Would aircraft in real life have indicators showing height above sea level and height above the ground?

*Progamer*
Most aircraft have barometric altimeters that can measure altitude from a set reference altitude, mainly sea level.

this is the standard way of telling altitude in an aircraft, always has been.
some aircraft such as Su-25 and KA-50 (that i know of) use both a barometric altimeter and a radar altimeter. the radar altimeter is used to measure altitude above the ground but is rarely used as a reference point for flying height.

I assure you that many if not all fixed wing aircraft use height above sea level as a reference point for flying. Many military aircraft rely heavily upon level flight for proper ordinance delivery. most modern aircraft will not allow the pilot to release a weapon from its pylon without proper flight parameters such as minimum bank angle, minimum altitude etc.

It is 100% realistic to implement a system like this as it has been standard from many, many years and isn't likely to change. Adding this system would defiantly benefit the reality and game play of arma3.

just do some searching, you will see :)

you should change this ticket to request alternative flyInHeight [array] implementation like in VBS2 http://resources.bisimulations.com/wiki/flyInHeight

At the moment A3 supports only SCALAR as param

some duplicate of : http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=14194 (please up vote it also ! thanks )

Upvoted even it is a duplicate because it is very annoying. NO AMSL indication and NO possibility to set constant level flight for AI.

the lack of ASL reference for ai controlled aircrafts is making waypoints very chaotic, with constant altitude variation.

Like cyrilator said the AI waypoint following is vey chaotic. It is impossible to make planned flight path, because AI always follow the ground level and constantly lift up and down. It's flying like an idiot.

A command "unit flyInHeightASL height"would help us to force AI fly in smooth horizontal path, sometimes near the ground(over the hill) like players do.

+1 !! FlyHeight based on terrain is stupid.

OK, in real life:
height is above sea level or terrain. Easy to avoid crash in arma, works like a radio altimeter;
Altitude is above sea level (for low profile, steady altitude allows collision with ground!);
Flight level is in hundreds of feet and every one at the same standard barometric reference (1013 mBar)to separate traffic. Not really needed in Arma

let a AI chopper fly over Stratis and set flyinHeight to 300... now enjoy the rollercoaster.

whats the problem to set the heighest ground value into a variable and if flyinHeight > this VARIABLE use constant height over Sea.

No! I downvote because you want to break a useful terrain monitoring (flyInHeight) for a autopilot altitude keeping mode.
You need a flyInAltitude (above sea level). Let flyInHeight for height above terrain (or sea)

Alternative command... who cares, we need anyway to do this. Let it call flyInHeightASL and flyInHeightATL

Killzone Kid is on the right path here.
Dev team should just move the extended "flyInHeight" command from VBS2 to ARMA.

Syntax: object flyInHeight [altitude,mode];
Parameters:

    object: Object - Aircraft
    altitude: Number - Flying altitude in meters.
    mode: String - "ASL": altitude above sea level, "AGL": above ground level.

Return Value: Nothing

Example: _AiPlane flyInHeight [100,"ASL"];

Using current method gives me a bad headache and sometimes epileptic seizure (try on Stratis).

Up voting

This will be nice

I think the *flyInHeightASL* would be a better name(as i see this is the naming convention). The vehicle should fly in the see level and only change altitude when there is some obstacle in that height.

I tried once continuously change the value with flyInHeight, but it's impossible, because they don't fly forward all the time with constant speed. I made a roller coaster! :D

Since this dovetails with my posted issue about Zeus(debug=1) and the inability to get helos to obey any altitude commands between 10 and 49 over terrain (works fine in VR)... I'll upvote in the hopes that this will all be solved in one change.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=24603

REmoved downvote but just one regret: using bad terms. Altitude is above sea level (QNH reference), height above ground (QFE). But Arma doesn't care with real terms... As wind direction, 180° wrong because blowing "to" direction and not "from" like in any weather forecast.

Voted up, this military game really needs a command that allows AI to fly stable. It's very frustrating not be able to jump from an AI plane !

You can drastically damper the terrain following and almost reach the aim with this little script (in init field of an helo):
0 = this spawn {

_h0 = getTerrainHeightASL (position _this);
while {alive _this} do {
  _h = getTerrainHeightASL (position _this);
  _this flyInHeight (400 + _h0 - _h);
  sleep 0.2;
};

};
Change 400 for the height above your start point you want. Helo will smoothly keep the altitude (height + terrain height on map cursor).
Tested in Takistan mountains. C130 is more difficult due to his flight model I guess.
sleep 0.5 is working also for helo.

I tried to add a height prediction with:
_h = getTerrainHeightASL (_this modelToWorldVisual [0,speed _this/0.72,0]);
without significant improvement.
I tried also something onEachFrame with:
["autopilot", "onEachFrame", { _h = getTerrainHeightASL (position vehicle player);
No more improvement. So I "Keep It Simple Stupid", waiting for a BI command.

02-02-2016

Added: New script command flyInHeightASL

https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/140837-development-branch-changelog/?p=2974549

All military/commercial aircraft has always 2 altimeter types on board.
There is one more issue with AI - if you give it some large airplane it will make turns like crazy, turns that has too high angels for heavy airplane such as C-130. I'm not sure if there is a ticket, I hope it will be fixed over some time.

@Spam that issue exist on almost all planes. I think they are aware of it.