Arma III - Explosion and Tracerbullet effects

[laywiin 1]

Hello. :)

I'v been looking at all the videos now from arma III, iv waited for this game since 2, and i have experience with Flashpoint and upwards with Bohemia games.

The thing i was thinking about that i hated in Arma 2 and OA, was the explosions is not near the reality as i can figure out and the Blastcore (mod) Team made this insane realistic, but it doesnt look like Bohemia have noticed this and just

continued making they're way of explosions that seriously looks like cheap, cheap Hollywood effects.

I just asking, will the tracers from the guns and the explosions be perfected ?, made more " Realistic??"

Sorry the ..negative, but the game overall looks AMAZING! cant wait, but deep diss from explosions that i tough in 2012 would look better then this!:pet13:

[arye_r 0]

+1

IMHO, explosions should be less firey and less roundish, and tracers less lasery.

But i do see great progress on the frag post-explosion smoke/dust effect!

[maturin 12]

Blastcore does a lot of things right, but handheld AT and tracers are not among them.

The tracers need to be a lot shorter, to find that middle ground between the glowing orb and the drawn-out streak that in real life depends on camera speed, distance and angle.

[froggyluv 2130]

Combining Blastcore with Ace's ball tracers gives the best effect so far in my opinion.

+1 that they thin them out and give a more high res appearance.

[maturin 12]

One thing I've noticed about ACE's ball tracers is that you can barely see them if your framerate is low, and although I see how they are supposed to realistic, I don't think any solution works without a dynamic model.

In a perfect world, tracers would look like little dots at distance, but stretch out when zipping past your head, becoming longer the closer they are, and the more perpendicular to your LoS their movement is. Not to mention dimming considerably during the day.

[metalcraze 290]

Explosions are fine.

What will be annoying is if tanks will explode whenever you hit them like it's in BIS games thus far without mods. ACE makes it realistic.

I especially like how when you shoot a sabot at a moving vehicle and it penetrates it killing the crew - the vehicle doesn't explode but sometimes keeps moving for a while, slowing down. That has a much more "touching" effect than an explosion every time.

[maturin 12]

The explosions don't look real. On one level they are too Hollywood, on another they are not Hollywood enough.

ArmA has always had these big circular balls of smoke. They don't look bad, but they don't look right either. There are thousands of youtube videos to demonstrate why.

You need to distinguish from the smoke produced by the detonation of the warhead, and the dust kicked up by the blast. This latter often creates rising plumes (as seen in every youtube rocket impact ever), jagged sprays or reaching fingers (as seen in ArmA god-awful MLRS and howitzer impacts), but the bottom line is that distinct shapes are created in wide variety, and the dirt/dust doesn't look the same as smoke from the weapon itself. ArmA just has undifferentiated balls of stuff with occasional (in ArmA 2, very bad) splashes of brown pixels.

On the other hand, ever ArmA III grenade explosion we have seen so far looks like either a thermobaric explosion or a propane tank going off in an action movie. There's a fireball that lasts for a few seconds, rippling in the best traditions of crappy pyrotechnics, rather than than the brief flash of high explosive.

Edited August 18, 2012 by maturin

[Steakslim 1]

Differing colors of smoke and dust with the explosion (black and brown particles) would help add some definition to the explosions ontop of what Maturin already mentioned.

[krazikilla 5]

totally right, they should get opticalsnare from blastcore working for them.

He knows how to do the diffrent explosions, diffrent dust, stone blowing away, tracers, eg.

1 month paying him will pay off with all the nice effects :)

[Phantom Six 25]

You guys do know that using blastcore would require a bit better of a computer thus upping up the system requirements? I didn't download blastcore at first on my old computer because it barely meet the minimum requirements for ARMA 2, but I downloaded it after I built my new computer so no problem for me, but I really do like blastcore a lot since I downloaded it. It doesn't feel the same playing ARMA without Blastcore and JSRS sounds to me now that I got it.

[krazikilla 5]

You guys do know that using blastcore would require a bit better of a computer thus upping up the system requirements? I didn't download blastcore at first on my old computer because it barely meet the minimum requirements for ARMA 2, but I downloaded it after I built my new computer so no problem for me, but I really do like blastcore a lot since I downloaded it. It doesn't feel the same playing ARMA without Blastcore and JSRS sounds to me now that I got it.

There is always space to improve. Performance and effects.

[Steakslim 1]

You guys do know that using blastcore would require a bit better of a computer thus upping up the system requirements? I didn't download blastcore at first on my old computer because it barely meet the minimum requirements for ARMA 2, but I downloaded it after I built my new computer so no problem for me, but I really do like blastcore a lot since I downloaded it. It doesn't feel the same playing ARMA without Blastcore and JSRS sounds to me now that I got it.

Understand that with Blastcore (especially with the older War Effects addon) the performance drop comes from the heavy addition of particles being rendered ontop of the preexisting one's in the vanilla explosions (from what I can recall from one of OpSnare's posts). In Blastcore alone he better optimized his mod for performance and to avoid running into the particle limit so quickly during effects intensive scenes, but you can do only so much. If new and detailed explosions can be done from the get-go in vanilla Arma 3, while being somewhat economical with how much goes into them for performance sake, it'll be improvement enough over the older explosions and smoke effects which from what I've seen haven't changed much at all since I started playing ArmA 1.

People are more or less using blastcore as a reference or benchmark for what we'd like to see the explosions be like. Newer explosion effects doesn't have to be just like it, just something different from what we've had for some time now in vanilla.

That's not to say they won't do this anyways before release, because the newer rocket trails and such look wonderful, especially recently seeing their reactions with the helicopters, and I can't imagine they won't give other particle effects similar attention in time.

[Phantom Six 25]

Ahh I see. Fair enough. If its optimized well then that'd be great. I do love the smoke effect from Blastcore and the explosions look very nice.

[igneous01 19]

one thing I found funny, about the explosion sounds, is that, its the exact same sample from Lock On and the DCS games. Im really getting tired of that explosion sound...

[maturin 12]

one thing I found funny, about the explosion sounds, is that, its the exact same sample from Lock On and the DCS games. Im really getting tired of that explosion sound...

Is it really? I know that ACE_SM takes explosion sounds (excellent ones) from DCS.

[Foxtrop 10]

I am agree with the explosions, looks like gasoline explosion too much fire and light, it could be better, but at the same time its not really important how it looks afterall someone will mod it, so I think its more importan how it work would be the light produced in a exposion a variable in the config file? would be posible to change the bright of a texture in the particles?

[Madeon 6]

The most perfect game explosions I have seen are in this video starting at 4:02 -

KGgZfiSKoow

I love how plumes of dirt are thrown upwards and the explosion produces a quick 'shockwave' effect. The sparks and 'dust cloud' particle effects really make it look convincing.

Would you guys like to see arma's explosions look more like this?

[dragon01 902]

Explosions in Crysis are a bit exaggerated, but I agree they look good. It's amazing how a 2007 game can be one of the best looking out there, beating many later games, including it's own sequel.

While those explosions look good, I think that IRL, you wouldn't see any fire at all, just dust and smoke.

[Madeon 6]

I think that IRL, you wouldn't see any fire at all

Watch the grenade toss and explosion at 17:44, you can see some fire -

oC5dF0pEO30&feature=plcp

[dragon01 902]

Indeed, a brief flash of fire is visible here. I guess it depends on environment. There wasn't that much of dust the explosion could kick off in this case. I guess if it was thrown into snow or sand, the dust/smoke cloud would be a lot bigger, but less fire would be visible. That's another thing I hope to see in AIII, environment dependent explosions. Ah, and comparing those vids, it seems that Crysis explosion is almost spot on.

[laywiin 1]

Good too see that so many is really on my side of this case, I understand that you need to think about low-performance computer users, but what about the people that really have big performance? should they sit with low graphic and bad explosions because 20 % of the gamers don't meet the requirements?

Anyway, I really want to get my word and your opinion too the Bohemia team so they can maybe look at this?

if Bohemia cant do it, we can beg that the blastcore team will make this work!

I know that the tracers from ACE is much better, i use ace with j.s.r.s and blastcore to get the real arma feeling, and its an total different game!

so, what now? How to get the words to the leaders? And ye, the new effect when they shoot rockets in the Air, Wow totally awesome!!

This is what i want seriously:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kG4Pd3RBYs

And, lets not forget JTD fire & Smoke that make the game a different one!:bounce3:

[metalcraze 290]

Ahh I see. Fair enough. If its optimized well then that'd be great. I do love the smoke effect from Blastcore and the explosions look very nice.

I think they need to use PhysX to optimize those explosions - then the game will run at no less than 60 fps

[NeuerGolf 1]

It's amazing how a 2007 game can be one of the best looking out there, beating many later games, including it's own sequel.

Let me give you a hint

consoles

[mr.g-c 6]

Also it was kind of laughable that the rockets fired by the MLRS still had their motors burning while impacting. In reality they should be burned-off long ago. Lots of more unrelistic things i found in the latest videos.

What about tracers illuminating the area/ground? Now that more light-sources can be displayed at once....

EDIT: Also regarding the ACE Ball tracers... I dont like them, not because they are unrealistic (they are not in reality its also just a pretty "round" glowing tail of a bullet), but because the engine lacks of modelling fast passing lightsources into "streaks" like it is in reality.

[laywiin 1]

It is a militarsim, it should look like real stuff!