Tanks are really unrealistic

[-=seany=- 5]

Tank speeds are fine as are there climbing abilities, don't touch please!

Have seen this topic come up before and Suma pointed out that they are scaled to real world data quoting the speeds at different grades (for the Abrams I think). Possibly it is your perception of in-game time and distance that is at fault. In any case, best to make your point in a civil fashion with actual figures rather than sweeping generalisations otherwise I don't think anyone will care much what you have to say.

I agree. Your perception of gradients is also skewed compared to how it would seem in real life.

And what's with the video posted by the OP? that is supposed to some how demonstrate how BIS got it wrong? FPDR I didn't see any clips of any tanks climbing hills in that video...but I did find some examples myself and it looks exactly like Arma..quelle surprise

I'm not saying Arma's vehicle physics are perfect, there is a lot that can improved I know, but speeds and hill climb ability are pretty good at the moment.

[Beagle 684]

Speed of armoured vehicles are hilariuos fast downhill...you can reach up to 160km/h...thats much more of a problem as the slow uphil speed. really slow it get's onyl at extended gradients, and thats where a tanker considers 40km/h a good speed RL

In fact the APCs and tanks in ArmA OA are already a bit too fast on flat ground.

Another mein annoyance witl armpoured vehicles are the wheeled ones...a single missing tyre and it's all over. This things have 8 wheels for a reason. These kinf of vehicle is still able to drive away as long as it got 2 wheels on each side.

Edited March 21, 2011 by Beagle

[wolfbite 8]

mate try taking 67 tonnes uphill on 1'500 bhp thats only 500 more than a veyron and that weighs around a tonne..... In arma if you speed at a small hill you'll make it up fine.. In arma tree stumps dont smash up the underside of the tank and brick walls dont smash up the barrel on the gun.

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675052745_K-Company-3rd-Battalion-1st-Marine-Regiment_tank-climbing-up_steep-hill_knoll

[max power 21]

Another mein annoyance witl armpoured vehicles are the wheeled ones...a single missing tyre and it's all over. This things have 8 wheels for a reason. These kinf of vehicle is still able to drive away as long as it got 2 wheels on each side.

That's not my experience with these vehicles. Just today I was playing with a friend who had a wheel blown off of his BTR-90 and he was driving around for half an hour before it was time to quit.

[Beagle 684]

That's not my experience with these vehicles. Just today I was playing with a friend who had a wheel blown off of his BTR-90 and he was driving around for half an hour before it was time to quit.

I tried to replicate this and it is not working...as soon as a single tyre is gone there is no manouverabilty anymore. After coming to a halt is is near impossible to keep on moving...the effect is like a tracked vehicle with a blown track.

[whisper 0]

I suggest the OP to go do some hours of hiking in mountains, just for educational purpose. IRL no vehicle can climb most of areas in a mountain

1 tank in promo video doing some stunt on very limited area that can't even be labeled as anything "mountainous" doesn't mean this can be done on the field

I'm not even talking about the state of the crew inside. A crew chief I know was talking about how a simple hard break could knock off crew inside in case they are not warned, you simply don't do stunt while in battle.

If you speed up tanks climbing, that would be for gameplay reasons, nothing to do with realism

[larsiano 12]

Altough i agree with you to some extent making ground vehicles a bit faster should not be that hard with the help of a little scripting and patching. But after testing "Wold of Tanks" for ten minutes i came to the conclusion Arma2 is quite a good tank simulator :)

[max power 21]

I tried to replicate this and it is not working...as soon as a single tyre is gone there is no manouverabilty anymore. After coming to a halt is is near impossible to keep on moving...the effect is like a tracked vehicle with a blown track.

I wonder what weapon he lost the wheel to. I also think he was able to repair it slightly at one point. At any rate, it was a btr-90 and he lost the left rear tyre.

[Tonci87 163]

I think that there is no Problem when you loose one of the middle tires, but lose the front tire (steering) and you have a problem. Seems fair to me

[eosteric 10]

I'll be coming back here with videos, from Arma, to show better what I mean.

[dm 9]

On a 10% grade (thats a 5 degree slope) an M1A1/2 will only do 17mph, tops. 5 degrees above horizontal really is not that big of a slope...

Push that up to its limit of 60% (~30 degrees) and it tops out at 4.1 mph.

Those are facts, rather than observations/opinons...

[Sirex1 10]

Remember that the speed you see in standard zoom appears slower.

Hold down the numpad - while driving and you see what i mean.

[76 0]

Pressing left shift key with your forward key gives speed a boost

the 'E' key is this...

Q = slow

W = Normal

E = Fast

;)

In arma tree stumps dont smash up the underside of the tank and brick walls dont smash up the barrel on the gun.

Its the same pushing trees down in a dozer... if you just push straight over a normal+ size tree there is a good chance the root ball will roll you over... as it smashes up yer bellyplates.

[rangerpl 13]

This is some basic calculations, using very "rounded" numbers, but it does give you a rough idea:

Assuming a tank weighs 65,000kg (for the sake of simplicity, I'll have gravity as 10m/s/s, not 9.8), the force it exerts on the ground at 0 degrees slope is 650,000N. At zero inclination, the tank's weight doesn't slow it down by exerting force to the rear. It's all just friction from having to move 65 tons.

However, on 30 degree slope, the tank gets roughly 100,000N of force to the rear (holding it back), meanwhile the downwards force, keeping it pinned to the road, drops to ~642,000N. This means that the engine has another 92,000N (or 9.2 tons) to fight against when trying to move the vehicle.

Keep in mind that this math wasn't done to actually prove anything (it doesn't use realistic data), and it's just trigonometry, but using simple vectors it's possible to illustrate the additional burden placed on an already-heavy vehicle when it's going up a slope. Again, this isn't actual hard numbers, merely an estimation to give you a sense of the scale.

[Deathstroke 10]

There are a couple of things that cause the tanks in arma to feel so unatural.

( Feeling of being to slow )

- Cut in realistic dynamic and physic models:

Because armed assault is such a big scaled game and that hardly no well thinking dynamics expert is gonna throw away a steady 40k starting income to venture into harsh world of software/game industry ;). All vehicles in armed assault have limited calculation models compared to other games wich less scale.

-Tank speeds:

Despite what is mentioned above, the maximum speeds according to real figures seem to closely align with realistic values.

However those numbers are based on fuel effeciency and material wear, in reality its possible to function above those speeds for short heaps of time. So one could do a small speed burst in real life just to get over a hill a couple seconds faster, and destroying its gear box completely by doing so. In armed assault you are completely dependent on these set of numbers, but thats not main problem why driving a tank in arma can feel so sluggish.

-Gears:

As far from what I have seen the vehicles has no gears in bis games. You can press w for slower speed accerlation but you are still on same graph as pressing e only you get to maximum faster with e and to higher point. If you go up a hill you start off slow eventually getting momentum to a set max speed depending on degrees in climb. In reality the tank will start up hill relatively fast reaching his max speed within 0.5 second. Armed Assault does create a realistic climb speed eventually but because the start of the climb does not portray a torque monster the tank loses most it glory.

-Traction:

In real life the tank is contantly digging in the ground despite tracks best efforts not to. In armed assault its matters not much if its driving on solid road or grass speed wise. In fact the momemtum can often ( when going to downhill ) completely ignore realistic values. Making the tank feel like its sliding down a icy road frictionles. Or when coming to a hold feel like back is sliding to front.

Verdict:

Tanks are not realisticly portrayed in this game. But with such a vareity of vehicles and large scale it will be hard to improve. On some parts of its calculation it neatly alligns with realistic values so we at least get that. You have to realise that if ai already fails PID'ing to stay on middle of road most of the time that coming with even more calculations will not better the game :)

[Leopardi 0]

Is it possible to make tank turret control "analog"; turret speed would be determined how much the mouse has been moved to that direction?

[whisper 0]

Isn't it the case with joystick control of the turret?

[wolfbite 8]

It would be better if you had to spin the mousewheel realy fast lol...

[pooroldspike 128]

GRADIENT SPEED TESTS (vanilla Comb Ops 1.57)

Test 1: M1A1 The climb is pretty steep-

Ready to go-

On the road all the way up, the speed fluctuated around 15-17 kmh because of tiny undulations in the slope-

(I was commander and kept hitting the 'W' key to make sure the driver kept his foot down)

And paralleling the road but going offroad this time, the speed was the same:- 15-17 kmh.

Edited March 26, 2011 by PoorOldSpike

[pooroldspike 128]

Test 2: Bradley on the same climb.

It did 13-15 kmh on the road-

And offroad the speed was in the same speed bracket of 13-15 kmh-

Test 3: Hummer

(It had no commander position so I kicked out the driver and drove it flat out myself)

On the road it went like a bat out of hell around the 62-66 kmh mark-

And it was iin the same 62-66 kmh speed bracket offroad-

Conclusions- Surprisingly the M1 was fractionally faster than the lighter Bradley.

And going offroad with all 3 vehicles was just as fast as going by the dirt road.

Edited March 26, 2011 by PoorOldSpike

[max power 21]

The Bradley has a lower power to weight ratio in real life so that's okay.

I think ArmA does have gears, at least in terms of sound effects. I'm not sure if there is a simulation of torque or rpm, though.

[dm 9]

Surprisingly the M1 was fractionally faster than the lighter Bradley.

Not really surprising at all. The M1 has approx 25 hp per ton, the Bradley only 19.

And Max, you're right. ArmA has gears, but only for SFX. No torque, no rpm, no gearbox.

[pooroldspike 128]

Here's a small chart of the gradient tests-

M1A1- 16 km/h (10mph)

Bradley- 14 km/h (9 mph)

Hummer- 64 km/h (40 mph)

Top-class marathon runners do about 20 km/h (12 mph) on the flat, so the M1A1 was only slightly slower than that on the steepish gradient, which doesn't sound too bad to me.

Joggers do about 10 km/h (6 mph)

[Atkins 10]

I am by all means not an expert in tank related stuff and I am a total Armanoob still but i have few questions regarding tanks in A2 that puzzle me.

Why is the drivers view always the same weird small unmovable "periscope-window" within black background? Shouldnt different tanks have different viewports and whatnot? And shouldnt in some tanks this viewport/slit have a small range of movement? Like here in PR:

Now in A2 if you are the driver, your view is so limited and if you want to look a bit to the side, you have to turn the whole tank. Though in some tanks you can "Turn out" and get a slightly better view. Btw when turning out as a T-34 driver, the drivers hatch is made from super low quality textures for me. Is this on purpose or did i miss some video option to enhance this?

Shouldn't there be some other viewport/periscope/rearview camera for modern tank driver with thermals and such. Or have I just not found them yet in-game. Like here in PR:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HohC6sU1-Q

Why all tank commanders and gunners can zoom in when afaik this was not possible in e.g. T-34? And is it just me or does every tank commander have the same periscope view-thingy regardless which tank they use? And why is there no binoculars for the commander when he is out of the hatch? Or is there?

And using 3rd person camera is not a solution for tank driving. I don't even get it why there is a such a thing in a simulator. Feels like cheating when using it and it is a huge immersion killer anyways.

Ps. is there some Tank addon mods that i should check out?

[pooroldspike 128]

..Why is the drivers view always the same weird small unmovable "periscope-window" within black background? Shouldnt different tanks have different viewports and whatnot? And shouldnt in some tanks this viewport/slit have a small range of movement?..

The plain fact is that AA2/ OA are primarily infantry simulators, NOT tank/aircraft/helo simulators.

Hey I suppose they could develop the tank/ aviation side of the game into full-blown fully-realistic tank/ aviation sims and sell them separately..:)