Quote:
Originally Posted by emosun
Neat sounds like fun. I play battlefield desertcombat which has helicopters in it. Most people can't fly them because there too hard. I got really good at them and later found out on flight simulator that the controls were pretty much the same. One of my friends is a pilot and has flight simulator 2006 or somthing. He told me the helicopters were impossible to fly so he got pretty mad when I did it no problem lol.
I actually have a cheapo powersupply on a secondary rig thats holding up ok. So maybe yours will be fine. Just watch for crashes or bsod's or game artifacts.
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What are "bsod's?"
What is it that you especially like about the Battlefied Desert Game you mentioned? What does it have over other games you have played?
Well I think your pilot friend might be right that real helicopters are harder to fly than what we find in the simulation games. In a real helicopter any increase in the main rotor speed torques the body of the bird the opposite direction as the main rotor is turning. Slowing down the main rotor torques the body the other way. The tail rotor is used to cancel out those torques. NONE of the helicopter sims I have seen require the pilot to do that by hand. The very first helicopter that Microsoft included in flight sim 2000 or 20002, (might not have been theirs even, but someone's add-on) DID require that you manually change the tail rotor speed according to ANY change in main rotor speed. That bird WAS nearly impossible to take off or land. Once up in the air there was a little less problem if you got a little unstable but near the ground that is fatal right away. That is maybe the thing that makes real helicopters so hard to fly because you have to be adjusting the tail rotor speed every time you change the main rotor speed for any reason. And you have to be doing that all the time in addition to anything else you are trying to do, like turn or ascend or descend, or land. I am not sure whether more recent MS flight sim helicopters have provided the option to have the tail rotor automatically adjust for the main engine counter-torque or not but that very first one in MS flight sim required you to handle that tail rotor constantly on your own.
The other thing about the tail rotor has to do with turning. Most simulation games allow you to choose whether or not the tail rotor automatically helps you turn when you twist the joystick to make the body turn. If you choose that option, then when you twist the joystick the bird turns almost as if it was on a track instead of flying through air with all the actual effects of the air. I don't like that kind of flying - it feels too artificial. And even worse, if you choose that option then you cannot strafe. I love to strafe - flying essentially sideways by "leaning" the bird to the side and twist/turning only enough to keep the thing pointed in the same forward direction while you maintain that sideways "drift." That allows you to go around a corner flying sideways, already pointed in the direction of whatever is coming into view around that corner. I love strafe-flying very close to the ground, especially over rolling hills or allowing the bird to gently "drift" sideways down a mountain side while pointing parallel to the mountain range ridge and still moving forward in that direction.
Of the three helicopter games I mentioned Commanche Gold has the most realistic "feel" to it as you fly. Air-Assault is perhaps the least realistic feeling. I think Apache-Havoc flies pretty realitically too but I don't play with that one anymore and it has been a while.