Arma 2's Great Physics Engine!

[Steakslim 1]

I know I'll get hit for referencing Crysis but, allow bodies to have ragdoll effects till it hits the ground would probably be the best of both worlds in terms of this debate. Crytek (or Germany's) rather strong stance against extreme violence prevented players from playing and weaponizing dead bodies (once they were down, they stayed there till despawn). As for what everyone has mentioned before hand, the strain and issues brought upon game servers from this may be a hurdle.

[maddogx 13]

I know I'll get hit for referencing Crysis but, allow bodies to have ragdoll effects till it hits the ground would probably be the best of both worlds in terms of this debate.

This.

I've never understood why game devs feel the need to keep ragdoll physics active on corpses.

Hi all

As I point out in the first section of my last post Ragdoll physics has no benefit.

So why do it?

Why waste CPU time?

Why waste development time on it?

Fortunately, your opinion isn't the word of god. No matter how many epic walls of text you post.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Because corspes hanging in midair by a toe look stupid and break immersion. A ragdoll or similar animation system would supply the seeming effects of gravity ...and gravity is good Walker. Play Warband and tell me ragdoll has zero effect on enjoyment of playing.

Absolutely agreeing with this. And immersion is always a priority.

[walker 0]

Hi all

As I pointed numorous times Ragdoll physics does not work in MP and NO ONE has managed to quote a single MP capable game with it.

Because there are not any.

One of you tried to fake the community out with the fantasy that War Band has MP capable Laaagdoll physics but you know what? Surprise! Surprise! In War Band the Ragdoll is turned off in MP, just like every other game that has attempted to implement it; all that is left is just graphic fluff with no simulation benefit you can not bump into it you can not hide behind the corpses they don't stop bullets etc.

Why? Because the real world physics of the speed of light and the sensitive dependence on initial conditions of Chaos theory prevent it from working. So in War Band all they can manage is ghost copses that shimmy around appearing to one person in one place while appearing before another in another place.

Heck you might shout hey that corpse just fell off the top of the wall all nice and the other players say "No it ain't its still on top of the wall?!" and think you a dumb-ass.

Try to tell them the treasures near that corpse on the floor, they reply "What corpse?"

With perhaps a warping shimmy of a jelly zombie corpse to synch the positions up. I can see it now "Hey anyone see that jelly zombie crawling up the wall?" Its the Wizards doing it! Uhmm wonder how that plays in an MP simulation of WWII? Or any modern combat stuation? Ants are moving it! Or how about gasses bulding up in the body making it lighter than air!

People can you not get it through your thick skulls, that if all those game companies: from Codemasters to the makers of War Band, to the makers of Crysis and all the others; could never get Laaagdoll physics to work in MP in their game, then there must logically be a reason why?

I have wrote the explanation several times now are you really that dumb?

Wishes do not have any effect on real world physics. The Speed of light, Newtons laws of motion and sensitive dependence on initial conditions that desyncs all games without exception ignore all you wishes and kick seven shades of Sh*t out of your wishes.

Sorry kiddies but real world physics does not conform to your fantasies.

As I pointed out earlier and still not one of you has answered me:

MulleDK19

OK I WILL BITE.

Which games?

NAME THEM

How many entities?

How many players?

How big is the terrain?

Skeptically Walker

And the reason none of you can quote a single Ragdoll physics MP game with more than a few clients and an entity count higher than about 30 is because there are not any.

And as to working in a game as huge as ArmA!

As I said before:

...Dream on...

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[NeMeSiS 11]

One of you tried to fake the community out with the fantasy that War Band has MP capable Laaagdoll physics but you know what? Surprise! Surprise! In War Band the Ragdoll is turned off in MP, just like every other game that has attempted to impliment it; all that is left is just graphic fluff with no simulation benefit you can not bump into it you can not hide behind the corpses they dont stop bullets etc. Heck you might shout hey that corpse just fell off the top of the wall all nice and another plyers say no it aint its still on top of the wall?!

Actually, if you had read my post instead of writing another essay i clearly seperated it in a SP and MP part. And so did everyone else. :rolleyes:

Edited April 19, 2011 by NeMeSiS

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

Sorry kiddies but real world physics does not conform to your fantasies.

name calling is not required to make your point, is it? :nono:

neither your join date nor your wall of text exempt you from presenting your message with respect for the participants of this discussion. I doubt there are many children here.

[carlostex 38]

thats really resource-consuming.

good physics can consume lot more CPU horsepower than GFX and AI, together.

and scalability - thing that make Arma2/VR possible can easily disappear in that case.

p.s. i put serious hope in iNtel Larrabee chip, sheduled to 22nm waffers.

with appropriate CAL and OpenCL drivers, its can accelerate physics and biz computation CONSIDERABLY.

OMG!!! You put hope in Larrabee? That is the most ridiculous POS Intel has ever come up with. Larrabee it's just x86 P54C cores glued together. Why don't people realize that x86 sucks at massive parallel computing.

For accelerating OpenCL you would be better off with a discrete GFX card with only 80 VLIW5 shader units. If proper implemented, OpenCL could increase FPS and not otherwise, because your CPU would be free of physics processing. So your performance would theoretically go up due to more free resources on your CPU.

Larrabee is total failure just like Itanium.

[walker 0]

-Ziggy-;1901276']name calling is not required to make your point' date=' is it? :nono:

neither your join date nor your wall of text exempt you from presenting your message with respect for the participants of this discussion. I doubt there are many children here.[/quote']

Hi [DirTyDeeDs]-Ziggy-

And yet still people ignore the basic physics they were taught in high school.

As to my denoting that a person who ignores reality is acting like a child, stomping their foot and demanding sweeties in a childish tantrum, I think it apropriate.

You your self describe my carefully reasoned arguments as "Wall of text" which I could also say was not required to make your point. Oh and incedentaly they are not a "Wall of text" as my posts are paragraphed, and I even Include headings, bullet points and numbered sctions. Perhaps you mean verbose but in all honnesty you are free to express your opinions with passion and fervour just as I am. :)

Laaagdoll physics is a blind alley in MP game development; that wastes development time and ruins game making projects, it is the primary cause for the failure of Codemasters clones of BIS's OFP. It is the job of EVERYONE to point this out; to all in every community and especialy potential developers

There are far more important things to spend the finite resource of development time on.

If you all realy think Laaagdoll physics can work in MP then I invite you to get off your arse and write the code, prove me wrong I will eat humble pie if you can. Believe me if you can solve how to do it in MP you will all be very rich and could write your own ticket with any game development or simulation company in the world.

Kind Regards walker

---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 PM ----------

Actually, if you had read my post instead of writing another essay i clearly seperated it in a SP and MP part. And so did everyone else. :rolleyes:

Hi NeMeSiS

I was refering to the post after mine

... Mount and Blade Warband added ragdoll physics and Ive played in MP rooms with 220 people...

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[froggyluv 2136]

One of you tried to fake the community out with the fantasy that War Band has MP capable Laaagdoll physics but you know what? Surprise! Surprise! In War Band the Ragdoll is turned off in MP,

LOL, I wasn't trying to "fake out" anyone - if I was wrong in that the ragdoll is only clientside then I was wrong. Like I have also stated in various posts -it's worthwhile to implement a system, be it ragdoll or Bullet for singleplayer until better technology is available for the MP side of things. You seem to have the opinion that we all want ragdoll to go "awesome! bodies flying everywhere!!!!"....:rolleyes:

Things I'd like to see:

1. A real animation effect when a soldier is hit ie..stun or any reaction...at least some of the time.

2. No more death when walking off a 2-3 meter platform and proper animation to landing with stun or possible falldown.

3. Weighted bodies and corpses. Let gravity pull them down when it is warrented in a non-stiff way.

Does this necessitate ragdoll probably not.

I have wrote the explanation several times now are you really that dumb?

Sorry kiddies but real world physics does not conform to your fantasies.

As to my denoting that a person who ignores reality is acting like a child, stomping their foot and demanding sweeties in a childish tantrum, I think it apropriate.

You need to take a Zeta pill to chill out your Alpha-Male syndrome. Nobody else here is stomping their feet but you. I can assure you Im no kiddie mate and even if I was there's no place for this type of idiotic demeanings.

It may be very worthwhile for many to have an enhanced animation system even if only for SP whether you can accept that or not.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Hi NeMeSiS

I was refering to the post after mine

Still, everyone here already admitted the problems with ragdolls and we are all trying to come up with solutions, while you are going

and acting like we are idiots who dont understand anything.

Its childish and not helpful in any way.

(Also, i realise that we will probably never get it in ArmA2, but not because you are throwing imaginary maths at us)

Edited April 19, 2011 by NeMeSiS

[walker 0]

Hi NeMeSiS

Nothing imaginary about real world physics NeMeSiS.

Why else do you think NO GAME HAS EVER GOT RAGDOLL PHYSICS TO WORK IN MP.

I have tried quietly saying it even in this thread, but people still insist on repeating the same mistaken myth that ragdoll will work in MP, when in reality it wont.

I try explaining, they insist that it could work.

I point out why it can't and why it is a waste of effort, and they spout non existent examples.

It is a myth and one that causes lots of problems in game development.

Should I then ignore them and allow their clamour to persist and infect others with the myth that Ragdoll works in MP? I think not, Codemasters awful clone of BIS's OFP is an example why not. I do not want that kind of myth to fester in the ArmA community or indeed among developers of future games.

Better to give them a narative Slap round the back of the head. It seems to work well with some people.

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[NeMeSiS 11]

Have you even read the last few pages? There have been some interesting suggestions to work around the MP problem, ranging from limited ragdolls, to only partly syncing them (and then possibly syncing them again once they stop moving), to just not doing it in MP at all.

All of which you just dismissed by acting like we think we live in some kind of dreamword where bandwith and cpu cycles are inifinite. Which is awesome and all, but utter bullshit.

Edited April 19, 2011 by NeMeSiS

[froggyluv 2136]

Go back and read original post as well as my first suggestion -do you see the word multiplayer anywhere Walker? It was you that brought that into the mix along with your usual speed O' lite/Chaos madness :p

Maybe it just refuses to sink in but the whole game doesn't revolve around MP. And animation/gravity tweaks can be enhanced in the MP dept. as well.

Sorry if that offends the status quo mentality. Arma2 is a fantastic game, one of a kind.... that has happened because of enhancements and thinking outside the box.

Hell I remember when the idea of OFP AI actually using corners for cover and pathfinding thru tight areas was seen as an impossibilty -due to its scale (I also argued this) -look at em now :)

[dysta 10]

Technology won't evolute if our mind don't. At least, it's much more better than video capturing a real person, whom get shot at the head and see his body rolling down from top of a building, and see how fun the dead body ragdolling in reality.

Again, cruel reality also have cruel fantasy. Only people matters how they looks, instead of will it happens.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Finished my popcorn, got get some more :popcornsmilie:

[walker 0]

Go back and read original post as well as my first suggestion -do you see the word multiplayer anywhere Walker? It was you that brought that into the mix along with your usual speed O' lite/Chaos madness :p

Maybe it just refuses to sink in but the whole game doesn't revolve around MP. And animation/gravity tweaks can be enhanced in the MP dept. as well.

Sorry if that offends the status quo mentality. Arma2 is a fantastic game, one of a kind.... that has happened because of enhancements and thinking outside the box.

Hell I remember when the idea of OFP AI actually using corners for cover and pathfinding thru tight areas was seen as an impossibilty -due to its scale (I also argued this) -look at em now :)

Hi froggyluv

Right back at you:

Thread title

Arma 2's Great Physics Engine!

The OP describes a problem that exist in ArmA of vehicles bouncing into the sky.

A while back a friend and I found a interesting glitch. Here was the results of the physics engine freaking out. Enjoy!

Perfectly reasonable post I keep looking in the thread to see if there is sensible solution. I do not contribute, as I can not think of a solution or indeed how to specify it.

Others josh and joke nothing important is said until: Max Power contributes

This video is old. This is not a fault of the physics engine, but an improperly configured custom addon. The physics engine is not the most complicated thing in the world but it's not that bad.

and point out is is a feature of a badly configured custom addon though I have seen the same in ArmA Vanilla though that was some time ago and so conclude it is solvable problem and wait to see any more such sensible threads and specification of the causes of the bug type both for my own knowledge and so that I might pass it on to others.

I watch the thread develop popping back from time to time, mostly it is more joshing and joking, then this post:

It's not even a real physics engine.

A perfectly reasonable statement though nothing to do with the OP's post though and also true of every game and simulation that has ever existed. So essentially a null statement, goes in the same category as the joshing and jokes but it triggers the argument about what is physics in a game/simulation which should really start with this statement:

ALL PHYSICS IN SIMULATION/GAMES IS AN APROXIMATION.

The discussion starts to evolve like this:

Basic physics is picking up a skull in Ultima Underworld, throwing it and seeing how the skull sprite ricochets off walls and slides on the floor before stopping.

And on to this

Unless that thing happens to be a dead body hanging rigid in midair with only his pinky toe touching a platform :p

Defunkt kind of brings it back to the original topic and points out that the fact that ALL PHYSICS IN SIMULATION/GAMES IS AN APROXIMATION and that bugs and inaccuracies of physics simulation that result are widespread in many games:

LOL, did you witness the physics in OFP:DR?

fHdU9v05wqU

And it uses Havok, so much for real physics.

I have not contributed at all up to this point because I have nothing to add.

Whereupon you start inserting this agenda:

I believe you. Thats why I think implemeting a ragdoll or a more fluid and loose limbed animation system would better flesh out the physics that are already in place.

For instance (to rephrase myself): for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

...so when a soldier is shot (not killed), there should be a noticable effect on his body such as a flinch, knockdown etc...something is better then nothing. So if Soft Body Dynamics is out of the question, add it thru the animation system.

Personally I believe most people get that bad physics feeling watching corpses cause flying tanks are more entertaining. Like mentioned above -corpses that are locked rigidly overhead to an inch of material defying gravity are a turn off as are bodies exploding outwards with adult onset rigor mortis set in.

Adding weight to corpses has been done albeit a crude version by solus for his SLX mod -now the limbs just have to be unhinged :D

A newly enhanced physics model would be dreamy of course but Id settle for the fluid animations and let the physics come in baby steps little by little.

Which is nothing at all to do with OP's post at all.

Then a whole bunch of the Laaagdoll crowd pile in While Cookieeater points out a better solution and that Ragdoll is too laggy in MP. In fact it don't just Lag. It don't work. Aside by walker

Ragdolls are out of the question, it would look too laggy in multiplayer. What Bohemia Interactive should implement is the Bullet physics engine.

izyZ1kKQzbE

It's used in a lot of stuff(Shrek, GTA IV, 3dMark). GTA IV had cars using the simulation and it had really good vehicle physics. In an ArmA II battlefield, i'd say it's safe to assume there are around only 10 vehicles that are constantly moving at one time in a video game. I use "constantly moving", as the server only has to compute physics on a vehicle when it's moving. It wouldn't be that hard to simulate 10 vehicles moving out there in the field at the same time(Car, Tank).

The Laaagdoll crowd start off with the usual myths: So and so game has it! Loads of games have it! More games have than don't! etc. etc.

People point out that it don't work but the are Laaagdoll fans ignore them. Some of them say well what about Laaagdoll light!

I step in narrativley slapping people round the back of the head for their woolley understanding of the problem and sheer inability to comprehend both basic physics and therefore why Laaagdoll is not even needed and the more detailed reasons why it is the WRONG Way to go.

Have I left anything out?

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[froggyluv 2136]

Ok, point taken in that we have all strayed from the original intention of the OP's thread -bouncy tanks. Thread title is more general so it is easy to take off into general directions.

Bottom line is you and I will never agree on the importance or triviality of improving the animation/physics-gravity system. Thats fine but theres really no need for Wrath of God sized posts repeating the same things again and again as if we dont get it -we get it, just disagree.

I step in naritivley slaping peoople round the back of the head for their wooley understanding of the problem and sheer inability to comprehend both basic physics and therfore why Laaagdoll is not even needed and the more detailed reasons why it is the WRONG Way to go

Where and how do you solve the animation inadequecies detailing ragdoll being the wrong way to go and what alternatives have you provided for discussion? Perhaps you are happy as they are eh? Good for you. You also failed to notice that although I do mention ragdoll in my post, I also am looking for other solutions thru standard animation system or alternative animation systems. You seem to look at everything in Black/White -All or Nothing while others wish to discuss the pros and cons in an adult manner -minus the belittling and pedantic insults.

Edited April 19, 2011 by froggyluv

[walker 0]

...Where and how do you solve the animation inadequecies detailing ragdoll being the wrong way to go and what alternatives have you provided for discussion? Perhaps you are happy as they are eh? Good for you. You also failed to notice that although I do mention ragdoll in my post, I also am looking for other solutions thru standard animation system or alternative animation systems. You seem to look at everything in Black/White -All or Nothing while others wish to discuss the pros and cons in an adult manner -minus the belittling and pedantic insults.

Hi froggyluv

First up:

Perhaps you are happy as they are eh? Good for you.

They being ArmA Physics:

Statement of my POV:

I am not and never will be satisfied with any games simulation of physics!

But as I point out ALL PHYSICS IN SIMULATION/GAMES IS AN APROXIMATION.

This because a computer game is held within a finite universe composed of the program its algorithms CPU memory, hard drive GPU, network, client server architecture etc.

Where as the universe it attempts to imitate is more or less infinite.

So we start from a limited number of things the program can do both in terms of physical resources in the computer program environment and in terms of development time.

As I pointed Ragdoll does not contribute to how a target when shot falls. Mostly in games it used to present Hollywood physics and sever of the Laaagdoll crowd request it in the mistaken belief that Hollywood is correct physics.

I posted a Myth-busters video disposing of that myth.

So all those posting about how nice would be to see stuff blown away and jerking from being shot are pure and siple hollywood fantasists and their contributions have little or or no place in a physics argument.

Now down to the praciticalities

Within our understanding of current REAL WORLD PHYSICS the major factors we are interested in are firstly network archetecture and the affects of the the speed of light in terms of round trip time of a game frame and Secondly sensitive dependence on initial conditions that is better known as the butterfly effect.

We further need to consider how much data can be physically sent in one game frame. This is both a engineering question and the aforementioned physics question of the speed of light. The engineering question then devolves down to hardware and software capabilities of the network, in this case the internet. Which you can find out about here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

It then goes into the bandwidth capabilities of both game clients and game servers.

And then on into what a single frame of a game can send in one message, in the particular case of ArmA some of which is described here:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/basic.cfg

The basic thing about all this with ANY multi user environment is that there is limited amount of info that can be sent and that as the number of users increases, eventualy there is not enough room to send all the info at the rate the simulation runs at, so either the simulation slows to a crawl or you skip bits, you have seen it, it is called warping.

All well and done, and infact that is what a lot of netcode in a game does deciding what bits need to be sent every time and what bits can be skipped but the more load you add perclient the faster the problems occur. The more entities and objects you deal with the faster the problems occur. Any of this ring a bell?

So when ever you are buiding a multiplayer game and its netcode one of your main jobs is LIMITING what gets sent. Cutting out anything you can. Everything you put in has to serve a purpose.

The problem with Ragdoll is that either you do it all server side, in which case all the bits you have to send per entitiy and quickly overwhelm what can physicly be sent over the internet. Why I keep hammering on about do the math.

The other option is to do physics on the client but then you come up against sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Where one client starts moving an object a microsecond after an other client the discrepancies multiply and the more complicated the calculations the more they diverge. You see that in desync. The server then has to correct all this and sychronise it. Ragdoll physics and indeed any physics are very complex calcualtions and amplyfy this and thus soon suffer from the butterfly effect nesesitating even more network traffic to sychronise them. And so you qickly have the same problem of what can be sent in one frame of internet traffic.

Essentialy it all boils down to this: If you limit all other entities and objects severly you can cope with about 16 to 32 ragdoll entities/clients, depending on model complexity, on the internet. That is about what Codemasters awful clone of BIS's OFP could cope with and seems to be about what other games cope with.

Now some have said well use Ragdoll light. The problem with that is sychronising the animation with the ragdoll. So you get hands not grasping weapons, and models with wierd looking anaotomies. It just dont work.

If you can make it work show me.

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[NeMeSiS 11]

Honestly dude. There is absolutely no point in writing all these essays when you keep saying the same things over and over again. We argued against/around/ignored them for a reason, repeating the same things do not make your point stronger.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Honestly dude. There is absolutely no point in writing all these essays when you keep saying the same things over and over again. We argued against/around/ignored them for a reason, repeating the same things do not make your point stronger.

hehe, i can make some Walkerism too and quote wikipedia about the Coué method.

[NeMeSiS 11]

hehe, i can make some Walkerism too and quote wikipedia about the Coué method.

Well, i must have obtained a +5 to willpower bonus sometime in my life. :D

[walker 0]

Honestly dude. There is absolutely no point in writing all these essays when you keep saying the same things over and over again. We argued against/around/ignored them for a reason, repeating the same things do not make your point stronger.

Hi NeMeSiS

If you cannot accept what I am saying that is fine.

To prove your argument show me ONE WORKING EXAMPLE OF A RAGDOLL PHYSICS GAME IN MP with more than say 30 entities.

Then tell me how you intend to make it work in ArmA.

Can you do that?

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 19, 2011 by walker

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

Hi NeMeSiS

To prove your argument show me ONE WORKING EXAMPLE OF A RAGDOLL PHYSICS GAME IN MP with more than say 30 entities.

What about Left4Dead2.

Versus is an 8 player game mode with more than 30 entities.

zombies drop in all sorts of different ways after being shot, blown up, smashed, etc.

Rl6U5H-Pe3A

heheheh :D

Edited April 19, 2011 by [DirTyDeeDs]-Ziggy-

[NeMeSiS 11]

To prove your argument show me ONE WORKING EXAMPLE OF A RAGDOLL PHYSICS GAME IN MP with more than say 30 entities.

Then tell me how you intend to make it work in ArmA.

Can you do that?

If you had read the topic instead of just writing in it, you would have noticed that that is not what we were trying to achieve. Just because my posts are only a few sentences does not mean they do not contain any info. You yelling that it is impossible to have x amount of ragdolls in a server does not mean that that is what we were talking about. :rolleyes:

[froggyluv 2136]

:crazy:

Ok, heres an interesting write up about Battleground Europes attempt at online physics/ragdoll.

http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/index.php/component/content/article/10-production-notes/3315-131-introduces-ragdoll-to-battleground-europe-

So clearly it is also client side and doesnt allow weapon retrieval -a major bummer. Still interesting in that they are attempting it and general feedback has been positive. Just downloaded the game and will take it for a whirl.