What if CryEngine was used as Arma 3 future engine?

[nodunit 397]

It had to be an apache.. You know I really entertaining taking a break but now...

Outerra would definately be better subject than the cryengine, we can see the flight model is vareh nice and there is an example of in flight and active display the graphics don't scream CG to me and the view is just gorgeous, terrain would definately be outtera's strongest point which could really benefit all platforms, aviation and double for infantry and ground vehicles. I think that Outtera uses tesselation for the terrain though, something which if RV3 had could give it a major boost on all fields, especially on the ground..imagine driving a tank through those ruts.

The only question would be could it handle the AI and advanced features that RV2 and RV3 is capable of.

Edited November 12, 2010 by NodUnit

[dmarkwick 261]

Looks like a very nice engine :) very interesting. Aren't those terrains procedural though? I'd guess there would be some work involved in making a hard-coded terrain (like a real-location terrain) with placed buildings etc. But maybe they've already got a solution for that.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Looks like a very nice engine :) very interesting. Aren't those terrains procedural though? I'd guess there would be some work involved in making a hard-coded terrain (like a real-location terrain) with placed buildings etc. But maybe they've already got a solution for that.

[dmarkwick 261]

Very nice :) I expect the next great leap will be to procedurally identify buildings and other elements and to insert approximations into the engine from a library of objects.

[whisper 0]

Trees are 2D billboard in Outterra. Looks fine from distance, not when hiding just behind it, which is something common in ArmA ;)

Still, their engine looks nice

[NeMeSiS 11]

Trees are 2D billboard in Outterra.

Which is not supposed to stay like that, its WIP. ;)

I think this engine has great potential, however its far from finished, sadly.

[noubernou 77]

The only question would be could it handle the AI and advanced features that RV2 and RV3 is capable of.

The nice thing is that AI pathfinding/logic can be mostly dropped into any graphics engine.

Outerra is very nice, the trees need work and it needs clutter (which up the poly count).

[xxbbcc 6]

This looks very nice but as it's been pointed out, trees are just 3D elements. In the Arma engine, vegetation rendering is a large chunk of the rendering process so the Outerra engine will get a heavy hit when life-like vegetation is added. Buildings will also add to the load.

Putting down roads is nice too.

[therev709 10]

Some of what I am about to say has been stated before, but I would like to reinforce some points and to give my two cents and theory on this.

The Arma 2 engine is not perfect by any means, and in some ways is inferior to many other engines available on the market today. However, the Arma 2 engine is also far superior to those engines as well. It depends on what you're looking at.

Graphically, the Arma 2 engine is beautiful, but it does make many sacrifices. Sure, in the cryengine 3 and unreal 3 engine you can have breaking glass, mutating gestation that grows on walls, realistic water, and a real physics engine, but in Arma 2, you can have a battlefield that sprawls along a hundred square kilometers, with real time changes in time of day and weather. You can have hundreds of military units wrestling for control of this battlefield, from an infantryman, to an armor platoon, to a squadron F35 fighters hovering above. Finally, making missions in Arma 2 is a cake compared to building a mod for cryengine or unreal. You could recreate the entire Arma 2 campaign with the mission editor, and just look at all of the user generated content to date. Good luck doing any of that with the cryengine 3.

Where Arma 2 suffers in some areas, the engine can also do a lot that no one else can.

Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement in more important areas than "breaking glass" or super graphics. My biggest gripes is the AI and UI of the mission editor. I've been playing BI games since OFP, and I can easily tell you that the AI has improved astronomically since those early days. However, while its not as bad as it was (even between OA 1.56 and the original Arma 2 release) there is still room for improvement in path finding (especially for vehicles) and general stuff. Having your units dive behind cover, and actually orientate themselves toward the enemy is something I think the current engine can handle.

The mission editor UI is another gripe. Its been the same since OFP, and while its easy to use, I think it could be easily streamlined to help make it easier to develop missions.

As for Arma 3? Well, I sure hope they do develop a sequel to Arma 2. While up to this point the current engine is just an upgrade of the original OFP engine, I think its safe to say that BI will probably continue along this route. Why? For several reasons. BI is a small dev team when compared to Epic Games or Crytech. Their mainstream products (Arma 2) only have a small, but dedicated, customer base. Their other products (VSB2) are custom tailored to governments and the military. I don't know their finances, but I can imagine that the bulk of their income must be from the licensing to the military over the years. I'm sure with all of the DLC for Arma 2 they're making a hunk of dough, but VSB and VSB2 have remained a constant rate of income since 2002. Recently even, BI was hiring people for an office in Florida to work on VSB2.

Nevertheless, BI just doesn't have the resources as Crytech and Unreal to cater such advanced technology to their mainstream audience.

As for a wishlist for Arma 3 (without going over the top), I think its possible for them to at least include:

Obvious improvments:

1. Overhaul AI
   
2. Mission Editor UI
   
3. Graphical Improvements (of course)
   
4. Better animations
   
5. Scripting improvements
   
6. Real time cut scene editor (I hate camera scripting)
   
7. A 3d mission editor. One already exists, but I can't get it to work . . .
   

Personal Wishes:

• Better voice acting
  
• Swimming/underwater operations (opens up diving and sub warfare)
  
• AI path finding and animation for urban areas (think Full Spectrum Warrior for room clearing and urban squad movements)
  
• Streamlined squad control (drop menu maybe?)
  
• More realistic armor sections for tanks (reactive armor and cage armor works properly)
  
• Female soldiers
  
• Real physics engine (or something that makes sense)
  

[Laqueesha 474]

Better voice acting - This is a must. Bad voice acting will turn off the average gamer and thus, result in less players overall and smaller sales. If I recall correctly, there are no nine-year old kids that currently serve as special forces operators in the U.S. military.

Swimming/underwater operations - Would be nice and would open up a whole new world for infiltration missions, such as the USN SEALs.

AI path finding and animation for urban areas - This. The AI freezes up like a deer in the headlights when it comes to urban and CQB ops.

Streamlined squad control - I see what you're saying, something similar to Rainbow Six and/or Ghost Recon.

More realistic armor sections for tanks - Agreed. A Makarov PM should not be able to destroy an M1A2 MBT in a giant fireball.

Female soldiers - Good idea. Would help with immersion and add some vareity to the game. There is a mod in the works that allows for this.

Real physics engine - Or a basic physics engine to begin with. Try running over someone with a vehicle in ArmA II.

Edited December 18, 2010 by Laqueesha

[avengerzx 10]

We need RENDER TO TEXTURE

This :

http://developer.vbs2.com/onlinehelp/Content/Adding_Models/How_to/RTT/AMHT_RTT.htm

Simple thing

[EricM 0]

this would be probably more suitable for a Carrier Command on crack, but it's worth a look too...

[johncage 30]

this would be probably more suitable for a Carrier Command on crack, but it's worth a look too...

not really. it's basically a universe simulator. simulating detailed micro level details? not a chance.

[Kristian 47]

Better voice acting - This is a must. Bad voice acting will turn off the average gamer and thus, result in less players overall and smaller sales. If I recall correctly, there are no nine-year old kids that currently serve as special forces operators in the U.S. military.

Swimming/underwater operations - Would be nice and would open up a whole new world for infiltration missions, such as the USN SEALs.

AI path finding and animation for urban areas - This. The AI freezes up like a deer in the headlights when it comes in urban and CQB ops.

Streamlined squad control - I see what you're saying, something similar to Rainbow Six and/or Ghost Recon.

More realistic armor sections for tanks - Agreed. A Makarov PM should not be able to destroy an M1A2 MBT in a giant fireball.

Female soldiers - Good idea. Would help with immersion and add some vareity to the game. There is a mod in the works that allows for this.

Real physics engine - Or a basic physics engine to begin with. Try running over someone with a vehicle in ArmA II.

This might intrest you:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=12248

[wolfbite 8]

What graphics overhaul does this game need? Maybe nightime lighting and a few tweaks... Other than that I think this is the best looking game around.....

[nodunit 397]

Seems to mostly be lighting as far as graphics go, everything else has been updated but lights as far as how they look and work IE no white, somewhat bland and don't really light up an area as much as they should, not casting shadows which could easily work, just make it an optional tweak and suddenly BAM, no performance loss for those that can't take it.

Though even with the dullness of the lights I'd say the most off putting things about them would be the lack of shadows, so they go through everything, refer to Arma1 and early Arma2 aircraft when they had lights, you could see the green and red inside the cockpit where they shouldn't be, or inside the cargo.

And second that they cancel out the effects, when you stand under a light the specular and normal maps seem to diminish if not vanish..this problem was present in Arma1's sun, when it was sundown or sunrise all normal maps and specular went poof, but this is not the case in A2 (or at least OA from what I've seen while flying)

The sad part is how much lights are overlooked because of these things, with a more 'lit light', dynamic shadows and getting rid of the 'cancelling effect' they could really liven up a scene and many more things.

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

What graphics overhaul does this game need? Maybe nightime lighting and a few tweaks... Other than that I think this is the best looking game around.....

This. I only recently acquired the hardware to run the graphics on max and I can say with some confidence that they look far far better than any iteration of cryengine. If the animations were a little smoother it would be absolutely perfect but that's a little niggle.

Next person to say "I want ragdoll" gets reported to the CIA as a Wikileaks source.

[Flash Thunder 10]

The engine is impressive

for me its LOD which currently I think is just bugged so hopefully we can get clean LOD stages that arent so noticable like they're right now.

graphically the main thing I would like to see is the lighting engine be revamp and make it as a lighting graphics option so you dont further kill performance for people with older set ups.

I would like to see more light sources, dynamic shadows, farther shadow draw distances, less blocky,pixelated shadow maps especially on People, but yeah things like flashlights/headlights casting shadows would be significant.

after lighting engine I would say overall Terrain mesh detail, nothing more awesome then having a huge mountain range in the background with high res textures and high poly counts,

then after that particle effects improvements, debris from blowing up vehicles rather them just turning into black carcus's, overall better looking fire effects and smoke effects on the big bombs.

non skippy animations this is prevelant mainly online, im not going to expect euphoria type animation in Arma 3 but if its alittle better than arma 2 and no skips ill be perfectly fine.

add more graphics options to arma 3 BIS to help people out from the beggining

easiest thing to please people right here.

Grass/ground cover draw distance setting or config

Shadow map detail

reflections on or off

seperate post process effects settings like motion blur, HDR, bloom, SSAO

[WarriorM4 10]

I could care less about better graphics.It looks GREAT compared to original OFP.I can also live with the current voice acting and AI reporting.Lets fix more important issues like AI,armor ballistics,Aircraft flight models,and Physics.

[ArmAriffic 10]

Another thing that needs fixing is driving on objects like bridges and walking on objects on the water, dry skiing is not very good and vehicles jump when driving over objects (try landing a harrier on the LHD, you just die if your not landing vertical)

[johncage 30]

What graphics overhaul does this game need? Maybe nightime lighting and a few tweaks... Other than that I think this is the best looking game around.....

you're kidding right? the animation, for one. needs way better blending.

[psyclum 10]

IMO, the engine needs some refinement like better transition for opening doors or going from prone to crouch and stand. it's kinda bad when i'm crawling over a rock and suddenly my gun is aimed skyward like I'm holding up a flag pole or something. maybe have some kind of mouse wheel transition option for going from prone to crouch and stand. same thing with doors so you can crack open the door w/o fully opening it.(kinda like ghost recon/rainbow 6) so you can crack the door open and sneak a flashbang in there w/o advertising your entrance to the whole world.

aside from that, ARMA2 has one of the most impressive engine on the market today. and the ONLY engine that allows you to render out to 10km of clipping plane. it's really the only engine that allows for semi realistic sniping(aside from sniper elite) and quasi stalking. when i showed my CoD/MW2 friends how sniping is REALLY done with a M107 and 1500m away, they tend to raise their brows:)

IMO, the engine needs some optimization, then licensed to other games so that other games can utilize the capabilities of ARMA2 but with better interface and smaller learning curve:D

[nodunit 397]

Grass/ground cover draw distance setting or config

Shadow map detail

reflections on or off

seperate post process effects settings like motion blur, HDR, bloom, SSAO

An option to turn off normal maps and specular maps would help people with less powerful GPU's as well.

[Jockson 10]

I could care less about better graphics.It looks GREAT compared to original OFP.

It does look better than OFP obviously but I still prefer OFP graphics because they were so much more consistent and in turn more immersive. ARMA 2 looks amazing until you start moving around, zooming, using weapon optics... in other words playing. Then everything turns into a performance and LOD nightmare. Operation Arrowhead has to have the worst vegetation I have seen in a computer game, ever. Incredibly detailed trees that only a couple of meters further away from you turn into green blobs that keep changing into different shaped blobs. Do we really need 7 or 8 different LODs for a simple bush? Even a simple RMB zoom is enough to go through multiple LOD changes. Wouldn't it be better and more immersive to have more consistent graphics short vs long distances wise even at the cost of close up detail? After all, it's the massive scale of the game that sets it apart from everything else out there. OA's graphics are a step in the wrong direction in this sense IMO.

My wishes for future ARMA games if there ever will be one would be:

- More consistent look. Go easy on super detailed vegetation with millions of polygons if it means performance issues and too much LOD switching like now is the case. Quite a few games have shown that vegetation which looks good enough for a mil sim can be done a lot more efficiently.

- Improve multiplayer. I know there is no magic fix for this but MP game experience is very disappointing with so much lagging and stuttering going on, Again, the graphics performance issues don't do any good when it comes to this either.

- While when you consider the size and scale of the game the AI is pretty decent, there is a lot room for improvement especially because it's a big part of the game. Major pathfinding issues present since OFP just shouldn't be there anymore.

- Voice acting/radio voices. Don't think much needs to be said sadly. It's one part of the game that I can say is truly horrible. I understand having voice actors to record every single sentence in full would cost money, take a lot of disk space etc. but wouldn't it be better to keep it simple then and do it more similar to OFP way? Perhaps "12 o'clock man 500" isn't how soldiers talk in real life but at least in OFP it sounded somewhat natural, as if one person was saying it, instead of individual words being spoken at different speed and different pitch with pauses in between.

There's room for improvement in many other areas too of course like the UI, animations, physics, sounds etc. For example, it is nice how we have engine starting sounds for vehicles, but the actual engine sound while driving isn't smooth at all like it was in OFP.

[Millenium7 0]

- While when you consider the size and scale of the game the AI is pretty decent, there is a lot room for improvement especially because it's a big part of the game. Major pathfinding issues present since OFP just shouldn't be there anymore.

- Voice acting/radio voices. Don't think much needs to be said sadly. It's one part of the game that I can say is truly horrible. I understand having voice actors to record every single sentence in full would cost money, take a lot of disk space etc. but wouldn't it be better to keep it simple then and do it more similar to OFP way? Perhaps "12 o'clock man 500" isn't how soldiers talk in real life but at least in OFP it sounded somewhat natural, as if one person was saying it, instead of individual words being spoken at different speed and different pitch with pauses in between.

There's room for improvement in many other areas too of course like the UI, animations, physics, sounds etc. For example, it is nice how we have engine starting sounds for vehicles, but the actual engine sound while driving isn't smooth at all like it was in OFP.

wow. I think you have one major case of nostalgia :eek:

Voice acting in OFP was FAR worse. Let me reiterate

11 o'clock, enemy, soldier, 100

11 o'clock, enemy, bmp, 200

1 o'clock, enemy at soldier, 100

4, engage, that, at solder, 400

4: roger

5 engage, that, bmp, 200

5: roger

4: ready

4, return to formation

4: roger

4, heal, at, that, soldier

4: roger

Repeated over and over and over and over and over and over. It was certainly not better :confused:

But I agree with you ono the other aspects. I was hoping for a lot more since Arma2 was supposed to be an engine redesign. I think more than anything the engine is forced to do things in sequence. I.E. someone dies whilst standing up it must wait for them to finish that before the unit is counted as dead and plays the dead animation.

AI pathfinding is done in sequence, I.E. telling an AI to move forward, it must first plot a course around that tiny little rock in front of it and follow each step in sequence before considering or doing the next action. It's very clunky and frustrating at times. Instead the AI should be concentrating on moving 'forward' in most cases and then pathfinding comes second. This is why they are so ridiculously slow and clunky especially on roads, they slow down at each 'waypoint' in their path because they don't ever think ahead. And that waypoint must be completed successfully before considering the next. It should just be thinking "ok flat out, so i'm already at full speed towards the next one"

You also notice this quite a bit with scripting and events. They lag behind because something else is happening. The radio is exactly the same, if I say i'm injured it should be done when I press it, not waiting for everyone else to stop talking. Hell even the LOD issue is the same nothing ever seems to happen instantly.

If I had control over the engine i'd

>Make AI far more aggressive with their decisions. If an enemy is spotted within close proximity it shouldn't wait for orders or decide on its course of action. If it's in 'aware' or 'danger' It should immediately swing its virtual ass around and start spraying, accuracy be damned. Then it can think of sprinting to cover and doing all it's other routines. If it's in 'stealth' or 'hold fire' mode then get to cover FAST

>If it's ordered to drive forward then DRIVE FORWARD, plot the course as driving and adjust as necessary.

>Radio commands should be mostly stripped out with only essential short responses given, better prioritising and the 'queue' not being essential (i.e. if something important needs to be said, pause/skip whats currently being said and play that one instead)

For example if an AI commander is ordering troops to attack a small group of enemies

2,3 move up

4,5,6 flank left

THATS IT! no need for 1200 responses over the radio with pinpoint accuracy and uber audible micro management. Once its cleared a simple

Area clear

Return to formation

would do it

>Current commanding interface replaced with a context sensitive radial menu

>All death animations take priority, ragdoll would be best to allow it to flow seemlessly, but if a unit is midway through standing up when they get killed. Play the death animation immediately, not once 'standing up' has finished.