Helicopters?

[Valis]

+1 for a helicopter.

 

Would make a great collector's aircraft and a useful tech demo for the devs.

 

Picking up downed pilots, dropping off supplies, evading un-convincing dinosaurs. What's not to love?

 

[Avimimus]

Pulgasari was real?!

[AndyJWest]

2 hours ago, Avimimus said:

Pulgasari was real?!

 

If they are going to add giant reptilian creatures to Battle of Korea, they need to get the details right. Pulgasari had horns. 

[Talisman]

Yes, Igor Sikorsky was the great helicopter pioneer and the new Korean war flight simulation offers a great opportunity for the developers of IL-2 to showcase the development and use of the helicopter in the combat arena.  There are so many new opportunities and areas of interest to explore on the battle front in this area.  

 

 

You know it makes sense.  👍

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

Edited October 22, 2024 by Talisman

[Dagwoodyt]

Even if the developers don't have expertise in helo's it would be great to have them at least fess up. I have not had interest in learning helo's in DCS, but the idea of Korea without helo's just seems so very wrong😊

[Avimimus]

18 minutes ago, Dagwoodyt said:

Even if the developers don't have expertise in helo's it would be great to have them at least fess up. I have not had interest in learning helo's in DCS, but the idea of Korea without helo's just seems so very wrong😊

 

I'm sure they are capable of it ...but it would take time to implement the complex dynamics. Helicopters are quite complex in their operation and also very complex in their aerodynamic interactions (a lot of encountering your own downwash, rotor blade movements, inertia of parts, things like retreating blade stall)... I suspect adding flyable helicopters would require the work of adding multiple bombers. That said, AI helicopters might be faster to develop.

 

Also, you really should try flying helicopters in sims... it is a totally different experience.

[MaxPower]

On 7/1/2024 at 5:17 PM, migmadmarine said:

Since the sim is modeling flight physics, if they have made their physics engine well, introducing a helicopter shouldn't be some impossible task, since they aren't magic, if the physics check out it should be able to work in game.

This is not really representative of how software development works.  Usually features are planned and scoped.  Having a general physics engine that can handle every possible use case is not efficient and would be rejected at the planning stage.  It would actually probably not even be proposed.  What's more likely is there would be different physics programs to handle different scenarios with different amounts of detail.  I'm sure il2 already has this.  I'm quite sure the flight model is not being used for the particle simulation, although they might share certain data like air pressure at altitude.  Helicopters have a lot of special problems that are not necessary to model when planning a fixed wing aircraft simulation.  Transitional lift, settling with power, asymmetrical disk pitch relative to the rotor-head, auto-rotation, disk inertia, weird gyro effects blade flapping, lag hinges, etc are all dynamic phenomena that wouldn't necessarily be relevant to a fixed wing simulation.  A really well made fixed wing flight model may or may not have the necessary inputs and outputs to make a well made helicopter simulation.  All I'm saying is it's not like every decent airplane sim has a great helicopter sim hiding inside of it waiting to come out.  Usually systems planning is quite focused.

I don't know if this is really an implementation challenge or not but another fun thing to consider for helicopters is simulation rate.  A Bell 47's main rotor turns at a rate of around 360 rpm.  This means the rotor does a turn every 166 milliseconds.  A simulation running at 30 frames per second has a frame every 33 milliseconds.  This means the rotor turns 1/5th of a turn every frame.  60 fps would have the rotor turn 1/10th of a turn every frame, etc.  The forces on rotor blades change dramatically throughout the course of their complete rotation.  Is 30 fps enough for the dynamic simulation of rotor blades?  If not, do you think the fixed wing flight model has an abstraction that can take care of a rotor simulation in sub-frame steps, or a generalization of rotor blade behaviour?  I think that the wing simulation that doesn't have dramatic changes in force every few milliseconds probably does not require code to handle a case like this.  A propeller, which is much less dynamic than a rotor, probably does not simulate each blade but instead acts like a thrust conveyor with other rules for torque in the flight model.

Edited October 26, 2024 by MaxPower

[Lensman]

Helicopters in Korea would be some kind of MASH up ...

[Talisman]

On 10/26/2024 at 10:45 PM, Lensman said:

Helicopters in Korea would be some kind of MASH up ...

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

[Gambit21]

I have no doubt that they could do it if they were driven to do so.

I do have serious doubts however for reasons that should be obvious, if starting essentially from square-one, that the juice would be worth the squeeze for them all things considered. 

 

 

[TBTSJulBlox]

As much as helis didn't have much of a place in WWII, they did start having a place in the korean war, so seeing as the devs are working on that, helicopters would be cool to see. Even if they made it so that it's 1 collection aircraft, priced at 40$ I'd still buy it just for the fun I'd get to have with it. 

 

I know they aren't for everyone though, so I would understand if they decided not to make them. I also know that it would be a costly project due to the complex physics behind helicopters, but still, would love to see them.

[FeuerFliegen]

Hoping we can at least get an AI helicopter!

[BlitzPig_EL]

As an AI I would be OK with it, but in general I put it in the same category as the Waco glider in Great Battles, the only "plane" that I regret purchasing.  It's use is so one dimensional that, and this is my opinion now, it does not justify the development time and cost to make it flyable. 

[Talisman]

Hi Folks, 

 

I suggest that there are a lot of virtual pilots who fly helicopters in other flight simulation titles, including combat simulations, that would be very interested in Korean War rotary operations with this new title.  For example, I belong to a very active virtual helicopter squad base in Europe and love making a difference to the ground war in both SP and MP flying the Huey and Chinook. 

Delivering boots on the ground, artillery, rocket launchers and SAR/medivac runs, etc, etc, can make a big difference to the war on the ground.  Helicopters have great tactical value and are a very historical part of the Korean battlefield. 

It would be so disappointing not to have helicopters for us to fly in this upcoming IL-2 Series Korean War flight simulation title.  AI helicopters would just not cut it in my humble opinion.  We must be able to fly them.  Surely that is what a flight simulation is about.  

Please find a short video below showcasing the use of the helicopter to take/secure Heartbreak Ridge in the Korean War:

 

 

Happy landings,

 

Talisman

Edited February 12 by Talisman

[czech693]

Carriers with both jets and props.  I like helicopters and fly them in DCS, but the time and resources spent on the flight model could be better spent on arresting system, catapult, and "paddles" for the carriers. Carriers played a major part in the Korean War compared to helicopters.

Edited February 13 by czech693

[ST_Catchov]

"And the prop-driven flying machines with wing and tail shall glide amongst the heavens bringing joy and wonder. Those without wing are unclean and a product of the devil. Worship not the false idol."

 

Genesis 6:11

[BraveSirRobin]

helicopters don't really fly, they're just so ugly that the earth repels them. 
 

Genesis 6:12

[AndyJWest]

Whatever the devs may decide to do long-term, taking on too many new things at once clearly isn't a good idea when resources are limited. And whether helicopters are even a viable proposition or not will clearly depend on how well the planned Korea content sells.

 

 

[[CPT]Crunch]

Cursed be the 109 helicopter pilot in the valley and the spitfire helicopter pilot above the mountain top.  Lamentations Mk 108:303

[Dagwoodyt]

On 2/12/2025 at 4:09 AM, BlitzPig_EL said:

As an AI I would be OK with it, but in general I put it in the same category as the Waco glider in Great Battles, the only "plane" that I regret purchasing.  It's use is so one dimensional that, and this is my opinion now, it does not justify the development time and cost to make it flyable. 

🤣In DCS flying heli's is like having a whole new map to fly. If the terrain map in Korea is good it makes absence of heli's all the more disappointing.

[BlitzPig_EL]

It's pretty simple for me.  There were no "attack" helos during the Korean War, hence I can't use a chopper to blow stuff up in the upcoming title, so, to me it's a waste of effort to make them flyable.  Back in old IL2 when the Stinson L4 came out as a mod aircraft I gave that unarmed aircraft a go on several multi player servers,  all I ever got for trying to do some recon was shredded by AAA or sent down in flames by Zeros looking for easy kills.  It was not fun.  Helos in the new Korea sim will face the same fate, because the sim world will not, and cannot ever, accurately portray operations of unarmed aircraft because of the condensed space we operate in.

[Avimimus]

10 hours ago, Dagwoodyt said:

🤣In DCS flying heli's is like having a whole new map to fly. If the terrain map in Korea is good it makes absence of heli's all the more disappointing.

 

It would be fun to have a helicopter though. If the launch had gone smoothly we might have had a Cierva autogyro and a Kamov A-7 for Cliffs of Dover (both of which would be simpler to model than a true helicopter).

 

That said, they could also provide that experience of low and slow flying with a Po-2 (with no development risk). At least five of them were shot down I believe, and they carried bombs - so they were also in combat.

 

Anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic!

[migmadmarine]

I think the comparison of the helicopter to the glider made above is a bad one,  since the mere fact of the mission not being inherently one way is a big factor to interest. My mission success state in a helo isn't essentially crash-landing in the right spot, I have to get myself back out again safely, which in a mission type like front line casevac, or rescuing a pilot from behind the lines, has a lot of cat and mouse danger to it which I think would be phenomenal fun. Maybe it wouldn't work well in MP (although people enjoy flying logistics and troop insertions in DCS, they are selling a chinook for gods sake) multiplayer isn't the only realm for missions.