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Apache Havoc by Empire/Razorworks (U.S. Release)
by Eric Marlow |
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Realism I've always been hesitant to vilify flight simulations for characteristics such as the flight model. As someone who's had his share of non-virtual flight time, I can speak to what things look like from the air, but I cannot definitely criticize the performance of the AH-64 or the Mi-28 since I have never flown them personally. Having said that, what I CAN do is compare Apache Havoc to other helo sims, the laws of physics, and generally produce some commentary as to the feeling of flight in this simulation.
I was unable to find a significant difference in the way the Apache flew vs. the Havoc. The performance was almost identical, at least to the point of being difficult to discern any distinction in performance from my point of view. There were some holes in the flight model. The hover-ceiling altitude was supposedly 4,760 meters for the Havoc, but at 6000 meters I stopped my experiment since the bird was not about to stop climbing. The sense of speed was adequate, but it didn't seem proportional. I reached about 580 km/h in the Havoc after coming out of a steep dive and apparent ground speed looked the same as at 350 km/h. Of course it's not normal to fly a helo at jet speeds and everything below 350 kph appeared reasonable. On full realism the helo is a challenge to fly, which I like. The helos were a bit more difficult to fly than the Apache was in Longbow 2, but nowhere near as squirrelly as the Apache in Team Apache. A feature called "cross coupling" allows the cyclic to be tied to the tail rotor - I recommend keeping this feature ON. When this feature is turned off you have to supply a tremendous about of right rudder to keep the helo going straght. Once you've built up enough forward momentum the torque effect becomes less noticeable, but it makes holding a hover next to impossible. Cross coupling will make your life easier. |
In general, I found the weapons systems and avionics to be quite nice. At times I was able to lock up objects using my FLIR/DVO/DTV combo, but not with the FCR radar. This is a bit confusing when the item is a T-80 tank that is out in the open and I suspect a bug here. Line of sight is critical in ground warfare, and tanks hiding behind the hedgerows cannot be locked up easily which is appropriate. You must be careful not to over-fly their position because if they are feeling feisty they'll frag you pretty good. Small Crawling Insects Apache Havoc presented a mixed bag of results on my two test systems. Initially I installed the software on my primary gaming platform (P2 450). For this system, Apache Havoc performed well, a nice change of pace from recent sim releases. I guess we have the Brits to thank as beta testers for this, since it appears that the initial British release had quite a few more problems than version 1.1c. There really were no "show stopping" bugs for me. My first problem occurred when I loaded up the included Thrustmaster F-22/TQS file. When I jumped into the game I noticed some strange keyboard behaviors. Taking a closer look at the Thrustmaster programming, I noticed a liberal use of the /p /r (press-release) key combinations. This combination can be tricky if every press is not followed by a release. After I created my own HOTAS file by removing most of the /p /r sequences the problem went away. Go to Page Six
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