ArmA, view distance and the curvature of Earth

[iceman77 18]

Pufu is abit of a dick, I've lurked for awhile and pretty much stuck in a superiority complex. No offence to Pufu. But you all know nothing at all about Frostbyte since its closed source, just like ArmA.

Arma is closed source!?

---------- Post added at 22:57 ---------- Previous post was at 22:55 ----------

Far Cry 3 isn't Frostbyte. Cryengine 3 has a freely available devkit, thus most of it is open to the developers/modders. Unlike ArmA or Frostbyte.

What are you talking about? Arma is the most heavily modded franchise in the history of PC games

[Droikka 1]

Arma is closed source!?

---------- Post added at 22:57 ---------- Previous post was at 22:55 ----------

What are you talking about? Arma is the most heavily modded franchise in the history of PC games

Do you have the source code of this game? Can you alter the engine directly, without any work-arounds? Open source means that you have the source code of the game, closed source means you do not. Pretty much every commercial game ever is closed source.

BIS does NOT provide a full devkit, like Epic games, otherwise you could create games for RV platform. Most (pretty much all) arma mods are just re-textures and new content. Look at Garrysmod if you want to see content modding and at unreal engine games if you want to see ACTUAL devkit operation.

[[frl]myke 14]

May i quote myself?

@all

Calm down, focus on the topic (which doesn't have anything to do with Cryengine nor Frostbyte) and watch your language. No more warnings, next time infractions are handed out.

This goes for everyone, no exceptions.

Infractions handed out, next step would be a ban from this topic.

[max power 21]

Did you even read OP?

I wasn't talking about the OP, I was talking about you ;)

[MulleDK19 21]

I don't know where you heard this, but it's not correct. Arma3's Limnos is supposed to be ~300km² pure landmass, most likely on a 400km² map (that's 20x20km). Stratis is significantly smaller.

As for VBS2, I'm pretty sure I've read about it featuring 100x100km maps - that's 10,000km², more than an order of magnitude larger than the largest Arma maps.

Yes. VBS2 is 10,000km². And ARMA 3 is around 300km², whereas the real Lemnos is 476km².

Also:

[Droikka 1]

Yes. VBS2 is 10,000km². And ARMA 3 is around 300km², whereas the real Lemnos is 476km².

Also:

It's a circular viewdistance limit.

Also; I don't care about infractions. I'm such a badass. Limiting one's ability to post here does nothing for you guys, but an another account on these forums. It probably takes around three clicks to ban this account? It takes less than 20 to create a new one.

[max power 21]

+1 infraction.

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[DeclaredEvol 10]

I do have to mention that real life mountains and terrain is a bit different from ArmA. If you go to visit mountains in real life... there are springs... a lot of stone walls and sometimes trails that move around the side of the mountain to the top. I really think with the new tools and engine of ArmA 3, it is likely we could make some really badass terrain. I only think that the mountains in ArmA are a little bit too simple. But don't mind me, you guys are very creative... come up with some really good artwork for your fans :)

I am going to buy ArmA 3, I just want to know more about the stuff we're getting. When will the alpha\beta be out for public, I know Ivan and Martin are not present. Will this mean another two long years of waiting :confused:

[dragon01 902]

I don't know where you heard this, but it's not correct. Arma3's Limnos is supposed to be ~300km² pure landmass, most likely on a 400km² map (that's 20x20km). Stratis is significantly smaller.

As for VBS2, I'm pretty sure I've read about it featuring 100x100km maps - that's 10,000km², more than an order of magnitude larger than the largest Arma maps.

It might've been an advertisement that's gotten things wrong. That, or the map will be 100x100km, with majority of it being dinky islands around Limnos and water for sea battles (I don't remember where, but I heard Limnos is going to have a lot of usable water around). I'd lean towards the former though, "3rd party" ads sometimes brag about things that are nowhere to be seen in the actual game and the latter sounds a bit too ridiculous.

I know ArmA III will support even 180x180km terrains though. I know, because AII does: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6160 While this map is mostly an empty desert, there was another, experimental "flight sim" map with a similar scale. It isn't much less empty, but they both work. 51x51km maps with moderate detail have been made for AII. Also, TOH supports maps of that size.

That's a bit besides the point though. Curvature of Earth would be visible even at 20km distance. It's actually less about the landmass size and more about view distance. I've mentioned the numbers before, this would start manifesting at 7km in some conditions. At TOH viewdistances, it should be apparent. I think that the best way to implement it would be shader/viewdistance tweaks (I guess there's no point in tweaking gravity, ArmA's not a spaceflight sim... yet). Done right, this could actually reduce the load on graphics/CPU in some situations, by effectively capping view/draw distance at about 7km. The effect won't be great (because you'd need a badass computer to even consider those viewdistances), but I think it'd be nice to have. I believe that since AIII is going to use DX11 (since Vista has gotten it, there's no point in making anything use DX10 anymore) and the new PhysX, I think that viewdistances are going to go up to TOH levels and maybe even beyond. When you go into this kind of scales, it might be the time to start considering such little things. Horizon distance is a fairly simple function of your height ASL, and the technology to implement this has already been developed for VBS2.

EDIT: Just watched the video. It seems like some sort of horizon is implemented, and VD is huge. I guess we won't know for sure until community alpha is out. Yet another reason to look forward to it.:)

Edited November 7, 2012 by Dragon01

[rye1 21]

What's the ceiling height going to be?

[On_Sabbatical 11]

What's the ceiling height going to be?

If it's going to be completely foggy at 5km then it's useless to go beyond that anyway :D

[rye1 21]

Sadly true but the new clouds look awesome. I wonder how high up the cloud base starts. The improvements to HALO already look to be jumping out of the screen on with awesomeness the E3 2011 videos. But... the future... space jumps! SANO .... Space altitude no opening. Perfect weather can make a HAARP.