Controling Tail Rotar hit

[DBR_ONIX]

Hey
I have seen/player around with the tail rotar hit script.
it is okay for cut scenes etc

But.. I want in a mission, you are a helo pilot, you are hit buy a RPG (With SAM Script)
But I want the play to be incontrol of the helo, like in Black Hawk Down (The book) where the pilot is hit, and is tring to control the dammaged helo

Is this possible?
- Ben

[Dubieman]

I don't know about if its possible.

Maybe when hit you can use setvelocity in diff directions to simulate the chopper going back and forth and they happen like 10-15 secs apart. I'm not sure about spinning...

[DBR_ONIX]

Hmm.. The tailrotar hit script I have already makes the helo spin.. But I have no idea how to do the counteracting stuff..
Any ideas anyone?
- Ben

[HuNtA]

Hmm, theres not many ways I can think of. Maybe tell the player he can control it if he turns the jystick enough, that might work  ;D

[DBR_ONIX]

Hehehhee
Would this work....... Turn the helo slowly at first.. And if it slowed from the speed it was set to.. IE, the player has tried to slow it down a bit
Speed it up less
Then if it's over whatever speed, kill the player, if not, injure him

Any other ideas?
- Ben

[csde-PiLLe]

Do you have control over WHEN and WHERE the hit will happen? Then you could edit the script to exit as soon as the player is below 25 meters. Have a slow sink rate, then try YOURSELF if it is possible to regain control.

Have to tried using the tail rotor to spin your helo in flight? If you travel faster and faster, you have less and less control over your rotation. That is why Helicopters have a "rear fin" in the first place: The air passing by stabilizes the chopper in addition to the tail rotor. A Helicopter Pilot only has limited control over the tail rotor. Using his pedals, he can speed it up or slow it down by a few per cent, but he cannot turn it off or let it turn superfast. This is due the tail rotor being connected to the main engine using a gearbox, which is prettymuch like "seamless shifting". If the gear is at its limit, you cannot go further.

This means, if the tail rotor is gone, the pilot has no control whatsoever. The "turning force" (Drehmoment) of the main rotor will always get the chopper to spin faster and faster.

If the gearbox is damaged, the pilot may be able to "rotate" in one direction only or not at all. With a damaged gearbox, you only can hope that the right parts are damaged: those that would spin the chopper in the same direction the main rotor is pulling it.

I tried to put it down simple, I have learned a great deal about that when a local SAR Chopper crashed in an unmarked powerline. The pilot was killed and the Doctor (Notarzt) and the Paramedic (Rettungsassistent) were severly injured. We had used to work with this team quite a lot and as we were the unit to free them from their wreckage, we had troubles with what we saw and felt. So, a few months after the crash, we had a lesson on how helicopters and airplanes work and how to get people out of there.

Being a volunteer firefighter, you might face these situations again, though noone hopes he will ever have to rescue his friends from a chopper that crashed 60 meters (180 feet) straight down and tore a 2 meter (6 feet) crater into solid-frozen ground.

Another thing I learned is that you cannot pry a chopper open, for example, by using the jaws-of-life (Rettungsschere/-Spreizer). The material a chopper is made from is meant to be inflexible. So, it will break, instead of a car which you can deform.

Oh well

ANOTHER SOLUTION: Do not let the chopper spin. That might look cool, but as I mentioned, the pilot (being a player, AI will definitely fail) probably won't be able to control the spin.

Why not have their fuel-tank punctured instead? Have the hit start a script, for example using an event handler, which decreases the fuel amount of the chopper, so he has about 30 seconds to get the bird down. Then, depending on how well he did that (additional damage to the chopper) blow him up or don't.

You could add some smoke using a particle script (I have seen that in one tail-rotor-script) or have a warning horn sound. There are many websites around which offer airplane and chopper warning sounds, either from test-flights or from actual crashes (I ALWAYS only used the first) which you could use. Having a decent Synth, you could even make the horn yourself.

Cheers
PiLLe

[The Helipilot]

just a little corrections

Using his pedals, he can speed it up or slow it down by a few per cent, but he cannot turn it off or let it turn superfast. This is due the tail rotor being connected to the main engine using a gearbox, which is prettymuch like "seamless shifting". If the gear is at its limit, you cannot go further

In fact it's not exactly like this : the rpm in the tail rotor are always the same, you control the lift by increasing or decreasign the angle of attack of the tail rotor blades.

This means, if the tail rotor is gone, the pilot has no control whatsoever. The "turning force" (Drehmoment) of the main rotor will always get the chopper to spin faster and faster.
If the gearbox is damaged, the pilot may be able to "rotate" in one direction only or not at all. With a damaged gearbox, you only can hope that the right parts are damaged: those that would spin the chopper in the same direction the main rotor is pulling it.

not exactly also : the "turning force" is due to power you applied on the main rotor, if you cut this power ( by putting the collectif on the desk and entering in autorotation), you don't need rotor tail to control your helicopter...ok you control it but you're falling like a stone... So you will be in trouble when, near the ground, you will ask power to stop the descending rate...at this time you will spin in the opposite direction the main rotor is turning.

A tailtotor failure is a very sweaty but survivable situation, as long as you're high, there's a big free area not to far and you trained...ok Call 911 before landing...it can help... ;D Of course I'm not speaking about tactical flight or emergency: too low for a lot of option.

Well all this speech doesn't help with this script.

I had a look at it and definitevly it's made for cutscene (looks good by the way) but the inematique is not good. A real pilote will not spin like this : he will reduce power and exchange speed against altitude or the contrary depending where does he wants to land. Then approching the ground, or he will make a "rolling landing" asking as little power as he can ( no power = no spin) or he will make a "quick stop" to cancel his speed and the ask power to "reduce" the crash (a vertical spin crash). Of course it's with time to plan it. For low level pilots it can be a spin crash with speed (the worst) because they will ask power to avoid the planet.

Anyway, it's just details : for sure the script looks good.

Is there a way to "transform" the power signal input in a tail rotor input, to reproduce the "power effect" ? Or just reduce the power imput ?
I tried with deceasing the fuel level but it's a good simulation of a .......fuel failure... .
In fact we need something who will ease the control you have.... still working on it...

[csde-PiLLe]

Well, as I read it: It is exactly what the visiting pilot told us, but I totally messed it up.

Well, I thought I had something messed up with the gear, as I could not any automatic transmission that could handle that.

Basically, I stand corrected

In fact, I HAD previously heard about Autorotation, especially from a neat game called LHX Attack Chopper, which I bought and played for years, until all my computers were too fast

Thanks.

Cheers
PiLLe

[DBR_ONIX]

Hmmm.. What about options that are added when the script is run to increase/decrease the power of the rotars, so to bring the helo down faster, and less spin, or down slower but more spin
Then some random stuff + the speed and rotation speed, if it's > something, then hurt the player, if it's over something else, kill the player

All the info is usefull (And aprecated), but I'm still not sure if it's possible

Anyone want to have a go at the script?

- Ben

[The Helipilot]

actually I think there's nothing for power
but :

by shutting down the engine and restart it ( by setfuel) we can simulate the descent, and then if the descent is at an angle > than the "theorique" one, it means that player is asking power. In this case  : more spin. If angle< "theorical path" then it means autorotation, no power asked, no spin.

By this way we can simulate a controled descent, then a spin before touchdown with a survivable vertical speed.

Big scripting job and a lot of sync to do, but it looks doable no ?

and what about just playing with setpos ? I guess it doesn't work with human player ?

[Planck]

and what about just playing with setpos ? I guess it doesn't work with human player ?

Well...... you can setpos yourself  (player), so I suppose this means you can setpos humans.


Planck

[Grendel]

Just popped in and took a look at this...

Heres an "outside the box" idea to make a chopper hard to control-yet still possible to land if you are good (and lucky)...What if you used a script to "pulse" a command to disable user input at variable intervals along with some setvelocity commands.  you could use a loop with a small wait interval to make the controls "mushy" to downright random and erratic to simulate cyclic/collective input failure.  

Also, I spent a lot of time at my unit in Germany pestering Apache Pilots/mechanics for info so heres something interesting and realistic you could do:

Apaches have a fly-by-wire system with hydraulic back up.  The range of motion for the FBW system is relatively small, and in the event of system failure, the pilot has to force the stick outside this range of motion, thus snapping some shear-pins and activating the back up hydraulic system.  It would be cool (and possible) to impliment with a script.  In the event of system failure, user input would be completely disabled, and a new action would be made available in the action menu to activate back up controls.  EDIT: ok, just looked at this and realized you wouldn't be able to select an action if user input was disabled, so the script would have to simulate this.  This would activate the pulsed user input script to make the controls mushy.  Further damage could cause a leak in the hydraulic fluid, and make the user input progressively erratic until all control is lost.

Just an Idear...

-Grendel

[DBR_ONIX]

I like the idea of disableuserimput thing
I might just have a go at that...
Where'd I put that tailrotar hit script

With the FBW thing.. how would you know when to start the system failure?

Good idea though
Thanks!
- Ben

[Grendel]

With the FBW thing.. how would you know when to start the system failure?

You could use a "hit" EH with a random chance check that increases the odds based as the damage increases...

-Grendel

[DBR_ONIX]

Had a go at the script.. Failed  :-\
I only had a quick go at it, but i'll try agian soon
- Ben

[Grendel]

My cpu is currently on the fritz, so I can't be of any real help at the moment...

What failed in particular?

-Grendel

[DBR_ONIX]

Me
Nah, more just being able to enable/disable it
I can manage, I think, what is the corected version of this :

Code: [Select]

?(!screwcontrols == "true"): GOTO "Start"

I'll have another try tonight
- Ben

[Grendel]

Code: [Select]

?(screwcontrols): GOTO "Start"
Should work if you want the loop to run if the global variable "screwcontrols" is true.

the "!" means "not" so you would only use it if you wanted to check if "screwcontrols" is false:

Code: [Select]

?!(screwcontrols): goto "whatever"
-Grendel

[DBR_ONIX]

Thanks
I just guess that line (Didn't have the script open at the time)
I was kinda busy lastnight (Out), so will try tonight
- Ben