roshnak

LOD switching wouldn't cause a persistant lowering of frame rate as was described. The issue was almost certainly PIP.

Uh, in which games that are not bad console ports is this true? Even if it is true that the only improvement is reduced eye strain, how is that not objectively better? It's certainly not worse. Also, here's a study that shows increased player performance (shooting) all the way up through 60 FPS. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.217.393&rep=rep1&type=pdf You did comment before, but, again, input is absolutely affected by frame rate, especially in first person shooters. Your mouse controls the camera, and if the camera position is only updating 24 times per second, it is by definition less accurate and responsive than a camera that has its position updated 60 times per second. To claim otherwise would be like claiming that reducing mouse polling frequency to 24 times per second wouldn't impact responsiveness.

No offense, but have you actually researched any of this stuff or are you just going by experience? If 24 FPS looks okay to you, then great, but frame rate can and does affect input as well as simulation. Haven't you ever noticed that your fire rate slows down when you have very low FPS in Arma?

He stated what his viewdistance was and it's nowhere near 20km. It's 3000 for terrain, 2500 for objects, and 100 for shadows. Okay, well then disregard the part of my post where I said that and read the rest of it. It explains (roughly) why someone might be concerned about getting 50 FPS, and why 24 or 48 FPS being good enough for movies doesn't necessarily mean that it's good enough for games. If any of my posts came off as combative, then I apologize. It wasn't my intention. It looked to me like you were oversimplifying a rather complex issue by comparing it with a medium to which it's not easily comparable. If your question was serious, I can provide some links to websites that explain this stuff in more detail.

Or we could check with well known developer Infinity Ward who have made 60 FPS the target for their games, even on consoles. Again, this is a more complicated issue than you're really making it out to be. There are many factors that can influence how people perceive frame rate. Low frame rate tends to be more noticeable in games with a lot of quick pans and whole screen motion, such as shooters. In slower paced games with less rapid camera movements like exploration games, platformers, strategy games, and the like, lower frame rate tends to be less noticeable. The type of camera movement is also a factor. If your camera moving forward through a corridor at incredibly high speed, low frame rates may not be very noticeable. If your camera is rotating in place at moderate speed, low frame rates may be very noticeable. People are also different. Some people have a very high tolerance for lower frame rates, while some have a very low tolerance. And, to relate this back to the OP's complaint: sudden, large dips in frame rate are generally more perceptible than constant lower frame rates. Sudden dips from 70 to 50 FPS and back up again may well be perceived as stuttering, even to someone who would be fine playing at a constant 40 FPS. And this is not even close to a full discussion of frame rate. This is a complicated, contentious issue even in film. It's not like 24 FPS became a film standard because it was the best option. It was the cheapest, most acceptable option in a time when film was expensive. Yeah PIP drops my frame rate by 20 FPS sitting on the runway in an MH-9, so it seems fair to say that this is probably the OP's issue.

Frame rate and the way that people perceive it is more complicated than "movies run at 24 FPS." For several reasons, comparing movies to video games when discussing frame rate is generally not ideal.

Quoting this because it got approved late and buried six pages back. Atropine is weird right now. I'm also wondering why Atropine is lowering heart rate. I'd say it was just work in progress, but it seems to be having the opposite effect of what it should.

Uh, what? We're talking about the limits of the animation system as it stands now, not some theoretical version. No one is saying that it can't be fixed or improved upon. That's actually the opposite of what people are saying.

Atropine is weird right now. It probably shouldn't even lower heart rate in the first place.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I haven't seen that much concern with the way individual animations look in this thread. There hasn't really been much critiquing of stances or the way characters hold their guns or walk or anything. It seems to have been mostly gameplay stuff, to the extent that several people are even talking purely about movement mechanics (which is probably due to the wording of the OP). There have definitely been some misunderstandings, but there also seems to have been a decent amount of talk about the animation system in this thread, so far.

I don't think this is likely to work, since it seems like the 2 hour period is just for a guaranteed refund, and after that they'll take a look at requests for refunds anway. Despite the fact that refunding to the Steam Wallet is obviously not great, I don't see how offering refunds of any kind can be worse than not offering refunds at all.

Actually, true 3D audio is not just taking the 5.1 or 7.1 signal and processing it for headphones. That was my whole point. It operates on the same principles (HRTFs), but true 3D audio positions audio anywhere in 3D space, behind, in front, above, below, and anywhere in between. There's a whole bunch of stuff on the internet about this if you google HRTFs. Here's a decent article that talks about HRTFs in games and specifically addresses the differences between full 3D audio and virtual surround. With a little work, you can experience 3D audio in any game that uses OpenAL. These guys have some demos you can try out. So do these guys. As for your problems with Razer Surround, it could just be that their HRTF model isn't suited for the shape of your head and ears (it doesn't work very well for me, either, whereas the second RealSpace demo works great). I'm no expert, but as I understand it, if you don't have any trouble locating where sounds are coming from in real life, you shouldn't have a problem doing it with properly configured HRTFs (I could be totally wrong about this). This stuff is pretty interesting. With samples configured for differently shaped ears, things that are supposed to sound like they are orbiting your head in a horizontal plane can sound like they are suddenly rising above your head or dipping under it at certain points or there can be little discernible effect at all.

Except that's not true 3D audio. You're getting, at best, an emulation of 7.1 audio and interpolation between those points on a horizontal plane. Properly done, we could have accurate positional audio in horizontal and vertical space. Virtual surround is better than nothing, but it's not taking full advantage of what can be done. I want to be able to tell that someone is at my 8 o'clock and above me, not just that they are at my 8 o'clock.

OpenAL also has a few 3D audio solutions.

As far as I am aware, most (new) games do not have this.

Okay, to use your analogy, brushes are what we've talking about this whole time. Not the picture. No one is saying "Photocopy the painting that is Battlefield 4." What people are saying is that the artists who painted BF4 have some pretty sweet brushes and paints, and it would be nice if Arma used some of those things, too. I'm really stretching this analogy, honestly, but I hope it can clear some things up. Anyway, I'm not sure how much is left to really discuss about animations in Arma. It's not a great system. People have pretty much covered what's wrong with it. I'm pretty sure BIS is aware of the problems. Hopefully they'll overhaul it for future games, but I'm not super hopeful. I'm pretty sure they said they were going to overhaul it for this game, and it hasn't really been enough.

What are you talking about, dude? None of this applies at all. Do you think Arma shouldn't be using normal maps because some other game did it first? Uh, oh - Arma shouldn't be using PhysX, they didn't invent that wheel at all!

Again, why not? We're not talking about gameplay mechanics, here. We're not even talking about specifically copying Battlefield. We're talking about general features of an animation system. Surely you don't think developers come up with ideas in a vacuum. Edit: And yes, I am aware that the EA has a massive team working on Frostbite and tons of money to spend on it. The point of this post is that it is not unreasonable for developers to look to other games for examples and inspiration, generally.

Why wouldn't it?

On top of this, though, it doesn't have to look bad. Take that BF4 animations video for example. Most of those animations look pretty good and natural, and that game controls like most other shooters. I'm pretty sure you're wrong. People keep confusing animations with movement and behavior. Things like zig zagging before getting into a line, walking when too close to objects, constantly going prone, and making huge circles around a vehicle before getting in have nothing to do with animations, really. The AI could be completely unanimated, just sliding around with their arms sticking out and their behavior would be the same. Alternatively, they could be exceptionally well animated and these problems would still exist. Specialized animations like you suggest -- for reactions to being shot at, AI specific cover animations, etc. -- could certainly help make the AI appear more believable in some instances (although it would also make it very obvious who was a player and who wasn't), but it's not going to fix the underlying problems with AI pathfinding, cover usage, or stance selection. It'll just make them look really cool while sliding into cover facing the wrong direction. If the animations are good enough to allow a player to run up and take cover behind a car, leaning out to take a shot every once in a while, they are good enough to allow the AI to do the same.

I'm pretty sure we're not talking about realistic movement (despite the wording of the OP). I think it's a mistake to tie the idea of realistic animations too much to movement mechanics. You can have unrealistic movement that still looks good and believable with good animations. Limiting mouse sensitivity is a terrible idea. The great advantage of the mouse is that it grants exceptional control over the camera. The other side of that coin is that when you take away that control it feels awful. Even GTA5 has an unlimited turn rate while aiming. That OFP had motion captured animations? I'm pretty sure it was hyped at the time that OFP was released. e: This site credits Bohumil Trnka for "Motion Capture Performance." This article talks about the devs building a motion capture studio to record the movements of an ex-army instructor. "...dedicated motion capture and animation studio..." There are a bunch of articles.

I haven't had any trouble telling what direction sounds are coming from.

Have you tried listening with headphones recently? Because I suspect that headphones will make it easier to hear the quiet sounds, allowing you to turn down the overall volume. Okay, well do you want the game to have uncomfortably, even painfully loud gunfire, or do you want basically everything else to be unhearably quiet? Because if we are going to strive for the maximum possible range between sounds, then that's going to be the result. There's always going to be compromises. Instead of concerning ourselves with how "Hollywood" it sounds, maybe we should concern ourselves with how the game has to sound in order to deliver the information that needs to be available to the player. Edit: I also don't think we should worry about loss of hearing after gunshots, since the game doesn't even try to do that. Like, I'm not saying that simulating it is a bad idea or that we shouldn't suggest it as a feature or something. I'm just saying that what FrankHH is experiencing with equalizers is definitely not intended.

Look at how you have it bound in the options and bind it the other way.

These are all things that should be considered when designing the sound, but don't necessarily depend on the loudness of the sounds in game. If you shouldn't hear mechanism operating, then just don't include that in the sound. If you want to include this effect: You could do that by dampening the loudness of other sounds after firing a weapon. The player could have their volume turned down very low and still experience these effects. The original complaint was that gunshots are too loud in comparison to footsteps and the environment, so that in order to be able to hear those other sounds at the level he wanted to, FrankHH had to turn his volume up so much that gunshots were uncomfortably loud.