Flying jets/helicopters

[Nutcracker]

My first non-please-unban-me-I-didn't-do-anything-wrong post. :) I hope you enjoy...

I'll keep it short and sweet. Jets. Helicopters. How do you fly the darn things for more than 30 seconds without crashing? For controls, is it better to use Mouse + Keyboard or Keyboard only? Or how about a gamepad (for the flying only of course)? Anyone got a good tutorial that they can point me to?

Much obliged. This is definitely the most helpful gaming community I've ever come across. It's a rare occurrence when you can go some place where the majority of people are trying to shoot you in the head, yet somehow still make you feel welcome.

Thanks!

- Nutcracker

[Å|ArchBuck]

wish I could help you out... but use a joystick... could never do any flying without it

[moldykorn]

Wow. Is flying really that hard for people? Im not trying to make jabs ay anyone...but seriously.


When you first get in the helicopter!



hold down W. go straight up, and use the A and D keys to look to the left and right.

With the mouse, ssslllooowwwlllyyy move it around. Be careful, when it starts to pitch one way, move it the other way. But be careful not to over compensate. Thats where a lot of people mess up. They freak out, start moving the mouse like a clothes washer on spin cycle.

just go up VERY VERY high, and play around with it. That way if you mess up you can just eject and be safe.


Low level flying(my favorite) is a whole new ball game.



Oh, and jets. Just keep the nose above the horizon. And keep a large circle over the map and you should be fine.

[Wibby]

Now while I'm not the best at flying (read sucks ass, but trying to get better) but I find that it's easiest to stay in the air with the Helicopters by just using the keyboard. WASD to control the speed and to rotate it and the little directional keys to control looking up and down and turning left and right. For the jets I just use the keyboard and the mouse. Hope that helps a little.

[DinkyPoopStick]

If I were you, I would use the keyboard and mouse to go online and order a joystick.
For $20 you can be flying like a champ. :D

[wihadmin]

I fly choppers using only keyboard and I can hold my own. But for jets, I gotta have my joystick.

[TC HEAT]

nah joy stick the way to go....im used to playing jet simulators..so ima beast in the sky..i shake the mess outta peeps man i love it..

[Nutcracker]

Sounds like joystick is the way to go then. I'll have to dig mine out of the closet and plug 'er in.

Thanks!

- Brian

[theweightofarms!]

man i just threw my ancient joystick out because i thought i didn't need it anymore!

is there a good place to practice flying? would you reccomend loading up a singleplayer battle and practicing that way?

i'd feel like an idiot trying to learn to fly on a populated server like wih.

[CnC_drake32]

My two cents...

Airplanes: You need a joystick. Some people say they fly with the mouse, but I would crash instantly. Once I started using a joystick I was flying like an ace.

Helicopters: Keyboard/mouse is the way to go. I think the default sensitivity is like 3 or 4, I'd suggest lowering that down to 1. That way you can make little corrections and not find yourself overcorrecting, losing control and crashing. However, what I do is I use my joystick to keep my throttle at about 35-40%, which is about the hovering speed. I found that it is a lot easier to fly that way. So when you are trying to hover over a flag or something you don't have to constantly keep tapping W to maintain hovering position.

[N194CO]

nah joy stick the way to go....im used to playing jet simulators..so ima beast in the sky..i shake the mess outta peeps man i love it..

Yeah, I have been flying simulators since i was 6 Heat, Anyhow. With the Keyboard and Keyboard lol... use that with the Helicopter. Use the Arrow Keys to yaw right or left and the up and down arrows for your pitch attitude. W A S D for Upper Rotor and Tail Rotor movement.

For Jets, its real hard to use Keyboard only, so use the mouse and Keyboard at the same time. I recommend a Joystick with BF2 and any flight simulation games out there.

P.S. Heat, i can take you down anyday lol .. <-- teh beast in teh sky.

Happy Flying.

[LordBeer]

Joysticks for jets and choppers.. I like being able to rapidly change my flight inputs. Being able to go from a little left roll to a full right roll in an instant just might be the deciding factor in a dogfight. I feel that is an edge you get with a joystick. Although, Im not exactly sure what it's like to fly with a keyboard/mouse. I've been flying since the first Microsoft Flight Sim and I had a joystick then. Im probably not going to be trying to dogfight with a keyboard at this point.

Lots of flight sims under my belt...

[Nsane]

I fly choppers using only keyboard and I can hold my own. But for jets, I gotta have my joystick.
When do u play? I havent seen u on once.

[SoReal]

That's because his ingame name isn't wihadmin. Silly head!

[Nsane]

Well then i dont know if he's on or not i guess :crazy: <---(has lost all braincells)
On topic: i use a keyboard/mouse for both and i do somewhat ok.
:appz: :appz: :appz: <--- love those

[SnaKe]

Practice. Practice. Practice.

[=HR=Capt.Cal]

And more practice, practice, practice

[Merlinex]

I fly choppers using my keyboard/mouse, and I can hold my own as well.

Jets ... I can do bombing runs, but I can't dog fight, I think I'd need to go Joystick if I ever wanted to be good in that realm.

I have a friend who is opposite, he uses joystick, great with Jets, bad with Choppers. We've discuss this at length and well here is the thing. When choosing a Joystick to fly a helicopter, you need to realize that the throttle is one of the most important thing and needs to be easily accessible and move-able. In a Jet, you can go full throttle and do alot. In a chopper (with the keyboard) i'm constantly adjusting my throttle (WS keys) as I'm flying. If you can learn to a fly a chopper with a joystick, I'd go that route, however there are plenty of keyboard/mouse chopper pilots at there that are damn good.

The only downside is turning radius, with the mouse I believe its a bit harder to control hard/banking (not hovering spins) turns, but its easier to stop on a dime so ... hope this helps :).

Good way to learn to fly, hop on an empty server with a buddy who is a pilot, and just play follow the leader.

[karl_58sow]

I can fly just fine with the keyboard and mouse as well. But the jet is a different story as I can constantly change elevation I have to slide the mouse over and over and over same with barrel rolls etc.

[TrinitronX]

When I first started flying in the demo, I hardly could take off without crashing :tongue:.. but eventually I figured out the tricky part of taking off.. and now I'm pretty good. Dogfighting is really fun, especially with other good pilots.. I love doing crazy loops and stuff to lose anyone tailing me :tongue:.
I really don't like flying the support choppers though.. they're really slow and aren't as easy to control as the attack helicopters.
I fly with my trusty keyboard and mouse, with the sensitivity set at 4.3.
It's not really hard for me to control, and the higher sensitivity allows for more mobility when doing tricky maneuvers. I do find myself having to pick up the mouse and moving it down while lifted up, then pushing it back up to do really sharp loops in the planes, but any higher of a sensitivity would probably make me crash a lot more than I do... (which usually isn't much unless I misjudge my altitude :tongue:)
Lately I've been getting a lot better at dogfighting with pilots who know how to evade. I can follow them pretty easily... it's just getting the missiles to make contact that's the tricky part for me.
I also found out that in the attack choppers, you can actually do a loop if you have enough height, and push hard foward until you level out again. Not very useful in combat.. but just fun as a trick :tongue:

Another thing that I have been experimenting with is bombing another plane from above them :yaya: It's very hard to get above them, but then the real challenge is staying above if they're making turns. I've been able to get above another plane multiple times for this.. but I can't seem to judge where the bombs will go in the air. It's also fun to just fly really close to enemy pilots to freak them out :lol:

[DonkeyHodie]

keyboard and mouse all the way. using just the keyboard doesn't allow for fine tuning, and a joystick is too cumbersome. i just crank the sensitivity and yaw/pitch factors to the max. also try turning the mouse inverted, that should make it easier to fly.

[atomicbob]

I like buzzing the carrier inverted, headhigh in a jet. I bet it looks cool from the deck.

:nuts:

[wolfman987]

It`s not that bad. I use a keyboard and a mouse. If you need some real practice just create a game on singleplayer, that`s how I learned. Anyways, after sometime you`ll get the hang of it and will be killing people all over the place :D