Bohemia Interactive’s ‘Take On Helicopters’ Is The Most Realistic Heli Sim Yet
Fans of Bohemia Interactive know well the studio’s obsessive and exhaustive approach to simulation gaming. The ArmA series and its penchant for the excruciating minutia of military combat has been a beacon for simthusiasts since the original Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis taught us that one bullet is enough. With ArmA 3 on the horizon looking set to be yet another title to laugh and point at the tiny size of our PC hardware it’s boggling to understand where their team gets the time and coding power to create, of all things, a civilian helicopter simulator.
Take On Helicopters will offer an increased level of physics, hopefully far beyond the at-times arcade approach in ArmA 2, spread across three ranges of chopper; light, medium and heavy. The choppers aren’t brand-name favourites which is a licensing issue but given the generic shape of tail-rotored aircraft similarities to the real things are unavoidable. So in order of size you’ll see archetypes for the little bird, the Bell, the Merlin and more.
The first known area that you’ll be whirring around is Seattle, and as the videos show it looks spectacular. A second area is also shown that offers a more desert type terrain (but is located in America, not Afghanistan). ArmA 2 delivered some extraordinarily attractive visuals and as the menu systems show in the below E3 presentation, it’s the very same engine which means extreme line of sight and gorgeous textures all around. Volumetric clouds that affect the flight model? Yes the hell please.
In an interview with Bohemia Interactive Executive Producer Lukáš Milacek, he reveals that singleplayer will ship with a story/career mode that will allow you to upgrade your helicopters as you go. Multiple skins will be on offer for each chopper’s civilian and military variant. Multiplayer gets a look-in also which will be pivotal to long-term community success. As there’s no weaponry, it will be co-op and competitive challenges on offer. You might have races, chases, zombie modes… Bohemia have always been very mod-friendly and with a huge and active ArmA community, you can expect mod-support for TakeOn for a very long time.
Some of the details are a little hazy with the E3 presenter in particular dodging simple questions around eyefinity support, damage modelling and pilot-body support. In the absence of combat, the flight-physics will need to be immaculate and the strength of the missions will determine long-term success. Not having the licensed versions is another issue that will confound the true-simmer’s desire to be able to say “I could fly that aircraft, if they’d just give me a shot”. Given that I’m almost 7 foot tall, am not an American and will never fly an A-10 Warthog or a Little Bird I’ll be grabbing a copy on day one for my vicarious thrills. Aside from DCS: Black Shark there’s precious few high-fidelity simulations of these incredible aircraft and Bohemia, as an independent studio, deserve and need every bit of support they get.
You can try a community preview build of a basic light helicopter right now if you own ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead. It’s only 60Mb in size and will probably have bugs galore but if you can’t wait for the October release date (PC Only) then grab your collective and plug in your joystick.
