Operation Fish Hook, (in the workshop), highly recommended, thought I was in a classic Vietnam movie.
Screens won’t load so screw it, but still recommend the mission.
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If you know me you know I’m an incurable VR snob. Screw that. Prairie Fire is an experience, beautiful at even the most granular detail. I haven’t had any big-scale firefights yet but what I have had has been silky smooth with a plain 1080.
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Nice to see Prairie Fire in the Top 10 Steam sellers list! 
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I’m a complete ARMA newb and my reflexes aren’t what they used to be. So I’ve been getting some Huey stick time exploring the map. With the flight model on advanced and all of the aids turned off, it’s not quite on par with DCS, but entertaining and challenging enough. Hopefully there will be a need for slick pilots on a server somewhere.
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How does one turn the music off? There is a Music slider in audio settings but it doesn’t change the background music for me. Hard to hear dinks in the jungle with a drumline in the background.
OMG. I am so stupid. I had the Prairie Fire website running in the background. 
9 Likes
I can recommend the COOP1-4 Ash&Trash mission for some fun with the helo, works well in SP even. Mind you, it’s a bit repetitive but it gets you to get to know the terrain a bit and practice your landings.
Other than that the Mike Force mission sports a logistics team where you get to do some flying.
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At least the tracks are pretty good. Just picked up the soundtrack. Not bad, though it needs some Fogarty, Doors, Hendrix, and Wagner added to make it complete 
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They did a really great job with the terrain, unlike on Tanoa (I don’t mean to keep harping on it, but I feel like it had such unrealized potential), I’ve never once had the Prairie Fire AI snipe me through a playing card-sized hole, or grass I couldn’t see through. Each time I’ve been killed, it was because Charlie got the drop on me, fair and square (as far as I can tell). It’s very refreshing for Arma!
I cannot recommend this enough for anyone that plays Arma. It’s bringing in a lot of new players too, so far all of which have been really great to play with. Definitely giving the old girl a new lease on life! It’s a very well done, polished product, and the coop campaign with voice acting is awesome.
1 Like
Correct me if I am wrong (anybody) but I don’t believe that the Prairie Fire helos are coded to the same AFM standard as the stock ARMA models. The ARMA little bird is pretty damn outstanding. The Prairie Fire Loach is a different experience entirely.
I am now pretty sure I was wrong here.
Large exchanges are something else. Even minor skirmishes are harrowing. It’s so good. Everytime I want to complain, I realize it’s mostly the annoyances of ArmA 3’s Real Virtuality engine. Once you learn to work around those, this is such a transcendent experience. I love it.
I’ve taken to combining Prairie Fire assets with Cold War Germany for an experience as US Army Natty Guard Cav Scouts in a 1980s Cold War gone hot engagement.
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I haven’t flown the Loach yet, but had planned to tonight. FWIW, I can fly the DCS Huey pretty confidently and TakeOff was no problem either. But getting my ass kicked in the ARMA UH-1 with the advanced flight model. It needs some work, IMHO. I can sightsee fine, but getting it into tight LZs without breaking the bird has been pretty grim so far. Never mind sling loading. The exploding sandbags are getting old. And I’m sure that the XO is getting really tired of writing my next of kin. Sheepishly admitting to flying missions in newb FM at this point. Will keep training!
Having said that, killing snakes with my pistol has been a blast 
2 Likes
I sure hope they make a chopper campaign for this DLC because the helos are OUTSTANDING. I just created a quick little mission in the editor where I flew an escort mission in the Cobra. The mission was to extract a recon team that was under fire from a platoon size NVA force.
As soon as we arrived at the LZ the Huey I was escorting was hit by an SA-7 and went down in jungle. I circled around providing covering fire in an attempt to prevent their position from being over run. The new smoke and explosion effects are great. The SA-7 leaves a nice long smoke trail so it’s pretty intense.
I think Arma 3 is going to eat into my DCS time now. Didn’t see that coming… 
4 Likes
If you make a custom mission and add the following into the init section of the helo, when you double click on it, it’ll reduce the damage, maybe fully eliminate damage to the bird.
this allowdamage false;
At least this will allow you to land without killing yourself, hopefully. BTW, this doesn’t prevent YOU from getting injured. Just the bird.
2 Likes
Also, if used on the player can make for a cool survivable crash sequence. Then have a trigger:
Activation condition: !alive yourHelicopter
player allowDamage true; (set a countdown trigger with sufficient time to crash and exit the bird)
(and maybe even “player setDamage .3” to make the player have some injuries)
And now you will find yourself all alone in the jungle, running for your life and hiding from Charlie, trying to call in Sandy and the CSAR birds.
One thing I LOVE about Arma (and the original OFP) is the accessibility of the editor. Even before the 3den editor we all know and love now (and believe it or not, I remember everyone being apprehensive about ‘losing’ their 2D editor to the new 3D version when it first came out, lol!), the original OFP built-in editor was a beautiful tool for any casual player to build scenarios in. I wish DCS had an editor as easy and intuitive as Arma’s, hopefully someday it will come. The editor is the one thing that keeps me coming back to the Arma games, especially the scripting language that’s stayed pretty well the same since OFP in 2001.
2 Likes
I’ll have to check it out!
One thing I’ve noticed in Arma 3 is that running a large amount of mods really seems to tank my performance. Lately (what little I’ve played, I sorta took a year break and have been playing DCS almost exclusively), I’ve played with less mods, maybe five or so. If I’m mission-making, I try to reduce dependencies as much as I can. With a huge modlist, loading times are pretty long (expected, I guess) and frame rates suffer quite a bit. You might see what your performance is like with just the DLC loaded, it may be surprising.
My performance problem was just me being stupid. I forgot the limitations of the Arma 3 engine. It seems my system can handle battles with around 40 or so AI units before fps starts to decline from the 90-100 range. If its really heavy combat fps will dive into the 30-40’s until the heaving firing subsides.
The infantry groups in SOG-PF mission editor are 23 units in size so you put a few of those down in the editor and you’ve got quite a few AI units to deal with. Also, I think the explosions, smoke and tracer fire is all increased in SOG-PF so that also helps drags fps down in heavy battles. It sure is cool though. I’m just loving this DLC.
Maybe the sales will motivate the BI devs to get off their butts and update the engine finally.
I know it gets old when people offer advice. But trust me, what you are going through, everyone goes through. A helicopter’s collective pitch is virtually instant. Big helicopter, small helicopter, it doesn’t really matter. Yes, there are the laws of physics and inertia is a thing but generally at the rates pilots do things, the “instant” description sticks. In ARMA, and especially in the non-AFM helicopters in ARMA, the collective comes with lots of lag. I find myself doing what I do with the throttle when tankering or flying formation: pull or push big then back off by half.
That’s great advice, of which I have only heard one other time. A Hornet pilot was discussing how best to fly a smooth carrier approach. I hadn’t thought about applying it to rotorcraft, but it sure makes sense.
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The groups sizes are pretty large, you’re right. I kinda dig it, although I’m still manually splitting the platoon into squads so that the AI is a little more fluid.
Great advice! I’ll add to it that Arma inherently adds an almost imperceptible lag to to all joystick inputs, so your cyclic is affected as well, whether it’s noticeable or not. There’s been man arguments and pleas to BIS to have this fixed or addressed, and to my knowledge it never has been. You can prove it by sitting in the cockpit and watching the stick when you move your physical controller.
It’s unclear to me why this is, or whether it may be intentional or not…