wrong): In the case of traditional old windmills, which had rotors that wore turned by the wind in such a way that the wind "deflected" the blades. This is how I first thought of autorotation, but; One discovered a long time ago that if one reduces the pitch angle to only a few degrees, the windmill can rotate in the opposite direction and instead of the blades being "deflected" by the wind they are instead pulled into the wind by the aerodynamically forces! This is the same thing that makes it possible for sailing ships to sail into the wind direction for example. And also the same concept when an airplane glides, although in that case one usually have a negative pitch angle of the wings instead of a positive in the case of autogyros. As seen in this picture the Lifting force is always perpendicularity to the wind direction, so when the helicopter descends, the wind is coming from below and the Lift force is therefor pointed upwards and to the front. This cancels out the drag force and therefore a constant RPM can be maintaned, even though the Pitch is in the opposite direction from old rotor models. In the middle section of the rotor where these conditions are more favorable the total horizontal force is tilted to the front and in the other sections tilted to the back so the resultant force of the entire rotor is zero (this is during a constant RPM). But, however in the game DCS: Ka-50... :music_whistling: Even if one increases the rotor pitch to the maximum angle of 15 degrees for the Ka-50 the rotor still maintains in autorotation mode. Although from some mathematics I made the entire rotor should be in stall during these conditions and therefore it should slow down over time and at the end stop entirely. But this never happens. Also in autorotations guides for other helicopters it is always mentioned that it is critical that one reduces the collective quickly after engine failure, but it doesn't seem to be the case with Ka-50? Some mathematics for autorotation of the Ka-50 in vertical decent with full pitch on the rotors: Engine vs Rotor RPM ratio for Ka-50 = 55.15 100% Rotor RPM (calculated from engine to rotor ratio) = 354 RPM = 5.90 Rotations per Second Circumference of rotor is 45.4 meter Rotor velocity at the tip at 50% rotor RPM (corresponds to autorotation with full 15 degree rotor pitch) = 45.4*5.9*0.5 = 134 m/s Descend rate of Ka-50 (in autorotation with full 15 degree rotor pitch) = 12 m/s Relative wind pitch = arctan(12/134) = 5.1 degrees Angle of attack = 15 + 5.1 = 20.1 degrees Which would mean that the tips is stalled, which in turn means every other part of the rotor is even more stalled. (Assuming that stall AoA is below 20 degrees for the Ka-50, since the stall AoA is usually around 15 degrees) How come it is still possible to maintain a constant rotor RPM of the Ka-50 even during these conditions?

I started the game to look at this effect.. it seems like the head stays with the cockpit much much more than it stays with the horizon... therefore I would guess that the small head movement that occurs automatically relative to the cockpit is a way of simulating the G effects and the natural head movement you would make if your body would rotate for real. I think the effect is fine as it is, but since at least one other person seems the think otherwise shouldn't it be possible to turn it of in some config file?

I know that some log files only writes on mission exit.. so the hard drive isn't used during flight.. don't know about CockpitCommandsLog.log though...

Yes I have read that as well, but why is the Total Aerodynamic Force vector inclined forward even when AoA is positive? That is the question... :music_whistling: From this picture it seems like the Lift vector is always perpendicular to the Wind vector, is this true and is it the same for an ordinary airplane?

This actually makes some sense... :thumbup: But when gliding an airplane you must have a negative AOA or you would stall after some time since only the gravity can make you go forward, right? But in the Ka-50 you can have an AoA that is grater than 10 degrees (10 degree pitch plus the fact that the air comes from below since you are falling) and still gain rotor RPM... this is what is confusing me...

Is it only the in game 3D graphics that are elongated or is text/gauges that overlays the 3D graphics (for example ctrl+pause FPS counter or ctrl+enter Axis gauge) also elongated? In the Nvidia control panel look at the option for flat screen scaling (but this only applies if you have a lower resolution than the monitors native resolution) Have you tested windowed mode?

I have smoothing at 30 in the TrackIR software, higher than that and my head is slow like syrup :music_whistling: But at the same time I have reduced the sensitivity of my head movements in the TrackIR software as well (since the standard settings was way to sensitive for me) Test this: Turn of every light in the room just to be sure that there isn't any interference. Have the Trackir at some medium distance since I wold guess that longer distances would make the readout of your head more shaky (I have approx. 1-1.5 meter) Reduce the sensitivity of TrackIR but this will make you have you turn your head more to do the same change in view angle in game. (Change the curves for the different axis for a your profile in TrackIR software to have lower values) Look at the Gauges in TrackIR software and see if you can see the same "shakes" there as you notice in the game.

Looks like a good tip, I will try that! :thumbup: What I have been doing so far is to: Turn both Cyclic and Ruder to the right (but not aiming at any specific rudder input, only to help the turn) Increase Collective to maintain height And using forwards/backwards collective to maintain airspeed (not needed if you use the rudder for that?!)

I haven't tested this but to sync voice files to an aircraft doing random smoke runs inside an area you could set a trigger for that aircraft to start the voice file when he is inside that trigger zone, and not having his ordinary waypoint going through that zone, thus only activating the voice file when he is close to the enemy and on his attack run?

Look in external view during high speed flight (F2) and you will see how close the blades are to each other :thumbup:

The only time I have noticed that the AP is fighting me which is worth mentioning is the Heading-Hold feature when I'm not on a straight course and when I doesn't have the turn-to-target switch on... (Therefore I have only Pitch and Bank Hold turned on during normal flight, with them turned of the Ka-50 is to hard to manage at the same time as doing combat) Although keep in mind that in the real Ka-50 you can always feel the controls with hands and feet and pressing the trim button there is much easier since it only removes the springs to the cyclic for a small second, not recenter the whole position of the joystick as it does for normal Joystick users.

Have you looked in the Ctrl+Enter mode to see how the axis behaves and also turned of heading hold and reset trim etc. so you can remove any suspicions that it's the helicopter it self that wants to turn...? If the axis reported by the joystick itself is in the center position when you have centerd it then it's something in the game that is spooky, so if the rudder works great in other games and when you look int the control panel then you are probable experiancing somthing some problems in Ka-50 alone.

Sorry about that, didn't mean it in that way... :music_whistling: I'm not sure if anyone have thought about it, but what I am trying to understand is; If you blow into a fan from below the fan will start to rotate in one direction, but in during autorotation (both coaxial and singel rotor helicopters) the rotors rotates in the opposite direction to how this fan would rotate. I have even made experiments at home that gives the results that is contradictory to how the rotors rotate in Ka-50 and also from what I have read from autorotation manuals. In the Ka-50 this happens even if you increase your cyclic to a maximum value which lowers the rotor RPM but if you decrease the cyclic only by a small amount the RPM increases again, indicating that the forward aerodynamically force is larger than the drag even at high pitch angles. My guess is that the phenomena that gives this unintuitive result is much more complex than one can easily explain and therefore left out from helicopter manuals which only explain how to operate the helicopter during engine failure. The real question is why the resulting aerodynamic force in the driving region (explained in the link LIONPRIDE wrote) is pointed forwards in relative to that rotor and therefore maintaining rotor RPM. Even when one is not in forward flight which means only dropping straight down and still have a large pitch angle on the rotors? I hope it made some sense to someone.. :thumbup:

Thank you for linking to Wikipedia as if i haven't already checked that! Second, that page doesn't explain anything covering the complex aerodynamics of autorotation which would explains the unintuitive rotation directing of the rotors during autorotation and nether does any other page I found!

Edit: Scroll down to Post #16 to see the explanation... After being puzzled about how autorotation works on an aerodynamic level for a couple of days now and not finding any good literature on the internet explain this I'm asking here. :music_whistling: http://www.vimeo.com/3131589 This is what I have noticed by looking in Ka-50 (also by readnig about autorotation) and what I have experienced during tests of home made rotors or fans, the rotation direction is in the oposite direction. (press HD to look at HD) If I would make a rotor out of paper (I have tried this) and drop it from some height in my living room or if I blow into a fan for example, the direction that the rotor would want to spin in is quite easy to determine (look at the video above). Although during autorotation of helicopters the rotors turn the opposite direction that one would think is most intuitive. So my first guess was that when one have reduces the collective to 0 degrees of pitch the shape of the rotors makes them want to turn in the "wrong" direction. To test this i started my Ka-50 and turned of the engines at 1000+ meters and increased the collective to 10+ degrees of pitch and of course the rotor RPM reduces as expected.... but only to about 50% of normal RPM... from my logic the rotor would want to stop completely and turn around into the opposite direction but this never happens. So my guess is ether one of these: I have missed something embarrassingly simple. There is something more aerodynamically complex happening during autorotation that I have missed.

The limiter for you is most probably the CPU, so you can easily up the GF to 16x AA and 16x AF without any reduction in FPS. Also reducing some GFX options in the game does increase FPS for me (probably they are more CPU demanding than GPU demanding) for example, Water to normal, Shadows to Active Planar.

1. Havn't noticed this myself but if it's true i would also want to know why... 2. I think it has to do what kind of AI you have set for the unit, you select different ones by changing the task for the group (CAS, SEAD, Gound Attack etc.) 3. This would be very useful and I have no idea of how to do it!

Sorry didn't know that, I'm more of a physics guy I guess :smartass: But I still think it's a good question!

I don't think that what you are explaining is called Coriolis effect but instead conservation of angular momentum (that is what makes a spinning ice skater speed up when they move their center of mass closer to the spinning axis). Coriolis effect is a very weak force (usaually) that has to do with motion of something on another moving body, for example moving clouds on the rotating earth and in which direction these clouds will rotate around themselves, and this force is proportional to what frame of reference you use, for example the force is different if the observer is rotating with the earth or if he is stationary and looks at the spinning earth from a distance. And in many cases the Coriolis effect has it's origin in physical laws like conservation of angular momentum but they are not the same. Anyway, it would be interesting to get a complete list of what physical laws BS simulates!

I have seen the same problem as well as a friend of mine, ether you have to stay in game all the time or play in window mode to be sure it doesn't crash. But in window mode the FPS is reduced drastically so that's not an option for me...

Is more detailed information about the Vikhr classified or is it possible to find some more information on how the missile works in greater detail (Wiki etc. doesn't help much)? (Where does ED get their information about the weapons when they model them in the game?)

I didn't look there first either, I searched the forums for a while to find out what the command was... because games doesn't usually specify what the commands are enable FPS counters etc.

I agree, even though I have a good sense of what the different weapons do, it would be nice with a real life description of when different weapons are used and which is preferred in different situations on the Ka-50 of course.

I play almost exclusively in COOP with friends, and it can be very time consuming to create your own missions, but with a little knowledge of the editor it's quite easy to convert all the SP missions into multiplayer COOP. :thumbup: