To the people who are playing ArmA, how is it?

[dm 9]

...As well giving peeps the FALSE impression that since I can`t see them, they can`t see me...

Thats a somewhat naieve point of view though.

Modern warfare (and life in general) has proven that this isnt the case time after time.

Yes, it IS annoying that the grass dissapears after ~50m, but you'd all be whineing about how the ground looks crap and bare if it wasnt there...

[sanctuary 19]

I wish it was possible for BIS to get the same grass management that was present for DF2 without the important performance problems i already can imagine in this ArmA engine.

In DF2 it was really an important key feature that had a very strong influence on concealment and so on the whole gameplay.

But if the ArmA grass unlike the DF2 one is just an useless (in term of game play) eye candy with this "50m disappear" limit, i think it should be a good idea to be able to enable/disable it in the options as it then serve no purpose other than looking good for "close" screenshot threads.

Or at least find a way to "simulate" the fact "prone in grass zones" units are more difficult to see in a distance than ones that are not in grass zones (BHD/JO tried the semi-translucent player model trick if i remember well, not really good, but it was better than nothing for the gameplay while not over killing performance)

[Heatseeker 0]

I wish it was possible for BIS to get the same grass management that was present for DF2 without the important performance problems i already can imagine in this ArmA engine.

In DF2 it was really an important key feature that had a very strong influence on concealment and so on the whole gameplay.

But if the ArmA grass unlike the DF2 one is just an useless (in term of game play) eye candy with this "50m disappear" limit, i think it should be a good idea to be able to enable/disable it in the options as it then serve no purpose than looking good for "close" screenshot threads.

Or at least find a way to "simulate" the fact "prone in grass zones" units are more difficult to see in a distance (BHD/JO tried the semi-translucent player model trick if i remember well, not really good, but better than nothing for the gameplay

Back then you didnt have detailed forests, cities or any decent world detail, that game was barely 3D. The strong influence of grass was because of this, it was like a compromise since we were still gaming in the dark ages of ugly pixels. I cant think of a realistic combat situation where a soldier would "hide" in some grass, you can hide behind a rock, some bushes or in a forest, with the amount of world detail we have in Arma hidding in the grass seems... wrong .

The semi-translucent solution is even worse, it worked like predator cloaking where the models turned almost invisible, no thanks. Arma grass might get in the way of your sights/scope but its not tall and thick enough to conceal your body.

[Talyn 33]

Is the grass tall enough to completely conceal a soldier while in the prone position?

From the screenshots I’ve seen, the main patches of grass aren’t tall enough to “hide†a soldier. And reading the majority of comments you’d think that all the battles take place on crop fields.

Is it so hard to believe that someone with an elevated viewpoint can see more than someone lay on the ground? After all, the terrain isn’t flat…

[USSRsniper 0]

About editor view in ArmA, it looks to me they tried to make it more realistic. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu:8085/x-ussr/100k/M-35-052.jpg where roads are orange ))) Why i used this map as example because i dont know any other maps. When i saw screenshot of map in ArmA first thing i saw thinking is russian topographic maps that i have at home  

Actually i dont see why people hate ArmA editor? Its better since it does not have useless borders which just take up space..

[evilnate 0]

Is the grass tall enough to completely conceal a soldier while in the prone position?

From the screenshots I’ve seen, the main patches of grass aren’t tall enough to “hide†a soldier. And reading the majority of comments you’d think that all the battles take place on crop fields.  

Is it so hard to believe that someone with an elevated viewpoint can see more than someone lay on the ground? After all, the terrain isn’t flat…

Great question!

It would be ultra-kewl if an arma user took a pic of a solder lying prone just far enough (49m) away to see what they look like in grass.

My guess is that they will be quite visible even though the grass is drawn around their body. I think bushes will be the best quick cover.

[XCess 0]

@USSRSniper

Because they're just simple grey boxes, they don't look too great. But then, i've gotten used to it already and now prefer it over the OFP editor. I guess most of these complaints will die down in the next few weeks when people start getting used to the changes and accept them.

@EvilNate

Here's some pics of a guy at 65m

[fuzzhead 0]

I will show you exactly why the grass is such an issue for so many people.

I am in the group that thinks, if its just being used as eye candy, get rid of it!!!! Here is a couple pictures demonstrating why grass would be great at range, and yes it would conceal you alot of times. But with it only drawing to about 30 meters, there is no point in having it.

This is a picture taken of my unit, hes 10 meters in front of me.

This is a picture taken, Im in the exact same position, only this picture is taken in third person so you can see where my troop is.

[im]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/captain_fuzzhead/project%20reality/TEST2.jpg[/img]>100kb

This picture is taken of me back about 30 meters away from my troop. Notice, hes no longer hidden at all, because the grass is no longer drawing.

Now for those of you saying 'well, you cant hide in the grass all that well anyways!' Well how the hell would YOU know if you've never been able to try it anyways!!! I guarantee you that if the grass was drawn at a distance, it would be a very hard time to discern if that tiny lump out there was a prone soldier or a rock. The fact is, thats exactly what the prone soldier is thinking, hes thinking, with all this grass around me, its going to be very hard to see me if I sit very still. But of course he isnt covered by grass at all, the game is lying to him.

This is a huge issue for alot of gamers, its cheap, dirty 'wow that looks cool' tricks that up until recently mostly only console games used. But now computer games (BF2, Oblivion, now ArmaA) are starting to use too, and its a low blow to us realism fans, who love WYSIWYG.

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

[fuzzhead 0]

A list compiled by me of peoples comments as well as my own opinions

despite all these i still think armed assault is a worthwhile purchase, however i really hope that most of these issues are addressed as they WILL affect the longevity of the games replayability.

===========

INTERFACE:

===========

- New action menu is very buggy. If a body has a differant weapon than you you get a menu to take the weapon and cant get into the whole menu to take indivdual items. Same with vehicles, Hard to get in if they have ammo. You get the ammo menu instead of the get in menu.

- Each time you bring up the map in ArmA you get a 'load screen' when you switch back to the action. It's short load of perhaps 5 seconds. But its a huge issue in CTI where you send AI all around the map all the time. This really must be fixed.

===========

GRAPHICS:

===========

- textures sometimes not loaded or they blink.

- THE GRASS IS NOT REAL COVER. Its just like BF2 where it disappears after 30 meters. The AI will shoot right through it, although stuff like bushes and trees, does get rendered at range. The grass hinders the sight a lot but provides no visual concealment at over 30 meters.

- Every building colapses like the world trade center. They come down 90 degree to the ground, after the dust settles all thats left is a small pile of bricks. There are no damage levels, its either normal building or completely destroyed.

- During night time: The radius of the streetlight's, should be greater.... Should lit up a much larger area, and should be seen from a long way off as a 'haze'.

- Need better explosion effect when hitting tanks with AT weapons.

====

AI:

====

- problems with AI (RPG man shooting on tank after his destruction, somtimes fail AI - slow reactions and others)

- AI drivers still really prety bad.

- Playing the Single player mission called "Commander". Towards the end of the mission you enter a large town and the AI decided that they weren't moving. No matter what I did, the AI just stood there. I tried to get them to follow me accross a bridge, 2 did, the others ran around on the banks of the river. I tried to get them to follow me to where the vehicles are (which involves navigating through quite a few buildings) they just stood there again. Then the AT guys decided they were going to go off on their own. I kept telling them to return to formation and to move beside me, they didnt care, they continued to move around autonomously.

==========

SOUNDS:

==========

- Voices are sometimes damned annoying at times, they are sped up (sounding like one of the chipmunks)

- old favorite from OFP - the distance relative to sound being WAY off.

===========

CHARACTER:

===========

- Animations of taking out binoculars, taking out weapons etc sometimes are really long. I die 80% of the time because my character is scrolling through an animation. When you die, the animation will play out, and then you will play the 'dying' animation. For example, you are prone, looking through binoculars, you see an enemy, you switch to your rifle, enemy shoots you while switching. YOU WILL CONTINUE TO SWITCH TO YOUR WEAPON! Once your weapon is out, you will then die. Its confusing for both the shooter, who keeps shooting cause he doesnt know if he hit you or not, and the guy being shot at, because it appears like hes still living but hes actually a dead man just carrying out his last animation. It would be wonderful to make a button to just drop whatever action your doing and hug the ground. The 'Oh Shit!' button. You drop your rifle, you drop your binoculars, drop whatever it is your doing and hit the fucking dirt!! This is both a realistic response and would make it alot less frustrating for players constantly getting shot waiting for the animations to cycle through.

- Because of the recoil it is very hard to kill enemies. You have only 1-2 chances to make a shot, otherwise the AI will go prone immediately and return fire, usually killing you instantly.

- Gun movement when looking down the sites is horrible. The only way I can put it is its like they put a small delay on the movement to smooth it out and make it more realistic. But because there is a delay you tend to move beyond the target. VERY FRUSTRATING!

- Most player movement is prety bad. To look down your sights takes for ever. Its fine if your not in combat but when your under fire you usually get hit 6 times before the gun is up. In 3rd person view the camera zooms into 1st person and then you bring the gun to your face, making it majority of the time useless to use the sites..

- Your character cant be prone on a gradient. If yer prone and try to crawl down it stands you up, then you get shot. The gradient is not very steep.

- Your character never slides or falls off a hill (Like in BF2), even a super steep hill he will keep his balance.

- Weather effects are totally client side. They are not synced in multiplayer gaming at all. Meaning, if one man sees the sun in his eyes, another man might see it cloudy. I have confirmed this on a LAN game. The thunder does not sync up (players will hear thunder at different times). A player might hear and see it raining for up to 5 minutes before another player would start to see signs of rain. This is confirmed on a fast LAN with 0 ping.

================

WEAPON SYSTEMS:

================

- The general response time for weapons don't feel as good as they were in Flashpoint.

- Grenades are prety useless! M203/GP25/Frags have about a 5 meter kill radius. When they blow up, it looks like a ballon popped in the dirt. AI are good with grenades because they hit precisely on your position (less than a meter).

- Aiming with rifles feels choppy. You can move that slider to the left, so that the sensitivity isn't so much, but then moving around is awkward and not fluid. Wish there was a seperate slider for just aiming.

- PK gunners are still SNIPERS!!! Hit you at a very great range with a single round.

- Smoke grenades look/are crap. There is very little smoke volume, and it spreads to about 5 meters squared and doesn't move realistically at all (wind etc). Tactically, this is totally useless. It would never help strategically move a squad at all.

- RPG Splash damage versus infantry: if you don't directly hit someone with an RPG it won't affect them. Basically less than 2 meters splash damage.

===========

=VEHICLES:

===========

CHOPPERS:

- They are very user unfriendly. They seem to fly like a fixed wing now and are VERY TWITCHY!!!

- the smallest movement will make drastic changes in the altitude of the chopper.

- Chopper flys like a fixed wing aircraft in that if you nose down and lean left on the stick it should do an almost instant 180. Not here it flys on a glide path like a plane. The whole chopper banks left and follows a wide radious to turn.

- Cobra Chopper takes 5 Hellfires to kill 1 T-72.

- Harrier has no VTOL capabilties

- Harrier wheels are static (they do not rotate)

- 80 ton tanks can push themselves around by turning the turret so the barrel hits a building. When driving through forests, you can use the turret to 'mow down' the trees.

- Sabot and HEAT shells are stopped by chain link fences.

- Tank Shells that hit lamp posts seem to vanish.

- shooting at car tires of a humvee or other car, they dont go flat (like OFP) they turn rusty! dissapointing.

[Ra-cal 0]

I expected the a.i. would whisper when in stealth mode, if the voice files are there maybe it will be possible? .

Edit:

Simple curiosity... Are the wheels on the AV8B animated now? I presume this should now be possible in Arma?

Just to clarify the wheels on the AV8B are static and do not animate

[Sgt_Eversmann 1]

it is even possible to have animated landing gear in OFP

[mattxr 9]

look how many patches ofp had to have tho, all games anrt perfect when first released. think about the nasty bugs and how they could be fixed instead of complaining about them

Btw, some good reviews too in this thred.

[Skunk Monkey 0]

I wont be buying a new GFx card, no point, rest of the PC isnt up to it. I was thinking of a new machine next spring.

I've been offered use of a 5700 which has the shader 2.0 but will be next week before its in the post. New system next year. I know it will be slow but it will run it and I'll manage.

Well, I changed my mind. The 5700 card ran ArmA at 1FPS, so I ordered a X1600 Pro 512Mb.

Now the rest of the computer isnt up to much, still on SDram, although I have a Gb of it, old motherboard with a 2.4Ghz P4.

Runs sweet, even with all the setting on low its looks superb, lots better than OFP-Resistance. Player/enemy models are superb, everything is good, runs on average at 25FPS, lowest 15, but also need high 30's.

MP wise (I dont play SP) there are some bugs, as reported elsewhere, the most annoying are the sounds bugs, not hearing shooting, just dieing or seeing dust shoot up from the ground near you. JIP seems to work well, although connecting times can be long. Nothing that cant be sorted, and no worse than early versions of OFP-CWC. I'm certainly hoping for a patch for Xmas though

Have to say I'm impressed, and glad I bought a new card rather than a new PC. Its a good base to build on, one of guns is absolute shite (Aimpoint I think) and generally there arent enough units but it wont be long before the mods start coming out and we have been spoiled in the latter days of resistance with a vast selection of addons.

User missions seem a little unstable, some worse than others, not 100% sure why but the mission makers have been making missions for ages that work aqre coming accross bugs which seem to cause cilent side crashes. That said the BIS made missions seem fine.

Crashes are happening, but thats to be expected from a effective beta release Ver.1.00, some "Arma has encountered an error" type, which write the casues to a log file, some crash-2-desktop type, and some full-on system restart which invoke the "Windows has recovered from a serious error" start up procedure with disk scans. I'm sure this will all get sorted, and hasnt stopped me playing.

The SES dedicated 100Mbit COOP server is due on-line anyday (we had to order a slim-line DVD for our 1AU rack-mounted server) but everything is more or less sorted now.

Sickboy deserves a big for the English conversion work, well done

Anyone with any coop maps feel free to mail them to maps@skunkmonkey.net and we'll try them on our dedicated server to pass feedback your way. There is a shortage of maps, but its getting better by the day, I've done 3 but non of them are as yet realeasable

[Blanco 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

Or maybe make the grass shorter so noone can hide in it...

[Zombie_Mod 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

Or maybe make the grass shorter so noone can hide in it...

Why not have a "grass draw distance" that you can set yourself for MP games? Then players could hide in it properly.

This would of course require the same grass models to be drawn in the same place every time... you don't want a small bush to be drawn one minute, then look away and find a whole shrubbery there the next time...

I don't think that would be too difficult though, I am sure some algorithm could compute the required grass model to draw at position X,Y,Z, so the same grass is rendered on all machines in an MP session..

[dm 9]

I will show you exactly why the grass is such an issue for so many people.

I am in the group that thinks, if its just being used as eye candy, get rid of it!!!! Here is a couple pictures demonstrating why grass would be great at range, and yes it would conceal you alot of times. But with it only drawing to about 30 meters, there is no point in having it.

This is a picture taken of my unit, hes 10 meters in front of me.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/captain_fuzzhead/project%20reality/TEST1.jpg

This is a picture taken, Im in the exact same position, only this picture is taken in third person so you can see where my troop is.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/captain_fuzzhead/project%20reality/TEST2.jpg

This picture is taken of me back about 30 meters away from my troop. Notice, hes no longer hidden at all, because the grass is no longer drawing.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/captain_fuzzhead/project%20reality/TEST3.jpg

Now for those of you saying 'well, you cant hide in the grass all that well anyways!' Well how the hell would YOU know if you've never been able to try it anyways!!! I guarantee you that if the grass was drawn at a distance, it would be a very hard time to discern if that tiny lump out there was a prone soldier or a rock. The fact is, thats exactly what the prone soldier is thinking, hes thinking, with all this grass around me, its going to be very hard to see me if I sit very still. But of course he isnt covered by grass at all, the game is lying to him.

This is a huge issue for alot of gamers, its cheap, dirty 'wow that looks cool' tricks that up until recently mostly only console games used. But now computer games (BF2, Oblivion, now ArmaA) are starting to use too, and its a low blow to us realism fans, who love WYSIWYG.

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

This is a VERY biased and unfair test.

Its clear looking at the pictures that the soldier you are looking at is down-hill from you. So he is hidden by the land in 1st person, but not in 3rd person, which uses a much higher point of view, therefore being able to see over the prow of the hill and therefore your soldier. The same applies to your last image, where you've even had to more around about 70 degrees to be able to see the soldier clearly in the fold in the terrain.

Yes I agree that the grass is fairly useless eyecandy, but it is still a very naieve point of view to assume that because you cant see them, they cant see you. Should be one of the very early things you learn in life...

[d034rk 0]

This is a picture taken, Im in the exact same position, only this picture is taken in third person so you can see where my troop is.

[fuzzhead 0]

Deadmeat: yes it was a quick demonstration just to show you that, yes you can hide in grass, and that, yes the grass draw distance sucks.

In those pictures however, I can with ease, have a clear shot on the target, with no 'terrain' getting in the way, only the grass (I took the shot after the pictures were taken, much to Johnson's families sadness).

Ill make some better pictures and demonstrations when i find a suitable spot for it.

My main point: being at range, the grass not drawing makes it not worth drawing in the first place, because the whole point of grass is to conceal at range! go prone 100 meters from each other in real life in the wilderness, and good luck seeing each other...

[Skunk Monkey 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

Or maybe make the grass shorter so noone can hide in it...

If you wanted this for a player Vs player map then there is a "grass cutter" you can place in the editior which does exactly that. Great for around bases you create on grasslands, adds realism, reduces graphics needs and equalizers players.

[dm 9]

This is a picture taken, Im in the exact same position, only this picture is taken in third person so you can see where my troop is.

Rather than being a smartass, read what I wrote in my post

Here it is in condensed picture format.

Here you can see the difference in height of the point of view from 1st and 3rd person. So while the soldier hasnt moved, the view has increased in height by about 2-3m.

Here you can see how the fold in the terrain helps hide the soldier in 1st person. It doesnt have to be huge, even a few cm will make all the difference.

As for the last picture, you can clearly see, due to the shadows and the position of the soldier, that the pov for that image has swung round drastically.

[Heatseeker 0]

I like the looks on the grass, even if its not rendered all over the place it adds to the environment and makes it look more natural, other than that and looking at the pictures i can see lots of bushes, if you really want concealment go prone behind a bush, problem solved .

Old OPF stuff, when fired upon go prone and crawl to the nearest cover, if no cover is near crawl to the nearest bush...

[Shashman 0]

Thanks for that report, Fuzzhead.

It really does look like ArmA was rushed into the shops to coincide with the Christmas shopping rush to me.

Looks like the future ArmA modding community have a lot of work on their hands, which isn't really fair, considering the OFP modding community mainly added to the game, not corrected BIS' mistakes and failures.

I just don't understand what was going through BIS' heads when they released this. It's like, they knew that the modding community is strong and has come leaps and bounds since OFP came out, and therefore have had the attitude that "Ah well, there are a lot of talented modders out there who'll surely correct this product, let's just release it as is, and hope that they are as patient as they were with OFP"...

Hardly progress

[Blanco 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Please make the grass a server side option. In its current state I want it permanently, DISABLED.

Or maybe make the grass shorter so noone can hide in it...

If you wanted this for a player Vs player map then there is a "grass cutter" you can place in the editior which does exactly that. Great for around bases you create on grasslands, adds realism, reduces graphics needs and equalizers players.

What do you mean with grasscutter? A gamelogic?

I don't like the grass drawdistance, but I understand why it's not possible. Making the unit partly transparant would look odd, shorter grass is the only fair solution imo.

[evilnate 0]

Thanks for saving my typing fingers deadmeat, my thoughts exactly.

IMO I hope they keep the grass, I like it.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Thanks for that report, Fuzzhead.

It really does look like ArmA was rushed into the shops to coincide with the Christmas shopping rush to me.

Looks like the future ArmA modding community have a lot of work on their hands, which isn't really fair, considering the OFP modding community mainly added to the game, not corrected BIS' mistakes and failures.

I just don't understand what was going through BIS' heads when they released this. It's like, they knew that the modding community is strong and has come leaps and bounds since OFP came out, and therefore have had the attitude that "Ah well, there are a lot of talented modders out there who'll surely correct this product, let's just release it as is, and hope that they are as patient as they were with OFP"...

Hardly progress    

Sounds like you havent played OFP 1.0, this is ArmA 1.0, not ArmA 1.96, BIS will add/fix things for ArmA, stop being so worried.

I just hope they add an option for HDR and a max limit for shadows, right now i have to turn the shadows off when im in a forest, while i can put it on very high when im anywhere else (including big cities).