Realistic Rotor Wash

REALISTIC ROTOR WASH

A lightweight, rotor-wash-only particle overhaul that brings real-world helicopter downwash into Arma Reforger. Come in low over a dusty LZ and the ground answers back: churning dust that builds as you descend, a lingering brown-out cloud that hangs around after touchdown, debris kicked out from under the rotor disc, and terrain-specific effects that change with what you're landing on.

This mod only touches helicopter rotor wash. It changes no weapons, muzzle flashes, casings, impacts, explosions or vehicle effects, and it has no scripts. Run it alongside your other effects mods without overlap.

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WHAT IT DOES
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Real rotor wash isn't just a puff of dust. As a helicopter settles into ground effect, the downwash lifts loose material and recirculates it through the rotor, building a cloud that can swallow the aircraft and blind the crew. This is the "brown-out" that makes desert and dirt landings dangerous. This mod reproduces that behavior with two layers of effect:

- Near-field wash: fast, dense dust and debris thrown outward from directly beneath the rotor.
- Brown-out layer: a small number of very large, slow, long-lived dust clouds (roughly 6 to 10 seconds) that drift and hang over the landing zone after the initial blast.

Ground detection has also been tuned so that the wash reacts from a higher hover, so you see dust beginning to lift on approach, not only at the moment of touchdown.

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TERRAIN COVERAGE
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Each surface has its own behavior and color:

- Dirt: heavy brown dust, a lingering brown-out cloud, leaves, stones and wood debris.
- Grass: lighter dust with a tan brown-out haze and blown leaves.
- Sand: dense, warm-tan desert dust with a full brown-out cloud. This is the classic desert LZ.
- Gravel: grey-tan dust, kicked-up stones and a lingering haze.
- Solid ground: grey dust, small stone debris and a lighter lingering cloud.
- Crops: dust plus blown leaves.
- Foliage (summer, autumn, conifer): leaves thrown up when the wash hits vegetation.
- Snow: dense blowing powder and kicked-up particles for whiteout-style landings.
- Water: spray mist and expanding rings on the surface beneath the rotor.

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PERFORMANCE
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The brown-out effect is built from a few very large particles rather than hundreds of small ones, which keeps the particle count low for the size of the effect. The ground-detection emitter also fires less often than in Better Rotor Wash. As with any large, semi-transparent effect, a full brown-out fills a lot of the screen, so lower-end GPUs may see some cost during dense landings.

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COMPATIBILITY
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- Overrides the vanilla Helicopter_Rotor_Wash_*.ptc particle files (Particles/Vehicle).
- Applies to vanilla helicopters, and should apply to modded helicopters that use the standard rotor wash effects.
- Do not run alongside other mods that override the same rotor wash files (for example Better Rotor Wash, or Realism Overhaul - Effects). They will conflict.
- Fine alongside other effects mods that don't touch rotor wash.
- No dependencies beyond the base game.

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CREDITS
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Made with inspiration from, and built on the work of, two excellent mods:

- Better Rotor Wash: the base for the crops, foliage, snow, water, sand and gravel surfaces.
- Realism Overhaul - Effects (part of the Realism Overhaul collection): the dirt, grass and solid-surface rotor wash, the brown-out dust layer and the ground-detection tuning.

All credit to the original authors for their work. This mod isolates the rotor wash side, combines the two, and extends the brown-out effect to sand and gravel so desert and rocky landings get the same treatment. If you want the full 'Realism Overhaul Effects' package, go support the original.

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FEEDBACK
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Found a surface that looks wrong, or a helicopter that doesn't kick up dust? Leave a comment with the map, the surface and the aircraft, and I'll take a look.

Will also be updating soon with screenshots captured in-game to demonstrate how AWESOME this looks and how effective it is.