Virtual pilot: NovaLogic updates Comanche 3

Flight Journal, Oct 1998 by Lert, Peter

The role of the helicopter in combat continues to evolve. In Vietnam, the helicopter was primarily a transport (although, of course, both regular Huey gunships and, later, the Cobra were harbingers of its next iteration). During the latter part of the Cold War, it evolved into a ground-attack weapon, with particular emphasis on the anti-armor role. Now, of course, the "Evil Empire" is no more, but all those T-72s, T-80s, BMPs and BRDMs haven't rusted away (at least, not yet), and many former Soviet clients and their customers seem all too willing to put them to use. Hence, even as the Cold War was winding down, such projects as the AH-64 Apache continued to slouch toward operational status. (Indeed, in all fairness to the Apache, which has had more than its share of maintenance hassles and badmouthing, it was a group of Apaches that took out Iraq's early warning radars with surgical neatness at the beginning of the Gulf War.)

Meanwhile, however, the helicopter has continued to change, with current philosophy espousing the idea of a notso-light armed scout: a (preferably stealthy) helicopter with enough available punch to take out armor, enough electronic versatility to interface with today's increasingly complex integrated battlefield systems (for example, to receive tactical data from an orbiting JSTARS or use a laser to designate targets for weapons as diverse as "smart" bombs or "not much dumber" artillery shells) and the ability to accept a wide range of weapons loadouts for almost any conceivable mission. The machine that has been developed to meet these tough criteria is-the envelope, please-the

Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Comanche, and it's no wonder its designation reflects both the reconnaissance and attack roles. It's just reaching operational status now, but NovaLogic released a combat simulator package, Comanche 3, last year. Now it has built on that product with a new Gold version that retains the basic simulation but adds a much wider range of missions and campaign scenarios. In addition, there's a mission editor (complete with concise, online help) that allows gamers to build new missions of their own.

While NovaLogic represents Comanche Gold as a flight-sim game, I would have a hard time calling it an actual "flight" simulator. Admittedly, I haven't flown a real Comanche (I doubt any civilians except Sikorsky or Boeing test pilots have). It's supposed to have a triplex fly-bv-wire svstem that is alleged to make it "the easiest helicopter to fly, ever." Be this as it may, in the real world it will take a remarkably sophisticated flyby-wire and stability augmentation system (SAS) to make a helicopter fly like a video game, and that's certainly how this simulation flies, even in its so-called "advanced mode." On the other hand, perhaps the Army wants the helicopter of the next generation to fly like a video game, considering not only the backgrounds of the people who will be flying it, but that "life imitates art": whether at the arcade, on your own PC, or on the battlefield.

In the version of the program I received, there were also some significant glitches. In fact, I initially was forced to revert to the "easy" flight model only because the "advanced" one was unable to accurately resolve throttle (collective) position; it wasn't until I spoke with tech support that I found an overlap between the vertical stabilizer" of the easy mode and erratic collective coordination in the advanced mode. With vertical stabilization deselected, the advanced flight model became more true to life while still allowing a handy "height lock" to be selected when hovering.

That's not my only cavil with the flight model. The real Comanche's fly-by-wire may be so good that it really reacts this way, but even in the advanced mode, you can put the aircraft into a hover (using a very handy "hover lock" feature that keeps you static over the ground; in fact, the real Comanche does have this feature), then rack the collective up and down to make the bird "bob" up and down like a yo-yo over a couple of hundred feet without the slightest need to make anti-torque inputs to hold its heading. For someone who has worked as a real-world helicopter pilot and instructor, this capability falls squarely into the "too good to be true" category. Some of the arcadelike features also detract from the realism, at least for me. For example, even assuming you could hear an explosion through your helmet and the noise of your own helicopter when one of your Hellfire missiles blows up a tank a couple of miles away, you would still expect the bang to come some 10 seconds after you see the fireball-not in sync with it, the way it happens in the game.

That having been said, however, the actual combat missions are interesting and challengingat least, at the outset. There's a series of training missions to get you used not only to flying the helicopter, but also to deploying its various weapons systems with only a small number of people actually shooting at you. When you start the real missions however (nine campaigns of eight missions each), things get considerably more hectic. I'm perfectly willing to confess that by the third mission of the first campaign (feuding Ukrainians, etc.), it took me about five tries just to survive and get back to base, much less take out all the mission objectives. And I haven't even tried getting into the multiplayer arena yet. The package supports multiple play over direct connection between two computers, over a LAN and with a single opponent (or ally) via one-on-one modem connection, or up to four players via NovaLogic's Web facility.