Building on ArmA, Take On will surely have the best NPC/environment modelling ever. ArmA may have a somewhat superficial flight model (does it? compared to what?), but you haven't really flown CAS until the infantry scatters and runs for the woods or crawls for cover, or it dismounts and returns fire. I miss that high 'world' resolution in other seemingly more hardcore sims, where vehicles seem to run on rails and 'infantry' is five characters with AKs kneeling in the (often completely grass free, at that) field somewhere.

I can't wait to see what can be done in the civvy field. A car accident can actually be a car accident, with all its the butterfly-effect randomness. Hikers are actually injured game characters (if you want, injured by literally walking them off the cliff they will have fallen off of for the mission), not just a "wounded"-model with a timeout game condition. NPCs will see you, hear you, move and react.

There's no way that will end up being a 'light' sim, even if the flight model might be inferior to X-Plane or DCS:BS.

Are the community updates for Take On Helicopters cumulative, or do they need to be installed in order?

Hi guys, I'm a bit confused at what this is trying to be.

Is it an update for Arma
Is it a Arcade flight game
Is it a realistic sim with fully working switches and procedures.

Please don't think I'm trying to slag off this idea, that's far from the point, but I can't work out what it is going to be.

I've looked at the forums on it's website, and there do seem to be some promising comments from real heli pilots.

I would like to know, because I love helicopters and it's an area that we have sadly very few to choose from. Well I have Blackshark which is what I use for my heli fixes. I have been wishing for a fully realistic civilian heli sim for yrs

Would love to be able to do air Ambo work, or even charter pickups, underslung loads etc.

So have my dreams been answered, or is it looking like another sar game.

Womble

Have you tried the preview? Do you know the rest of the ArmA series? I think it's safe to say they are striving to make it as realistic as the rest of the series strives to be, the focus now being on the helos themselves, rather than the general 'infantry warfare' experience. Helos already are pretty good in ArmA2:OA, IMO. Not dedicated-study-sim-good, but they hold their own very well, even compared to actual flight sims. If they improve a little on that, I don't see how they could go wrong.

I don't see what clickability has to do with realism though. It's fun for startup procedures and general tinkering to see where the switches are and such, but after that, panning and zooming around the cockpit with a cursor hardly reflects the manner in which a pilot would fly his aircraft (I hope). It's funny that many flight simmers ask for clickable-everything, but no tactical-FPS player has ever asked for a clickable rifle, even though the same arguments in favor would apply.

And seriously now, SAR had the hardest flight model (aside maybe from BS) I've ever encountered. It's still the only helo game I've played where I actually checked the whind direction (with smoke and flags, no less) before landing - because it mattered. Others just let me plow in from wherever. And those coastguard decks really swayed, trees were collision enabled... Things many so-called realistic sims still grapple with. The ArmA engine has all that, practically on a per-branch level, plus individual AI, gameplay and other capabilities that most dedicated flight sims can still only dream of. I'm optimistic that even it the game itself falls short, the community will turn it into something great.

Nah, SAR was just a dirty arcade game because it didn't require a 20 minute startup procedure clickfest like in real life. Everybody and their mother knows real pilots click their switches.

This is tongue-in-cheek right?

SAR1 and very challenging flight models (at least it felt like trying to balance on a ball - and it took time to kill momentum).

Really looking forward to this one. I think the beta is being released tues for pre orders.

Rob

The Comanche had a wings level and cruise flight mode, but I'm pretty sure you had full authority most of the time. I don't know if there were bank or pitch angle limits while in this cruise mode (say, like an Airbus), but that's certainly possible. Not having full roll ability is annoying, but it's the pitch limits that are probably the most bothersome. Considering there is no benefit to flying high in CoG (visually-targeted no manpads), though, extreme pitch (and the ability to dive) I suppose has no value in the game.

Oh, and CoG has wind. And autorotation. And everything can be shot. It's just got no button/clickology and everything is scaled differently than in real life… assuming you can forgive the limited (coding or AFCS induced, for your imagination) flight model authority. Objects look bigger. Distances are smaller. That sort of kinda works within a game framework, though. It's so less boring than most flight sims, and yet it still requires real helo tactics in it to succeed. And with GlovePIE now it can have rudimentary attitude hold/ attitude command and cruise modes at will, dutch rolls from pitch and yaw, not to mention my newest scripts: a rudimentary VRS simulation from overly-rapid collective reduction while at very low trim states (near centered) for sufficient time (usually means you're hovering, though if you trick it you can get it to happen at around 40 or 50kts sometimes... keeps you on your toes). Oh and I can use pedals on it. I'm thinking of putting the cruise mode on the twist specifically and raw yaw on the pedals, but I haven't gotten around to that... and I like steering completely with my feet sometimes. Anyway, how'd we get on CoG in a TakeOn thread.? But I/we digress...

Are you guys saying Arma and TakeOn are worth checking out for their helos? Watching the helo and A-10 clips in Arma on YouTube, it looks seriously frigg'n lame to play and arcade as all hell. They seem able to fly around and blow stuff up like on rails and do so as if they're in god mode, or something. And it's hilarious hearing people do realistic style comms while doing it. I’ve never played either, though. I just watched the vids.

Reticuli, See here: http://www.simhq.com/_air14/air_514a.html for my review of Take On Helos.

The flight models in the Arma series are quite "game"-y. This doesn't mean that they're not fun, but they are not realistic by any large stretch of the imagination. I don't think they are intended to be hi-fi, however, and the vehicles are just supplments to the core FPS action.

Take On Helos with Patch 1.04 or later has a MUCH better flight model and does a good job of replicating the complexities of helicopter flight. In my opinion, it is still missing some key components, but the overall package is quite good. I hope BIS continues to polish the dynamics as they continue development in this line.

I haven't tried Take On Hinds, but I assume it's got the same basic underlying helicopter flight dynamics model but with Hinds and guns and missiles and bombs.

Takeon Hinds is a bit of a throwback to ARMA. It's not easy to fly but the weapons employment is about as arcade as a sim can get. I recommend a pass. However, I really like ToH. They are just about to release 1.06 which will all nearly all of the ARMA content to be accessed by ToH.