I hate that explosions increase in size over distance

[maturin 12]

Arma 2 is known for having very understated, realistic, non-Hollywood effect for its weapons. Bullets just spew a little masonry dust into the air. HE rounds are mostly smoke and little fire. Wrecked cars and light vehicles are modest when they catch fire.

But all this only applies up close. At distance, the engine, for some bizarrely stupid reason, makes every pyrotechnic effect look half again as big. I'm not going to exaggerate at all here.

Viewed from a hovering helicopter, M16s will put out as much smoke as a 17th century black powder Brown Bess musket. I'm pretty sure they invented smokeless powder over a hundred years ago.

HE explosions from the 30mm and 40mm class of weapons swell in size and become downright gigantic. Hit a tent with an M203 from 400m and the fireball will look like some sort of thermobaric weapon. The flash alone is larger than an RPG-7 round should be realistically.

Did I mention that the RPG, like all shoulder-fired shaped charge weapons in this game, creates an excessively large fireball and puts out laughable amounts of smoke? When you hit a tank with a rocket, the vehicle shouldn't be entirely obscured by a billowing cloud of smoke that covers a two-lane highway. But everything scales up and up with distance, making small caliber explosive look like 150mm artillery.

Perhaps the worst offenders are FFARs. Tiny little S-5 50mm rockets will hide entire city blocks with plumes of smoke. If you look on youtube, those things look more like cluster munitions going off.

People have pointed out that 80mm and 60mm mortars are similarly oversized. They are overpowered too, but that's a discussion for another time. ATGMs, AGMs, bombs and howitzers are perhaps the only decently-handled explosives.

Do you think BIS could simply resize explosions with a config tweak, or is it more complicated than that? I know preventing explosions from scaling over distance is likely complex. I didn't know whether to put this in Suggestions or Mods, so I put it here. Anyone want to organize a ticket and voting drive?

[ArmAriffic 10]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=111985&highlight=Blastcore

^Problem Solved^

[maturin 12]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=111985&highlight=Blastcore

^Problem Solved^

My video card squeals in piteous terror just opening the browser page.

And is it modular? A lot of the ordinance looks unbelievably good, but I don't want cartoony sunburst muzzle flashes and giant floaty glow particles for explosives that shouldn't have them.

[Gunter Severloh 3984]

Blastcore

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=12975

theres 3 vids on the page watch them.

Yes its modular, OS is working on an update for the mod that fixes some things reported, highly reccomend the mod, theres nothing else out there.

[kremator 1065]

OMG maturin, you have been about for AGES and you don't know about BLASTCORE? I suggest going through ALL threads and getting up to speed mate!

[rory_pamphilon 16]

Can somebody pls explain to me what a modular mod is? I use blastcorebon Xr warfare server but load it with -mod=...

Does modular mean the server/mission contains the mod and it's downloaded when u join the game?

I noticed gossimers warfare has mando built in, I'm just confused how it works.

Thanks

[Zipper5 74]

Modular means you can enable and disable parts of the mod as you please, usually by adding or removing certain PBOs from the mod folder's addons folder.

[andersson 285]

So blastcore fixes the size problem over distance?

[Zipper5 74]

I never noticed if it did. I think the particle size changes over distance is hardcoded into the game's particle system, therefore changing how the particles look may make the effect less noticeable, but I'm sure it's still there.

[dm 9]

I never noticed if it did. I think the particle size changes over distance is hardcoded into the game's particle system, therefore changing how the particles look may make the effect less noticeable, but I'm sure it's still there.

It sadly is.

Its been a pet peeve of mine for some time...

Zoom in on a smoke grenade and you'll see how ridiculous it really is...

[liquidpinky 11]

I never really noticed the particles problem till recently while watching a RHIB unit I was in command of travelling down a river. The spray particles looked huge when I was stood on the river bank watching it travel away from me.

Certainly some scaling gone wrong with them.

I will give Blastcore a shot as well now that I know what it does.

[maturin 12]

OpticalSnare's effects also appear too large over distance. It's set by the engine, as the thread title indicates.