The most frustrating sim ever..?

Maybe hyperbole..maybe..

I've spent the past three days and many, many hours trying to get Take On Hinds configured to be usable. Whenever I think I've finally figured out how to best get it set up, I realize there is still something wrong. I've literally flown it for hours now without actually doing anything other than try to tweak settings. It is no wonder that newbs probably fire this up, throw up their hands in frustration, and move on..

So I finally managed to get TrackIR working. Only to realize that when implemented it controls the inside view, but I don't see an option to retain the mouse as controlling the external view (for panning around the helo). The view options for TOH (borrowed from ArmA) could use some fixing for a flight sim type game. So is there a way to separate the TrackIR in the cockpit from using the mouse outside of the cockpit?

It also seems that I'm often doing battle with multiple controllers trying to move the helo. After getting TrackIR working, I found that somehow my mouse was now mapped to my left/right cyclic. Deleted those assignments and I think I'm good. Sensitivities are a whole other discussion and I don't see any real guidance on how to set those to realistically mirror actual helo physics (in particular the Hind).

It just seems like I'm spending a LOT of time in the configuration menus, exiting the game, reentering the game and trying to see what works. The promise of the great visuals keeps me coming back to tweak it and try to get it sorted out, but it sure is trying my patience..

BeachAV8R

Hey Beach,

Not sure if this would be a viable option, but can you bind the third person key to be the same key as the TrackIR pause button? That way when you change view TrackIR should turn itself on or off.

As to the sensitivity settings I assume you have found them in controls>Controller then selecting your Stick? As to getting them accurate I wouldn't have a clue as I haven't flown anything in real life. Good luck getting them accurate though.

And multiple bound controls will show in red under the controls menu, so after setting them up a quick scroll down should show any duplicated controls.

Fudge

Beach,

What HOTAS setup are you using?

Also, note that the Hind is a terrible flyer in a hover state (not a'bug' on BI's fault, I believe this is the case IRL), so chances are sensitivities settings that work in the default birds won't work in the Hind. It's very unintuitive, as it requires a mix of both heavy handed force and light finesse on the controls.

I've found with my CH setup that I like having the sensitivity turned down by no more than 10% from default. Any more than that, and the exponential force introduced around mid-travel becomes very un-natural.

Setting the controler to the right amounts seem`s to be only doable with trial and error. Maybe that can be of help:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?136961-Joystick-calibration-issue

Please report back if you have found pleasant settings. I would like to know youre impressions of ToH and it`s flight model.

That's why i quit flying in Arma and Arma2. Damn controllers suck.

Start your control settings with the long key binding list, not with the controller configuration settings. Here you can remove bindings from the mouse and tir as you wish (I think...away from my PC currently). When you get that as you like it THEN head over to control configurations. Remember that huge dead-zones are added by default. Removing them makes hovering much easier.

Thanks for the deadzone advice. I'll see if I can remove some. It's much too large by default.

i'm really enjoying the early TOH campaign missions. I have good FPS day and a believable environment.

The flying experience is not far off Black Shark, I think.

I enjoyed the original TOH campaign missions. I might have found a good balance of settings for actually *flying* the Hind right now. I will be honest though in that I don't think the whole ARMA type interface is the best choice for a simulator..

Well, I was incredibly interested in this game when it was in Dev. But as soon as the Demo came out I ceased having interest in it, sadly. The configuration woes I had to go through just to get the demo half way working, turned me away. I hope some day the game becomes more user friendly, because I love the idea behind this game.

The differences between the demo and the current release are significant. The game is designed to be comparable with ARMA and playable with WASD and a mouse. Those two things do create some limitations. But I came to ToH having never heard of ARMA--seriously. So I had no preconceived ideas about the reason for the interface. All I did was set it to Expert and flew. No issues whatsoever. Some of the missions are a little frustrating but the game is fun and the flight dynamics are believable. Overall, I think it is a pretty refined product.

I'd say the most frustrating sim ever HAS to be Back to Baghdad. But I've never tried TOH, though.

Hmmm - I just got that one - why is it frustrating? Do you mean the config (sorry to stray OT)?

Beach, I don't know if you have ArmA2 or not and it may be this that gave me some kind of advantage in setting up, but I bought TOH & Hinds a couple of days ago and had no issues with my G940 whatsoever.

Now, I've only done free flight up to now, always with the "Surprise me" option (didn't know we could fly the Hip - good fun! ) but it has gone very painlessly.

My very first flight was in the medium helicopter at Utes - the aircraft carrier is offshore and I flew over and landed on the deck with relative ease. TBH I find controlling the DCS Ka50 much more challenging - especially in terms of putting it down on the excact spot I want to.

I went into the controllers config, deactivated everything except the G940 and TrackIR, went to the adjustments and killed off all dead zones except a small one on the rudder.

I set up the axes via the Helicopter controls menu and ignored the other control sections and that was it.

I've been having aball with treetop/wavetop flying (okay, I sunk once when I was trying to get a cool screenshot) and pulling stunts.

Must be down to the different controller sensitivities.

I was taking shots like David Bailey until I remembered that there is no screenshot function in ArmA/TOH! Derrrr

Not diggin' TOH at all. Having flown ARMA and ARMA II helos for ever now I thought it would be a good graduate experience but it is not. I am willing to stipulate that the flight modelling may be better but ones situational awareness is no better than it was in ARMA. I am able to keep myself ahead of the aircraft in ARMA and not get into progressively dire situations, but in TOH once it starts going all to hell, I am doomed. The PID controller in my head can't keep up with the oscillations once they get rolling.

The small helo in ToH feels the most authentic to me. It might be a bit more unstable than the real thing but its not so bad once you give it some time. Find a nice open field, the airfield at Utes is a nice choice, and practice hovering. Don't look just outside the plexiglass. Look about 50 yards ahead. This will better let your brain register drift in both attitude and position. The helicopter reacts a fraction of a second out of sync with input. Your brain will eventually compensate for that. Once these things happen the old ARMA helos become hard. (I can't fly them)

Hinds is definitely an awful game, but I agree with smokin' the light chopper is a fun little thing to buzz around Seattle with.

I used to enjoy flying helos in games like Battlefield 2 and Arma2, but since I've been flying DCS Ka-50 Black Shark and the TOH helos, I just murder myself and teammates with these "simple" helo flight models.

I love flying helo's in ARMA 2 & other sims, but for some reason I could never quite get into TOH and the Hind. I suspect it is the FOV and TrackIR implementation that does not feel natural to me, and some strange "artifacts" in the flight modelling. And it wouldn't have hurt to come up with a more user friendly GUI and flightsim related view scripts such as Fly-by, tower view etc.

It is an excellent product, but it can be WAY more with a bit more effort.

+1 to all, Warmbrak. It is a fun sim, even with its limitations, and certainly helps feed the need for a "real" helo sim, even if it's lite a few key features.

I currently re-play it and doing the carrier path. I want to make some vids of my flying with some diffent camera angels. It´s possible but a pain in the ass (scipting stuff) for a guy like me.

Yeah..the view system is pretty odd. The lack of a preset flyby view was disappointing.

I appreciate all the suggestions in this thread, but my time is so limited that I just gave up on trying to work through the issues. I'm not a big fan of spending more hours configuring than flying.

I just replayed the Career. It was better the 2nd time around! If this is frustration, I want more of it.

I really looked forward to this Sim, but after almost two weeks worth of tweaking I got a refund...

The flight model update from this post on the BI site goes a long way to making this a playable sim...

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?145171-Advanced-Flight-Model-based-on-HTR

It does a great job to reduce the poor inertia model.

Worth a try. Been having much better luck flying with it installed.

Rmako

With the dcs sale on right now, I'd personally just get the huey.

Ha, I thought so too. Picked up the Huey in the sale looking for a Vietnam vibe. Whomping along the tree tops with some period tunes banging away in the back ground. Stones, Doors, Hendrix, Jefferson Starship etc.
How cool that would be.

Sadly the Huey is not so easy either.
Not sure if it the fact I've been flying prop based combat sims for the last 15+ years makes me a rubbish Helio pilot,but, Flying the Huey in DCS is always a one way trip for me
Mastered getting it off the ground. Putting it back down has proved a challenge.

A real helo is difficult to fly, especially if you've learned in fixed wings, but is definitely manageable and rewarding!

I had the opportunity some years ago for a flight in a chopper that was having a test flight. After 20+ years of fixed wing simming and not a little Jane's Longbow, I was well up for some stick time.

I was given control at about 1k altitude and bowling along was a breeze.
'Ok bring her into a hover' the pilot said. So gently pulled back on the cyclic whilst dumping collective and trying to keep one eye on the horizon and the air speed and it all went tits up.
The pilot laughed his head off but he did admit I did all the right things, just not in the right quantities at the right time.
Sod flying an Apache at night in the driving rain at 20ft with people shooting at you... ^^

To get back on topic. I don't think its frustrating at all... Try the new Advanced Flight Model you should check the TOH forums. As rmakowsky Said.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?145171-Advanced-Flight-Model-based-on-HTR

I too highly recommend it & Rudder Pedals to get the full experience, but nothing is like the real thing.

p.s.

I realize this was started back in January but in April the Flight Model was Introduced, so i feel its relevant to anyone reading about this sim.

I might revisit it and check out the new FM. That said though - it was more than just the flight model - the whole interface borrowed from Arma is a bit awkward. When you are flying along and you go to the mouse to do something and one of the options that is easy to click on is TURN OFF ENGINE (or whatever it was called)..that can ruin your day really quickly.

I love the concept..but just wish the sim had broken from its roots a bit more. I'll still check it out again and if I think things have changed I'll be sure to post my impressions..

BeachAV8R

Yes, that's the main problem with Take on Helicopters: It ends up being more of an ArmA "extended mod" (with all the bad and awkward parts of ArmA) instead of being a new game/sim that it should have been. And on top of that BIS seems to have completely abandoned this game/sim.

Well, maybe we'll eventually get "Take On Helicopters On Mars", after they get a massive terraforming mission worked into "Take On Mars".

While going through Advanced in flight school, one of the other "less than optimal" students in my class was doing a Basic Instrument hop over Mobile Bay one day. It was common practice for the instructor to roll the twist grip to idle which allowed the student to recognize the emergency and then practice an instrument autorotation. Apparently on this day, this student's first instinct was push the lock button and roll the twist grip all the way to OFF. Oops. Maybe she needed a scroll menu.

Fortunately the IP was quick and rolled it back to idle in time and the engine re-lit and he recovered the aircraft.

I decided to try this one again, and I am enjoying it much more this time around. It performs much better now on my newer hardware, and I spent some time tweaking the graphics for smoothness (critical for flying helo's in a sim) but more importantly the flight controls. I tweaked the control curves to be flatter closer to the cyclic center which allows finer control with a short joystick.

The most important find was the trim functionality (I never realised that it was implemented). Very few sims get this right, and this implementation is probably one of the better ones I have experienced. There is a command for trim engage, and a separate one to disengage. I assigned these to my Warthog Hotas. Once one has taken off and translated into the cruise, one may find that it needs a set force on the cyclic and yaw keep the helicopter to fly straight. Pressing the Trim Engage allows one to relax the pressure on the controller. This makes cruising and overall flying a lot easier.

Although not perfect, I am finding TKOH a lot more satisfying this time. The game would benefit considerably from using the ARMA 3 engine instead of a modified ARMA 2 one. I have started flying the single player campaign, and I am enjoying it a lot so far. One gets to inspect the helicopters for faults, arrange repairs (Pleasantly surprised), and the missions are well thought out (if you can ignore some of the cheesy dialogue).

Folks should realise this is not strictly a helicopter sim, but a helicopter centered "adventure" with plausible realism and missions that one will most likely not be able to experience in FSX/X-Plane/DCS etc. BIS should probably have focussed a bit more on hiding the ARMA interface and making it easier to set up for everyone.

The inverse is also true. Nearly everyone expected ARMA 3 to borrow from the TOH engine. What we instead have is a helicopter model that is worse than ARMA 2. Hopefully that will change and players can chose between a dumbed-down WASD/mouse and the far more satisfying TOH level of fidelity.

Perhaps that expectation was a bit unrealistic. The helicopter flight models for vanilla ARMA 2 & 3 is in line with the rest of the game, and realistic flight models falls outside of the scope for a game like ARMA. ARMA is about accessibility, not the ultimate realism.

As a side-note, I loved the first ARMA 3 Alpha, but it became boring as BIS turned up the "realism" to satisfy the die-hard fans.

I actually love the idea that BIS with Take On - a story driven helicopter adventure. But the borrowed menu/controls from the ARMA series make it clunky. I'll give it a whirl again I'm sure..hopefully my perceptions will change..

BeachAV8R

BIS stated that they planned to eventually migrate the Heli flight model from ToH into Arma 3. I'm actually a bit ticked off it's taking so long.

Me too. But in the meantime I am doing it their way. Toss the stick to the side and fly with the mouse. It just works so much better with the current model than attempting to make real something that is so obviously not.