The UH-1 Huey by Nimbus Simulations is still a bit far away from release as the team continues working on it.
After our preview, Nimbus kept on working as fast as they could to improve the model. Besides some nice improvements on textures and flight model tweaks, the team has also implemented a cool tool for us to do something that we all love doing with our choppers: customize them.
Please do remember that this is still an Alpha so a lot can change – especially regarding the interface. So, the images presented here may not be the ones you’ll see on the final release. Nonetheless, this feature will pretty much work this way.
On the left of the screen, we can now access a couple of tabs. One of them allows us to customize the cargo/seats (something we may talk about on a later article) and the other one lets us customize the almighty Huey.
As we click on that tab, a panel opens up that shows us the profile of the helicopter (both left and right) and we find some obvious “OPEN” buttons that, you guessed it, open each door.
While talking with Nimbus, though, they told me the actual doors are also clickable. What does it do? Well, it removes the doors. Cool! We can fly on a doorless Huey! I can imagine Joe jumping up and down once he finds out he can do long-lining with no doors.
Not only that but you can also remove the machine guns, the wire cutters and the antenna placed on top of the cockpit, which allows for a huge amount of different possibilities.
Right now, there’s no plugin that saves the state of the Huey as we reload it or in between sessions but Nimbus told me they are working on it as well as some other goodies that will make a lot of us really happy.
Again, Nimbus is not that close to releasing the Huey, but they are surely taking their time on adding cool features and making this a good helicopter for the community. So far, I am well impressed with their work and with the potential of the helicopter.
The customization tool is very nice, and I hope to be only the beginning since there are a lot of other cool options (such as water tanks, high skids, fast fin, etc.) that help us customize the Huey and make it more “our own”. This is particularly true on such a workhorse.
Well done, Nimbus. Now, show us more!
