If A4 actually came to fruition, is it even necessary/possible for BIS to use a new modern engine?

[spanishsurfer 58]

Let's speak in hypotheticals here, we all know there are NO plans for A4. However, lets say it was released in 2018 (Which is about 1 year longer than the time between A2 and A3). Is it NECESSARY and a POSSIBILITY for BIS to use a new modern game engine?  This topic has been discussed in the past but it typically spirals out of control, I'd like to read everyone's thoughts on this matter.  

 

When I say NECESSARY, I mean is the performance so bad for all of us that we'd be willing to see the "spirit" of Arma in a whole new game engine? What would we have to sacrifice as a community and would it even benefit BIS? How would it effect modding? Does BIS have more to gain monetarily by switching game engines? Can it be done and be successful (think about the A3 release, did not go smoothly)

 

When I say POSSIBILITY is there even a game engine out there that can do everything that the ARMA engine does BETTER? Massive draw distances, enormous maps, realistic bullet drop, ballistic penetration, manipulation of objects in the world, large player #s, EXTENSIVE modding tools, STEAM integration, focus on realism, BETTER NETWORK performance and FPS, reasonable priced engine (something BIS could afford), etc. 

 

My opinion, BIS has tried for 3 years (Longer if you add the other series) to improve FPS during online play and failed to deliver a SOLID change. Dwarden has done a magnificent job at squeezing as much out of the engine as possible and the rest of the BIS team has improved the A3 experience leaps and bounds from what it was during release, the game is just fantastic when played in singleplayer or with a low player count. However, heavily populate a server, add some objects, and start adding mission objectives and AI and performance begins to tank. Many mission/mod/server DEV teams have worked for years trying every trick in the book to improve FPS but it's still not enough; most of us play A3 @ 10-20 fps in a populated server. Doesn't matter if we have a $5000 rig or a $1000 rig, the performance is just subpar when compared to other game engines with large draw distances and maps (GTA V for example). I believe that Real Virtuality 4 has reached it's end of life, the engine just doesn't know how to use new hardware and all of the effort BIS has put in has resulted in no major shift in a positive direction. To me, results speak louder than words and the current result of hard work from BIS is that the engine isn't cut out for modern gaming.

 

However it's very easy to complain about the performance issues without addressing the 2 previously mentioned elephants in the room, NECESSITY AND POSSIBILITY. Which to be quite frank, I'm not sure if a game engine exists that suits all of our needs we expect from ARMA and outperforms RV4 while still being affordable/profitable to BIS.

 

From what I've read/talked with others online over the past 15 years of playing ARMA, the low performance is the #1 issue (As most of us know). If there was a way provide excellent FPS in a multiplayer game like Arma, the potential for it to explode into the mainstream market is there. Just look at a game like CS:GO, 546,00 players peaked on it today when compared to A3's 32,000 player peak.  Give folks EXCELLENT FPS and they will come.

 

What do you think? Should BIS make the switch? Is it NECESSARY &/OR POSSIBLE? If A4 was released in 2018 with RV4 would you buy it?  I'd like to read everyone's thoughts, thanks!

 

 

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Arma's Engine is being developed. Just for DayZ for right now as a basis for their Future games. The only thing that i'm concerned about is RV4 features not making it to the newer engine, such as water reflections, advanced stance, Heli AFM, and so on, so fourth. Otherwise, i'm pretty positive about their progress... But yeah, i'm sure there's threads for this already, where people ahve put their 2 cents, and probably even a few dollars in there.

[vitdom 5]

Because of Arma 3's high modability and sandbox design, there's no need to push out a new game every other or so years. Therefore there is no negativity in waiting to release Arma 4. As long as Arma 3 is continually supported and improved with fixes, optimization and content updates in the form of the existing DLC strategy of Arma 3, then Arma 3 will be popular for at least 5 more years.

 

If Arma 4 is being developed, the same mindset should be undertaken, meaning it should be developed for next-gen systems. An emerging trend for next-gen systems is VR. What Bohemia need to ask themselves is, do we want Arma 4 to be VR-compatible, and if so in what way. A hybrid monitor/VR game, or with separate VR-gamemode support? When Arma 4 releases in the future, do they want the game to be JUST a Sandbox, or should it be a complete, all-around and premium content Military Simulator with modern / futuristic weapon and support systems and gear, or somewhere in-between with long-term development possibilities? That is of course a lot more time demanding and investments are heavy on the company to create an entirely new game. The Arma series is already a very renowned trademark, and I'm sure if Arma 4 is beating this already high reputation it will become an immensely popular premium game.

 

Not much information is available on the performance of future hardware post next-gen, coming in the years following 2018. But it is likely that VR-games will have established conventions of quality by then. So if Arma 4 is to be VR then in the future years ahead we will really see what VR can do and the tricks to make it work well, as well as what it needs in the future for enhanced capabilities instead of "an empty 4x4 m room cleared of objects"; these type of requirements are not available to everyone.

[en3x 209]

If you are even thinking about new engine know that it would take like 6 years to code everything from ground up.

[kremator 1065]

VR is indeed the future and will need to be a main thrust of new development.

[IndeedPete 1038]

VR is indeed the future and will need to be a main thrust of new development.

 

I hope not. I'm getting sick from 3D movies already. And the current VR solutions didn't really catch my attention so far. Plus there's still the problem with people getting nausia from walking in VR. As Arma is infantry-centered, players spend a lot of time on foot. Unless there's a better solution it will be down to either teleporting or the "empty 4x4 m room cleared of objects" and full-body VR. It would make sense for helicopters and other vehicles though.

[domokun 515]

I hope not. I'm getting sick from 3D movies already. And the current VR solutions didn't really catch my attention so far. Plus there's still the problem with people getting nausia from walking in VR. As Arma is infantry-centered, players spend a lot of time on foot. Unless there's a better solution it will be down to either teleporting or the "empty 4x4 m room cleared of objects" and full-body VR. It would make sense for helicopters and other vehicles though.

Have you tried the HTC Vive? With Onward?

Because both are significant improvements on earlier attempts at VR.

I don't think that VR needs to an EITHER OR debate.

Its true that flight sims are particularly well-suited to VR (War Thunder, Elite, etc.) but Onward shows that FPS are not only feasible but fun.

[ineptaphid 6413]

I hope not. I'm getting sick from 3D movies already. And the current VR solutions didn't really catch my attention so far. Plus there's still the problem with people getting nausia from walking in VR. As Arma is infantry-centered, players spend a lot of time on foot. Unless there's a better solution it will be down to either teleporting or the "empty 4x4 m room cleared of objects" and full-body VR. It would make sense for helicopters and other vehicles though.

Also most of the VR systems warn against using it for long periods. We all know that a typical Arma scenario can easily stretch to hours, and usually involves straining your eyes looking for tiny amounts of movement on the landscape from distant enemies-I can't see being able to stay using a VR head set for that long.

 

Regarding a new engine, I was under the impression that the one they are using for the DayZ standalone addressed almost all of the issues people have with the current engine. So i assume that would be used.

[tpM 478]

I'm sure there are at least plans for Arma 4. I would even dare to say that they are already working on it.

Since Arma 1, we used to get a new game / updated engine every 2-3 years.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Have you tried the HTC Vive? With Onward?

Because both are significant improvements on earlier attempts at VR.

I don't think that VR needs to an EITHER OR debate.

Its true that flight sims are particularly well-suited to VR (War Thunder, Elite, etc.) but Onward shows that FPS are not only feasible but fun.

 

Ah, no, I haven't tried VR yet. Closest thing I experienced was some prototypic 3D stuff back in ~2010 on the CeBIT trade fair. But as I said, there's no real incentive for me to buy a device myself. Partly because I already spend way too much time on the computer and I feel having a monitor attached to my face wouldn't be beneficial for my eye sight. And partly because it's all still in a very early stage. I'm sure there will be technical improvements over the coming years and maybe they will even be able to sort out the nausia problems. Aside form that, I really only play Arma 3 at the moment and that already runs like a dog, especially on Tanoa. 20-40 FPS are just too little for VR applications. Maybe Enfusion or its successor will provide high enough FPS, who knows.

 

But you are right, both VR and traditional display technologies do not necessarily exclude each other. Though other things to consider are Arma 3's various control schemes which might require special input devices for VR. Especially with mods, remembering all the key combos can be a challenge. I imagine it just gets worse when you can't see your keyboard in VR.

[omon 19]

i hope it doesn't come out until billion Arma 3 bugs are fixed, and i'm not talking about making textures look pretty!

i hope they make more quality DLC content instead, as Arma 2 still has 80% more units and vehicles in it.

[kerodan 25]

i hope it doesn't come out until billion Arma 3 bugs are fixed, and i'm not talking about making textures look pretty!

i hope they make more quality DLC content instead, as Arma 2 still has 80% more units and vehicles in it.

 

Please elaborate on the "billion of bugs"? In my experience, A3 runs very well (did so since the beginning) and the amount of bugs is total normal for a game of this scale/modability. Furthermore, the comparison to A2 is just mind-boggling due to new tech beeing introduced in A3 (especially concerning unit loadout) und many vehicles in A2 OA (I assume this is the title you are referring to) beeing either ported from previous titles, which had a similiar setting, or having a very high number of variants of the same model.

 

Concerning the topic: I also have the assumption that A4 will be based on a version of the Enfusion engine. As can be seen by DayZ, it seems to be the next step engine-wise and to some degree designed to accomodate backwards/cross-game compatibilty which is essential for a game like Arma and BIS as a developing studio.

[ThrashInc 31]

Personally, I think we need to not see steps backwards.

 

What I mean by this, is a map like Tanoa where we moved closer to Arma 2 in terms of what buildings we could and could not enter.  Tanoa is a gorgeous map, but at some point in its development someone had to have said, "Fuck, this runs like trash."  -  And if it didn't run like trash, then the system you're running development on is not indicative of what people are using to play Arma OR you are not playing Arma with mods or modded game modes.  I think it's important that such things be taken into consideration because the game is sold with a bare minimum of 'things to do' because the game itself is predicated on the fact that our imaginations as a community drive the types of game modes, mods, and scenarios the game 'actually' provides.  This is true of MilSim, in their use of Zeus-like mods and gear/weapon/AI/etc packs, Exile/Epoch/DayZ type survival sandboxes (which also use other mods), KOTH/EUTW/BR/similar, and Life mods.

 

And for the record, I don't want BI to limit the 'things to do' because they provided more of them.  I love Arma but I'm not in love with BI's direction and thought processes on many things as they pertain to realism.  The sandbox aspect of Arma is 100% why it is successful.  If BI doesn't want to license likenesses of weapons, great, someone will mod them and we can return to 2016.

 

A map like Altis could be cut in half at the main airfield, taking everything West of that, and turned into a new map that would probably run 20-40 frames better at a really good view distance for most users.  Knowing what I do know about map editing, this wouldn't be a huge task for BI to accomplish. (This also happens the be the better modeled portion of the map) 

 

We do need big maps, because air/armored operations dictate a larger battlefield, but if Arma is the epitome of infantry combat then that has to be the primary focus - if that means cutting the map size down (and total objects) then that's what needs to happen.  

 

Focusing on the infantryman, the buildings need to be functional in ways that infantryman would find function in them.  If you model a window that I have trouble shooting out of, then I need to be able to address that situation in game.  Things that ACE provides should be more standard, like being able to deploy sandbags, better ways of mantling weapons (flat), earplugs, etc.  Even things that I've seen in their other products, like IR Sparkles from ISR/Lightning Pod on an A-10.  There is a ton of minutia that could easily be modeled and would be useful for making the game more realistic and immersive.  I'd take that and a smaller map with increased performance instead of something that makes gorgeous screenshots.

[kremator 1065]

Ah, no, I haven't tried VR yet.

Then you have no experience with these HMDs.  360 videos are rubbish in comparison.  I can tell you that owning a Rift, it is one of the most immersive experiences.  Software houses NOT embracing VR will be losing out big time.  The industry is reckoning that by the end of 2016 VR will be worth $20billion and that is not to be sniffed at.

 

Personally I'd be happy with OFP graphics BUT in a VR environment.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Then you have no experience with these HMDs.  360 videos are rubbish in comparison.  I can tell you that owning a Rift, it is one of the most immersive experiences.  Software houses NOT embracing VR will be losing out big time.  The industry is reckoning that by the end of 2016 VR will be worth $20billion and that is not to be sniffed at.

 

Personally I'd be happy with OFP graphics BUT in a VR environment.

 

Might be. Still, what about the movement-induced nausia people experience in VR FPS?

[kremator 1065]

Caused by artificial locomotion.  Basically bad coding and implementation.  Please don't contaminate this thread if you haven't even used proper VR.  Not trying to get at you, but it is important.

[domokun 515]

i hope it doesn't come out until billion Arma 3 bugs are fixed, and i'm not talking about making textures look pretty!

i hope they make more quality DLC content instead, as Arma 2 still has 80% more units and vehicles in it.

Once you start using the CUP mod, this argument quickly becomes untenable.

[domokun 515]

Might be. Still, what about the movement-induced nausia people experience in VR FPS?

I think that some percentage of the population will always be susceptile to nauseau with VR, in the same way that many people get motion sickness from reading in cars, trains and particularly boats. However I strongly recommend that people try the latest VR. It really is a fairly mind-blowing. I've watched it with great scepticism myself. I agree that these are the early days. I agree that most games aren't really suitable. I agree that the cable getting in the way is annoying. I agree that most cannot play for hours on end. But I can assure you that from grognard who's been playing games for 30 years, building PCs for 20, playing arma for 10+ years, it really is the future. I would far rather play 30 minutes of VR than 2 hours of desktop. It's so much more immersive. I can certainly see huge scope for improvement but once my family's finances are only a more stable footing, I'll be taking the leap. In fact I'm thinking of hiring one for an afternoon for my eldest son's 8th birthday.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Caused by artificial locomotion.  Basically bad coding and implementation.  Please don't contaminate this thread if you haven't even used proper VR.  Not trying to get at you, but it is important.

 

I think that some percentage of the population will always be susceptile to nauseau with VR, in the same way that many people get motion sickness from reading in cars, trains and particularly boats. However I strongly recommend that people try the latest VR. It really is a fairly mind-blowing. I've watched it with great scepticism myself. I agree that these are the early days. I agree that most games aren't really suitable. I agree that the cable getting in the way is annoying. I agree that most cannot play for hours on end. But I can assure you that from grognard who's been playing games for 30 years, building PCs for 20, playing arma for 10+ years, it really is the future. I would far rather play 30 minutes of VR than 2 hours of desktop. It's so much more immersive. I can certainly see huge scope for improvement but once my family's finances are only a more stable footing, I'll be taking the leap. In fact I'm thinking of hiring one for an afternoon for my eldest son's 8th birthday.

 

No need to defend VR. I don't doubt its technological value and that it will have some impact on gaming or entertainment in general. If that should be a priority for the next Arma title and put above other features, I don't really know. I'm just trying to determine whether it would be fully feasible for a game like Arma 3. All the first person games I've seen for VR either relied on teleporting or were on rails. Or had very slow, gradual movement. And as already said, 30 minutes of playtime is often not realistic in a game like Arma. Especially in larger co-op sessions. Not to mention the performance aspects already brought up. It's already hard to make a game run at X+ FPS on many hardware combinations. I have yet to see that working reliably with user-generated content.

 

"Basically bad coding and implementation."

 

Do you have anything to back that up? I'm genuinely curious if and how it's solved as nausea seems to be a problem with VR since its beginnings in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness

Keep in mind that I don't mean nausea in general, I mean the specific side effects people got from experiencing fast movement in first person VR.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I think the next Arma title will have to go more in depth. When you look at the things Enfusion is doing, it brings more interesting possibilities. Though, at the same time, there are core features that made Arma great that i fear will miss out of being in the Enfusion. Diving for example, a big one. While probably a pain to implement in its early stages, it's actually one of the best features the Arma series has had. But what i think BI's biggest downfall, is their bad organization of Engines. Since Arma 2 jumped to TKOH, and then Arma 3, then Dayz ended up using TKOH's engine instead of RV4, but then they're supposedly merging two engines, and then what is Arma 4 gonna run on? If it's missing lots of features Arma 3 had, it's going to be a massive mess, as well as end up being a massive disappointment. It's kinda like what happened to the Battlefield series, when they didn't have full combined arms for a good time being in the series (Bad Company(ies)) and then went back with the 3rd and 4th installations.

[dragon01 902]

I think that Enfusion is a good start, but BI (nor its customers) won't accept such a drastic step backwards in terms of functionality. Therefore, diving, AFM and advanced stances will have to be ported to the new engine. 

 

This could be easier than it seems, though. All these features are not fundamental engine components (such as the animation system or graphics), but rather "subsystems" built upon these components. It would be impossible to port the overhauled animation system to RV, but adding more stance animations to Enfusion should be very doable. Likewise AFM, which is built upon an external, commercial library (called rotorlib).

[brightcandle 114]

When we talk about a new game engine in which to build the series what we are really talking about is using Unity or Unreal Engine, because those are the two remaining commercial engines out there. Neither provides a good base for this type of game although neither is awful either as they are general purpose game engines. But the real issue with a wholesale replacement engine is you start from nothing, you can't carry across anything you have currently. Arma/A2/A3 are all built on top of each other and there is a lot to the games code and unique rendering qualities. A new engine would mean none of today's mods could be ported, none of the content would work nor would any of the scripting and BI has a lot of features in their game. The redevelopment cost into a whole new engine would be enormous, potentially a decade or more and what would that achieve? Mostly it would just mean loosing a bucket load of time rewriting everything when the problem is with just a couple of percent of what they have.

 

The underlying issue in the Arma problem revolves around two key areas. The simulation for world updates is mostly serial and based quite a lot in SQF and the rendering engine itself is mostly single threaded but also still contains a lot of effects algorithms running on the CPU (smoke for example). Neither is easy to fix but changing the guarantees around the SQF and world updates in general combined with a more parallel scripting engine would produce vast improvements in performance (its around 1/3 of a frame currently) and require a lot less rewriting but would still require a chunk of change. The rendering engine on the other hand mostly just needs more of the CPU activities moved onto the GPU and porting to something like DX12 along with quite a substantial change in how it parallelises.

 

So while so many people are advocating that BI just throw what they have away and start again that is a ridiculously bad thing to do if you want an Arma 4 game any time soon. They have a world class engine of their own with a list of features 99.9% of games don't come close to matching currently but with some performance issues. When you have performance issues you don't just throw everything away unless everything is the problem, and in this case I highly doubt that is the case. What happened is they predicted poorly where the CPU market was going and lost that bet, but now given the issues they have had I suspect they can put the appropriate resources into evolving the situation for Arma 4. Adding parallelism and performance isn't easy but its much easier than rewriting the game from scratch. If each patch doesn't have to worry about a working game that doesn't break most of the existing user content and mods then its possible to at least change the situation in a future big release. I believe it can be fixed having looked at how it works from the DirectX, ingame and other profilers.

 

However until BI actually commits to fixing performance its not going to happen. We have had the same song and dance about performance in Arma 3 since Alpha, "we are working on it". Back in Alpha we determined the multiplayer limit was about 30 and the AI limit was about 150 to sustain reasonable frame rate and that hasn't changed. On a fundamental level the main thing that changed was 3 generations of Intel CPUs and they do improve performance in this game (where they don't in most others). Just like with Arma 2 it runs better on modern hardware not available when the game was released. I don't think that is the way this should work but you have to also remember the developers are aiming for 30 fps and they are achieving that quite well on their minimum and recommended hardware. When I take a diag_captureFrame and compare it to the ones I did in December after release in the same scenarios they are basically identical. People keep saying performance has changed but I can't see that in the actual objective data on the same CPU. There has been releases that decreased performance substantially but none that improved it past the base line I took all those years ago. Until BI commits to fixing it and we hold them to it they will continue to not bother, after all they got your money already they don't need to do anything more at this point.

 

They said before Arma 3 came out that they had a solution for parallel behaviour, I remember seeing the design for which the headless client was the first iteration. They abandoned it in order to ship the game. They said they were investigating DX12 (well I kind of said that wouldn't help) and they abandoned that. Every release they tell us performance has improved, they release "performance" binaries that seem to only fix bugs. There is a pattern emerging and the last time people got irritated they rolled out Dwarden to tell us it was all going to be OK, but has it been? No it hasn't been its the same story as Arma 2. You want something to change its going to take the community to actually mobilise. Throwing out their engine isn't the solution we just need them to actually do what they say and work on genuinely fixing performance and we will deal with the breaking mods and such that happens as a result. But hand waving "new engine" just gives BI the pass to keep not doing it and it'll be the same in the next game.

[en3x 209]

Yep building your own engine takes years perhaps even decade and is not feasible solution from financial

and logical perspective.My few points are this.First BI is improving performance but on small scale one which

is implementing new feature costs performance and then you have engine optimizations that save that

performance and it results in never ending cycle of improvements vs drawbacks (while implementing new

features say vehicle in vehicle).

 

What needs to happen is Dayz mindset.If you follow the development blogs, they are actually working on

low level code while game is live!They managed to decouple renderer (significant performance improvement)

they revamped animation system, added server queue, spawn system, even R&D toward deferred lighting,

implemented Arma 3 (!!) audio system...

Yet when you look at apex update from programmer perspective or from feature perspective

Visual improvement (Sea shader, reflection), AI driving WIP, Respawn overhaul, VTOL, Audio overhaul, "Tasks"

lot of is welcomed but not on the level of previous DLC features.Mainly bipods and slingloading, firing from vehicles.

Compare arma 3 engine changes from apex update (which started in may 14!) with dayz and you can see better what I mean.

[IndeedPete 1038]

That is because DayZ is built on a different engine, on Enfusion. As far as I know, they completely replaced RV with Enfusion during DayZ's development. And that's also while the game has been and still is in Early Access for three years or so.

[en3x 209]

That is because DayZ is built on a different engine, on Enfusion. As far as I know, they completely replaced RV with Enfusion during DayZ's development. And that's also while the game has been and still is in Early Access for three years or so.

 

Yeah is built on the other engine yet there is nothing stopping them implementing arma 3 say audio overhaul into it.It doesn't matter what engine it is, what matter is what is the focus of improvements. (time/resources)

What I'm trying to say is that arma 3 engine could be just as much improved as dayz if leadership decides to do it.Yes is a long and complex process.Yes it requires manpower, time and knowledge but is

essential for actual longer term improvement where they finally break down frustration of phrases "not possible" "not within the scope" and so on.