Arma 2 and trees

[JayMeal 10]

Hey guys, still messin with the demo of the game, it's one of my faves already without even using the full version. But theres a few things, that make me LOL more than am concerned about.

One thing I noticed, is with basically any car/armored vehicle, if you go a moderate speed and hit any type of tree, no matter the size, the trees just topples over, with no damage to the car.

Now..I've been in a car that's hit head on with a tree, and i can say there wasnt so much as a scratch on the tree but the car was totaled, so i dont understand the logic of like 20mph hitting a tree and it just falls.

Another thing is the lack of damage to vehicles, not just the car vs tree thing, but even helis and im sure planes, the most "damage" ive seen to wheeled vehicles is the glass shattered, but thats about it. i havent even tires to shoot out tired, but i think there should be damaged even just basic dents or glass shattering when you hit objects. And when i take a heli and i come down at a moderate speed, nose down, the damn thing will just stand on its nose till it comes down, sure enough not a scratch on the heli even though usually its not operational afterwards.

So theres some aspecs of arma 2 that are SUPER realisitc then these quirks that seem so out of place in a realistic sim like this.

Anyone agree or is it just me

[no use for a name 0]

Welcome to OFP/Arma! that's just the the game...All vehicles use a fairly basic hitpoint system, so it's not really localized. IMO it has so much to model that they skimped on the damage and physics for the vehicles and concentrated more on the infantry aspect like ballistics, weapon models, AI pathfinding, etc.

There might be some mods that will change this, but only time will tell. Pretty sure BIS won't be adding any major physics/damage changes of the vehicles (unless of course they consider something a bug

[JayMeal 10]

Thanks for the welcome. You're probably right, I would imagine it would require several new models for each vehicle, but a nice crash is always nice. The helicopter "crash lands" are just silly to me though. I mean here's a real life video of when a heli goes unstable

arma2 physics are very similar but what it lacks is the rotors crashing and breaking causing a catastrophic failure, which would probably require a nice model animation.

But like I said it's just so darn out of place seeing all the smoke and carnage of war, then see your heli dance on it's nose, lol.

[pokemaughan 10]

That's one thing I've always wanted in a sim like this- a mix of realism on foot and wonderful damage modelling for the vehicles. An all-around sim, instead of a sim with tacked-on features.

But all-in-all, ARMA 2 is the best of it's kind, so I'm not complaining

[JayMeal 10]

Yeah one of the most accurate sims IMO, but still not perfect. My suggestion for BIS is to atleast increase the amount of damage the trees take before they topple over, and for fences, when you're going 40mph, you should fly through the simple fences around the map, but it brings u to a dead halt n then pushes the fence over.

[Greg 0]

...Now..I've been in a car that's hit head on with a tree, and i can say there wasnt so much as a scratch on the tree but the car was totaled, so i dont understand the logic of like 20mph hitting a tree and it just falls....

What kind of car were you driving in real live and in the game?

I've driven in a hunting wagon, a dune buggy fitted with bull bar. We drove through a forest knocking down trees more than 20cm in diameter without damaging the vehicle at all. I presume a HHMV can do better than that. By the way, that was an crazy ride: wacky wheels, mad driver and gun nuts.

Edited July 25, 2009 by Greg

[Reyn 10]

The moral of the story is don't drive into trees.

[maturin 12]

It'll damage you more than the car. I killed myself on a fence.

[MaXyM 10]

I'm more familiar with racing simulators more than ARMA, and believe me, there is also missing a lot of reality when calculating crashing. Damage system consists 2 major things: physical damage and graphical representation. I'm sure that achieve realistic behaviours for both is really hard.

Physical damage needs a lot of data from real vehicles, crash tests which allows to map collisions on damages (note crucial meaning of power and angle of impact). More, we know that CPUs are overloaded by current game version. So, what would be used to calculation additional physics?

Graphically it may be represented by predefined damages but it is not real and often looks terrible repeatable. New technologies (like geometry shaders) allows to modify existing objects but it is available since DX10.

So.. as I said this subject is the main problems in sims where collisions is the main part of the product (racing simulators inluding the best of them: iRacing, rFactor, GTR2, Race series).

So I would not expect from BIS to create something better, especially if collisions are not most important thing in the title.