Blastcore A3

[Fjordmonkey 10]

BlastCore. Punishing systems since...whatever. GIMME! Pretty please? *bambi-eyes* It looks so damn good.

[Opticalsnare 12]

A3 Blastcore looks much better on your video than vanilla explosions. Still, IMO what kills the immersion are these circling big textures. If these could just rise in up or be partially animated like vector textures but it is up to BIS not modders.

Are you planning on adding shockwave visuals? It would make explosions looks much more intense and much powerful looking forces than in vanilla.

Look up for examples:

http://kauscience.k12.hi.us/~ted/Craters/SailorHat/sailor-hat_bravo_kn11352.jpg

http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/k.parker/wave_intensity_web/pics/shock_wave.jpg

http://www.google.pl/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:pl:official&channel=np&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=664&tbm=isch&tbnid=AV21DHLewJ0HEM:&imgrefurl=http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/graham-warwick/2008/02/picture-of-the-week-14/&docid=ej9WF8wSJ0zGdM&imgurl=http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/flightglobalweb/blogs/graham-warwick/F-14%252520shockwaves.jpg&w=445&h=334&ei=gp01UrmQI8q84ATUnoGADg&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:6,s:0,i:108&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=174&tbnw=215&start=0&ndsp=12&tx=100&ty=97

first video and fast forward to 0.37

There can be pressure waves, but at the moment there is nothing in A3 that is big enough to use them on.

[PaperPlane 1]

Would it be possible to make explosions look like in PR? The way the smoke developes is pretty amazing. Look better than BF4s MP explosions.

Start watching at 1m 21s in, just wow.

[smokedog3para 365]

A feature of A3 is meant to be shock waves but I don't know if there in yet or what ordinance they are used on, my thoughts would of been a big gbu I always remember project reality bf2 on kassan desert and you would see jdams go in to the main bunker and it would have a massive dust cloud allowing you to use the dust as cover to move in on the bunker it lasted some time too would love to see those type of explosions effects and dust clouds in a3 blast core for a2 was a must have so I am looking forward to this release

dam beat me too it and you have a vid lol

[Opticalsnare 12]

Would it be possible to make explosions look like in PR? The way the smoke developes is pretty amazing. Look better than BF4s MP explosions.

Start watching at 1m 21s in, just wow.

Not sure how they did the effects in PR but to me looks like a single animated sprite with a large frame count. Which in A2 / A3 is possible and would increase performance massively. And i wanted to do the main visual effects in this way, making the effects in actual third party particle program and render the animated sprite in-game, however when i tested this years ago it did not work as intended as the size of the sprite had to be enormous in-game and the issues were that because the engine works strange in the way it displays its particles, the actual effect moved position in relation to the camera or players view and was more noticeable the bigger the sprite had to be.

It also changed size with distance regardless of what the size was set in the config values. It would look normal at like 200 meters but from 1000 meters it would look ridiculous huge. You can notice this when you run thru a smoke shell the particles shrink and grow. So yeh that idea was scrapped. :(

So anything that is a animated sprite usually gets used as small and little as possible.

[PaperPlane 1]

Too bad, I guess you can't have everything in life. Greatly looking forward to blastcore in A3 though!

[cheeseburger 1]

Did you try it in A3? Maybe it works now?

[Opticalsnare 12]

Did you try it in A3? Maybe it works now?

Same as A2

[roberthammer 582]

Good work Opticalsnare

Also what about A3 new physx particles? did you test something with them? - i remember one dev saying using those new particles you can create amazing effects , not sure how much in A3 tho

[Opticalsnare 12]

Good work Opticalsnare

Also what about A3 new physx particles? did you test something with them? - i remember one dev saying using those new particles you can create amazing effects , not sure how much in A3 tho

Yup its pretty mental you can do some pretty mad things with it. Sparks bouncing over the ground looks bit fancy.

[Polygon 11]

Yup its pretty mental you can do some pretty mad things with it. Sparks bouncing over the ground looks bit fancy.

Metro Last Light has some nice touch on the effects and their interactivity with Physx on, but it's so GPU heavy.

Here's a video comparison for MLL Physx on/off:

Only in Arma 4 or even later. :P

[fragmachine 12]

There can be pressure waves, but at the moment there is nothing in A3 that is big enough to use them on.

That's great to hear! I believe soonTM there will be something big enought :)

Not sure how they did the effects in PR but to me looks like a single animated sprite with a large frame count. Which in A2 / A3 is possible and would increase performance massively. And i wanted to do the main visual effects in this way, making the effects in actual third party particle program and render the animated sprite in-game, however when i tested this years ago it did not work as intended as the size of the sprite had to be enormous in-game and the issues were that because the engine works strange in the way it displays its particles, the actual effect moved position in relation to the camera or players view and was more noticeable the bigger the sprite had to be.

It also changed size with distance regardless of what the size was set in the config values. It would look normal at like 200 meters but from 1000 meters it would look ridiculous huge. You can notice this when you run thru a smoke shell the particles shrink and grow. So yeh that idea was scrapped. :(

So anything that is a animated sprite usually gets used as small and little as possible.

Too bad. Who needs particles to handle power-hungry explosions where we could have animated texture that is more appealing to the eye and less hungry for PC.

If the problem could be localised and put on FT then maybe A3 devs could fix it for update. I guess that without fixing that idea would require additional scripts and lot more work around visuals for different distances. Not sure if it is possible.

[Nikoteen 24]

The King is back. Hail to the King !! :)

Thank you... I thought we were stuck with those terrible vanilla FX... :(

[Moerderhoschi 107]

Blastcore for A3 with PhysX Particel use on board :bounce3: can't wait for the release

thank you Opticalsnare for your great work

[Takoda 10]

Opticalsnare I would love to see some videos of your Blastcore A3 testing, it doesn't matter if it's just videos of random experiments or works in progress.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Not sure how they did the effects in PR but to me looks like a single animated sprite with a large frame count. Which in A2 / A3 is possible and would increase performance massively. And i wanted to do the main visual effects in this way, making the effects in actual third party particle program and render the animated sprite in-game, however when i tested this years ago it did not work as intended as the size of the sprite had to be enormous in-game and the issues were that because the engine works strange in the way it displays its particles, the actual effect moved position in relation to the camera or players view and was more noticeable the bigger the sprite had to be.

It also changed size with distance regardless of what the size was set in the config values. It would look normal at like 200 meters but from 1000 meters it would look ridiculous huge. You can notice this when you run thru a smoke shell the particles shrink and grow. So yeh that idea was scrapped. :(

So anything that is a animated sprite usually gets used as small and little as possible.

Firstly, I know nothing of what is and isn't possible in the Real Virtuality engine. I was wondering, however, could this be sidestepped somehow by creating and animating some kind of 'object' or texture rather than a particle? You could then add particles around this object to blend it in, perhaps. Or are there problems inherent with this approach that make it unlikely? What are your thoughts?

Edited September 16, 2013 by SaBrE_UK

[fragmachine 12]

Firstly, I know nothing of what is and isn't possible in the Virtual Reality engine. I was wondering, however, could this be sidestepped somehow by creating and animating some kind of 'object' or texture rather than a particle? You could then add particles around this object to blend it in, perhaps. Or are there problems inherent with this approach that make it unlikely? What are your thoughts?

There are problems that still exist even in BF4 with those sprites. Project Reality dev speaks about it himself:

Originally Posted by Murphy:

I realize that the explosions are basically 2d cardboard style visuals, not unlike older school FPS engines entirety. So with that in mind I was wondering if there was ever a 3d version of the explosions/smoke plumes because I think a simple solution might be rotating the effect slightly so as to trick the player into believing he is looking at 2 different explosions but it's just the same one rendered on different angles.

I'm not sure if it's at all possible, and if it is possible will it look good? Might be worth a look though.

Unfortunatley not Murphy . I know it feels quite lame but we are still dealing with 2d sprites that follow the players camera even today (even bf4 still has them).

Once they come with an engine that can handle real volumetric particles ill be the happies man ever. But yeah that, at this stage, will just fry pcs .

The main reason that big explosion clouds look the same is because in this old engine, if you want any sprite to show up from looooong distances (which i really wanted to achieve) then you have to use many emitters in the same spot.

So i could make them clouds to show up in different random sizes and movement speed which will indeed achieve the effect of having different clouds but then they wont show up beyond 100 meters. So i figured out that if i place about 4 or five animated sprites in the same exact spot, then the engine still renders them from far away.

I might be speaking chinese to you but yeah this engine is tricky as f@#k :/

Cant wait to work with new engines thats for sure

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Thanks for that, Fragmachine.

[-=anders=- 0]

Too bad you couldnt get animated sprites to work correctly in distance. I wouldve getting you some I bought for PR. Yes Im the head for PR sounds and visuals now in 1.0.

Trick in BF2 engine to make it look good is to mix common particle emitters with animated textures and change the sizes etc for random play with the animated textures, then they wont look repetetive. Although, we couldnt do that with really large animated sprites, cause the game has its limit in data size, or we wouldve had 3-4 different looking animated sprites playing randomly for big impacts plus more.

I work with code and to see the results I look in the bf2 editor. But I have absolutely NO idea how you work with effects in Arma3 engine now. Would be nice to know. I hope you dont have to enter the game everytime you want to see the results?

[Opticalsnare 12]

I hope you dont have to enter the game everytime you want to see the results?

Yea and its annoying.

[super-truite 54]

Yea and its annoying.

I began to port the particle editor made by ColonelSandersLite and Mandobole for Arma: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?157226-Particle-Editor.

It is buggy and I don't have time to polish it ATM, but it does the job for scripted particle effects and you can save the effect in config format. You cannot modify in real time the exclusively config parameters (like bouncing) but it is usefull for the other parameters.

[Opticalsnare 12]

I began to port the particle editor made by ColonelSandersLite and Mandobole for Arma: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?157226-Particle-Editor.

It is buggy and I don't have time to polish it ATM, but it does the job for scripted particle effects and you can save the effect in config format. You cannot modify in real time the exclusively config parameters (like bouncing) but it is usefull for the other parameters.

Yea it comes in handy sometimes mostly for the smoke sorta stuff.

[PaperPlane 1]

Explosions in water, anything you're looking into?

[-=anders=- 0]

Played GTA V first time today... Jesus, they putted alot of effort on visual detail. :)

[Opticalsnare 12]

Played GTA V first time today... Jesus, they putted alot of effort on visual detail. :)

Yea i bet. Its crazy to think A3 is built on an engine that is 12 yrs old.

Edited September 17, 2013 by Opticalsnare