ultra realistic mode

[frederf 0]

The HUD has little to do with Hellfire or Vikhr target acquisition normally. Be aware that there are actual HUDs and HMDs in ArmA2 (not the 2D GUI kind) and they do function apart from the 2D overlays. Putting Hellfires on target usually involves a heads-down look at a TADS cockpit screen with a black and white image. This is accomplished with a turreted optics view in game. The only real information missing in this view is range and the range is displayed when a target is locked using the box-diamond system (which I think is inappropriate for the Hellfire).

I also think that much of the 2D overlay GUI for infantrymen is inappropriate. Pretty much only the action menu, a quick-fading fire mode display (without ammo count), and a hip shoot fuzzy crosshair are all that's really justified.

"Removing HUDs" sounds is a nebulous statement. Do you mean the glass columnated display in 3D would be a mistake to be sure. But what 2D GUI elements really stand up to scrutiny? What 2D GUI elements are necessary and can be displayed in absolutely no other way? Animated gauges have been in since OFP so there goes the fuel gauge and the damage meter. The 3D HUD displays weapon count, type, and heading so there goes the upper-left weapon GUI and the compass tape.

Except IRL most infantrymen don't carry and/or aren't trained in using such devices.

That's not an except, that's an also. The idea to have assisted targeting does not suggest that every infantry squad have that ability, usually only special forward observers. Thus the "except" part of your reply is inappropriate.

[BlackLord 0]

when the bullet smashes through your avatars head or your vehicle errupts into flames you dan't actually die...

:D

What a pitty, that would be ultrarealistic and so much fun. BiS should totally include a small explosive device players can attach to their heads so when they die in the game they die in real life too. :p

[galzohar 31]

Yeah, "also" would've been more appropriate. They should at least make a realistic carrying system though so not everyone and their mom take a heavy laser designator.

HUD should only show you the kind of information you would have had access to IRL via feeling. Where you got shot, your firing mode and your stance for example should be on it. Crosshair for shooting unsighted and magazine bullet count, on the other hand, are things that should not be on the HUD.

Air weapons definitely should be operated via the aircraft controls only, and not via some silly artificial overlay HUD.

[frederf 0]

Weight and weight's effects, limited availability, and complexity of use should be sufficient to balance such equipment. Making a 50kg load far less pleasant than a 20kg load would go a long way to make ArmA players long to shed weight if able, which is a natural want of a human soldier. If the mission maker puts 100 SOFLAMs in a box then there's not too much one can do about that. Also if it took a few minutes to warm up and was suitably difficult to use a lot more players would stick to their trusty rifle more.

I don't mind a stance indication on principle but I've never needed one in ArmA. I am always able to tell/remember my stance so I would forgo such visual clutter personally. The ACE method of "weighing" your current magazine is a nice ability that allows you to check ammo count without a round-accurate counter in the upper left.

Unsighted shooting however I think deserves a very vague crosshair. I've tried with absolutely no crosshair and it's not right considering how off the screen your rifle is when unsighted. Human shooting performance unsighted is pretty good 25m or less. I believe a proper unsighted crosshair would enable shooting performance that matches real world ability and contributes the absolute minimum to UI clutter and aesthetic impact.

I was moderately disappointed that the 2-and-only-2 aircraft MFD gauges: the artificial horizon and the compass circle, have not been updated for ArmA2. Similarly neither have the HUD displays. There is not a lot of information that ArmA2 tries to display for aircraft and it could be displayed via these animated gauges and HUD using existing abilities and achieving a effect that could be viewed by anyone.

[Defunkt 431]

As mentioned elsewhere, rather than an unsighted crosshair I'd like to see an interim ironsight position where your weapon is raised but you haven't yet placed your eye to the scope/sights. This would offer much better CQB usability for weapons with medium/high-power optics and/or dual sight arrangements. One suggestion was a quick tap and release to toggle ironsights or hold down (1 second+) to go to full aiming through the sights.

[diveplane 0]

But do modern helicopters and jetfighters not usually have some form of sophisticated HUD? As opposed to the unrelistic HUD elements for lets say an infantry rifleman that the game allows ? Removing HUDs from modern fighter aircrafts would be a step back in realism, not forward... if the purpose is to make the game as true to life as possible.

hud being the unrealistic one on top of the screen showing enemy positions.

[bhaz 0]

I definately agree that elements of the HUD and game should be removable to create some sort of... hardcore mode. But I wouldn't want it all the time, perhaps a per server option? I guess it'd needa be like the grass in multiplayer, if the server has it enabled, so does everyone else.

[frederf 0]

As mentioned elsewhere, rather than an unsighted crosshair I'd like to see an interim ironsight position where your weapon is raised but you haven't yet placed your eye to the scope/sights. This would offer much better CQB usability for weapons with medium/high-power optics and/or dual sight arrangements. One suggestion was a quick tap and release to toggle ironsights or hold down (1 second+) to go to full aiming through the sights.

I believe that was me or I have made a similar suggestion as someone else that you've read.

Rifle states are currently low ready, high ready, and sighted. The inclusion of a shouldered and semi-sighted site (or changing of the existing states) might be helpful.

The sighted mode, even with 2xNum_- (FOV max toggle) is really hard to use for CQB because your eyepoint is bolted to the weapon sights, the weapon sights bobble, and thus your eyepoint bobbles. I believe ArmA2 has gone a long way to correcting that by having your eyepoint pretty steady and having the sights move with respect to your eye. That's my memory from watching videos.

[galzohar 31]

Unless you have your weapon down (like, while running or while manually hitting the "lower weapon" button), it's always in the "shouldered and ready to fire" position and you're just not looking through the sights.

The problem with unsighted shooting crosshair is that it forces the accuracy to be determined by pure conefire, and we all know random conefire is bad for realism (if I didn't move my rifle, while should my 2nd round be totally off in comparison to the 1st?). IRL even if you didn't hit because of lack of training, you can adjust based on where the bullets hit. In a game with conefire and a crosshair this is not possible. In a game with no crosshair it's still (after a bit of practice) pretty easy to hit someone at 25m, maybe not first shot (which btw is realistic for 25m unsighted), but hitting will be possible. Then the only way this system can break is by drawing a dot in the center of the screen, but you can force a bit of freeaim to prevent that from being effective.

All in all, making realistic unsighted shooting with no crosshair can give much better results than any crosshair system if done properly.

[osmo 0]

I definately agree that elements of the HUD and game should be removable to create some sort of... hardcore mode. But I wouldn't want it all the time, perhaps a per server option? I guess it'd needa be like the grass in multiplayer, if the server has it enabled, so does everyone else.

I agree. I'd love to see "realism" mode which could be switched on by server (and forced on to all players) which removes HUD etc. Some things should still stay to keep it reasonable. For example, it's important to be able to see how many magazines you have left, and in real life you can just look down to where the magazines are stored and check it, but in ArmA you can't do that so it's good to be able to see it as text on the screen.

[frederf 0]

Unless you have your weapon down (like, while running or while manually hitting the "lower weapon" button), it's always in the "shouldered and ready to fire" position and you're just not looking through the sights.

Yeah that's called "high ready" the problem is, at least in ArmA1, it was really far from your vision such that usually only the muzzle tip poked in the corner of your screen and firing by generally looking along the length of the weapon was no where near as effective as it would be with the rifle in my hands.

The problem with unsighted shooting crosshair is that it forces the accuracy to be determined by pure conefire

This is not true. There is no "cone fire" for an M16 in ArmA. It always tracks where the muzzle is pointed even if it is on your back. You might not be able to tell without crosshair but the bullet always flies where the weapon is pointed.

[galzohar 31]

Neither IRL nor in game are you supposed to fire "along the length of the barrel" (unless you're firing in point blank). You're supposed to just know that when you hold your weapon in a certain way it'll point in a certain direction. IRL this is achieved by practicing a lot, and same can be done in game. At short range I can hit people fine with no crosshairs (highest difficulty). I'd just love it if conefire would've been removed and possibly other methods introduced to reduce accuracy of shooting without sights, so that if I see I hit left of my target I know it's because I need to adjust right, and not because the game rolled a certain number.

I don't see how you can say the weapon always fires when it's pointed when you have a converging crosshair. There would be no reason for a converging crosshair if there was no conefire when firing unaimed.

[frederf 0]

You seem to be ignoring the direct statement that there is no "cone fire" in weapon aiming apart from the natural dispersion of the weapon itself. There is no "converging crosshair" The little bars ][ on the sides show how fatigued you are from running. The little ' mark between the bars ]'[ always shows your muzzle direction. You can even see it jump when you fire as the muzzle climbs briefly.

Also the crosshair ambiguities and the muzzle tracking ambiguities are two separate issues. The crosshair could take on any shape or visible appearance that you please; this does not change the fact that the muzzle is always tracked by the game engine. There is no "rolling of the dice" apart from natural weapon dispersion.

To clarify what I mean by "natural weapon dispersion" I mean if you screw the rifle to a big hunk of concrete and pull the trigger several times the barrel is perfectly stationary but the bullets will not all fly the exact same path due to atmospheric effects, small changes in bullet shape, etc.

As for being able to shoot without any crosshair accurately... what floating zone do you use? For me the weapon is barely on the screen and since I operate with some floating zone (hey this isn't CS:S), it's usually impossible to have any idea where the weapon is pointed except for somewhere in the middle 50% of my screen in the X and Y directions.

[GoOB 0]

As far as I know, there are no hit indicators on real tanks....

And as far as I know, ARMA2's tanks aren't real either - I heartily agree with stripping alot of GUI features out (no floating waypoints in first person view, no crosshairs, no "health meters" and no magic radars for all vehicles with weapons mounted). But for tanks, and to certain extent two man aircrafts the radar screen and the damage indicators simulates something that can't be represented very well IG, atleast not in singleplayer anyway. The radar in a tank for instance may very well be seen as the information the commander of the tank is feeding to the gunner, the same for a two seat helicopter like the Cobra, the radar represents information that the gunner is feeding to the pilot. That said, for multiplayer these radar screens are redundant, in MP you can have another player feed you that info from the gunners seat.

As for damage indicators in tanks et cetera they serve to simulate the fact that sitting inside a tank, or indeed, a soft skinned vehicle you will be rather well aware of when you need to bail, sure, you might not know the damper fluid is leaking from that last RPG/.50 cal salvo or that your fender is bent.... But at the end of the day, we can't simulate all the cues to vehicle failure/explosion/destruction that we would receive in real life - Take the GUI with a grain of salt, and indeed, see it as something that replaces smoke that makes you unable to breathe as a way to know when to get the hell out of dodge.

For all this text.... I very well see how nice it would be to remove radar-fields and whatnot for multiplayer use, but for singleplayer they do have a purpose, to simulate a flow of information that we in MP could get from our teammates. I remember playing with Cobras that lacked radar screens in good ole OFP for instance, good fun, and a good challenge.

[frederf 0]

I disagree about "IR radar" in single player. AI spot targets just as well without "IR radar" and can be ordered to target them as quickly if not more so than a human gunner would.

[MBot 0]

Absolutely agree about removing the "magic-radar" in non-radar equipped vehicles. Spotting your targets is as fundamental to a pilot as it is to an infantry man. And for the helos, tanks and many airplanes, this is still a matter of scaning the landscape with your eyes (or through some optics). The magic-radar is a big gameplay killer for vehicle combat.

Keep it as a difficulty option, just as it is for infantry, but give us the option to remove it.

[galzohar 31]

No floating zone for me. If I want for some reason to look at a different direction than the weapon is pointing, I'll use freelook. Besides, like you said yourself - the accuracy of unaimed shooting with no crosshair goes down as your floating zone increases in size, and I play on the highest difficulty where crosshairs (and a lot of other unrealistic things people complain about) simply aren't present. Even at the highest difficulty a couple of unrealistic HUD elements remain, though.

[frederf 0]

Ah see, you can't say that hip shooting without crosshair is fine if you have to turn floating zone to 0 basically turning the shooting into CS;S. Many of us play with a floating zone and it's a nice feature that must be a practical option. It's also silly that you can pull the trigger and have no idea if 5.56mm or 40mm is going to come out.

I think a very faint (like 30% opacity), fuzzy, and vague crosshair set is necessary for realistic unsighted shooting performance and muzzle identification. This is compounded by the fact that grenade throwing, laserDesignator on/off status, Stinger lock, etc all are broken without the 2D crosshairs. There are of course solutions to most or all of these 2D crosshair requirements: arm should be extended for grenade throwing, laserDesignator should have an on/off light on the scope display, and the Stinger should give a "lock tone" as per real life. Everything except the Stinger launch tone has been modeled before in ArmA1.

It also must be said that there aren't simply 2 difficultly levels but 2 difficulty sets that have a wide range of adjustment in each. Multiplayer kill messages for example are displayed in Veteran mode by default but can be configured off by server or local client.

[maddogx 13]

I think a very faint (like 30% opacity), fuzzy, and vague crosshair set is necessary for realistic unsighted shooting performance and muzzle identification.

In addition to that, I think making the crosshair fade in and become less fuzzy while holding the weapon fairly steady but fading it out when moving the crosshair too much would be a good idea. That way, running and gunning would still be very difficult, while taking time to stop and aim would give you info on your muzzle and allow shooting from the hip. :)

[Gemini 359]

+1 for this idea !

Realism = nothing at all on the screen to help player, like in real life.

[galzohar 31]

I did say that information you should have in real life should be on the HUD - that includes showing you if pressing "fire" will fire a m203 or a 5.56. Fire selector should also be on the HUD, since that's something you should be able to feel with your finger.

I also did say that veteran turns off *most* unrealistic HUD elements. Not all of them. There is still a need for that "ultra realistic mode" that the thread's title suggests, and it's really not all THAT hard to do if BIS (or even modders) really wanted to.

If you're going to fire weapons unsighted but have crosshairs that show you where the barrel is pointing and have the weapon always fire where the barrel is pointing, what's the point of having sights? IRL what sights do is show you where your barrel is pointing exactly, and without them you pretty much have to "guess" based on prior experience with the weapon. Usually a decent way to force inaccuracy in this way while keeping it as a "bullets go where the barrel points" is to enforce some minimal "floating zone" that is the same for everyone. Overall I don't think a big floating zone is something you really need for immersion or realism - if anything it just complicates moving around when you're not shooting. If you want to point your weapon in one way while looking at another (which btw IRL should be avoided when it isn't necessary), there's freelook (with or without TrackIR), and considering you should not look away from your weapon on a regular basis, a "hold to activate, release to deactivate" freelook button should be more than enough.

[frederf 0]

In addition to that, I think making the crosshair fade in and become less fuzzy while holding the weapon fairly steady but fading it out when moving the crosshair too much would be a good idea. That way, running and gunning would still be very difficult, while taking time to stop and aim would give you info on your muzzle and allow shooting from the hip. :)

Heh, slow down Tex. I was just talking about what can be done by a simple modder and some time in Photoshop. Variable intensity or geometry would be cool but I ask for a peach and you ask for the tree ;) Good thinking though.

In ArmA the crosshair actually does "dim" (become more transparent) after a certain time idle.

Realism = nothing at all on the screen to help player, like in real life.

Not really. Try throwing a baseball with only your eyes and ears for information, no fair knowing where your arms are. There are certain limitations of the human-computer interface that justify additional helpers.

If you're going to fire weapons unsighted but have crosshairs that show you where the barrel is pointing and have the weapon always fire where the barrel is pointing, what's the point of having sights?

Overall I don't think a big floating zone is something you really need for immersion or realism - if anything it just complicates moving around when you're not shooting. If you want to point your weapon in one way while looking at another

You use your sights because the crosshair is useless for shooting beyond a very short range ;) The question depends a lot on how the crosshairs are designed.

Also I disagree about floating zone. Floating zone is great such that every little twitch of your muzzle doesn't mean a corresponding twitch of vision. It's good to make you feel in the game when your vision is somewhat stabilized. And it's not fair to call floating zone "looking away from where your weapon is pointed." With moderate floating zone it's 10-20 degrees at most... hardly the complete opposite direction.

[galzohar 31]

I don't understand how you can say crosshair shooting is useless at long ranges, yet claim that crosshair shooting has no conefire. Those 2 claims cannot co-exist, as the crosshair has a very specific and well-defined dot at which you're supposedly aiming.

For the floating zone, like I said to add some inaccuracy to unaimed shooting you will still have some minimal floating zone which will be the same for everyone (though there is no reason to prevent you from setting it higher, but with no magic crosshairs I don't see why you'll want to).

[Spartan 969 10]

Anyone actually know how much time and work it takes an attack Choppers gunner to lock and launch? Speculation there... abounding :confused:

I think that the quest for realism should never stop as the fun of the game comes in for me in that.... when the bullet smashes through your avatars head or your vehicle errupts into flames you dan't actually die...

:D

within seconds your dead from a AH-64! :P

and if ya want realism, then in helecopters anything that moves with heat signature (people, animales, vehicles etc) should enhanced on your hud and lockable:P along with 360 degree radar

[frederf 0]

I don't understand how you can say crosshair shooting is useless at long ranges, yet claim that crosshair shooting has no conefire. Those 2 claims cannot co-exist, as the crosshair has a very specific and well-defined dot at which you're supposedly aiming.

For the floating zone, like I said to add some inaccuracy to unaimed shooting you will still have some minimal floating zone which will be the same for everyone (though there is no reason to prevent you from setting it higher, but with no magic crosshairs I don't see why you'll want to).

The crosshair does not define where the muzzle is! It is a visual indicator only! I'm also saying that crosshair shooting at long ranges is in properly accurate in the crosshair that I want implemented by the way, not the one that's currently in the game.

Changing floating zone to adjust shooting performance is bass ackwards. Floating zone should not have to be adjusted to make the game work correctly. What I'm suggesting lets people set floating zone to whatever they want and get proper unsighted shooting performance. Your "solution" does not.

within seconds your dead from a AH-64! :P

and if ya want realism, then in helecopters anything that moves with heat signature (people, animales, vehicles etc) should enhanced on your hud and lockable:P along with 360 degree radar

I hope you're joking. Your statement is a joke whether you intend it to be or not.