Can the AI see through grass? Some testing.

[Wifout Teef 10]

The AI doesn't see through bushes. They will shoot at you if they hear you shoot from there, see your muzzle flash, or see you move around the bush.

[Hyp3rdyn3 10]

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Edited June 26, 2009 by Hyp3rdyn3

[jakerod 254]

@Hyp: someone way back when made a How Not To Be Seen video from OFP.

Ontopic: I hope they do fix that. I don't have it yet but I could see it being very annoying.

[Bluenose 10]

I do think the AI is too quick to spot you. At night I have no chance!

[Praelium 0]

I do think the AI is too quick to spot you. At night I have no chance!

Seems to be mixed. The AI is very quick to spot me through trees and behind buildings, yet there seems to be an occasional delay for them to actually shoot me if I lean around the corner.

However, I still need to test more as I only have he demo.

[craig3000 10]

The disappointing thing for me is spawning traveling somewhere taking about 10-15minutes thinking nice one! I'm in the action now poke my head around the corner bam!!!! I have to respawn and do the same thing again

And when your in a helicopter even when your pretty fair away from the A.I they always manage to shoot you down as if there all equiped with stingers and miniguns, there also extremely accurate even though there so far away

I think its unplayable atm IMO

[MPBR 10]

The disappointing thing for me is spawning traveling somewhere taking about 10-15minutes thinking nice one! I'm in the action now poke my head around the corner bam!!!! I have to respawn and do the same thing again

And when your in a helicopter even when your pretty fair away from the A.I they always manage to shoot you down as if there all equiped with stingers and miniguns, there also extremely accurate even though there so far away

I think its unplayable atm IMO

Where is your squad when your poking your head around the corner ?

Did you scope out the enviroment prior to entering the town/city etc ?

This is not a run in and gun shooter...

[galzohar 31]

Where is your squad when your poking your head around the corner ?

Did you scope out the enviroment prior to entering the town/city etc ?

This is not a run in and gun shooter...

Still, someone has to be the first to poke his head around the corner, squad or not ;)

10-15 min travel times on a regular basis is too much, but that's the mission designer's fault, not the game's fault.

Back on topic - AI will see through grass/low vegetation but not see through bushes. Of course it's not always easy to tell what classifies as what (though setting terrain details to very low may help with that). Anyway, if the AI did see you, even if he loses sight of you he will guesstimate where you are and try to suppress/kill you, he won't just forget about you - at least not for a while.

Regarding AI detection, I've noticed that sometimes they'll detect you from amazing distances, while on other cases you can shoot them and they don't get a clue. Maybe it's just the sniper and SF "camo value" though, making it harder for the AI to see you in all situations, even when it makes no sense.

[craig3000 10]

Where is your squad when your poking your head around the corner ?

Did you scope out the enviroment prior to entering the town/city etc ?

This is not a run in and gun shooter...

My squad my squad HAHAH the A.I you have in your squad suck compared to the A.I you play against, heck what's the point having them they only give away your position the only thing there good for is AA and AT, there's been plenty of times where my squad of 8 has been wiped out by 1-2 A.I players I mean wtf?

Anyway I'm not too bothered about A.I, I just wish the performance was better, it's kind of like Crysis/Warhead it looks pretty but the gameplay is always clunky even on lower settings unless you have an uber rig and if its clunky it wrecks the whole immersion

[ebud 18]

Oh god, where's Walker? He'll be here any minute to make the OP do a battery of tests to prove his assumption. :rolleyes:

The AI cannot "see" you through bushes, but can detect you too easily with their spider senses.

If enough people see this as an issue, when does it finally become as issue rather than just shrugging it off as whining?

<edit> This post may seem out of place after the thread merge.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Ebud

[BlackLord 0]

If enough people see this as an issue, when does it finally become as issue rather than just shrugging it off as whining?

Never.

[HKFlash 9]

Oh god, where's Walker? He'll be here any minute to make the OP do a battery of tests to prove his assumption. :rolleyes:

He's probably too busy playing ArmA2 right now.:cool:

[nomdeplume 0]

I'm sure BIS are doing their best to improve the AI detection routines, and nobody would know better than them the limitations it currently has. It's definitely true the AI spots targets on the other side of hills and so on.

I don't find my AI squad is any worse than the enemy AI squads. Maybe double check the difficulty settings (you can adjust the friendly and enemy AI skill separately)? My AI squad regularly puts me to shame by spotting and shooting targets I can't even see -- which is actually a good illustration of the problem. Sometimes it's arguably just they have a better/different perspective than I do, but other times it seems clear there's no way the enemy was visible from their position.

The vegetation is annoying. I played a bit with the demo and then set the terrain detail to 'very low' to get rid of it. It looks really nice, and I can trade that for a framerate hit - that's a normal trade-off. But it makes the game so much harder to play, especially when you go prone and can't see a thing. It'd be okay if the AI also couldn't see anything when prone, but that's clearly not the case, so it just seems like a bunch of eye candy that puts the player at a significant disadvantage.

[Cirap 0]

nice test, certainly looks like the behave realistically

Can you shoot suppressed weapons with realistic reactions? The sonic crack should make them take cover, but they shouldn't be able to pinpoint you very easily.

I'd try it myself, but I don't have the game and I just uninstalled the demo

Edited June 26, 2009 by Cirap

[KeyCat 131]

The AI cannot "see" you through bushes, but can detect you too easily with their spider senses.

I've been mucking around and testing various thing last couple of nights and I agree that the AI's "ESP sensibility" needs some tweaking down the road.

I haven't done any proper test missions to share (yet) but try to put a single AI enemy ~20 meters ahead of you facing away (skill slider 0.50) and then put yourself in as a sniper and try to sneak up on him from behind, in other words crawl slowly, he will detect you almost instantly when you start to crawl.

Tests done with following default (Regular) settings in the .ArmA2Profile.

skillEnemy=0.60000002;

precisionEnemy=0.60000002;

Ohh worth mentioning again. It's quite easy to "pick apart" the AI of any sim/game if just focusing on one single thing but we have to try to remember to see the bigger picture as well. However I think several AI things like this can be improved with cfg adjustments and most likely will be - judging from BIS past track record!

Great sim tho even with it's current warts and all and I've seen great improvements in other AI areas :)

/KC

Edited June 26, 2009 by KeyCat

[doford 10]

My squad my squad HAHAH the A.I you have in your squad suck compared to the A.I you play against, heck what's the point having them they only give away your position the only thing there good for is AA and AT, there's been plenty of times where my squad of 8 has been wiped out by 1-2 A.I players I mean wtf?

Anyway I'm not too bothered about A.I, I just wish the performance was better, it's kind of like Crysis/Warhead it looks pretty but the gameplay is always clunky even on lower settings unless you have an uber rig and if its clunky it wrecks the whole immersion

Do you mark targets for your team AI, change there formation and stance and keep them at a distance?

They're normally pretty good at med-long range. They're not good for rush tactics tho.

[ebud 18]

snip...

Ohh worth mentioning again. It's quite easy to "pick apart" the AI of any sim/game if just focusing on one single thing but we have to try to remember to see the bigger picture as well. However I think several AI things like this can be improved with cfg adjustments and most likely will be - judging from BIS past track record!

snip...

/KC

I can live with it the way it is since it's been this way for the last 8/9 or so years. If it hasn't been perfected by now then it's not going to happen. I also know how if you fix/tweak one part of the AI's senses in a config how it can really really screw it up when you put the AI in another situation.

In open, rural terrain playing combined arms scenarios this AI is top notch, but when you get into denser environments or when you try to play it in R6 style, these issues really show. Over the years though, with the mission editor I can more than make my own missions so that those issues are limited. So I can live with it, I just like to bitch and moan about it on occasion.

[KeyCat 131]

I agree that this issue been there (more or less) since the dawn of OFP but trying to stay optimistic about it.

I guess we are a hard crowd to please. Some of us want's sneaky stealth missions, some want's all-out-epic-WWIII-like-wars while others want's something in between. I guess it's hard finding a balance that works for all, but still hoping...

/KC

Edited June 26, 2009 by KeyCat

[ebud 18]

I agree that this issue been there (more or less) since the dawn of OFP but trying to stay optimistic about it.

I guess we are a hard crowd to please. Some of us want's sneaky stealth missions, some want's all out epic wars like WWIII while others want's something in between and I guess it's hard finding a balance that works for all, but still hoping...

/KC

I agree. This engine can do anything and everything, but only a few things really, really well. Most people, myself included, lose sight of the fact that unless you know the engine inside and out you really cannot understand why things happen, why it runs so slow at times, why the ai doesn't act like it does in Bf2, why you can kill a tank with enough rounds from a 249. Most people don't care, they just know it "feels" broken when in-fact it's not, they just don't know how the play the game correctly or don't understand that the engine has to do more than just play out an interactive scene and place you in it. It's not perfect, and if the scope were scaled down things might work better but then it would be just like any other game.

[Tammej 10]

Like someone said above, while being prone on a landscape as flat as can be, it is pretty much impossible to aim now, and there are hardly any smooth surfaces anymore, aside from naked cliffs or roads.

But the AI seems to be able to do it just fine. Even if it's not, it feels like it has supernatural powers. Being prone should have a lot of advantages, but they don't work out right in ArmA 2, they work against you. They still hit you, because they aim perfectly well while standing up, and unless you have a tree for cover, you're pretty much history.

I'd dare you test this: In the mission "bitter chill", try to reaproach the base you started at, directly from the forest to the south of the entryway. The enemy AI will be at that entryway. You are *in* the forest. You should be well out of sight. Guess what ... every time I tried that, I got shot-up pretty bad. They just crossed the road and behaved like they can see right through all the trees and shrubbery. And I wasn't exactly making a ruckus. To top it off, I couldn't see them *at all*. Not even with the binocular. It was all just trees 'n trees and more trees to me. And then I ate the lead.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Tammej

[ta.maximus 10]

I wonder when people will realize that enemy AI and friendly AI uses exactly the same AI and one isn't more somehow higher "evolved" than the other. It all comes down to:

1) Is the enemy AI stationary and is your squad moving? If so, they have a better chance of killing your squad.

2) Are they situated in a better location than you? They often are because the mission designer may have placed them in a good defensive position while you are happily strolling across an open field.

3) Do they have better weapons than your squad?

4) Is the enemy AI squad set to a higher skill level than yours?

I bet I can take out a 50-100 enemy AI soldiers together with 10 friendly AI's depending on the situation - without cheating or using known flaws in the engine.

[Tammej 10]

If you meant me, I didn't see any of the targets they announced through the radio, when we were in the forest. I wasted hours just to get into a proper position, and never saw a soul while they obviously saw something. If this is supposed to be athmospheric, it takes me out of the experience. If this is supposed to be real, it's unreal.

[doford 10]

Like someone said above, while being prone on a landscape as flat as can be, it is pretty much impossible to aim now, and there are hardly any smooth surfaces anymore, aside from naked cliffs or roads.

But the AI seems to be able to do it just fine. Even if it's not, it feels like it has supernatural powers. Being prone should have a lot of advantages, but they don't work out right in ArmA 2, they work against you. They still hit you, because they aim perfectly well while standing up, and unless you have a tree for cover, you're pretty much history.

I'd dare you test this: In the mission "bitter chill", try to reaproach the base you started at, directly from the forest to the south of the entryway. The enemy AI will be at that entryway. You are *in* the forest. You should be well out of sight. Guess what ... every time I tried that, I got shot-up pretty bad. They just crossed the road and behaved like they can see right through all the trees and shrubbery. And I wasn't exactly making a ruckus. To top it off, I couldn't see them *at all*. Not even with the binocular. It was all just trees 'n trees and more trees to me. And then I ate the lead.

I was playing bitter chill on elite and myself and the AI took out loads of ai heading towards napa. Through forests, in the middle of fields, ect. Only reason I died once was because I wanted to see if I could satchel a bmp.

Good tactic i've found is to hold fire, retreat from danger, allow ai to recognise enermy from distance and then open fire.

[Tammej 10]

I guess I fail to just use the AI properly then, when I try to make some kills of my own. ;)

Edited June 26, 2009 by Tammej

[nomdeplume 0]

Yes the friendly AI has the same ESP as enemy AI, but that doesn't solve the problem. I shouldn't have to have friendly AI with me at all times or suffer a massive disadvantage. If I can't see enemies 500 metres away on the other side of a forest, then my AI companions shouldn't be able to "see" them either.

One theory I have is that the AI gains a much larger detection bonus against moving enemies than it should do. It should be easier to spot moving infantry, but not so much easier that you can't approach an enemy base from a dense forest. Concealment seemed to be much more effective in Arma1.

Then again, I did find Arma1 pretty hard to enjoy with the stock AI as well, so perhaps it's just a case of BIS being tremendously hardcore and me being a bit soft. :)