What does ARMA 2 have that Operation Flashpoint 2 doesn't?

[householddog 10]

Thats actually a reall good point. Agreed. Most (except the most anal FPS twitch player) won't notice really, it wont have much of an effect on the overall gameplay.

This is true, if it keeps above 30fps at all times. Once it drops it really starts to chug. Hopefully the patch will help.

Ahahah I fuckin cracked up when I heard the DR Dev say that...that one comment alone (let alone the noob red barrel comment) was enough to stop me from wanting to buy it

I just looked on their site. Apparently there is no leaning out of corners.

That's a real deal breaker for me. It destroys most of your cover, in cities.

[whisper 0]

Finally, don't most flight sims use huge draw distances? Or am I being a "pseudo 3D-engines expert" by making such an observation?

Comparing an ID engine game to ARMA is an apples an oranges test. QUAKE maps are drawn in small areas and crammed with objects. The maps are designed to be small with a lot of details. Arma maps have much less detail.

To do a propper test, on anything, you need to change one thing and see the result. IE you need to put an ARMA2 map in quake or a quake map in ARMA2. Not so easy.

My main argument is to do with hardware scaling, not distance scaling btw,

IE

By the way. I am not the only person who thinks it doesn't scale well. Its the equal 3rd problem on the bug tracker.

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/1770

And here we go again. Shall I post a screenshot of close terrain rendering in DCS:BlackShark so we can see why a flightsim engine wouldn't suit BI's need either?

I don't deny there is still work to do on A2.

But pulease, the "game X does Y, it should be easy to do it in A2" simply is not an argument if you don't take into consideration how feature or technique Y would scale in A2 environnement.

And simply put, apart from BI's engine, we do not know. (my guess is that it's not by chance and all other attempts stumbled on the same kind of issues)

Again, yes BI must still work on this. But stop (not really pointed at you Householddog) crying at BI like they are a bunch of incapable programmers because "it works in in Game X & Y!"

On a sidenote, ID Tech and derivatives is not used exclusively by Quake, FYI.

[householddog 10]

But pulease, the "game X does Y, it should be easy to do it in A2" simply is not an argument if you don't take into consideration how feature or technique Y would scale in A2 environnement.

If I expand the range of area and visibility of a ID Tech engine, simply put, it's on its knees and can't work. If I do the same with BI's engine, it handles it fine (ie short or large scale is the same for him).

Which of these statements arguments is true then?

You are correct when you say I am a pseudo graphics expert. I am. I have had to try and solve my issue myself. When I, and others, post that they have issues, they get told that its something, they have done. Sometimes they are practically told, they are imagining it. The "feature not bug" line gets trotted out a bit too. This, in the official support forum?

Seriously most of this negativity, would be helped, if we had some word from the devs, on what they acknowledge, as issues. Whether they are being addressed in the next patch, the one after that, or never. It doesn't really matter. It also needs to be put in the news post, not as a reply 20 pages deep in a post either. By this time they would at least have a few issues nailed. Rather than getting people trying everything to fix it themselves just let them know its being worked on.

Asking the question BTW gets your thread locked around here. ;)

I have worked in computer support or a number of years. The first thing you let customers know about are major issues. It stops the report requests. Customers know the issue is being looked at, rather than wasting their time trying to fix it themselves. Everybody happy.

I still can't recommend it to anyone with a low-mid spec system BTW.

From what you are saying is that, there is unlikely to be much improvement too. If I follow your remarks I really can't recommend it ever. I hope you are wrong.

Edited June 14, 2009 by householddog

[abs 2]

What does Armed Assault 2 have that Operation Flashpoint 2 doesn't?

Sorry if it's been said, but ARMA2 has the following, and I'm pretty sure that OFP2 won't have it...I'd actually be really surprised if they did.

Hookers with transparent underwear.

Abs

[LJF 0]

Don't look any further than this vid:

I'd like to see OFP:DR do THAT!!

- oh, and I realise why they changed the name from ofp2, because it now has :D in it lol.

[whisper 0]

I still can't recommend it to anyone with a low-mid spec system BTW.

From what you are saying is that, there is unlikely to be much improvement too. If I follow your remarks I really can't recommend it ever. I hope you are wrong.

1) E6400, 8800GT, 2G RAM == mid-range PC. I'm pretty happy with the result, like I was with OFP Resistance, tbh. Less FPS than other titles, but the game is more than playable performance-wise anyway. It's all that count. When I list the features I want to see in a game and features of other titles I played, few can compare, meaning I know I'll play it for long. So I'll recommend it, ofc not to everyone, it's mainly a matter of tastes.

2) Where did you get there will be no improvement? I must really be unclear, cause that was not my point, at all.

As for both sentences you quoted, you won't see me on a ID Soft. forum moaning at them because there engine can't go past 600m view distance while BI to this since OFP days, so all they have to do is "do like Bohemia did!"

3rd lil point, while I agree communication is always good, if I list the points where some1 requires that BI tell them wtf happens, they'd more on forums than coding! (I like exageration;) )

Anyway, I don't really see them saying "we're resolving the 'performance doesn't scale with graphics' issue", because it's less than a precise issue, is it? More a broad topic of general performance, in which case I think they already told us they're working on it, in fact all the time.

[Azamato 0]

- oh, and I realise why they changed the name from ofp2, because it now has :D in it lol.

Hahahhaha xD !! you sir are hilarious :D

[Scrub 0]

1) E6400, 8800GT, 2G RAM == mid-range PC. I'm pretty happy with the result, like I was with OFP Resistance, tbh. Less FPS than other titles, but the game is more than playable performance-wise anyway. It's all that count. When I list the features I want to see in a game and features of other titles I played, few can compare, meaning I know I'll play it for long. So I'll recommend it, ofc not to everyone, it's mainly a matter of tastes.

Same statement, just replace quoted specs with the following.

Phenom 3 core @ 2.1ghz

ATI 3850

4gb

Seems to be an issue with high end systems, go figure :confused:

[Placebo 28]

Discussions about system specs and performance and such belong in other threads, such as the pinned system specs thread, get back on topic please.

[jonneymendoza 10]

If you like OFP/ArmA you choose ArmA 2, if you like Battlefield 2 you choose Dragon Rising.

UMM INTERESTING as i do love bf2 but cant see OP2 looking any better then BF2

[evilnate 0]

What does arma 2 have that OFP DR doesn't

A release date.

An original title.

Transparency.

As far as game features, who knows? OFP DR hasn't been released yet so it would be impossible to say for sure, and speculation doesn't equal facts.

[Calradian 10]

Disclaimer 1: I'm not a BIStudio fanboy incapable to admit negative views on ArmA2. I know its has a long road ahead of squashing bugs, tuning balance and squeezing performance.

Disclaimer 2: Nothing personal householddog - I just hate when people talk lots of crap without knowing shit :)

I'm by far not an expert in game engines but they normally ignore this kind of discussion anyway - so lets point out things that even a dilettante like me could notice.

Its hard, to find a game, where, lowering the res, does not increase the fps.

Not hard at all - its a typical situation when the bottleneck is not the graphic card but the microprocessor.

I really think the engine is pretty poor. An engine is not about how good a game looks, per say. Rather how much performance you get with those visuals. It's not particularly efficient IMHO.

Assuming it's the graphic part of the game engine you are talking about - I'd say that taking into account the complexity (number & detail of objects and applied effects - not the visual quality of it) of the scenes it usually has to render - it has an amazing performance! I don't know the exact stats and can't directly compare with another graphic engine but I can say: ArmA2 has the best virtual forests I've ever seen! Not visually stunning little grooves with fogs and nearby hills hiding the horizon conveniently cutting the complexity of the scene - but massive amount of trees, bushes, grass and other objects for many virtual kilometers away.

<crap pile>I don't really think the ballistics are going to be a major issue. They are certainly not difficult to calculate. Any coder could program it themselves with little difficulty <...> They can always code the things that the engine lacks. Or adapt its routines for a different project. The developer is not entirely limited to the engine.</crap pile>

All the objects on those forest I mentioned are dynamic - meaning grass moves when you crawl around, bushes fall broken by a light vehicle, and heavy ones are just killdozers ;) And that is just a tiny dot in the long feature list of this unique game engine. One of the biggest dots on that list is the amazing network code that makes all of that work for "limited only by server & bandwidth" number of players. If resolving physics and other complex processes (like advanced non-scripted AI group interaction for instance) would be so easy Armagan Yavuz would have included multiplayer in his masterpiece way before it hit beta v0.6. As for the ease of codding to bypass a game engine limitations... that only shows your "deep understanding" of game development and programming in general.

I hear, a lot of posters, saying Arma2 can't be optimised further. If this is true I couldn't really recommend it to anyone, without a top notch, computer ever. In effect you are telling people their computer's will never handle it.

I really can't recommend it ever.

You started to play PC games last week right? :D Now, seriously - the "top notch PC" label wears off really quick - buying at least a new graphic card every other year is a common practice in PC gaming. What really takes awful lots of time is waiting for a masterpiece of video game entertainment to be finished. The sequel of Operation Flashpoint (Armed Assault was just a visual upgrade) - one of the best in all gaming history is keeping me waiting 8 years and counting... so can you recommend me anything even remotely similar to what ArmA2 can offer?

[-Paladin- 10]

arma is out for sale and on my Hd ofp not

[ryan80 10]

OFP 2 isn't even out yet and so many people are assuming how bad it is.

[Zipper5 74]

There's a lot of evidence they can present to you to support that it is bad, ryan80. I for one also think it's looking terrible.

[-Paladin- 10]

There's a lot of evidence they can present to you to support that it is bad, ryan80. I for one also think it's looking terrible.

The only evidence that counts is my opinion on the ready product.

Ther is to much fanboy talking, i-net company´s dystroing a product by bad publicity and ather trics that are used by ppl.

If somthing is bad or good evry one hase to decide by him self, wehen ofp is out I will buy it and decide wher I stay and who hase made the bether game.

The looser game, will be seld or dystroyd or what ever.

[dunedain 48]

What does arma 2 have that OFP DR doesn't

Arma 2 has no ragdoll, no dismemberment "cf Ro", crappy physics, poor animations "especially between hands and weapons cf Ro/H&D2", crappy weather effects, crappy muzzle flash "this last most essential :rolleyes: "...

Ofp2 will have all this stuff but it still looks so AAA and casual, reminds me what Ubi done with Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon ... :butbut:

Edited June 15, 2009 by dunedain

[MehMan 0]

arma 2 has no ragdoll, no dismemberment "cf ro", crappy physics, poor animations "especially between hands and weapons cf ro/h&d2", crappy weather effects, crappy muzzle flash "this last most essential :rolleyes: "...

Ofp2 will have all this stuff but it still looks so aaa and casual, reminds me what ubi done with rainbow six and ghost recon ... :butbut:

keep on trolling

[Zipper5 74]

Ragdoll is worse than the current death animations in my opinion. Evidence provided in other games that have used it, such as Half-Life 2, Crysis and Far Cry 2, make it look just... Weird. It's much less natural than ArmA II's death animations. Dismemberment is also something that isn't in a lot of games, the only recent one I've seen it in is Call of Duty: World at War.

The weather effects aren't THAT bad. They're not amazing, but they look convincing enough. And seriously, when are people going to drop this muzzle-flash crap? So what? It's a muzzle-flash for God's sake! There's so much else in this game and people are whining about the muzzle-flash. Eugh...

[whisper 0]

keep on trolling

He's not that wrong, though ;) I prefer having bad death anims, no dismembrement, bad fog and dodgy anims, but content and innovation. I prefer unique games ;)

[dunedain 48]

MehMan, saying negative things about a game on its dev forum is always trolling for some guys in it .. Just saying what i'm thinking about both game until now, won't stop me from buying Arma2 like i bought Ofp 8 years ago.

Zipper5, "i was half joking about muzzle flash" concerning ragdoll if you played Red Orchestra they've done well much better than current animations, same goes for dismemberment, for those games you quoted realism isn't the goal.

I'll summary my previous point so I won't hurt anyone, I'll look for Ofp2 but only for its technical part while Arma2 will be as always true to itself, surely too much, but it still comforting on this time, where some good licenses get rapped by economic purposes.

Edited June 15, 2009 by dunedain

[MehMan 0]

You don't know if OFP2 will actually have any of those things.

[Lauxman 10]

Ofp2 will have all this stuff but it still looks so AAA and casual, reminds me what Ubi done with Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon ... :butbut:

And that is exactly why OFP2 will be horrible.

[katua 10]

I think both games will be top on its own style, and i think i will buy both and enjoy them. I have been playing games since 20 years ago and i can enjoy dcs black shark, silent hunter.. oblivion, the witcher.. doom, cod.., ofp , arma.. no matter the genre if it is a good game it is valuable for me.

Arma and ofp come from the same tree; Wolfstein 3D, Doom... That was the origin.

If there weren't for those "red barrels", no arma, no ofp, no crysis and no cod would have ever been created. So a bit of respect for the ancients is required.

Ofp created the sub-genre of tactical military sim (this is a great badge if you ask me), but it is just an adaptation of the classical 1st person shooter.

So the criticism on 1st person arcade shooters is like the car industry guys were laughting at those who invented the wheel.

[monty67t 0]

What does ArmA2 have that OFP2 doesn't? Well since none of you have played OFP2 you don't know. However, I will speculate and take a couple guesses along with the rest of you.

1) ArmA2 has fixed wing aircraft and OFP2 does not.

2) ArmA2 has horrible AI and physics and OFP2 does not.

3) ArmA2 is based on a very old engine with too many limitations and OFP2 isn't.

4) ArmA2 has fake FLIR simulated really poorly and OFP2 has excellent FLIR that looks much more like the real thing.

5) ArmA2 is somewhat easy to make addons and mods for, OFP2 is using the Lua language which is a much more widely used language that has been used to make incredible mods like Garry's Mod for HL2.

6) When ArmA2s healing system works, you can magically heal all the way back to full health, OFP2 doesn't simulate some kind of magical healing, once you're hurt, you're hurt. You can patch it up and stop the bleeding, but you never get back to full health.

7) ArmA2 uses the same old hit point system and OFP2 uses an awesome damage model. So in ArmA2 if you shoot a humvee in the door enough times it will explode like a red barrel, not the case in OFP2.

There are arguements for both sides and no one can actually say until OFP2 is released. I've supported BIS since the release of the original OFP and I will continue to pay for, play, and love BIS games. However, I'm not going to crown them king and blast every other game just because I love BIS.