I may not be flying in ARMA anytime soon, but it is still fascinating to see how the quirks of a specific flight model can lead to very different strategies and options in a crash. Great video as always Dslyecxi!
This series is an absolute masterclass. This video explains so many frustrating autorotate crashes I've experience lately in prairie fire. Thanks for always uploading such quality stuff!
Damn. At first I remembered that you already did a video like this, but you already mentioned once towards the beginning to scrap everything we learned from that one. This really went in-depth and feels like you really spent some days, if not a couple weeks trying to figure out what really goes into Crashing. Like finding out exactly that anything from a 7° dive forward will decrease rotor rpm and what-not. Out of interest - what was the actual time invested for this project? In days and working hours, since maybe you started recording first footage 2 months ago or sth.
The first footage was recorded June 23rd, and prior to that I was working on the written script. The script file has a creation date of June 12th. The script originally started out as a short video, but then I started discovering things that dramatically changed the scope of it. I did a *lot* of iterations on it, including two major rewrites.
Reminds me of the days I was flying helos for the 506th IR RU, me and a few other rotorheads managed to figure out the core concepts of autorotation in ArmA 3, but we never quite understood how RPM was lost. I had a general idea of "not dipping the nose" will make my rotor spin longer, but I never figured out you could actually gain back some RPM by pitching up. Had I knew this bit, I could have saved at least a few exfils and inserts.
As always, the most professional analysis. Very interesting content. I was wondering why in certain situations I could not avoid a catastrophe. Everything is clear now, thanks a lot !!!
No wonder I had so much trouble with autorotations in ARMA, I tried to mimic the IRL method of dumping collective and diving for the nearest landing spot. I always figured I was just bad and that's why I couldn't pull up in time lol
What is really interesting (and imo wasn't mentioned in the video) is that the AI pilots dothis when forced to do auto-rotation landings. They are actually pretty good at it. They pitch the nose up and descend in a prolonged slope. The old method of trying to gain speed by nose down never really worked for me and once I saw how the AI did it I got better at auto-rotation.
@@dslyecxi Oh no definitely not!! No way haha. Just find it interesting that the "competency" of AI doing auto-rotation is based on the same principles you describe to not loose rpm.
same, ive only played it a little bit and it seems like too much to really get invested in, but every time i watch his videos i wish i was playing it lol
I have a little addendum to your keyboard/mouse collective tip. When you release the collective up/down key it applies as much of the "virtual scale" of the collective range to maintain altitude. If you turn the engine off at a hover in a helicopter with the collective movement modeled (Eg. the RHS UH-60), you can see it raise with RPMr decay. In a normal hover with engine power, you can see it move up and down if you pitch and roll to mess with your airspeed. I would say that under most circumstances, assuming you're using keyboard and mouse control, that merely releasing down collective is more effective than hitting collective increase.
hey i was talking with my friend the other day about scav karma and i came up with the idea of having your scav mumble something when he looks at other scavs. something only you could hear quietly under his breath he says like "comrade" or something for friendly scav and this could also apply to their total scav karma if the have - karma and are marked for other AI scavs why shouldn't it be for player scavs. youd still have to pay attention and learn what line mean what but its a way of giving more info without breaking immersion
As well done as this video is, it's just frustating to see how little sense Arma's flight model makes. I'd rather fly with the "realistic" physics turned on for autoration that makes some sense. DCS style would still be best as that gives you the most control over the aircraft and does what you'd expect from it.
There's the advanced flight model, it feels as good as DCS Huey's. However some mods and DLCs (*ahem* Prairie Fire) reduce the performance of the aircraft compared to basic flight model. It's so bad in Prairie Fire, the Mi-2 will barely takeoff with full passenger load, or UH-34 will rollover just after getting in.
@@chameleonh sadly nowhere close to DCS's Huey. I tested auto rotation yesterday with Armas advanced model and it does the same thing with loosing RPM based on pitch.
Cool video, Dslyecxi. Compared to DCS, arma is just too..well arma (at least in Vanilla). Which mods do you recommend for better (more realistic) flight characteristics?
Would there happen to be a raw script version of this video available, anywhere? There's a lot to parse and take notes on here and even more for someone who's done a lot of flying in Arma. It'd be nice to be able to easily reference and cross-reference. All around an incredible video, as expected.
Huh, angle of attack is the critical factor in autorotation? Wow, somehow I subconsciously knew this based on ARMA jank. The moment I lose engine power I pitch up and drop collective and it's a habit of mine since back in ARMA2. I've got 1700 hours in ARMA2 and 2600 hours in ARMA3 and flying for that long my brain picked up the odd behavior just automatically. Thanks for pointing it out! I never knew this was why I was always great at recovery
As I mention in the video, the technique that has been given for years is completely valid. What you’re describing is basically that technique. This video explains why that works, and also reveals that there is more going on beyond that. My original Arma autorotation video was released in 2013, to put things in perspective.
I've ran LOR and LOE trainings plenty of times for new pilots, but I feel brand new watching this video 😂 the number of times I've dipped to avoid fire and was confused why my RPM suddenly wouldn't recover.
I was sent to this through a Reddit post, but I'm glad the clarification was made. Vanila Arma 3 has a terrible damage model for aircraft, especially Helicopters when compared to Reforger. I didn't know it was that drastic until my Xbox bit the dust and I was back to PC with Arma 3. It's wild how sensitive they are. But, I appreciate this guide nonetheless! 🤘 I swear I used a lot of this in GTAV accidentally, but instead of powering down collective, you'd throttle for more (RT instead of LT on Xbox) while maintaining level or slightly higher nose pitch. I never knew I was using Rockstar's janky auto-rotation growing up but can confirm that out of maybe 400+ dead engines... (because GTA's smoke means the aircraft is worthless in about two minutes) That I've never once crashed any of the helis in that game (when engine failure). 😮
That's crazy. I used the same title six years ago, inspired by your first Art of Flight videos. I was crashing an MH9 into a hill to damage it then landing it lol
My back and knees hurt just looking at this video. lol, but it is better than the alternative. ai seems to have no problem GTFOing after the landings. Great video and content as always.
Vanilla Arma iii seems to be extremely different from your version. The only way I can reliably autorotate is by flying over 110kmh in a littlebird and flaring slightly maybe 30m above the ground, stoping flaring and starting to raise collective at 10m. if I fly below 100 kmh, I don't even remotely have enough rpm to slow the descent. Raising collective at 30m like you did in the video slightly cushions the fall (at 30m) and then makes you plummit like a rock.
Have you noticed if horizontal airspeed matters more for lift in the advanced flight model? Seeing how the sfm handles rotor rpm is a bit of a disappointment as a dcs rotor wing enthusiast.
I'll be honest Dslyecxi, I'm a bit disappointed about the explaination of rotor RPM loss. I would expect an explaination that takes only attitude in consideration to be something in a 5 minute tutorial on how to autorotate for beginners. You completely omitted the relationship between main propeller and direction of travel. If you are going 200kph and decreasing altitude at 10m/s, having an attitude of -5 degrees stalls the propeller. If you were to do the same without any horizontal speed you wouldn't have any issue with it. This is because what it's considered is the perpendicular component of the airflow through the main propeller which is what it's meant to speed up the blades (like blowing through a computer fan to speed it up. If you blow sideways, equally on both sides, it goes nowhere)
Yeah... fair enough, I just tested it and even going perpendicular to your direction of travel will not spin up the blades much faster but it will drastically reduce your ground speed, which doesn't make any physical sense ^^
the heli alarm sounds like my alarm clock, I've played arma for a mere 2.5k hours or so and I've noticed I've required multiple alarms set at the same time to wake me up lol
Great video, but I think your explanation is not quite right. In an autorotation, you're trying to store energy in your rotors via RPM and trade that RPM for lift close to the ground. This means to maintain RPM you must manage the angle between the rotor pitch and your *velocity vector*, not the horizon. The horizon is irrelevant. Generally speaking, your rotor pitch is above your velocity vector, you will increase RPM (minus a drag coefficient for the rotor blades). This does often correlate to the horizon, but only because you're most often traveling in level flight.
There's a reason I emphasized right at the start that what I am talking about is exclusively for Arma 3 and not real flight. How I describe it is how Arma works. What you're describing is not how A3 behaves in the normal FM. The deciding factor is your attitude compared to the horizon, not to your velocity vector.
@@dslyecxi I was under the impression that was also the case in Arma but sure enough I just tried it with vanilla helis and it's definitely the horizon. Wild.
Didn't the basic technique use to work in A2? I recall pitching down to build RPM and lift to cushion the fall. Arma just never liked high velocity impacts for some reason lol.
I believe there are helo practice scenarios on the workshop that should have this kind of functionality in them. If not, you can also use the debug console to run either of these commands: (vehicle player) setHit [getText (configOf (vehicle player) >> "HitPoints" >> "HitEngine" >> "name"), 1]; (vehicle player) setHit [getText (configOf (vehicle player) >> "HitPoints" >> "HitVRotor" >> "name"), 1];
Genuinely curious here and not trying to armchair quarterback (I only have experience flying low-inertia rotorcraft so it may be different for birds like the MH-6) but at 6:48 it's said that forward cyclic doesn't reduce RPM IRL, but in my experience, it does the opposite. Aft cyclic and nose high flight builds rotor RPM. Now obviously if you're in an OGE hover and lose power, once an auto is established reducing collective and pitching forward for airspeed is useful for building your energy buckets for your flare and settle but I would never initially respond to an auto with forward cyclic to build airspeed. Is that different for high-interia helicopters?
I may be wording that poorly. The underlying point is that diving IRL will build RPM, whereas in Arma, it will continually degrade it. Going into a shallow dive as part of an IRL autorotation is normal, going into one in A3 is fatal.
Ohh, now I think I really understand. It's not about aft v. nose *cyclic* , A3 only cares about pitch attitude. So IRL you can pitch your tip plane path aft with aft cyclic to build RPM *while* in a dive, in A3 you can't apparently and it just assumes a level TPP. Huh, I've just been reflexively pulling aft cyclic in A3 for years, I haven't even noticed this phenomenon. Super cool stuff Dslyecxi!
This will make it so that your engine will cut out between 30 and 150 seconds after executing this command. : [] spawn { sleep (30 + (random 120)); (vehicle player) setHit [getText (configOf (vehicle player) >> "HitPoints" >> "HitEngine" >> "name"), 1]; };
Mmm at least the title is straight forward and doesnt shy away from the fact you ARE crashing!! Also yes, thanks for touching on regular ARMA damage modeling lmao Thanks Dyslexi!
@@vansan4271 The scenario "Hell Heli" on the Steam workshop is pretty useful for helping you react to unexpected loss of power/tailrotor by taking all that effort away from you, you just fly and try not to crash!
