Discussion. Are some Effects not "real" enough?

[Basxt 1]

First of all, Why am I starting this topic,

Many people here seem to have noticed that some aspects of the game like shooting bullets to far makes it sometimes hard to see the bullet impacts.

Or the impacts from the helicopter rounds seem to just magically disappear in the ground.

Creating such a high scale quality impact of a mortar for example will give you that amazing thrill, you should think "OH Shit!" and not "Cute explosion".

Things have also been discussed about the "random destruction?" like in Battlefield 3 etc. But from what I remember that won't be happening to Arma III If I'm right.

What do you guys think about all the effects Arma has right now?

Here are some example's:

M-198 155mm Howitzer

Now please mind that such a big artillery isn't in the game YET(?).

http://i.imgur.com/74ECSSp.jpg (159 kB)

A artillery or bomb strike?

A tank and crew members burning

explicit image removed

EDIT, Now this is what a explosion should look like!

http://youtu.be/Xa5oZKpRQa0?t=10s

I hope everyone understands what I'm trying say with this topic.

I'm just giving some examples and would greatly appreciate what you're opinion is!

Basxt.

Edited June 11, 2013 by Max Power

[Smurf 12]

Yes, some effects for explosions and impacts could get some love, shockwaves, debries, overal more dust getting kicked up. Would add shellcasings (from small arms and vehicles) and empty mags to the list for a brief time or number of them around.

As some of them seems to be WIP right now and those effects really consume performance, I`ll hold my breath.

PS: IN the third pic, the IFV was already destroyed, not related to the molotov the guys are taking.

EDIT: Also, last time heavy arty was shown, was kind of good:

@7 minutes there. MRLS could have a lot more smoke while firing and afterwards. The cannon seems good.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Smurf

[Basxt 1]

Anyone Else's opinion? :)

[froggyluv 2136]

^^^Yes. The second picture is stunning and I've never seen a non-canned video game pull off anything remotely as spectacular.

Secondly, look at the amount of the performance complaints coupled with trying to keep FPS up while still implementing Physx, ragdoll and all other sorts of features. They must literally have their heads spinning with "We want this, this and THAT!!!" all the while saying "but keep it optimized at 60fps MINIMUM!!!"

But I agree with you - I'd rather have it all at 20fps (with planned future optimization) than feature cut at 60 :)

[chrisb 196]

Its exciting everything that’s happening at the moment, kju’s and sakura chan working on providing an, almost, complete cross over of games. Its only been out, what is it, four weeks or so, really early days yet. I can imagine some really great mod/addons effects being made for A3, plus hopefully buildings that disintegrate better, it looks really bright the future for the game.

I was sceptical at the beginning, thought maybe stick with A2, which I will every now and then, but if things keep going the way they are for arma3 then it will be incredible, so we may just get the effects, that will portray the type of things you show in your pics (good pics). A lot of the effects in A2 were really good, spoilt a little by the fact the building really didn't react well to whatever hit them. Perhaps at some point it will all become available, down the road, who knows..

Anyway for me, it is all dependant on ai, far more important than effects, got to have really good ai, effects come later..;).

[seamusgod 1]

this is a discussion on whether the effects are realistic enough, not whether or not you think it's more or less important than so and so or how much you like ported arma 2 content.

back on topic:

you can never get highly detailed explosion dust and debris effects with physical particles, the only way would be to mix in some sprites. i think the grenade explosion effect currently uses a sprite because of its short duration. and then the dust and debris that it kicks up uses particles.

for artillery and jdams, it's really hard to get the prongs of smoke to look good if you're using particles, it'll end up looking like puffs of smoke stacked on top of each other.

[Lauxman 10]

They really need WAY more brownout during a helicopter landing. You can be through clearing the 3rd house by the time the dust settles in real life...

[Nexerius 10]

I dont like how you put up a poll for this. OF COURSE everyone would like better effects.

I think theres a lot of improvement to be put into explosions and firing effects. Especially the sounds from explosions needs to be improved.

I could easily live with the current, though.

[Failberry 10]

I like the vehicles blowing up, the billowing fire from that, and the improved muzzle effects when firing a gun, but I would love to see an improvement in the explosions overall. Many of them seem pretty canned, especially the grenade explosions, artillery impacts, and rocket fire.

[dmarkwick 261]

Hmm, what an odd poll, do you want things better, or not want things better? :)

Of course the effects can ALWAYS be better. There are some limitations however. Currently, large particles do not perform well in the ArmA engine, so you need to make effects with more, smaller particles. This in turn puts a strain on the general appearance of a battle, as particles are popping in & out of existence all the time. A flurry of grenades and other explosions will quickly eat up the particle count "budget" and some longer-lasting particles like smokeshells will have some of their older particles suddenly culled. I've seen this several times before already in A3. As my main interest is in larger, longer lasting particle effects I'd like to see more efficient particle properties. Sometimes fewer, larger particles will be a better solution than more, smaller particles.

Edited June 11, 2013 by DMarkwick

[EDcase 87]

Of course we all want spectaular photorealistic effects...

But it will have to be controlled in graphics settings because some computers just won't cope.

Or wait for addons that we can use if the computer is up to it.

[Ezcoo 47]

Here's actual real life footage filmed in the middle of artillery strike by the Finnish Defence Forces. Maybe this could be used as reference when tweaking the arty effects and sounds:

I'd like to see arty hits to have more "punch" in both effects and sounds like in the footage, so that they would cause an actual "oh sh*t" feeling. Currently the effects and sounds lack power that causes the fear factor to be not high enough IMO. It can be observed by eg. looking at players in MP when they get under arty fire – usually they don't care much about the strike, but it should be rather opposite: when the first round hits the dirt, the effects and sounds should make the people really afraid and to seek cover.

Edit: also a strongish cam shake effect (similar to vid) when round hits near the player would probably be an easy way increase the feeling of power of the impact pretty well. One should really feel da power of arty!

Edited June 11, 2013 by Ezcoo

[EvenLease 11]

First of all, Why am I starting this topic,

Many peop.....

A tank and crew members burning

removed

Damn, that guy must have one hell of a kill streak... hes on FIRE!

-_-

I'm also hoping for better effects, time will tell I guess.

Edited June 11, 2013 by Max Power

[Heaney 11]

The problem is not that realistic effects would be harder to do GPU wise.

Even ArmA 2: CO's effects are more realistic than ArmA 3.

The problem is that ArmA 3 has gone for a more artistic artstyle rather than ArmA 2's pure realism art style.

I for one resent this in what used to be a milsim series, but that's how it is.

You won't get realistic effects from the devs. It will be in mods in a year or so.

[metalcraze 290]

I always found ArmA2's spinning round sprite fire/smoke effects they've introduced to be looking very cheap and unnatural.

I doubt that doing effects like say in GTA4 or other games with nice looking fire/smoke would be any more punishing on GPU than what we have now.

The smoke looks more or less fine in ArmA3 but fire really needs work. Also I've noticed that there are sparks now when something is burning. BIS needs to increase their amount since they are barely noticeable. That will improve the burning effect by miles. It's not like there will be more than 20 burning wrecks even in combat intense mission (unless somebody just drops a ton of units in the editor - but missions like that are not made for playing) so there's no harm resource-wise.

[bad benson 1733]

yeah, particle effects are a weakness since ofp. no disrespect to the people making these but it seemed there was never a focus on getting particles right in the series. i remember how i annoyed i was by the orange juice splash effects that were supposed to be burning powerful explosions in flashpoint.

i agree that smoke can look very nice but i think what needs work overall are the parameters of the effects. the one thing that was always bugging me the most is the speed in which explosions expand. most small explosions in the arma series always behave like huge ones. they expand too slowly. they should expand in a split second to a large fire and smoke cloud and then slowly expand further as the created particles start to react to wind and stuff.

to see what i mean place yourself in the editor as an AT unit and then compare the grenade explosion and the NLAW explosion (shoot the rocket into the ground). the grenade one is pretty nice in terms of timing (the rest is not OK). but the NLAW one looks like a slowed down, bigger version of the grenade explosion. it just makes no sense when looking at it. the fire ball behaves like a small fuel explosion when it should be more like a sudden release of energy.

if you shoot a vehicle with the NLAW you'll notice that the explosion itself is improved compared to arma 2. but i think it would also benefit, if one would speed up the initial expansion. also the dust shock wave is way too overpowering. the particles need to be lower or smaller. at the moment they cover the actual explosion (which itself looks pretty nice) with what looks like a wall of particles that are just one plain colour. the dust would also look much better, if it was more transparent.

dust in general tends too be too dense in the arma series which leads to it looking very unrealistic. the particle texture hasn't as much definition as the one for smoke so it will just look like a cloud of one colour, like i said.

i really hope they keep working on the effects since they are already better than before in some cases. most stuff just needs tweaking in my opinion.

[WildFire6 10]

Nice video. I agree there is room for improvement if you caught inside an artillery strike. Shrapnel effects, random chance of dying within perimeter of hit, amount of hit damage taken (not necessarily instant death) and definitely greater smoke effects. Mostly smoke not really too much explosion it seems like in vid. Hopefully they get to it. As for heaney the devs have said plenty of times in recent YEARS that they intend to make the most realistic simulator they can. However not everyone can program everything. It is possible that someone freelancing might do a better job, such as WAR FX which was second to none for effects. Either way perhaps a feedback ticket is in order for the arty effects. I'd vote for it but I wont imagine it will be a priority until everyone has game in hand and can run it on their pc (post full release). But we can try.

[rye1 21]

What about blood effects? Mmm... squirty blood. Too much?

[dmarkwick 261]

i agree that smoke can look very nice but i think what needs work overall are the parameters of the effects. the one thing that was always bugging me the most is the speed in which explosions expand. most small explosions in the arma series always behave like huge ones. they expand too slowly. they should expand in a split second to a large fire and smoke cloud and then slowly expand further as the created particles start to react to wind and stuff.

I'm in agreement :) there needs to be an auxillary effect for particles that allows them to "poof" onto existence BEYOND the parameters already existing, for two reasons:

1. The parameters needed for this effect to happen in existing tech means that the resulting particles will be too "light" and will easily float away on any wind. If you want a "poof" effect followed by a solid, fairly static cloud (as in a large explosion) then the current parameters make this difficult.

2. There seems to be a bug, or cap, or other limitation on how fast particles can move vs their resistance to movement. So even with the existing tech it's not possible to gat a "poofing" activity where particles will suddenly stop.

I would like to see a further parameter that can suddenly generate particles from a center, very quickly move them to their starting positions and then act normally.

What about blood effects? Mmm... squirty blood. Too much?

I like blood effects :) especially, I like ground-splatter, with a directional component. So you can look at n area and work out where incoming fire was coming from.

[bad benson 1733]

@DMarkwick: maybe a solution could be using more than one particle source (or more than are used atm). it always seems to me like too many effects are like based on a smoke effect and tweaked into something else. like with one emitter and the rest is done with the existing parameters.

what i mean is that having a system of sources (not many just like 4) that are used just for the "poof!". so you could use other parameters on them and don't have to move them to a place further from the main emitter. like making them really short lived to avoid the wind influence you mentioned. i mean i know they use more than one source to have smoke and fire at the same time but they should use more for the fire ball too.

i think the current fire effect suffers from that too. i think it would look way better if burning vehicles would just slightly burn in several places instead of the huge orange cone we have now. i mean it's more the stuff inside the vehicle burning and not a huge oil fire.

aside from that i'd really love if they would finally drop those black wrecks and use just damaged models with a little soot on them. there was a damaged humvee in arma 1 or 2 (can't remember) which looked much better than the full black wreck. i know it's kinda offtopic but it's really one thing that still makes the game look kinda cheap and arcadey.

[dmarkwick 261]

@DMarkwick: maybe a solution could be using more than one particle source (or more than are used atm). it always seems to me like too many effects are like based on a smoke effect and tweaked into something else. like with one emitter and the rest is done with the existing parameters.

what i mean is that having a system of sources (not many just like 4) that are used just for the "poof!". so you could use other parameters on them and don't have to move them to a place further from the main emitter. like making them really short lived to avoid the wind influence you mentioned. i mean i know they use more than one source to have smoke and fire at the same time but they should use more for the fire ball too.

It's difficult to get a convincing effect of one thing using 2, 3 or 4 things. There is almost always a visible transition from one particle to the next. The use of several effects to simulate one sometimes results in an equally unsatisfying effect, but for a slightly different reason. My current method is to simply spawn the explosion in place all in one go - not quite a "poof" as there is no sudden expansion, but the effect is often seen as a "poof" because, well that's what you expected to see :) it works on grenades etc but larger explosions are a little more tricksy.

i think the current fire effect suffers from that too. i think it would look way better if burning vehicles would just slightly burn in several places instead of the huge orange cone we have now. i mean it's more the stuff inside the vehicle burning and not a huge oil fire.

The current fire effect that BIS use is a compound effect - which means that it needs several together to be convincing. In my addon I use different fire animations so that I can spawn them within the object's bounding box, giving a more satisfying look. There are still occasional oddities, but overall I think it looks better.

aside from that i'd really love if they would finally drop those black wrecks and use just damaged models with a little soot on them. there was a damaged humvee in arma 1 or 2 (can't remember) which looked much better than the full black wreck. i know it's kinda offtopic but it's really one thing that still makes the game look kinda cheap and arcadey.

It's long been a complaint that there is one single way to display wrecked vehicles - the burned out way. IMO there could be a few "levels" of wrecks, ranging from inoperative but complete, through various levels of broken, to burned out (like currently). In fact I rather liked OFP's way of doing it, using random vertice displacement. It would need massaging, but localised displacement would be great :) and add in damage decalling and the effect would be great. IMO natch :)

[Beagle 684]

Another aspect is that games tend to look not real anymore but instead look like all is seen thrue a CCD camera not a human eye. Bloom is an example because it only happens in a CCD camera. We coem to that point where games try to mimic YouTube videos and not the reality...but still seen as fully realistic because most players know war and explosions only by YouTube. it's the same with the Scope view discussion where people throw in YouTube videos showing that a CCD camera can focus on both with help of a little software and build in Multifocus sensors.... scope occular image with 6x magnification and the surounding environment. all sharp and clear...problem is...your natural unaugmented eyes can't do that.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Beagle

[EDcase 87]

Another aspect is that games tend to look not real anymore but instead look like all is seen thrue a CCD camera not a human eye. Bloom is an example because it only happens in a CCD camera. We coem to that point where games try to mimic YouTube videos and not the reality...but still seen as fully realistic because most players know war and explosions only by YouTube. it's the same with the Scope view discussion where people throw in YouTube videos showing that a CCD camera can focus on both with help of a little software and build in Multifocus sensors.... scope occular image with 6x magnification and the surounding environment. all sharp and clear...problem is...your natural unaugmented eyes can't do that.

While this is true, the problem is that making it accurate to human eye is also quite boring.

I think we are so used to seeing films portray war and archive footage etc that we accept a cameras view as being real.

That means accepting camera limitations such as under/over exposure, flare, noise, dirt on lens etc as showing us being in the action.

[Beagle 684]

...this gives the term "video game" a new meaning.

[Opticalsnare 12]

If A3 had a built in particle effects editor it would make it a lot easier than guessing different variables in the config then having to load up the game every time u need to check for the result.

Its like painting with the lights off.