yeah - I chuckled when I read one of their developer posts about r/l helicopter pilots evaluating ToH as "high fidelity"

..made me think of the old Capitol Records label on my Beatles LPs - maybe they meant the sound quality..? I do like the blade whistle effect

Lets see what its like in a couple of months though before we write it off completely. I think we'll see some improvements between now and then

I'm off to go shower and buckle down before we loose power here in the North east, but I wanted to quickly jump in and add that I think things are much better in ToH than in arma as far as flight goes.

My main grip with Arma Helos was the collective. It never felt very analog, so holding a given altitude was very difficult. The flight model also didn't seem to really agree with a joystick all too much. You could tell it was made for WASD/Mouse based flying.

I think a slightly simplified version of Trainee with Arma 3, will make all parties happy. I know they intend to allow full helo realism as a server option, but I wouldn't be surprised if the single player helo's saw some improvement as well.

I don't think we'll have a more much realistic heli game for a while though. The issue I'm seeing across the simulator board, is our aircraft are still flying in a vacuum, with fluid dynamics being hard-coded. Years down the road, when PC's are powerful enough to render real-time aerodynamic models, I think we'll see the rise of a true heli sim.

I'll post more later if we manage to keep power, but in short, I'm happy with my purchase, and I'd say the title get's my thumbs up.

the Flight Model used in Take On Helicopters is N times complex and better in simulation than the one used in ARMA 2: OA

http://takeonthegame.com/technology-checklist/

FDM we using now is more 'for-simulation' than the arcade one used in past

What is the editor like? I got pretty good at making missions for me and my couple of buddies to play for the ARMA games. Is the editor as powerfull as it was in ARMA games? Also how is the multiplayer?

I agree with EinsteinEP on the "Personally, I'd prefer a believable flight model with simplified visuals as opposed to the other way around".....Because whats the point in flying a pc chopper if it doesn't fly correctly. You know,i never had any gripes about armas helis because in arma it wasn't what that game was focused on. You spent more time on the ground than anything so if the flight physics of the helis weren't that great it was ok with me. But with this one the heli is the main focus and if you claim (high fidelity) then come on with it.

High-order physics can be linearized and simplified to run real-time on low-end processors with good effect. Choosing the operating points and linearization methods and implementing the simplified models in a package that is globally accessible and still fun to play is no simple task, however. The issue here isn't whether the models are accurate to the Nth decimal place but whether the overall simulation is really authentic or high fidelity. There are critical helicopter dynamics effects that are appear to be either missing from the simulation or are incorrectly modeled: dissymmetry of lift, rotor stall, translational lift, lost of anti-torque effectiveness, etc. The way these particular items are modeled in Take On gives the appearance that the developers didn't fully understand the phenomena or the physics behind them, or (even worse, IMHO) didn't find them important enough to get right in their "authentic" and "high fidelity" simulation.

@Dwarden: just because a phenomenon is listed as "incorporated", doesn't mean the model in the sim has been incorporated correctly.

That all said, you don't have to have spot-on physics to have a fun game, and I certainly do enjoy cruising around in the simulation. I've finished the training missions and am just about to start the career mode, and I'm looking forward to it. It just bothers me that this sim totes itself as having "authentic" and "high fidelity" dynamics when it's missing very basic helicopter dynamics.

I'm currently in the process of methodically evaluating the simulation and the different helicopter dynamics effects, so I'll have more than just first impressions in the next week or so.

What Einstein said...

DCS did a great job with this in Black Shark, mimicking all aspects of helicopter flight dynamics along with inertia, momentum etc...

ToH does have tremendous potential though, going forward - and it can and likely will be improved upon in time.

For today, it offers lots of great entertainment and is visually quite good.

I look forward to your extended evaluation of ToH EinsteinEP, as I read all of your articles on this site.

Hey guys,

From everyone's complex responses to a rather simple question, it's pretty easy to see what we have here.

It seems that this sim (game) is (IMHO):

- fun as hell
- not chocked full of "high fidelity" FMs
- challenging nonetheless
- probably worth the greenbacks shelled out if you're a helo fan.

BTW, did any of you guys fly the "SAR" series? I loved it, but got kinda bored with the sameness of the missions. The "Career" in this seems to have solved that issue.

I agree with heywooood, I'd love to see BI massage this thing like the boys over at triple-7 did with "Rise Of Flight". To say that ROF released with issues, is like saying that beer is good. The were able to pull it from the outhouse and move it to the penthouse, like I've not seen in all my years of flight simming. Maybe BI can take a page from their playbook.

Only time will tell.

EP, keep us up to date on what you see in that FM!

later,

BBall

this is not just some random numbers and features on top ARMA 2: OA helicopter flight-model

being aware of the shortcomings identified by the real sim enthusiasts in the ARMA 2: OA helicopters,
we decided to work together with the RTDynamics FDM (http://www.rtdynamics.com/v2/wp/2008/rotorlib-fdm/).

We've tried to identify the real 'missing' parts of the simualtion (like Vortex Ring State)
and continue to support improvements to the FDM in future patches for Take On Helicopters.

we had on our disposal multitude real helicopters and theirs pilots,
some staff flew portion of these helicopters themselves
some members of staff even took flight training for pilot licenses on helicopters
we even built our own helipad next to HQ building, to have copters close as possible

on top there is openness to modifications (xml)
and then addition of our extra engine features
(fuel consumption, dynamic weight load, maintenance and damage simulation)
there were added new parameters in addon *.cfg files allowing even more modification

ofcourse it's first game then as well as simulation
and the key point is to have fun while flying these copters
so i hope You will enjoy the game
and i can't wait to read Your review and evaluation of our new FDM"

seeing developer interaction on these boards (and others) is very encouraging to both current and future customers.

please don't take early criticism too personal -

I would like to express my greatest appreciation to you all at BI Dwarden, for this excellent flight sim platform

I look forward to future patches and game content both from BI and 3rd party

ToH is great fun