Attack heli zoom

[Elektro]

I was wondering if you could give the gunners in all attack helicopters, a better zoom. Becouse when ur flying 600 - 800 meters high 1 zoom click is not enough. Maybe you could make it as powerfull as the tanks? they have double zoom

[Proff3ssorXman]

If the attack choppers had 3 levels of zoom (Like you are suggesting) then the 3rd level would be soo hard to get on target it would not be funny.

[Solid Knight]

I had mine setup as:
Default: 1.15
Level 1: 0.6
Level 2: 0.3
Level 3: 0.1

It's not as powerful as the tanks. The first two levels are very useful. I think in the PR helicopters it starts out at 0.6 as the default view.

[Ragni<RangersPL>]

Please, NO!!!

Maybe that would make couple of you guys happy but let's think about it from another point of view... from "the other side of the barrel". Let's look at it from a point of view of someone you are aiming at.

It's already hard to spot hovering heli on high alititude. First of all, it's a very small spot on the sky. Secondly, when enemy helo is near view distance limit it looks almost transparent (almost the same color as the sky but a little bit white)... probably it depends from graphic settings or it's BF2 engine issue.

Now...

If you play as an infantry, you can spot enemy helo before it can spot you. It's a lot easier if you appear on the sides of the helo, so you can retreat or flank it and move to safety... If you appear on the front of the helo your chances of survival are dropping (a lot), it depends on gunners reactions and ability to spot small (infantry size) targets but if he spots you (and you were unable to find cover/retreat) than usually it's over.

If you play as a crewman in a vehicle (apc, tank, IFV) you can zoom in... but your unzoomed field of view is narrowed. Usually helo is on high altitude so even if you spot him, you can't elevate your barrel high enough to you use your primary weapon... and even if you can (APC, IFV) skilled pilot can evade enough rounds to survive and return to base for repairs (it happens). If you are unlucky and apear on the front of enemy helo it's usually to late... vehicles are large, fast moving targets and are easy to spot (human eye recognizes movement a lot easier then shape or colors).
Even AAVs are easy to destroy. I'm not sure what's the range of AA Missiles or locking range but I've seen AAVs destroyed by helo missile before it was able to find target, lock on and fire... efficiency of AA missiles is another thing, sometimes they act wierd.


IMO, more zoom for helo would make it more overpowered, it's good as it is.

[Rudd]

whatever the best approximation of what happens IRL is what we should do

[xatu miller]

Yea it should be as close as it is IRL. In real life when flying a sophisticated attack helicopter you would have much more devices to help you hit the target even at ranges as long as 8 km and with out directly seeing the target.

If you can't kill a attack helicopter with a APC or a tank then it is how its suppose to be.

Even if a AAV some times gets killed by a attack helicopter it's normal. 1 AAV is often enough to scare all attack helicopters out of the area so I don't see a problem.

[Solid Knight]

The more zoom you have the narrower your field of vision. It's actually easier to go unnoticed when they're using their high zoom simply because they have to do a whole lot of scanning to see what's going on.

[Mora]

Add one more zoom layer. Done

Especially now when the view distance of kashan has been increased, scanning on the far distance is also a part of what an attack chopper should be able to do in PR.

If you look at my video you can see that it can be handy here and there

[Ragni<RangersPL>]

Yea it should be as close as it is IRL.

The problem is you can't do it comletely due to game engine limitations and some things must be scaled down to fit into gameplay.

Example:
Imagine Kashan Desert map (size: 4x4 km) with realistic range of view. IRL Attack helicopter on altitude of 500m have visual range radius of 41.37 km (!)... if we put it on kashan along with realistic range of weapons, you can rape enemy base (and everything else on the map) hovering above your own base... how good for the gameplay it can be? As you can see not everything in PR should (or can) be like IRL. As I already said, it's simply impossible to implement all important factors because of game limitations or gameplay.

If you can't kill a attack helicopter with a APC or a tank then it is how its suppose to be.

Yes, it's true... but not the way you think.

It is possible to shoot down a helocopter by a tank or APC in some circumstances IRL. There are even special anti aircraft tank shells manufactured for this purpose. Yes, probably there are no confirmed use of those shells during real combat. Simply because of assymetrical conflicts we are experiencing.

The problem in PR is unrealistic use of attack helicopters. Players hover high above the ground to avoid being shoot down by a tank. IRL that kind behaviour would lead to death. Pilots would be shotdown by AA artilery or missiles... those things are dangerous for aircrafts.
In PR helo pilots don't have to worry about AA fire from the ground because view range on maps and AA artillery/missile range is unrealistic (scaled down).
The main reason why PR helo pilots act in other way then real pilots and fly high is armor and their turret moving speed. Tanks turret in PR are controled by mouse so it is possible to do almost instant 90 degrees turret turn (or even more, depends on game settings) and shoot down enemy low (realistic) flying helicopter with no problem. IRL tank turrets don't turn so fast, mainly becasue of the weight of the turret.
AFAIK very few armored vehicles are equiped with high speed motors to track fast moving targets like aircrafts, most of them are AAVs.

Conclusion:
- Making WSAD controlled turrets for tanks, APCs, IFVs and propper turrets turning speed would force pilots to keep their helicopters near the ground
- AAVs should keep their mouse controlled turrets to simulate radar controlled auto tracking systems and high speed motors.

[Solid Knight]

You don't need WASD control. Just lower the turn rate.

[Alex6714]

You don't need WASD control. Just lower the turn rate.

The problem with that is some guy with uber DPI mouse that he switches on the fly.

[Solid Knight]

That would be me. However if you switch to digital controls your going to get annoyed when the crosshairs go a little too high and a little too low on those long distance shots. I wouldn't concern myself too much with some guy who has a better mouse as there are many other factors that come into play than the speed of the turret. People can have all kinds of elaborate setups to give them an edge but they're marginal at best. Actually, the only real benefit of this adjustable DPI mouses is being able to drop the senstivity so you can work in high zoom easily. Also, people have different quality of keyboards which will influence the turrets as well.

[xatu miller]

The problem is you can't do it comletely due to game engine limitations and some things must be scaled down to fit into gameplay.

Yes, i meant as realistic as possible in the scaled down form. Haven't written it down though.

Conclusion:
- Making WSAD controlled turrets for tanks, APCs, IFVs and propper turrets turning speed would force pilots to keep their helicopters near the ground
- AAVs should keep their mouse controlled turrets to simulate radar controlled auto tracking systems and high speed motors.

Totally agree with that, though the lock on procedure should be more complicated in some way so the pilots will rather choose hanging low, but that would work only with the WSAD control for the APC's and tanks so they want be able to kill the low flying fast helicopters so easily it would be unrealistic.

[Mora]

The problem in PR is unrealistic use of attack helicopters. Players hover high above the ground to avoid being shoot down by a tank. IRL that kind behaviour would lead to death.

CAS_117;885588']

Attacks are done from ANY altitude.

Let me be clear:

The altitude at which an aircraft flies is based ENTIRELY on the current battlefield/weather conditions.

[Zoddom]

Ragni is right.
IRL, attack helos dont fly higher than 500 metres (during attack)
but I think you should add zoom to the pilote seat in a helo, because u can hardly see your targets, and its unrealistic, because irl they have drawn their targets on the HUD

[Hotrod525]

whatever the best approximation of what happens IRL is what we should do

Ok so add UAV radar to apache, add 30x zoom, add fire and forget mod, auto-target ID, autolock on target and an Awesome view range of 8KM. It would be little bit closer to a real one. =)

[Arnoldio]

Primary controls in the tank turret should be WASD, mouse sens would be overwrited (dont know if possible) to really low rate, just to adjust to long range targets (fine tuning).

Sry for offtpic tho.

[Alex6714]

Ok so add UAV radar to apache, add 30x zoom, add fire and forget mod, auto-target ID, autolock on target and an Awesome view range of 8KM. It would be little bit closer to a real one. =)

127x zoom iirc.

Still, may aswell make the hellfires take 2 hits to kill a tank, and the cannon single shot as it is now.