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Is the flight dynamics ever gonna get fixed?


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Just curious if it is because its had the most unrealistic flight dynamics ever. We make fun of it cause it like  a radio controlled helo in an aerobatic competition. If you ever seen those, you'll know what I mean. Would be nice to see this helo updated though.

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10 hours ago, Buzzles said:

Yes, once they've finished the Kiowa:

Two weeks later, after facing community backlash, they said they would develop both in parallel instead of just leaving the Gazelle on the shelf.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4045817&postcount=33

 

Considering how the Gazelle isn't being updated, the Kiowa isn't out yet and wont be anytime soon because of the Mi-24 entering EA (staggered releases) I dont think the Gazelle will be updated in a long, long, long time.

 

So, as usual, expect very little from polychop and keep that in mind when considering the Kiowa.


Edited by Sephyrius
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  • 7 months later...

Hi Guys, I have also noted that the flight model is a little off. Regarding the Gazelle,  Does not auto rotated property (rotor RPM not manageable, Airspeed and inertia is off),  Auto pilot modes not working, I have would like to add that I have flown the Astar B-3 and very familiar with Aerospatiale (now Airbus) flight Characteristics. I also love the module and would like to see it improved

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15 hours ago, Capt Bob said:

I also love the module and would like to see it improved

I'm waiting for this since 2016.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I will leave this here with one caveat, I know the Gazelle is off with the flight model. It's definitely too light and when you add weapons on it it doesn't even change in weight. Having proper weight would go a long way to it having momentum properly. That being said, it has a rigid rotor system, just like the BO-105 (in fact the same one). It can change direction quickly. It is a very light helicopter. Does it overperform (in DCS)? Yeah pretty sure it is. Can it do these things IRL but to not such a degree as in DCS? Absolutely. 

You wanna see UFO helicopters? Here ya go:

BO-105

 

Gazelle

 

Lynx

 

Apache

 


Edited by csdigitaldesign
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@csdigitaldesign

Thanks for the videos!
Inspired by these, I had to take it up for a spin. I'm no flight engineer, but it really feels light with lack of momentum/weight as others have pointed out.
But I feel what's very wrong is how the controls are implemented. The FFB is totally borked, and one better turn it off if one doesn't have an FFB stick. I stopped flying it because of this, but today I re-discovered why it doesn't even work with an FFB stick. The trimming is all wrong. It ads to the trim. Not exponentially like the UH-60 community module does. But rather doubles it. To overcome this I disable the the trim button in the module, and use an external app called simFFB.
One can easily observe this while pressing "T".
First picture is untrimmed, and then I trim a little with the app in the other pictures, without moving or trimming the stick. I only hit "T", You can see it gets totally out of whack in both axis.

image.png image.png image.png image.png

Also I keep thinking about that video analyzing and showing that it keeps rolling with little input while it shouldn't, and that it's probably overly sensitive.
So If they could just fix the controls and those issues first, I believe it will go a long way!

Cheers!

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15 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

@csdigitaldesign

Thanks for the videos!
Inspired by these, I had to take it up for a spin. I'm no flight engineer, but it really feels light with lack of momentum/weight as others have pointed out.
But I feel what's very wrong is how the controls are implemented. The FFB is totally borked, and one better turn it off if one doesn't have an FFB stick. I stopped flying it because of this, but today I re-discovered why it doesn't even work with an FFB stick. The trimming is all wrong. It ads to the trim. Not exponentially like the UH-60 community module does. But rather doubles it. To overcome this I disable the the trim button in the module, and use an external app called simFFB.
One can easily observe this while pressing "T".
First picture is untrimmed, and then I trim a little with the app in the other pictures, without moving or trimming the stick. I only hit "T", You can see it gets totally out of whack in both axis.

image.png image.png image.png image.png

Also I keep thinking about that video analyzing and showing that it keeps rolling with little input while it shouldn't, and that it's probably overly sensitive.
So If they could just fix the controls and those issues first, I believe it will go a long way!

Cheers!

Yeah I agree there's not enough mass on the Gazelle. There's some other issues as well.. but a lot of people think it's WAYYY off when it's not really like that. Certainly it responds too quickly with inputs but I really wonder if that comes back to mass (which effects momentum etc). It is however a very twitchy helicopter IRL... I hope they eventually do get it adjusted with a new FM... but even after that I'm sure we'll still see some people complaining because they don't think a helicopter can do what this helicopter can do.


Edited by csdigitaldesign
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1 hour ago, csdigitaldesign said:

Yeah I agree there's not enough mass on the Gazelle. There's some other issues as well.. but a lot of people think it's WAYYY off when it's not really like that. Certainly it responds too quickly with inputs but I really wonder if that comes back to mass (which effects momentum etc). It is however a very twitchy helicopter IRL... I hope they eventually do get it adjusted with a new FM... but even after that I'm sure we'll still see some people complaining because they don't think a helicopter can do what this helicopter can do.

 

Yeah, haters will be haters. 😊 

I will definately get the Kiowa, and I hopefully they'll tune the FM, with the incorrectly roll issue. And FFB is kinda important for me too. 😊 

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I have little experience on helicopters than fixed-wings. But I did feel something strange on the gazelle among all the choppers we have. The gazelle seems to lack some basic stability as a chopper. When cyclic moved away and back to trimmed center, the gazelle seems to show more tendency to just stay at new pitch and roll attitude instead of recover former stable attitude like others. Is it strange with improper weight or as it should be?

Besides it never gets overspeed to damage itself when dive from extremely high altitude, and simply increasing collective would save you out of any vortex ring crisis. I think these qualitative anomalies are the true FM problem.

As for the maneuverability after that, I totally believe it's correct as it should be, and even other helicopters we have could also do some loops and barrels.

Human allowed, demon allowed, Deka never allowed.

Distort allowed, provoke allowed, fight back never allowed.

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The Gazelle is probably my favourite helicopter in DCS (yes, even including the Apache!).  I have flown in (but not flown) the Gazelle a couple of times, so by no means an expert but it is a light, responsive and agile helicopter.  It isn't meant to feel like the Huey or Hip (It is 1/2 the weight of the Huey, 1/5 the weight of the Apache, and 1/7 of the Hip).  Realism is a two-way street, for a simulator to feel realistic, you have to do things in a realistic manner.  If you fly it like a real helicopter, then it behaves pretty much like a real helicopter.  If you fly it in unusual ways at the edge of the envelope, then you will get unusual results.  It definitely needs some work, but is far from a lost cause.

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On 4/1/2022 at 2:56 AM, Torbernite said:

I have little experience on helicopters than fixed-wings. But I did feel something strange on the gazelle among all the choppers we have. The gazelle seems to lack some basic stability as a chopper. When cyclic moved away and back to trimmed center, the gazelle seems to show more tendency to just stay at new pitch and roll attitude instead of recover former stable attitude like others. Is it strange with improper weight or as it should be?

Besides it never gets overspeed to damage itself when dive from extremely high altitude, and simply increasing collective would save you out of any vortex ring crisis. I think these qualitative anomalies are the true FM problem.

As for the maneuverability after that, I totally believe it's correct as it should be, and even other helicopters we have could also do some loops and barrels.

You can absolutely overspeed it. It will 100% go into retreating blade stall. You can also put it into VRS... it's just very hard to do because it's weight is far too little. It tends to "float" instead of dropping when you drop the collective to zero. It floats so much that it's hard to build up enough speed to get it into a vortex ring state... and that's why people think it doesn't go into VRS... it's something you have to really try hard to get into. If it had more mass, and thus more inertia, it would be much easier to get it into VRS... 

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5 hours ago, csdigitaldesign said:

You can also put it into VRS... it's just very hard to do because it's weight is far too little.

Actually the combination of lighter mass AND smaller diameter main rotor, mean VRS risk in the Gazelle should be similar to that of the Huey.

Whether VRS is over modelled for other helicopters in DCS is another debate.

5 hours ago, csdigitaldesign said:

If it had more mass, and thus more inertia, it would be much easier to get it into VRS... 

A heavier helicopter has to be supported by stronger/ faster downwash (in a hover), so requires a fast descent rate to enter VRS, IMHO the risk of accidently entering VRS is thus reduced.

What more mass/inertia does bring is an increased risk of "settling with power", where a fast descent (close to the ground) can't be stopped quickly.

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  • 3 months later...

Here is an interesting video about an ex-military British gazelle pilot.

In a nutshell, the Gazelle flight model is not that far off. The first issue he states is that the 'cyclic is too stable'. In the real bird you never can let go of the stick unless it has both skids on the ground - meaning you need to constantly 'stir in the pot' so to speak to keep the thing level or have it keep going where you want it to. It acts too much like a Cessna in DCS once you have it on the move.

The second issue is that the Saturation-Y of the pitch and roll channels (in this case the cyclic) greatly depend on your hardware - and not only for the Gazelle. If you have a control stick with a short base (such as most off the shelf commercial sticks - Saiteks, Logitechs, CH-products, Virpil etc...in fact any stick that sits on a table surface), the 'Saturation Y' setting in the controls should be somewhere in between 60% and 80%, both in the cyclic pitch and roll channels. If you are the lucky one who got a real Gazelle stick from a scrapyard somewhere, nailed it to the ground and hooked that up to DCS, the Saturation-Y setting should be left to  100% - standard value. The more saturation, the more you will jerk the bird around with small motions of the stick with a tabletop setup. In a real gazelle, where the stick is more than 40 cm high, moving the stick say 30 cm to the left, at the base it will only move maybe 1 cm, hence 100% Saturation at the top is required.

When using a stick with a short base, less saturation is required so the stick will probably move full range 5 cm on the top and 1 cm at the base, hence a Saturation-Y  of 60 to 80% will do.

Just remember, the smaller the stick the less saturation 😉 which kinda makes sense. All other controls (collective and rudder) can be left untouched.

The impossible-to-come-by-correct Saturation-Y setting values also make it clear that you will never get it 'completely' right, (on any module) or on par with the real thing, for that you will have to buy a Gazelle and fly it for real. Perfectionism as you can see, is NOT an asset in your life, on the contrary, it drags you down.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Edited by dertien
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On 3/26/2022 at 10:01 AM, csdigitaldesign said:

I will leave this here with one caveat, I know the Gazelle is off with the flight model. It's definitely too light and when you add weapons on it it doesn't even change in weight. Having proper weight would go a long way to it having momentum properly. That being said, it has a rigid rotor system, just like the BO-105 (in fact the same one). It can change direction quickly. It is a very light helicopter. Does it overperform (in DCS)? Yeah pretty sure it is. Can it do these things IRL but to not such a degree as in DCS? Absolutely. 

Actually the gazelle doesn't have the same rotor as the BO105. A kinda obvious hint would be the number of blades (4 on the BO105 and 3 on the gazelle)
The gazelle has a semi articulated rotor system vs the fully rigid one of the bo105. However the BO105 rotor was tested for use on the gazelle but proved unsatisfactory. 

The gazelle has some well known FM issues. I am hoping it eventually gets looked at. We shall see... 

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On 8/3/2022 at 6:25 PM, dertien said:

 

To be fair, the fact that a helicopter FM has the cyclic behaviour of a fixed wing aircraft (13:00 and 24:30) is a pretty huge deal. If a fixed wing module was released with the cyclic behaviour of a chopper, there'd be an outrage, but the fixed wing playerbase is larger so there'd be more familiarity with the issue. I have zero clue how this even got past the QA process.

The other FM issues are footnotes in comparison and the saturation issue is easily fixed by the user.

But all I know is that while it works fine to fly the Gazelle, it teaches me terrible habits because the basics are wrong, and if I wanted simplistic arcade solutions I'd stick to arcade games.

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Well, looking at yet another review from a real military pilot in the video below who flies/flew the Kiowa, and has talked to a few real Gazelle pilots. He doesn't seem to share the opinion that the Gazelle is flying 'on rails' - There are however some differences in the way he sets up his controls, but...

A) Controls setup

All in all het tells the same story as the Gaz 341 pilot from the video above. The saturation values cannot be left on default because of the length of the stick handle. The pilot in the video above who flew the Gaz 341 also said that the Gaz 342 is a heavily pimped and updated version of the 341 which has even more power and will behave even more jittery. His Y-saturation values to get the 'feel' he remembers from the Gaz 341 will have different are higher (Y-sat 60% in pitch and roll channels) as opposed to the settings in the video below:

Settings in a nutshell which were also confirmed by the Gaz pilots het talked to and Polychop themselves.

Options->Special-> FF both on zero and un-tick the FF checkbox.

Rudder - Saturation-Y: 60%
Collective - Saturation-Y: 70%
Pitch - Saturation-Y: 40%
Roll - Saturation-Y 25%

As an addition he set the rudder curve to -15 (something that felt 'better' to him)

2) Augmentation

Another thing we should keep in our minds is that military helicopters (even derivatives of commercial non military helos) apparently have augmentations, making them basically a lot more stable than their civilian non augmented counterparts. He discusses this in the video above as well. It is very likely that the Gaz 342 by Polychop which is a military chopper, not just a civilian chopper with a new paint scheme and some avionics that enables it to fly missiles, has this augmentation, while the Huey which is a very old machine in comparison does not.

3) Conclusion

The only problem is that when rolling the Gaz left or right while in a non hover turn having established forward flight, and putting the stick in the neutral position after initiating the turn, the chopper should straighten - come back to a neutral position faster all by itself.

Polychop is aware of this, and this will hopefully be addressed in an update.

All in all it does not seem to be a bad module at all, and the flight model is not as borked as is said.  

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5 hours ago, dertien said:

2) Augmentation

Another thing we should keep in our minds is that military helicopters (even derivatives of commercial non military helos) apparently have augmentations, making them basically a lot more stable than their civilian non augmented counterparts. He discusses this in the video above as well. It is very likely that the Gaz 342 by Polychop which is a military chopper, not just a civilian chopper with a new paint scheme and some avionics that enables it to fly missiles, has this augmentation, while the Huey which is a very old machine in comparison does not.

The Huey's Stabilizer Bar performs a similar function (SME feedback is that ED's Huey is missing this RL stabilization).

 


Edited by Ramsay

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9 hours ago, dertien said:

Another thing we should keep in our minds is that military helicopters (even derivatives of commercial non military helos) apparently have augmentations, making them basically a lot more stable than their civilian non augmented counterparts. He discusses this in the video above as well. It is very likely that the Gaz 342 by Polychop which is a military chopper, not just a civilian chopper with a new paint scheme and some avionics that enables it to fly missiles, has this augmentation, while the Huey which is a very old machine in comparison does not.

Debates over the Polychop SA342's flight model have been done to death at this point. You cannot get past the fundamental inaccuracy of the FM. Full stop. It doesn't hit known data points and only sorta resembles a helicopter feeling. Axis tuning no doubt helps (even I use Casmo's settings to good effect), but at the end of the day you are in essence going a vague likeness of a helicopter. That doesn't make it bad, it only makes it inaccurate. The SA342 can be a lot of fun to play around with and now that there have been inroads on items such as multicrew it has greatly expanded the fun factor.

Having said that, I have to vehemently disagree with the idea that civilian derivatives of military helicopters are somehow using a completely different SAS or SCAS setup. This is totally incorrect and reeks of misunderstanding basic helicopter flight systems. The comparison made is toward uniquely different aircraft: a UH-1H with a stabilizer bar versus a AH-64 is apples and oranges. The main reason you see aircraft like the Bell 204 in widespread civilian usage is simply that such aircraft are far cheaper to buy and more economical to operate than a modern EC145. You'll find that a lot of the more big, expensive civilian helis like the Bell 214 will use a SCAS out of necessity, due to the use cases of the helicopter. The 214's SCAS is fundamentally identical to the SCAS on the AH-1 series of helicopters, up to the Z model.

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Inaccurate or not

1 hour ago, NeedzWD40 said:

Debates over the Polychop SA342's flight model have been done to death at this point. You cannot get past the fundamental inaccuracy of the FM. Full stop. It doesn't hit known data points and only sorta resembles a helicopter feeling. Axis tuning no doubt helps (even I use Casmo's settings to good effect), but at the end of the day you are in essence going a vague likeness of a helicopter. That doesn't make it bad, it only makes it inaccurate. The SA342 can be a lot of fun to play around with and now that there have been inroads on items such as multicrew it has greatly expanded the fun factor.

Having said that, I have to vehemently disagree with the idea that civilian derivatives of military helicopters are somehow using a completely different SAS or SCAS setup. This is totally incorrect and reeks of misunderstanding basic helicopter flight systems. The comparison made is toward uniquely different aircraft: a UH-1H with a stabilizer bar versus a AH-64 is apples and oranges. The main reason you see aircraft like the Bell 204 in widespread civilian usage is simply that such aircraft are far cheaper to buy and more economical to operate than a modern EC145. You'll find that a lot of the more big, expensive civilian helis like the Bell 214 will use a SCAS out of necessity, due to the use cases of the helicopter. The 214's SCAS is fundamentally identical to the SCAS on the AH-1 series of helicopters, up to the Z model.

The reason for my posts here is as follows:

I was simply trying to find and point out sources of what real helo and Gazelle pilots had to say about the DCS Gazelle's flight model. It was not my intention to portray the flight model as flawless. It is clear that it is not. What I wanted to do was find real Gazelle pilots on Youtube who would shed light on how to setup the Saturation-Y curves as to get as close as possible to the 'real feeling' as we can with the flight model that is there now and also the reason for the Y-curve-numbers. It is also clear that the closer we get to the real thing by fiddling with the settings, and get those right (at least), the less of a conversion leap it will be to switch from this failed and fiddled configuration to as close as possible to the corrected flight model when and if PC decides to update the Gaz.

Inaccurate flight model or not, a number of things I pointed out here (such as tuning the Y-curves) are also valid for all other modules, and an understanding of how they work. I did not know that, and I simply wanted to share.

I am myself not a helo pilot, and I don't know SAS or SCAS from Swiss cheese, and I appreciate what you are saying here but that does not discredit what the Gaz 341 pilot in the first YT movie above said about the flight model. I was merely connecting dots.

 


Edited by dertien
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1 hour ago, RealDCSpilot said:

You cannot get past the fundamental inaccuracy of the FM. Full stop.

I was on here like 7 years ago (I'm not exaggerating) trying to explain the obvious core issues with the cyclic behavior of the DCS Gazelle.  I even took an in cockpit video of a RL Gaz pilot, and made a GIF to illustrate the fact that the cyclic behaves normally - that is, it doesn't snap back to center after inputs. 

I have had alot of fun with the gaz (Not in a looong time, though, since the LIttle Bird mod came out.  Highly recommended.), but the problems with it are substantial, and should have been addressed years ago.

There is no "winning" an argument with those who still defend it.  The appeals to "authority" while ignoring logic and evidence are tedious to say the least.

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