User Experiance Review

[nomdeplume]

I think the tutorials aren't too bad, however I agree it would really help if the voiceover would wait for you to perform the steps before continuing. Having it highlight the control(s) in question would be good too. For me, the biggest flaw of the existing training for Black Shark is the basics of flying, i.e. what all the flight stablisation buttons do, how to actually perform a control hover, etc. Every time I try to do the control hover I end up slewing all over the place like a drunkard. This is probably a misconfiguration of my controls, but since there's no nice walk through of what to do and what should happen, it's hard to determine.

 

That leads me to another thing I'd like to see in these types of games: assistance with setting up your joystick profile. I actually enjoy this process, but I find it hard to unlearn bad settings I've made. As a newbie it's hard to work out which controls are actually important to have at your fingertips so there's a lot of guesswork, and the controls that seem important when you're just learning to fly often end up not being so important once you're used to it and actually trying to engage in combat. DCS does help with this a bit by listing the controls on the cyclic and collective sticks, but you need to already be pretty familiar with the simulation in order to work that out. In addition, it would be nice to have some straightforward way of ensuring your sensitivity curves and deadzones settings are 'correct' for the aircraft, rather than spending hours being frustrated at your inability to control the chopper until you finally stumble across a forum post suggesting lowering the sensitivity near the centered position to give you finer control. This kind of information should be presented by the game as early as possible so you can learn basic flight with a sane and properly configured controller.

 

I'd also like to see training missions you get to fly with an AI buddy. I really liked the familiarisation flight that kicks off the Deployment campaign, and I think something like this would be a great way to let a newcomer immediately start flying the aircraft, with a friendly voice telling you what to do and why you're doing it.

 

Ideally I'd envisage a two-stage training programme: the first being very gamey and focussing on just getting your controls set up in a sane manner, probably starting the player in the air and letting you fly around a bit. No landing, no complex avionics, just the very basics. This sort of stands in for the years of experience in flying similar aircraft the pilot would actually have before getting in a combat helo or jet, as well as configuring the controllers which is a decidely unrealistic (but utterly necessarsy) thing to do be doing in a sim.

 

The second stage would be more realistic, starting from almost-cold on the ramp, with just the radio on so your flight lead/trainer can talk you through the startup process. The gamey aspect would be having them wait for you to complete each step before continuing, and ideally visual cues as to which control they're talking about. With this process the player could learn cold start, taxiing, take off, some simple navigation tasks, and finally landing and parking. I think this could be very engaging and let the player very quickly get to what they came here for. The AI lead could provide some background info in addition to just "flick this switch", along the lines of what exists in the current tutorials.

[Maulkin]

I thought the tutorials were quite well done in showing all the capabilities of the aircraft but what I really needed was one more tutorial that kinda tied it all together. For example, how often does the pilot press the trim button during a mission, and when? I understand all the different things about the weapon systems, but what is the most common process to quickly hover and attack an armored target with missles? When are you pressing the trim button through all that? ;)

[SSneg]

Every time I try to do the control hover I end up slewing all over the place like a drunkard. This is probably a misconfiguration of my controls, but since there's no nice walk through of what to do and what should happen, it's hard to determine.

 

This is because ДИСС (Doppler radar to measure speed and crosswind, not sure of English name) is not functional in the first 2-3 minutes of flight. You have to sit still until it "heats up" and starts working. You can see it's operational when speed indicator shows up in the upper left corner of HUD. The autopilot will act haywire until the system is operational, this is why you can't hover. Patience is the key.

 

For example, how often does the pilot press the trim button during a mission, and when?

All the time. Basically, after every evolution of the helicopter.

[element1108]

There's a black shark video on youtube someplace and you can see the pilot hit the trim button after every maneuver. Think of it as changing gears for a car, but not directly associated with speed.

[LastRifleRound]

I learned how to cold start, shut down, take off and land in 4 hrs yesterday and I SUCK with gradual control input. The key is to do exactly as you said, treat it as a lecture, and take notes. It's kind of fun when you do it that way. But like you said, to each their own.

 

I find the Black Shark MUCH easier to handle than the Su-25t. I love the "t", but man that thing was a pig to manuever! Then again I've always been more of a rotor head....:pilotfly: