I just noticed that the pilot can exit the Chopper at any time, including during high-altitude full-speed fight. My Chopper proceeded to descend as it drifted... And landed in the lake. It made me wonder - is it worth trying to add some kind of "lock" on the vehicle which prevents the pilot from leaving unless the Chopper is landed or even the engine is off? The experience of jumping out of it is really odd, because the thing isn't ACTUALLY airborne. As a consequence, the pilot just pops up where the Chopper is regardless of perspective.

I actually like this feature, but I will consider adding an option for it for people to turn it off. That's going to be low-priority for now, though.

And two months later... Sorry, I forgot to check for responses :) And no worries - up to you. My reason for posting this is because leaving the Chopper without landing reveals the trick of its flight - that is to say, it's not actually flying, but simply casting an offset shadow. Of course, being able to interact with structures from the chopper does the same thing, so oh well.

I guess I was just surprised that my Chopper apparently auto-rotated into a lake :)

So I've been thinking a lot about how to do this and other things I want to do. The chopper mod is a fork of a mod that's been around for a long time and has been forked multiple times. Importantly, from well-before the spidertron. The spidertron model provides some new options for how to create a flight vehicle. I think I may be able to redesign the chopper using the spidertron model to improve its flight mechanics (strafing, for example). I'm a busy engineer for a major global company, so I don't have much time to mod these days, but maybe over holiday break I can give it a try.

Hey, that would be pretty cool if you could pull it off. I love the Chopper to bits, but it does show that it's sourced from another mod, and it does have its limitations. If you do want to make a whole new version, I'd definitely be up for taking that for a drive. To bug-test it, of course :)