What if CryEngine was used as Arma 3 future engine?

[funkee 0]

I also hope that Virtual Reality will be finally replaced. Even free AA3 engine "Unreal" would be better than this crap.

[noubernou 77]

I also hope that Virtual Reality will be finally replaced. Even free AA3 engine "Unreal" would be better than this crap.

No, it wouldn't.

[Pyronick 21]

I think Virtual Reality is slowly being rewritten, we've that the game now loads seperate threads for different tasks.

To me the graphics engine, AI and sound engine look completely rewritten.

Hopefully these are divided in modules and objects so they can be easily replaced in the future.

I hope to see an addition of gameplay physics, even in a very basic form (think FarCry for instance) in a future title.

Something that allows for proper object physics like in Half-Life 2, with the addition of simulating suspensions, destroying (premodeled) static meshes, etc.

Or even rope physics for rapid decent.

[whisper 0]

I also hope that Virtual Reality will be finally replaced. Even free AA3 engine "Unreal" would be better than this crap.

lol

AA3 engine (like most other "working beautifully" engines) dies once you get past 2 km terrain :D

VR doesn't.

VR wins in this department, which is a good thing, because that's what it is designed to do and what makes the game unique. You don't like that, you don't like the game genre, basically

[fraghetti 10]

i dont care about the graphics tbh, but the animations. it just looks ugly when you shoot a guy while he is prone and about to stand up, he first has to finish his animation, and THEN he does his scripted death-animation. rag doll, anyone? :P

[Big Dawg KS 6]

I also hope that Virtual Reality will be finally replaced. Even free AA3 engine "Unreal" would be better than this crap.

That right there tells me you have no clue what you are talking about.

Unreal is quite a powerful engine; AA3 does not take advantage of this. The AA3 implementation of Unreal can't even cope with it's own game at times, so the remote thought of even considering it for a game of ArmA's scope is downright ludicrous. Also, Unreal certainly isn't free. Ok, there is a free version, but you have to pay Epic to release commercial games with it, so you're better off getting a licensed version.

---------- Post added at 10:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:42 AM ----------

i dont care about the graphics tbh, but the animations. it just looks ugly when you shoot a guy while he is prone and about to stand up, he first has to finish his animation, and THEN he does his scripted death-animation. rag doll, anyone? :P

That's something that VR can certainly improve on, and as we have seen BI is continually improving animations. No new engine is needed here. Sure, it'd be nice one day to have sort-of ragdoll in ArmA, hopefully well implemented though unlike a lot of games where ragdoll causes bodies to go flying.

Edited October 6, 2010 by Big Dawg KS

[Vultar 0]

Guys guys guys, what are you talking about?

Real Virtuality vs Unreal Engine

RV - 30$. Open World Military Simulation. Modding fully available.

Just needs more care for details and multiplayer.

Just look at ACEmod to see what this baby can do. I love ACE :P

UE - Another 50$ commercial game. Limited maps.

Multiplayer? SC Conviction's doesnt work.

And CryEngine3? It's platform crap. CE2 is better.

I do still think that Care is all that RV needs. Other than that we have a nice original game on a unique engine. PC only ;)

Ah, forgot to mention. Show me ANY game with map size of that in Arma2.

Edited October 6, 2010 by Vultar

[gossamersolid 155]

I also hope that Virtual Reality will be finally replaced. Even free AA3 engine "Unreal" would be better than this crap.

hahahah go away troll

[Zipper5 74]

Why dignify funkee with a response anymore? :rolleyes:

[Pyronick 21]

And CryEngine3? It's platform crap. CE2 is better.

You do realize that CE3 is an extension of CE2 and would look pretty much the same on PC?

Obviously console builds have less demanding features.

There are a few new features though, such as this:

http://www.shackvideo.com/crytek-i3d-2010-tech-demo-17406

I do still think that Care is all that RV needs. Other than that we have a nice original game on a unique engine. PC only ;)

Ah, forgot to mention. Show me ANY game with map size of that in Arma2.

Exactly. This is why Virtual Reality should stay. But I still think it needs gameplay physics.

By the time it will see daylight, I assume DirectCompute and OpenCL hardware is already mainstream. So I would use that as an advancement.

Edited October 6, 2010 by SgtH3nry3

[Flash Thunder 10]

The basics need to be refined before I would ask for physics like half life 2 or crysis

I would expect

better LOD's

Longer grass draw distance

Parallax mapping on more than terrain mesh

particle effect overhaul I really hate them in arma 2 except for the smoke grenades (even then those are extremely taxing on the cpu)

Lighting rendering overhaulment, Shadows dont light up areas behind walls, more light sources that cast shadows, like headlights/flashlights casting shadows.

Streaming refinement villages that dont bring the game to a crawl

Higher viewdistances

Hopefully these come in:

Crysis physics maybe with not as much fidelity

35km Viewdistance

Animation/physics blending system like Euphoria Natural Motion

Overhaul of Destruction models, Gore skeletons, Realistic Vehicle damage simulation driven by physics engine, Overhaul in vehicle controls/handling.

Arma 3 will be a good game, hoping BIS will have enough funds to keep in Development for as long as they can before shipping so we dont have another Arma 2 German launch Nightmare. By then my performance issues should be a thing of the past. Phew. :)

Good thing that was fixed in upcoming BETA PATCHES: Z-fighting Significantly reduced this is great BIS keep it up!

Edited October 6, 2010 by Flash Thunder

[danny96 80]

Oh damn this engine is cool the graphics look so real!

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

Just epic lols at the guy who was complaining about grenades being unusable in CQB... Seriously? You want to be able to use a nade when the enemy is that close?

More epic lols at the people wanting to use a third party engine. I can't see BIS doing that at all... It's a simulator not a game, RV is fantastic at what it does. RV4 will (should) wtfpwn anything on the market in terms of capabilities.

[celery 8]

It's a simulator not a game

Trolololo.

[st_dux 26]

Seriously? You want to be able to use a nade when the enemy is that close?

Seriously, grenades are used in CQB all the time. They are an integral part of MOUT training IRL, and for good reason. IRL, it's very easy to crack open a door and toss a grenade into a room, or throw a grenade into a window without exposing yourself at all. Grenade control in ArmA is nothing short of absolutely terrible. I honestly can't think of a single tactical shooter that's done it worse.

[Pyronick 21]

The basics need to be refined before I would ask for physics like half life 2 or crysis

I'm not asking for Half-Life 2 puzzles and detailed interactive games. :p

Just more FarCry-esque object physics, like barrels flipping over and tables getting knocked over.

Even Quake/Half-Life 1-like crate pushing would greatly enhance the gameplay.

I would expect

better LOD's

Longer grass draw distance

These definitely are the most important.

Parallax mapping on more than terrain mesh

I'm actually hoping to see less parallax mapping and more tessellation.

If the new AMD Radeon HD 6k series is released GPU's have better tessellation performance then parallax occlusion pixel shaders, this included the nVidia GT 4xx series.

particle effect overhaul I really hate them in arma 2 except for the smoke grenades (even then those are extremely taxing on the cpu)

Yes, but I don't understand why most game engines still render particles on CPU's.

HLSL Shader Model 3.0, DirectCompute or OpenCL allows for GPU accelerated particle rendering and dynamics.

Lighting rendering overhaulment, Shadows dont light up areas behind walls, more light sources that cast shadows, like headlights/flashlights casting shadows.

I don't know if modern hardware can handle this. ArmA 2 has a lot of lights to cast and to soft shadow.

Streaming refinement villages that dont bring the game to a crawl

I think that's because of texture compression and file transfer bandwidth.

This seems to be solved if you use low-latency SSDs.

Crysis physics maybe with not as much fidelity

Maybe in the far future. A whole new physics engine needs to be built from scratch. And I don't know if the engine itself needs intensive rewrite to incorporate a physics engine.

Most engines with physics engine or physics middleware are built with dynamics in mind.

Arma 3 will be a good game, hoping BIS will have enough funds to keep in Development for as long as they can before shipping so we dont have another Arma 2 German launch Nightmare. By then my performance issues should be a thing of the past. Phew. :)

Good thing that was fixed in upcoming BETA PATCHES: Z-fighting Significantly reduced this is great BIS keep it up!

I'm sure ArmA 3 will be a huge improvement. The studio is increased in size, ArmA 2 has drawn more attention than previous titles, most killer bugs has been squashed and ArmA 2 is even graphically up to date with most AAA shooters.

[Grillsquad 10]

Wow have you seen the new cryEngine 3 engine? This could suit a game like Arma!

Fully destructible enviorments, Open world . easy create to mods and can convert your work into the consoles in "real time" and last but not least, looks downright Sexy

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/14/cryengine-3-released-box-of-tissues-not-included/

Remember OPF2? Seen the xbox and playstation3 logo in the engine = limitations just there. Nice graphics and all, but the Crytek engine wouldn't be utterly useless for a game like arma. If you want to play on maps the size of COD, sure thing it's perfect, but arma's wast landscapes where stuff is happening all over the map realtime wouldn't be possible.

If anything, I'd rather have BI to create a whole new engine for the next, if any installment of arma.

[BlackLord 0]

And I don't know if the engine itself needs intensive rewrite to incorporate a physics engine.

It can be improved further, VBS2 has much better physics engine than ArmA2.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Just more FarCry-esque object physics, like barrels flipping over and tables getting knocked over.

Have you ever even played a mission with barrels and tables? :raisebrow: They get knocked over all the time.

---------- Post added at 09:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 AM ----------

A whole new physics engine needs to be built from scratch. And I don't know if the engine itself needs intensive rewrite to incorporate a physics engine.

Most engines with physics engine or physics middleware are built with dynamics in mind.I'm sure ArmA 3 will be a huge improvement. The studio is increased in size, ArmA 2 has drawn more attention than previous titles, most killer bugs has been squashed and ArmA 2 is even graphically up to date with most AAA shooters.

RV already incorporates basic physics. It has since OFP, though it has improved much. There are some issues with collision detection (not always happening), but other than that it's pretty much at the level you'd expect for any generic game engine. Even then, it's probably just because physics isn't given as high a computational priority. I think a lot of the confusion is a result of only a few objects in ArmA 2 actually using these physics: like barrels and other small objects. In a game of ArmA 2's scope, objects using physics are going to be more expensive.

Edited October 7, 2010 by Big Dawg KS

[Pyronick 21]

Have you ever even played a mission with barrels and tables? :raisebrow: They get knocked over all the time.

Yes, but those are placed by the mission editor. And it seems the collision detection is off and has a too slow refresh rate.

Map bound objects still are static.

RV already incorporates basic physics. It has since OFP, though it has improved much. There are some issues with collision detection (not always happening), but other than that it's pretty much at the level you'd expect for any generic game engine. Even then, it's probably just because physics isn't given as high a computational priority. I think a lot of the confusion is a result of only a few objects in ArmA 2 actually using these physics: like barrels and other small objects. In a game of ArmA 2's scope, objects using physics are going to be more expensive.

Of course, but there still is much room for improvement.

Physics may not have a high priority but I consider it higher up the list compared to graphics for instance.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Yes, but those are placed by the mission editor. And it seems the collision detection is off and has a too slow refresh rate.

Map bound objects still are static.Of course, but there still is much room for improvement.

Physics may not have a high priority but I consider it higher up the list compared to graphics for instance.

Valid points, but also consider how ArmA 2 uses terrain streaming - enabling physics on map objects would probably cause a lot of issues (especially for mission makers). In that case, I'd argue to remove small objects from the map/building proxies alltogether, and let the mission place them where needed. This of course would mean more work for the mission makers who need to populate more detailed environments, but nothing a few handy scripts couldn't accopmplish.

And I agree that some objects should use physics with higher priority (grenades for example; I have tested using ArmA 2's "thing"-object physics for grenades and apart from clipping issues at high speeds, it works very well). But I also don't want to see performance suffer do to abuse of using physics, or compromise in the game's scope just to allow for more use of physics.

[dmarkwick 261]

Seeing as we're talking about ArmA2 the game and not VBS2 the tool - perhaps some sort of gaming style split could be used to differentiate between MP and SP?

I mean, as much as I hate to do this, mention another game, but Crysis has a system where full-on physics is used for SP and a nerfed system is used for MP. I think it would be a relatively doable system, to apply physics to all objects in SP but to remove it in MP, a simple flag.

I mean, in a PvP game online just how important is ragdoll anyway? I would say not at all, or at least very little. But SP it makes it just that little bit more enjoyable IMO, after a while of playing you get to "know" how a dead body lies and can easily disregard dead bodies ingame because of this. Some visual dissonance would make the game a little more tense :)

I do note however the success of the SLX system of "resurrecting" some dead bodies to simulate another aspect of this.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Seeing as we're talking about ArmA2 the game and not VBS2 the tool - perhaps some sort of gaming style split could be used to differentiate between MP and SP?

I mean, as much as I hate to do this, mention another game, but Crysis has a system where full-on physics is used for SP and a nerfed system is used for MP. I think it would be a relatively doable system, to apply physics to all objects in SP but to remove it in MP, a simple flag.

That still doesn't address one of the biggest hurdles in ArmA 2. ArmA 2 has a huge ambient game world. Pretty much every other game revolves around the player: things way on the other side of the map that the player can't see usually don't do anything, or might not even be there until the player approaches. That means these games can get away with higher fidelity physics, because even if they have larger maps they still only care what's next to the player.

One of the major selling points of ArmA 2 however is its simlike ambient world, where things can't simply sit still because the player isn't around. You can have huge battles playing out on the other side of the game world that the player doesn't even know is happening, yet is totally independent from his actions. That said, ArmA 2 still optimizes this very well, and you could argue that physical interactions can be faked in these situations; but you have to wonder if that would work given the nature of ArmA 2's gameplay where everything is usually accessible.

[dmarkwick 261]

That is all true, and is in fact a point that I often bring up myself :) the essential non-player-centric nature of the game engine. However, for SP gameplay purposes, a "bubble" of physics can be implemented I expect, centered on the player, like a sort of "view distance" but for physics. All events outside the bubble revert to old-style engine handling, there's probably no difference to the player experience to come across a situation that's happened outside the physics bubble long before the player got there.

In any case, it's just a musing on my behalf, I'd rather the current engine than a lesser but physics-enabled engine :)

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

Seriously, grenades are used in CQB all the time. They are an integral part of MOUT training IRL, and for good reason. IRL, it's very easy to crack open a door and toss a grenade into a room, or throw a grenade into a window without exposing yourself at all. Grenade control in ArmA is nothing short of absolutely terrible. I honestly can't think of a single tactical shooter that's done it worse.

Fair enough, I've never really noticed a problem tbh but then I could just be far too used to compensating. I've lobbed a nade into a building to clear it without taking damage in arma 2 many times... Incidentally in Crysis wars you can drop a frag through the skylight of a building and still get killed by it despite the thick concrete ceiling between the blast and you.

Admittedly there is only one way of chucking the grenade in Arma 2 and this does feel clumsy at times, if there was a way to roll it or underarm toss it would be quite good rather than having the frag bounce off the wall of the building and explode in your face. Adding this isn't necessarily an engine change though but some clever scripting could do it with the exsiting system.