PhysX Discussion (dev branch)

[chortles 263]

Hmmm...

This script allow the pilot to set cargo ramp in 3 positions: open, middle and closed.

When the cargo ramp is open, player have an action to get in or get out using cargo ramp depending if he's in the vehicle or not.

[[evo] dan 79]

Hmmm...

TOH could do that as I recall, but you couldn't walk in. (especially as the Mohawk is probably the TOH model largely rather than just the old BAF one)

[bigpickle 0]

When i rag-doll going to be finished? Players and AI bob like apples in water when wounded.

[bad benson 1733]

i'm not sure walking inside a moving vehicle is as easy as people think. overall i mean. in all games. i haven't really seen it in any game to b honest, would love to see some examples though. i'd be happy with simply being able to shoot from stationary positions in vehicles though. like the shacktac littlebird for arma 2.

[mamasan8 11]

Walking inside a vehicle in singleplayer shouldn't pose a big problem. It's just another 'room' with doors.

But in MP theres the issue of synchronization, falling thru walls, floors, standing on air. Easier to just tell the engine 'This guy is in a chopper and he will stay there until he ejects or gets out. So ignore his position if it gets out of bound'. I see often people flying back and forth, over and under a chopper in MP.

[bad benson 1733]

Walking inside a vehicle in singleplayer shouldn't pose a big problem. It's just another 'room' with doors.

with the big difference that the room has its own velocity which has to be transfered to the person using friction to hold the person in place. i'd really like to see an example of it working great. i don't say it's totally impossible but i think it's pretty hard to do especially when the parent object is flying aka pitching and banking.

[scorch_052 127]

i'm not sure walking inside a moving vehicle is as easy as people think. overall i mean. in all games. i haven't really seen it in any game to b honest, would love to see some examples though. i'd be happy with simply being able to shoot from stationary positions in vehicles though. like the shacktac littlebird for arma 2.

Halo 3/4, Killzone 3(Although that was scripted), GTA(did it in III without PhysX), and I'm sure theres more. Other games have done it before, but I think ArmA's physics just aren't up to the standards necessary to achieve this type of physics simulation. I certainly agree with you that a static shooting position from a vehicle would be preferable solution, but even that isnt really good considering you cant look around using ALT like you could in ArmA 2.

[RushHour 11]

Yes in GTA5 you can for example take your car, hit a ramp and land inside the cargo bay of a moving aircraft, then walk around or shoot out of it, whatever you like.

I´ll see if i can find the gif, (it actually happened)

Edit: found it.

Edited February 8, 2014 by RushHour

[bad benson 1733]

I´ll see if i can find the gif, (it actually happened)

that would be great.i'm not saying "leave BI alone it's impossible" but i just can't remember it happening in a real "working" way in my gamer career. like in gta for example i mostly fell off cars when they kept driving. or you generally slide off things in other games that have elaborate physics. and most shooters that have these moments in SP mostly do it via animated map objects with predefined paths. but i didn't play every game out there so...;)

what i can imagine working, and what does to some extent already, is walking/driving on big ships but that needs a lot of tweaking by BI. as i said before. physX is implemented. but that's it. not even the cars feel very "physical" yet. i hope that will change.

in general i could imagine that we would have to really formulate to what extent this should work. i mean walking inside a fast flying heli making turns and shit is probably out of the question anyways, realism-wise.

i can remember seeing something VBS (a video i think) related but i forgot if it was just shooting or also walking.

this is one but not what i meant

[RushHour 11]

Updated the post.

Walking inside moving aircraft is not really needed, although it would be cool with parajumping out of an aircraft.

Shooting-positions inside vehicles already exist in Arma 3 (Ghosthawk) so i can´t see any reason why it´s not possible on other vehicles.

What i´d like to see is store vehicles in aircraft then do a low pass and just dump the tanks on a road as you are flying past.

Edited February 8, 2014 by RushHour

[bad benson 1733]

0:57 (h) and onwards shows how vehicle and vehicle interact

1:06 (h) and onwards shows character and vehicle

seems like gta does this really well. especially characters seem to have good friction behavior. ofc stuff like wind and so on are ignored but overall it seems to me that maybe the lower weight of the character makes it stick better than th heli for example. it's a shame that arma doesn't have dynamic character physics like gta. it would fit very well into the game. to me it seems like characters in arma 3 don't support physX until they die. before that they are as stiff and weird as they were in all arma titles. most shooters have that down way better. i don't know the reason but arma seems so different and clunky when it comes to the physical handling of characters.

the storing of vehicles you describe can easily be scripted since there is no movement needed while flying. but you mentioning the paradrop made walking inside aircrafts a lot more intriguing to me :D. i don't see it happening without a major change of how characters are handled though. let's hope the current physX implementation is just the start.

[bigpickle 0]

Does anyone know if BIS consider the engine's PhysX development to be final?

[teddmcfred 10]

Halo 3/4, Killzone 3(Although that was scripted), GTA(did it in III without PhysX), and I'm sure theres more. Other games have done it before, but I think ArmA's physics just aren't up to the standards necessary to achieve this type of physics simulation. I certainly agree with you that a static shooting position from a vehicle would be preferable solution, but even that isnt really good considering you cant look around using ALT like you could in ArmA 2.

Joint Operations did it and the game was very similar to Arma you could stand on/in helicopters, ships and etc while they were moving

here you can see the guy jumps into the helicopter and moves around while its flying

[Fushko 59]

Does anyone know if BIS consider the engine's PhysX development to be final?

I really hope not. Tanks flipping for no reason, magical forces which unflip them, ragdolls being freezed because of their instability... I could go on for a while.

[Necrodancer 10]

Joint Operations did it and the game was very similar to Arma you could stand on/in helicopters, ships and etc while they were moving

here you can see the guy jumps into the helicopter and moves around while its flying

Its the same game engine as the delta force series and you could walk, stand inside vehicles back then too (Delta Force 1998). However it didnt have any newtonian physics at all. Vehicles felt like being driven on a rail in 2 dimensions.

[bad benson 1733]

wow! something like in the scond video would be amazing though. and the static shooting from vehicles is a must. i hope they add it via DLC.

[novemberist 2]

Playing around with Zeus today, I realized for the first time that weapons and many other objects (explosives, mines) don't have any physics at all. If I place a weapon on a table and the table gets moved by a grenade explosion, the weapon models will remain in place and float in the air....this is really disappointing...

[teddmcfred 10]

yeah the game was well ahead of its time when it came out and the company also made simulators for the military

its a shame the developer never moved on to the 21st century I still hope that they will release something that will be the next Joint Operations

but yeah if Arma 3 can implement something like the JO game where you could drive up vehicles into chinooks and take of along with piling up guys into 1 blackhawk and walk around without dying

[barakokula31 10]

Playing around with Zeus today, I realized for the first time that weapons and many other objects (explosives, mines) don't have any physics at all. If I place a weapon on a table and the table gets moved by a grenade explosion, the weapon models will remain in place and float in the air....this is really disappointing...

The weapons and objects themselves don't have any physics, they're entirely dependent on their weaponHolder. If you use a regular non-simulated one (groundWeaponHolder), the weapons won't have any physics. However, if you use the weaponHolderSimulated, the weapons and any objects inside of it will behave somewhat realistically.

[Necrodancer 10]

yeah the game was well ahead of its time when it came out and the company also made simulators for the military

its a shame the developer never moved on to the 21st century I still hope that they will release something that will be the next Joint Operations

but yeah if Arma 3 can implement something like the JO game where you could drive up vehicles into chinooks and take of along with piling up guys into 1 blackhawk and walk around without dying

Like I said, it's not that simple. Delta Force/Joint Operations had no physics what so ever therefore it was easy to be able to stand on any moving vehicle. Doing the same in a game engine that has proper physics simulated is immensely more complicated.

However GTA 4 and 5 has that ability.

[teddmcfred 10]

I think they used friction but don't quote me on that

[dunk 10]

I really hope not. Tanks flipping for no reason, magical forces which unflip them, ragdolls being freezed because of their instability... I could go on for a while.

For me personally, it is the vapid suspension physics and complete lack of any track physics though removing the anti-roll-bar technology would be nice. It would give recovery vehicles a proper place.

You know, is the only reason that I keep coming back onto these forums because I can only think about one thing that bothers me about the game as a direct result of being too blind to see anything else that needs fixing? Or is it because I feel that because a large number of people could care less about vehicles as this is a Mil-Sim-FPS first to them and thus there needs to be a stronger voice on the matter? I dunno, just a moment of donkeying around in my mind.

[x3kj 1247]

For me personally, it is the vapid suspension physics and complete lack of any track physics though removing the anti-roll-bar technology would be nice.

When was the last time you used a tank? Tank physx has improved since 2 days or so now. Much better climbing and offroading in general.

[Fushko 59]

When was the last time you used a tank? Tank physx has improved since 2 days or so now. Much better climbing and offroading in general.

Tanks flipping for no apparent reason on flat ground is still an issue, I experienced it yesterday.

[Dwarden 1125]

Tanks flipping for no apparent reason on flat ground is still an issue, I experienced it yesterday.

repro+ticket or at least video so we can track it to fix