Any word about the Gazelle?

Since my main love in DCS, at given state, are choppers...i would like to know if anyone can give me an opinion about this chopper specially if confronted to the HUEY.

Thanks in advance
NE

I have both helos and love them equally but differently. The Huey is the most fun to fly because you're engaged the entire time. It's also low tech with a manual elevation sight and unguided weapons, but you have enough minigun rounds to saturate an area by playing follow the tracers. You can manhandle it and do some great things, but it will punish you if you abuse it too much (google "mast bumping"). It's the Harley Davidson of DCS; there is no substitute.

The gazelle is a lot twitchier; manhandle the controls at your own risk. What you do is get the gazelle pointed were you want to go, trim using the hat switch, and then make very minor adjustments to the stick and collective. Works well with a Warthog or anything with tight centering. You have speed and altitude hold modes to go with the SAS channels, and you have wire guided missiles on the M and a cannon and rockets on the L. Rather than flying in low and fast with firepower, you go to a point 4km distant, go into a hover, then use the targeting system on the left seat to fire the HOT missiles. The avionics are much more capable than the Huey, but not that much more complex (except for the NADIR doppler nav system). The gazelle right now is the only multi-crew capable helicopter, though its implementation is still buggy with syncing issues. When it works, it's a blast and when it doesn't work it can be very frustrating.

If I had to choose between the two, I would take the Gazelle, but it wouldn't be long before I missed having the other helo in the hangar.

EDIT: One more thing: if you haven't flown either helo, I would start with the Huey. Once you learn how to fly the Huey, you will be in a better position to learn the Gazelle in all of its twitchiness. If you've flown the Mi-8, you should be ok with either. If you've only flown the Ka-50 or fixed wing, start with the Huey.

Thanks, i've flown all but the gazelle and can easily maneuver all of them, however my beloved remains the huey, i just cannot get tired of it. What about the campaign, does it worth? By the way you described the Gazelle it seems a bit like the KA-50, where you have to learn how to manage the system and not get killed by it, at least you have only one blade so no risk of blade collisions .....
One more question, from the description it seems that the gazelle doesn't have the standard trim button as other choppers but rather a pitch trim like plane, is that right?

Yes. the Gazelle uses a trim system very much like an plane. It's some sort of gyroscopic auto pilot(I know some one will be along with a better explaination lol). However it is very simple to use and The chopper is really easy to fly, but on the other hand it is a real handful once you get low and slow.
Also be aware that the campaign fot the Gazelle is broken and has been for a while.
Apparently they are working on a fix...........

SD

Can anyone compare these new helos with the Shark? I had a "phase" wherein I was a rotor head with EECH and was quite disappointed with the Shark.

The shark has a totally different feel to any of the other helos... for me the shark feels like a modern super car with all driving aids .. the uh1 feels like an old transit van ... no aids and seat of your pants flying ... the Mi8 is a bit in-between the shark and the huey .. some flying aids .. but feels like flying a small truck, have not spent much time in the gazelle but I liken it to a small sports car very twitchy and will kill you quickly if you let it


hope this helps

Comparing the Gazelle with the Shark, I find it easier to fly the Shark with the autopilot channels disabled than the gazelle with the autopilot channels enabled. Once the gazelle is under control, all it needs is a light touch, but the trick is getting it under control. As SD said, its more of a challenge once you translate from forward flight to hover.

I tell people to learn the huey so the shark is more intuitive, and the gazelle is harder to fly than the huey.

Regarding trim, the gazelle has both the magnetic trim like the huey as well as progressive trim like fixed wing aircraft. You can use whichever you prefer, but with the light touch on the gazelle it usually makes more sense to use the progressive trim.

Thanks all info, sorry i didn't reply before but i had connection issues for a whole week.

That said i have to admit that i was about to buy it, even with some issues that i've read here and there which makes this thing harder to fly, but after a week without internet i took some time off from XPlane and started to play with DCS after almost a year. God dammit, 3 days was enough to remind why i quit DCS. Its gameplay is so sterile due a missing dc campaign but also due to the missing AI system (as a programmer i will never agree that a whole script system can substitute a multi layered goal/behavior tree system). First i saw the AI in the huey campaign just flying weirdly in many missions then i tried a couple of KA-50 campaigns only to see how broken the whole system is (in this case even the missions design are quite stupid which leads you to fail just because the ai screw itself up).

At this point i decided to dive in F4 and although it have its flaws, i started to feel triggered again. This is exactly what makes me feel pissed off with DCS, wonderful airplanes/chopper and a really awful combat environment (even EECH is way better).

It is hard to see me even buying the long waited F-18....whenever in comes out in who knows 3 years ahead XD

I bought the Gazelle just over a week ago as I had some extra cash to spend. I've since spent that time flying it exclusively.

When it was first released, I was a bit put off as I wanted a true gunship and immediately dismissed it. How wrong I was. As everyone has said, its not the Huey or Ka-50. It's twitchy and easy to crash. But the enjoyment from it, is amazing. You have to get in close to see your targets and have to think about your position.

If you like helos, you'll be pleased with the Gazelle. Be sure to watch some tutorials and go through the training missions. Cold start is a snap.

Enjoy!
Jeff

This is exactly how I feel. If I were just learning an aircraft or learning a system or learning an attack method, the sterility and repeatability of the DCS environment is ideal. For scripted missions, there's some fun in that too. Once you outgrow your training wheels, however, the flaws of the world start to show. If the user has nothing else to do but to go and study ANOTHER aircraft, and thus keep their training wheels on indefinitely, I can see how the world will continue to appeal. Again, if/when the time comes for the training wheels to come off, I don't think the DCS world environment will still feel the same.

I am fully aware that there are virtual squadrons dedicated to flying certain aircraft such as the A-10C and these guys don't have their training wheels on. However, for the amount of effort needed to maintain the suspension of disbelief for a mission that will only be flown a handful of times, well, again, the DCS environment's flaws are difficult to cover up.

I will be buying the Tomcat and the Hornet and I am fully aware I will have fun with these aircraft with the training wheels on. I spent so many hours in Jane's F/A-18 doing carrier qualifications that I'm hoping to do the same with the F-14 and F-18 in DCS. I hope to get my money's worth in entertainment before I have to take the training wheels off, but my purchase of these modules will be due to the inner-child within and not the critical simmer viewpoint that I'm using for most of ED's actions or products.

I guess we can say that it should have named Digital Training Simulator, that would be the best and honest title for this game

In a nutshell.

I don't know which came first TBS or DCS, but DCS looks and acts like a training sim with a token gesture of "combat" tacked on, fine if you're a military group who needs to train pilots, not so fine if your a gamer wanting immersion.

TBS hand me down? It would explain so much, maybe fixes and improvements aren't viable unless requested and funded my a military group, it would explain 5+ years of total ignorance from ED.

Most definitely a Digital Non Combat Training Simulator.

I have the Gazelle, Huey and Mi8. I've not flown the Huey in real life but similar sized aircraft and it flies as I would expect. Predictable and no real quirks.

I've time on the real Gazelle, and while a few things are wrong with it in 1.5, they're not biggies and most sim pilots would never spot them, its pretty bang on, does what I want when I fly it like the real thing. In 2.0 beta it is broken and doesn't work. Beta so no drama.

Now the Mi8 I cannot fly for toffee. It doesn't do anything I want it to. No complaint about the module, I've never flown one and so don't know what to do with it. goes to show we are all still learning

They have some real Mi-8 pilots that have tested the module in the sim and they say it's spot on as well. To me it's like the Cadillac of helicopters. It's almost effortless to fly once you get moving and it's just super smooth but a little on the slow side. It can however carry a massive amount of rockets so it's fun to just smash stuff and cannons are just nuts as you can cycle between grenade launchers and different caliber guns. Nothing guided though. The only down side is that it tends to shudder a bit when coming to a hover but the real pilots said that's normal. You just have to learn how to come to a hover slowly. I think they said that it will have multi-crew ability in the future. I have the Mi-8, Ka-50 and Huey and love them all for different reasons.

Has the Gazelle FM been substantially improved recently? I bought it maybe 6 months ago and almost immediately got a refund (thank god for steam!) as the FM was so poor, it felt very much like it didn't interact with the air at all and was more like flying a kids $9.99 r/c coax heli.

hmmm , it is still very easy to fly

Huey and MI-8 will try and kill you its pretty hard to die in the gazelle

To me, once you get the Gazelle airborne and trimmed out, it flies as if with a gyro on a RC plane.
But it will try and kill you.

Got into a turnfight with another Mistral equipped Gazelle last night on the 99th NTTR server. We spun and wheeled trying to get a tone. Popped flares, etc...
Luckily a Huey was present that distracted him long enough for me to get shots off. It was truly laughable to see us do it, but fun.

Sorry but I can't believe anymore that there was only a single "real" XXX pilot which flew XXX modul and for sure if so NEVER one of those has said "it's spot on". Never ever! Because they said this one year BEFORE the modul was out of the beta status.
We heard that for the Su27 too and each time we said, this or that can't work because of SU developers orignal doku and first hand real SU27 pilots infos, they said we are wrong.
NOW, after so much YEARS we've got the paddle brakes and a working Auto Pilot but at first we were wrong like #%&*$#. Before that they said that the thrust below 78% can't accelerate the Su27 enough for taxi. Some "real" Su27 pilots might have said that you need always to go at first above 80% thrust and then lower it to 0% to hold the Su @ 30 km/h. What BS... but some "real" Pilots said..... blah blah blah blah.
Wanna know what ED has said about the missiles? You know, the missiles which lose the tracking if someone uses chaff BEFORE you've fired the missile? And that the missiles can't even reach their real maximum range, even for a headon?
But some "real" Pilots said the RADAR tracking and the missiles are mostly ok..!
Yep... as we could see.
Oh and what about the A10C.. the same story.. but at first all was ok, because some "real" Pilots said so.

Were there some real pilots?
IDK!
But what I know is, they NEVER said "it's spot on" at the time ED said it to us.

The Gazelle flys like the real thing. From a pilot who flew it for over a thousand hours. It does some strange things at Vne but on the whole works.

So sim pilots, what do you think a real pilot doesn't know. I'm open to your superior knowledge. Ask and I will answer. But more likely ridicule and laugh at.

Go ahead.............

can you do this in real thing?

Please read the second paragraph. There have also been other real life pilots that have tested the module. I read something back a year or so ago but I can't find the link.
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/helicopters/magnificent_eight/

That linked video raises a few eyebrows. During the flip, it's overly stable laterally. Doesnt flinch or teeter at all. I've done a roll in the Gazelle and it darn near crashed. It became very unstable.

So what mod/cheat was used for that video? How recent was it made?

Any way to tell if they had the FM set to easy/game mode or whatever it's called?


The Jedi Master

Looks like its game mode on.

Should have put a smiley in there, was meant as light hearted and jokey, not confrontational, as it appears.

Earlier poster on backflip, no you can't do that in a Gazelle. You can in a Lynx though.