In-Game Screen
Compass/Radar (shown at top left of screen above)
You can toggle this between a compass and radar. The compass has two arrows, a white one and a red one. The white arrow points in the direction that you’re currently heading whilst the red one points to the next objective in your mission. The radar shows the targets in the current mission zone. The targets are colour coded to denote whether targets are friendly or not. See Weapons Firing below for a list of the colour codes.
Helo Status (shown at top right of screen above)
Your armour is displayed here along with the name of your currently selected weapon. As your helicopter takes damage, the armour indicator moves further down on the display.
Weapon Status (shown at top right of screen above)
This tells you what weapon you have loaded and how much ammo you have remaining for each
Mission Status (shown at bottom left of screen above)
This informs you on the current mission objective’s status. It is displayed as either a percentage or a ratio. Percentage shows how much of a given target is destroyed. Ratio shows how many targets destroyed compared to the remaining targets.
Toggle HUD
You can switch the position of your HUD to the top of the screen (as shown in the screen shot above), to the bottom of the screen (as shown in the screen shot below) or simply turn it off by using the Toggle HUD key in your default set-up (see Control Configs).
During the game you take control of the helicopter required for that particular mission. Although they will handle differently, each bird is flown, will fire its weapons and display information in the same way. The basic control and understanding of this is explained below.
Details of default controls are listed in the Controls section and a list of the weapons available are listed in the Glossary.
Each heli has four movement controls. Your helicopter can fly forwards/backwards, left/right and up/down. You can also rotate left/rotate right with your helicopter to change your heading. All the heli’s can move up/down faster than it can in any of the other axis’ so remember this when you’re under fire!
There are cross-hairs on the ground in front of your helicopter, the number of cross-hairs depend on which weapons configuration you are using (the Huey gunship has three cross-hairs, one for the main weapon and one for each of it’s two door gunners). When you Change Weapons the cross-hairs also change indicating the weapon you have selected. The shape of the cross-hair matches the weapons icons on your Weapon Status.
When you have a target in your sights, the cross-hairs will change colour to indicate whether a target is friendly or not. The colours are as follows:
Yellow - Mission objective: You must destroy these targets.
Red - Hostile: You don’t need to destroy these but they’ll be shooting at you
Blue - Friendly: Do not destroy, or you will be Court-Martialed.
Green - Neutral: Less important than Blue but destroying too many could get you in trouble.
When you Fire Weapons, the cross-hair will stick to a target, allowing you to manoeuvre the heli whist retaining a lock on the target. The target lock will remain until it is destroyed or you stop firing.
Joystick defaults Gamepad defaults
Fire Door-guns
On helicopters with door-guns, you fire them with this buttons.
Rotate Camera View
You can rotate your camera around the helicopter to 90░ either side. Use this function to get a better view when trying to target with your door gunners.
Toggle Camera
Switches your view of the world between two cameras.
Fire Green Flare/Fire Red Flare
There are two colours of flare, press the respective button to launch flare.
Toggle Compass/Radar
The Compass/radar instrument on the left of your HUD can only display one of these functions at a time. Press button to toggle between them.
Toggle HUD
The positions of your HUD can be toggled to the top, to the bottom of the screen or off.
Config (during game)
Takes you to the Config screen.
Gamma up/gamma down
If your monitor is at it’s brightest but the game is too dark, use this to adjust it.
CD music toggle
This turns the CD music on/off
Real-time static map
This brings you to the map of the mission you are currently flying.
See ‘in-game map’ above for details of functions
Repeat last radio message
If you receive a radio message but missed some of it, this will replay it for you.
Take Photo
This takes a photo of the game screen when the button is pressed. It will save it out to *.pcx in your game directory.
Pause
This will pause the game you are currently playing
Exit
If you want to quit the current mission, pressing this will bring a confirmation box. Press OK to confirm.