The chopper flight models in PR seem to be quite unrealistic and, as a result, unintuitive. I'm having a lot more problems doing small scale maneuvers in PR than I do with the study simulation-grade flight models in DCS: World. I've flown helicopters quite a bit in them, and I can tell that flying in PR feels very weird compared to that. I've heard others mention the low cruise speeds of all choppers, and I think that also comes from the same issue.
I'm not entirely 100% on this but it seems to me that choppers have too little upwards thrust on the main rotor. The climb rates achievable with most choppers seem really low compared to those I've seen in DCS. It also seems that there's some sort of weird horizontal force boost system that makes the horizontal movement feel really slippery compared to the better models. This line (found in gb_ahe_apache.tweak) seems to point that way as well:
With the 'real' models, you have to tilt the chopper quite a lot to achieve maximum cruise speed, whereas in PR you're only talking about a few degrees of tilt. In PR, tilting the chopper even a little makes you lose altitude even at full thrust, which seems really odd to me. Let me show a simplified force model of the situation:
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Hopefully you can tell from the image that in order to stay in level flight, a chopper must provide enough vertical thrust (labeled t_y in the image) to cancel out the gravitational force affecting the chopper. Any additional thrust (labeled t) that isn't needed for level flight, can then be converted into horizontal acceleration by tilting the chopper forward.
Now, if you don't have enough overall thrust in the first place, you have to compensate for the lack of forward thrust by adding in a horizontal velocity multiplier. This approach however has the negative qualities mentioned earlier: even tiny changes in the angle of the chopper cause huge accelerations, and the climb rate of the chopper will suffer greatly.
I think getting rid of the horizontal velocity multiplier and readjusting rotor thrust rates would fix both the handling issues, as well as making it possible to have higher cruise speeds for choppers without breaking anything in the flight physics. I don't know enough about the BF2 editor to give you any solid examples yet, but I'll try fiddling around with the variables and see if I can make any sense out of it. I'd also appreciate any advice you can give to me with regards to chopper flight models in PR.
I'm not entirely 100% on this but it seems to me that choppers have too little upwards thrust on the main rotor. The climb rates achievable with most choppers seem really low compared to those I've seen in DCS. It also seems that there's some sort of weird horizontal force boost system that makes the horizontal movement feel really slippery compared to the better models. This line (found in gb_ahe_apache.tweak) seems to point that way as well:
Code:
ObjectTemplate.horizontalSpeedMagnifier 5.2
Hopefully you can tell from the image that in order to stay in level flight, a chopper must provide enough vertical thrust (labeled t_y in the image) to cancel out the gravitational force affecting the chopper. Any additional thrust (labeled t) that isn't needed for level flight, can then be converted into horizontal acceleration by tilting the chopper forward.
Now, if you don't have enough overall thrust in the first place, you have to compensate for the lack of forward thrust by adding in a horizontal velocity multiplier. This approach however has the negative qualities mentioned earlier: even tiny changes in the angle of the chopper cause huge accelerations, and the climb rate of the chopper will suffer greatly.
I think getting rid of the horizontal velocity multiplier and readjusting rotor thrust rates would fix both the handling issues, as well as making it possible to have higher cruise speeds for choppers without breaking anything in the flight physics. I don't know enough about the BF2 editor to give you any solid examples yet, but I'll try fiddling around with the variables and see if I can make any sense out of it. I'd also appreciate any advice you can give to me with regards to chopper flight models in PR.