VBS3.7 new maritime features possible in ARMA3?

[NightIntruder 710]

but what is the gameplay value of this?

 

Well, I am not talking about bow/stern wakes only. I am talking about whole sea effects and I am focused on this new water surface movement.

 

1. SAR missions. Imagine the difference between hoisting a person from a still deck that don't move at all, and from the deck dancing in 6 axis on rough sea.

2. LHD or LPD as a starting point for milsim Marines unit. They have vehicles, ammo and supplies there to be transported to the ground. Pilots have to start from there and land at the deck that is bouncing on waves. Immersions, emotions, demanding in regards to pilots' training.

3. Planing decisions that have to be made and they are connected with weather/sea conditions. 

4. Smaller boats behavior. For instance, I am working on US invasion on Grenada camaign for a few clans (several joint ops). Currently, I cannot recreate a scenario where SEALs were parachuted onto rough sea and had issues to get to a beach on Zodiacs due to the sea state. 

5. Naval fight, fire support from sea - precision of fire, obscured field of fire due to high waves, etc.

6. Sailing across high waves not in paralel to them. It's something like landing upwind (rule of thumb in aviation world) and lack of it is another realism breaker that can be found in the game.

7. Exfil from a beach to rough sea. I can imagine that Zodiacs could be pushed back to a beach by sea when badly driven by unexperienced cox.   

  

There would be more scenarios that could utilize new sea effects but it would need more and better naval addons. As long as sea environment is not addressed by developers, it won't happen. It's like "I will not work on more better acting tank since tanks always blow up from one shoot". Lack of realism and complexity impacts on quality of addons and thus further on gameplay and possible scenarios, in my humble opinion. 

 

From my point of view, this game is mostly focused on realism of the battlefield. That's why I play the BI games since 2003 and love them. Never seriously touched COD and other FPS. Immersion of the real world is the key word. Why you don't complain about a rain or fog in-game (that btw kills FPS horribly)? Because they are a part of real environment and play a role in the way how players conduct their missions. The same applies to the sea effects, regardles the fact they look much better thus create better immersions of real world in game.  Sure, there always must be balance as we cannot completely recreate physics and chemistry of the living world in a game, but ... sea state of VBS3 is something that looks to me like not performance demanding and enhancing gameplay in the same time. Yea, I know - weather, sea states, aviation constraints - all those are something completely out of a question in case of large group of ARMA3 players who just want to shoot at something and in most cases just walk on a ground :) Those factors might be something crucial for milsim units, flyiers, people interested in special forces, Marines and - of course - naval warefare.

 

I fly a lot in AFM and make aviation addons. I am really focused on realism and looking for real world aspects that: have impact on aviation, don't create immersions and can be improved in the game. All of them are true in case of sea effects that's why I like them very much and started this thread - to find out whether it's technically possible and in trying of persuading developers that the implemention of the sea effects would pay off. I don't know whether they read such threads, I just made a try instead of seating inactively. But at this very moment I lost my hopes. It  started emerging to me that there are much less players who play the game for it's realism and real battlefield immersions than I thought. 

[dmarkwick 261]

but what is the gameplay value of this?

 

i'm not opposed to any new tech being implemented as long as it doesn't kill FPS (more). i'm just wondering what this would bring to the game aside from that one situation where that large ship drove by and your boat started shaking.

 

but since we're talking about waves. i don't liek how uniform the waves look in arma. i mean the 3d ones when you crank up the values. i wonder if the algorithm could be altered a little to add more randomness to it. also some more elaborate foam shader for wave peaks would be cool instead of just increasing normal map depth. but maybe my view is outdated. honestly haven't looked at the water in detail for a while.

I should say it has the same gaming value as other weather effects, in that it's another element for the player to overcome. Unstable weapon platforms, slower travelling speeds, etc.

[dragon01 902]

ArmA was never really about naval warfare, though. The maps are too small for it and large ship handling is somewhat dubious ATM. Not to mention the thing that really kills it: lack of horizon simulation. The maps are perfectly flat and in a naval situation, this is a very big deal. IRL, your direct-fire weapons are limited to about 6-7km depending on the height of your freeboard. Maximum sight distance depends on the height of your mast and can be as much as 30km from the top of a modern tall ship's main mast (a warship's military mast would be shorter). This is the real reason why guided missiles dominate today's naval warfare - they can be fired over the horizon with great precision. In ArmA, unless you put in an arbitrary maximum range, an Iowa-class could wipe the floor with a modern carrier group, since direct-fire shells are faster and harder to kill than missiles (which is the reason the USN is wanting railguns now). 

 

I don't know if VBS simulates the horizon (it probably does), but I've suggested that during ArmA3 development phase and was told that given everything, it's not feasible, despite the maps being more than big enough for it to matter. I do hope they re-evaluate it for ArmA4, though.

 

That said, better mechanics for boats (including waves affecting them properly) would definitely be great. If the wind affected them, we could even have realistic sailboats (likely as mods) in ArmA.  ;) One could make some good missions with involving boats in difficult conditions. Still, I don't see it as critical. If a better looking wake can be attained by adding a particle emitter, they should go for it, but anything that'd require a lot of work would is unlikely. There are other areas of the game (plane flight model, for example), which are in more urgent need of attention.

[NightIntruder 710]

I don't know if VBS simulates the horizon (it probably does), but I've suggested that during ArmA3 development phase and was told that given everything, it's not feasible, despite the maps being more than big enough for it to matter. I do hope they re-evaluate it for ArmA4, though.

 

Yes, it does. VBS Blue is the project that simulates whole Earth that can be populated with procedural creation + custom objects like whole cities, airports etc. Currently they can use terrains which are 4000x4000km in size. Even Arma3 has such capabilities. There was interesting project called Cosmos Engine for A3 that covered whole Earth, here: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=27261

I think it didn't simulate the horizon over terrains like Altis, but for rest of the planet it had to, I guess :)

[graemeshute 218]

I think its safe to say maybe in Arma 4. I did some checking for availability of Arma 4.com. That URL was purchased by BIS roughly one year after Arma 3.com was bought.  I believe the new studio will soon start on Arma 4. Hence the two vets-Joris and now Karel going that side. Karel is the dude who cooked up Arsenal, Zeus and 3Den. So if he is there he is there for a reason.

Check job listening also. If a Studio hires people they cooking shit up.

[NightIntruder 710]

Thanks for sharing your findings with us. This is quite interesting, actually :) If they cooking up the ARMA4, I hope they listen to their customers.

[target_practice 163]

I think it'll probably be some time before Arma 4 comes around, as they'll still need to finish the Enfusion engine before then.

Well I hope they will , because at this point pretty much everyone has realised that they can't that they simply can't push Real Virtuality any further.

 

On an unrelated note, how is Cosmos engine actually possible in RV?