New aircraft damage? Please?

[Fluffy 10]

Yup,100% agree with OP.I want to actually have a chance to survive a plane crash.

[-=seany=- 5]

I agree, although I feel this falls under the the need for a massive rework of the physics system in Arma. Like some one mentioned already, it affects everything not just helos, eg the hummer burning in water. We need what I can only describe as "ragdoll" (for lack of a better word, I know that some think its a curse word around here. I personally would like rag doll for infantry too) physics for vehicles.

But, I think one reason we are lacking in such complex effects in Arma is the size of the game. We already have enough problems trying to get the game to run acceptably so adding more complex calculations of physics for vehicles will hurt.

[dmarkwick 261]

It doesn't need to hurt too much, a glass-damaged helo without a rotor would be a good solution initially :)

[ziiip 1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L394PTW1YxA

Not to mention that you cant touch down like that in ArmA2. :oops: It would be cool if rough landing would break the landing gear.

[nodunit 397]

You don't need ragdoll physics for it to effect the aircraft, Franze released an Su-17 not long ago that has dynamic destruction and pending on what you lose the aircraft may lose in some control.

It's a massive undertaking yes but it can be done, I know because I've seen it first hand with Franze in both OFP and Arma1, it is possible to have aircraft with two engines that act like two engines so that if you lose one engine it's not game over..and to have it so the engine isnt entirerly dependant on the general "health" of the aircraft.

Aircraft can have many pre determined damage areas, gear, engines, weapons, cockpits, instruments, fuel, main rotor, tail rotor and so on but this requires alot more config work..still it would be nice to see at least the engines be seperated on default aircraft.

Edited September 5, 2010 by NodUnit

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Physics in Arma 2. There aren't any.

Instead of defining a set of Laws that some, or all Entities should follow, you have animations: from rotating rotor blades to infantry deaths. There is no animation for a rotor spinning without its blades, thus the only easy solution was to config the whole chopper to explode.

Whatever floats the devs' boat.

[Daniel 0]

You're saying it wouldn't be possible to "simply" remove the mesh of the rotors and have the aircraft skid to the floor?

[nodunit 397]

That would be silly unless the assembly is hit around the base.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qYqvkE4RKA

Perhaps a better solution would be some kind of hidden selection animation, the rotor comprised of multiple parts takes damage, the damage part breaks off in some way to leave the rotor spinning..

naturally the pilot would shut the engine down so rotor damage could be tied to engines so perhaps the rotors could be tied to engines or fuel, can' really make use of one without the other right?

But can it be done with moving parts especially one that banks around and isnt static..

Edited September 5, 2010 by NodUnit

[ray243 11]

Also, is it possible to have landing failures? I've seen videos where everything seems to go smooth, and then the jet touches down, and 1-5 seconds later, the wheel flies off and very bad stuff happens.

[maddogx 13]

I'd like to add my +1 here, though none of this is going to happen any time soon. Perhaps in Arma3...

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

You're saying it wouldn't be possible to "simply" remove the mesh of the rotors and have the aircraft skid to the floor?

Whodda thunk o' dat?

Remind me last time when a part was shot off, fallen off of something or that time you've seen a tank stranded with its tracks 150m behind it? Don't mention vehicle wheels.

Without a physics engine you'll only get more animations, and who's gonna do those? Certainly not the people buying 6 core CPU to make Arma 2 run 'better'. :icon_eek:

[Cyborg11 10]

You don't need ragdoll physics for it to effect the aircraft, Franze released an Su-17 not long ago that has dynamic destruction and pending on what you lose the aircraft may lose in some control.

You mean this right? :)

Also, is it possible to have landing failures? I've seen videos where everything seems to go smooth, and then the jet touches down, and 1-5 seconds later, the wheel flies off and very bad stuff happens.

Would be possible that the landing gear failures. BUT if you touch the ground you will explode :/

[Daniel 0]

Whodda thunk o' dat?

Remind me last time when a part was shot off, fallen off of something or that time you've seen a tank stranded with its tracks 150m behind it? Don't mention vehicle wheels.

Without a physics engine you'll only get more animations, and who's gonna do those? Certainly not the people buying 6 core CPU to make Arma 2 run 'better'. :icon_eek:

Eh? I'm saying that if a helicopter clips a thick tree or building with the main rotors, that it would be better to simply remove the rotor disk (maybe with some flying debris spawned for aesthetics) and have the aircraft fall out of the sky, which would be survivable in some cases, than for it to bounce off or explode.

[nodunit 397]

You mean this right? :)

Yes that, before release he showed me a video of the destruction at work, a dogfight up close with a wing breaking off. On the second encounter the AI lost its wing and spun out of control. During a test I lost most of my rudder and was unable to control the swing very well at all, needless to say he landed fine and I made a nice crater.

I've used the addon and played with it during testing, it's alot of fun and nice to see the damage system taken up a notch from the OFP days, hopefully we can apply it to more in the future.

Edited September 6, 2010 by NodUnit

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Physics in Arma 2. There aren't any.

Yea... I'm pretty sure there are.

FPDR

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Yea... I'm pretty sure there are.

FPDR

Hitbox detection. Counter-Strike had better implementation back in 1999.

P.S. I see a Graphics discussion in the stickies, but no physics thread?

You can create another ACE mod equivalent just to simulate gear failure, loss of rotor blades, wings et cetera, but you can never replace a physics engine.

BTW, ACE 2 had ballistic penetration simulation from SABOT going through a T90, hitting a BMP behind it, with the results: T90 disabled, BMP in flames; to M107 killing the crews of BMPs and BRDMs. Without shooting the wheels off of latter. :D

Yet, you do not see such things in vanilla.

If people want this game to get more popular, then acknowledge certain truths.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Iroquois Pliskin

[dmarkwick 261]

Hitbox detection. Counter-Strike had better implementation back in 1999.

P.S. I see a Graphics discussion in the stickies, but no physics thread?

There's gravity and there's collision. There is a physics engine, it's pretty basic but there is one there. Certainly enough for a better helo damage solution anyway.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

There's gravity and there's collision. There is a physics engine, it's pretty basic but there is one there. Certainly enough for a better helo damage solution anyway.

And that is an obvious point I'm making, yet it would seem, people are content with what they have.

More animations will not simulate what the OP is asking for.

P.S. I've read this as Certainly not enough for a better helo damage solution anyway. People over at ACE 2 couldn't simulate 'better helo damage', they've just increased the hitpoints so you could crash land and not explode.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Iroquois Pliskin

[nodunit 397]

To be honest the idea of processing power required for Arma2 with advanced physics is rather scary though overall it could suit every aspect..or nearly every aspect.

Of course physics are also VERY easy to screw up and render to texture would still be more important in terms of modern warfare and such than physics..at the end physics are still eye candy for the most part.

Edited September 7, 2010 by NodUnit

[maturin 12]

It would be really hard to model the effect of a thin little chopper airframe hitting the ground. Even in GTA IV with all its physics, the choppers just pop their tails and rotors off.

Maybe a one-frame crumpled airframe model would work, the way ACE2 has T-72s turning into wrecked versions. But it would be kind of hard to have a whole squad still sitting in that sort of thing.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

To be honest the idea of processing power required for Arma2 with advanced physics is rather scary though overall it could suit every aspect..or nearly every aspect.

Of course physics are also VERY easy to screw up and render to texture would still be more important in terms of modern warfare and such than physics..at the end physics are still eye candy for the most part.

One title: GTA IV. Even being such a poor port, it has decent performance on 2 core CPUs.

As for physics being eye-candy: keep on polishing that GFX engine and you will be left behind, while everyone else focuses on the gameplay part of a game.

The next generation of GPUs will not have the amount of Processing Units doubled, they're working towards quality & features instead.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Iroquois Pliskin

[carlostex 38]

There is enough processing power in machines today to run whatever you want. The keyword is SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION. I don´t understand why people say a better physics engine like (ragdoll) Havok or such would kill performance. Arma 2 runs fine in my Core 2 Duo. With a Core 2 Quad at the same clock speed i wouldn´t get a significant improvement in FPS. Maybe 5 to 10 FPS.

The physics calculation could be totally done in only 1 core, it would be more than enough.

What Arma 2 needs is an engine re-write. I know this would cost a lot of time and money to BIS but it would be a future improvement. And would offer better simulation possibilities for future versions of VBS too.

I may be getting off topic but let me talk you about upcoming (2011) processors. The one i´m most curious about is AMD ´s Bulldozer. Bulldozer CPU´s will be made of what AMD calls modules. Each module is a improved Dual-Core that shares all the logic possible in order to execute 2 threads in the smallest die space and power consumption possible. It has 2 Integer cores that share a single Floating Point Unit.

So this FPU is what i wanna talk about. AMD introduced a couple of years ago a few new instructions 2 of which are called FMA4 and XOP instructions. FMA or fused multiply add are 128 bit instructions that will allow an enourmous boost over previous SSE instructions. XOP instructions are revolutionary (and very very powerful) instructions that allow also a huge boost over previous integer instruction execution. Now each of these Bulldozer modules will be capable of executing 1 FMA4 and 1 XOP instruction per clock cycle. The top Bulldozer part will be a 4 module (8 core) processor, so it will be capable of 4 FMA4 and 4 XOP instructions per clock cycle.

Now just think if a Arma game was optimized to take full advantage of this code, you would never have to worry about CPU performance. You would be limited by what your graphics card could render only.

The problem with this is that Arma game would be only extremelly appealing to users with AMD systems only. So it should be optimized for intel´s AVX also. Maybe it would reqiure an AMD and a intel executable??

So believe everybody the processing power is THERE. The question is that software won´t properly utilize that. The true power stays asleep.

[max power 21]

As you can see in this video, the airframe comes down HARD and by hard I mean REALLY hard. The only time it bursts into flames is when it lands upside down, and I wouldn't call it an explosion by even the loosest of definitions.

The H-21 Shaunee was powered by a supercharged piston engine which required high octane gasoline. Gasoline is much, much more flammable than jet fuel. Likely, however, they wanted to test airframe damage and crew survivability equipment and not how cool it would look if a helicopter exploded in flames and burned in an unapproachable fireball for half an hour, so they probably didn't put much fuel in those aircraft. They can infer from the damage whether or not a fire was likely.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Max Power

[whisper 0]

There is enough processing power in machines today to run whatever you want. The keyword is SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION. I don´t understand why people say a better physics engine like (ragdoll) Havok or such would kill performance. Arma 2 runs fine in my Core 2 Duo. With a Core 2 Quad at the same clock speed i wouldn´t get a significant improvement in FPS. Maybe 5 to 10 FPS.

Because to be able to scale with RV Engine, the physics engine must be able to handle calculation of physics on over hundreds (thoushands?) of character entities, over places as large as 25 sq km and more, in short, it will face scale limits.

I don't know enough of engines and such to be categoric in saying "it's impossible with current hardware", but you gotta agree this is going to push any physics engine's limits a little bit, don't you think? ;)

On OP : anyone tried fiddling with handleDamage on choppers?

I did a little bit while trying to overcome this : http://dev-heaven.net/issues/12107 , and there are certain things that are workable, like resilience to crashes, perhaps avoiding explosion, things like that

Edited September 7, 2010 by whisper

[f2k sel 164]

I used handledamage on a plane and it could hit trees and rocks without damage but touch the ground and still blows up instantly.