So, my girlfriend bought me this game for Christmas and already regrets it! It's a great helicopter sim I originally found out about through links on this board. Anyone else fly this sim?
My thoughts:
GREAT fun. It's real tricky to fly and balance the trimmer with my rudder spiking, but it's do-able. The basics of flight are a lot tougher to get used to as there is a whole new dynamic. It takes me up to 5 minutes to trim it properly for straight and level flight, though I attribute most of that to my stick spiking. The first time you enter combat it becomes obvious why there aren't many single-seat attack helicopters: Combat is VERY overwhelming. If you use Track IR it is probably a LOT easier, though for me I simply do not have enough hands and focus to fly, target with the headseat, and dial in the target on the Shkval screen, so my strategy is to stand off about 4km away from the bad guys, hover (I manually trim the bird rather than using the auto-hover feature which screws up the rest of my flight for some reason...) and just pick off the bad guys with ATGMs. Infantry gets a high speed rambo-style pass just screaming though spray-and-praying the rocket pods. I rarely use the cannon because I always have more ATGMs than I have targets, and the range of the cannon does not allow me the time to perform the tedious aiming procedure without dodging bullets.
If you are a stickler for realism, this game has it. With realistic mode on flight, and avionics, everything is done by the pilot. I fly with realistic mode on, and several times found myself screaming into a target zone forgetting to set my targeting lazer to standby, or turn the master-arming switch on. To give you an idea of how intricate most actions are, my pre-fire checklist for ATGMs alone is 17 steps and a full page of writing long.
Graphics are beautiful. Because there is no damage checklist like in AH, I find myself cutting to an external view after taking fire to look and see what's broken. This sim has made me realize just how fragile helicopters are, when just two or three lucky rounds find an engine, and suddenly you barely have the thrust to fly... fortunately, you can jettison anything on the wing hard points to save weight, so the entire rocket pod falls off, unlike AH where you can only fire the rockets and hang on to the tree...
So, some sample screens. Nothing too crazy as I am only about 5 missions into the first of four campaigns.
Two Helicopters on the way to the fight:
Flying through clouds on the egress (This became an IFR flight QUICKLY as my planned flight path took me over a mountain range completely obscured by clouds):
Firing the Cannon:
The friendly in the background had lost an engine and made an emergency landing on this peak. I'm guessing the pilot walked away because his door is open... I decided to try to rescue him, and well... the picture speaks for itself.
Damage assessment after clearing the AAA so a pair of Hinds could hose a town:
