versus

that looks pretty sweet so far, opticalsnare. nice work! :)

al pacinos muzzle flash looks awefully large. i'm pretty sure it's been "hollywoodified". from what i saw in videos of real rifle fire around the net i gather that muzzle flashes in broad daylight are almost invisible. you see mostly smoke and a "heat-wave"-like distortion in front of the barrel. they DID pay great attention to the sound effects in that scene though. most awesome city-firefight sounds in any hollywood movie ever! :)

some thoughts on those flashes: in general the duration of a flash should be as short as possible. when watching a film running with 30 frames per second a muzzle flash is visible only for the duration of ONE frame, if at all, unless the rate of fire is ridiculously high like in a minigun. in general there should be at least one "empty" frame before the next flash is shown otherwise it looks like a continuously burning flame. also in the last video you can clearly see the display duration is too long because the muzzle flash actually travels upwards with the barrel as the recoil kicks in. but they already do look better than vanilla :)

first of a big thank you to the a.c.e. team and all the mod developers involved. i haven't been able to playtest it a lot yet but as far as i can tell ace2 is living up to the hype ;) i just can't imagine playing arma anymore without being able to rest my weapon against stuff! second i'd like to ask a little question. i've been trying to get another soundmod to override the ace2 sounds but have found that it just doesn't seem to work with all the basic rifles like the m- and ak-series. other sounds like the movement sounds for example are replaced ok though. am i doing something wrong or am i missing something? if not, are there any plans to add an option like the one in ace1 where you could tell it to use "standard sounds"?

thank you for the fast fix opticalsnare!

thanks for the update opticalsnare! but is it just me or are the blood particles pretty excessive this time around? i liked them better before...

really like the latest version of this mod. definitely a keeper :) thanks opticalsnare!

the tracers in ACE for arma1 are the best tracers i've ever seen in any game EVER. period. no contest. the coolest thing about them is that they actually change from a "trace" to a "blob" once they ricochet. i can't wait for ace2!

hi opticalsnare, congratulations, your spark explosion effects simply look aweinspiring! so thank you for making and releasing this to the community! like some others here i have some nitpicking observations that i hope you won't be sore at me for voicing here. like others have noticed before, some of the effects feel overdone. "too big" if you will. dust kickup and tank explosions come to mind. another very general recommendation i would make is to randomize as much as possible. you know, things like particle count, transparency, duration, size, etc. it would make the effects much less predictable and feel more natural and realistic. well, that's about it:) looking forward to future versions of your great mod! cheers!

so, online activation doesn't count as copy protection? i'm confused :confused: you convieniently forgot to mention the two programs gta4 forces you to install and run (some people may consider them "bloatware") as well as the two accounts that you need to create before you can play anything. that is all part of the "activation". un-obtrusive? riiiiiight... you are right. i meant "satisfactorily" like i wrote originally. look, simply stating that "online activation may be the best method" just isn't good enough, sorry. this has nothing to do with what i "think". you are simply making claims without backing them up and i'm still waiting for ONE good argument from you WHY in your mind online-activation is preferable to a simple cd-check. not because i like arguing with you. i just really, really, really want to know. even if there is just a little risk that you may be unable to install your product to no fault of your own, why would you be willing to take it, even though the effectiveness is the same as with traditional offline methods? not only that but you defend it with hands and feet, literally fighting for it! after all the online-activation is an optional part in securom7...bethesda didn't use it in fallout 3 and i don't think they had any problems with sales. same goes for morrowind which didn't have any kind of protection at all and sold over 4 million copies. short answer: no. i won't comment any further, because obviously placebo doesn't like it. you mean the part where you said the gtaIV activation method was "alright"? sorry, but you had that one coming. just look at all the forums across the internet filled with complaints and outcries over that "protection". hell, even the MAGAZINES protested against it and they usually tend to take a neutral stance when it comes to stuff like that. what's to explain? you find it "alright". well, to each his own.

you're not actually comparing games to online-forums are you? come on... there's a HUGE difference and you know it. up till now games always were fine without connecting to the internet. and now all of a sudden companies tell people that it's absolutely neccessary to protect the game from piracy. and it is not. this is what people are complaining about. that comparison lacks a few parallels. here's one from me: i'm an illustrator by trade. imagine i sell you a print of my work and you hang it up in your house. but now i'm worried. you might make copies of it and give it to other people. so I lock your house and post guards on all doors and windows to make sure you're not taking any copies of my print with you. to open the door of your house the first time you'll have to ring me up so i can give you the entrance code. if you go on a vacation however i'll change the code and once you come back you'll have to ring me up again. oh, but now my phone's not working. too bad. guess you'll have to sleep on your lawn until my telephone is repaired. hey, but at least i protected my work and i don't really care about your needs unfortunatelly that's no longer true. especially with systems like the one gta4 used. hm...i thought it was pretty clear ever since deadfast translated that video.:confused:

there you go again, just skimming posts instead of reading them. i wrote satisfactorily. you weren't supposed to fill in some nonsense. the sentence was supposed to make sense in the end. frankly i'm getting tired quickly of trying to make clear to you why online activation is far from the "best and most unobtrusive way to prevent people from pirating", so i'll just skip it. rubbish. if i want to install arma2 to play offline and there's no internet i want to be able to do that. period. lol, and what part of starforce do you think is more intrusive than securom 7? actually these days i'm having more trouble with securom 7 protected games than starforce games. second, you calling gta4's activation system "unintrusive" makes me question your ability to form logical thought. maybe you'd like to share with us what this well designed system will look like in your opinion? maybe some rainy sunday you'll want to install arma2 or any of your games using your beloved steam system and for one of the many possible reasons you'll not be able to connect. maybe then you'll finally "get it". next you'll want me to prove that the sky is blue. this isn't only about "rights". it's about functionality. if you still don't understand how online activation limits functionality compared to a disc-check then i can't help you.

dear ch_123, i guess there will always be people like you who for some reason like to lie down on their backs and give up rights they have previously enjoyed. why is it so hard for you to understand that some people don't want their OFFLINE games to be dependent on being ONLINE? especially since there is no more or less "protection" if online activation is used instead of a simple cd-check. many people who don't buy the games because of drm/activation will download/copy them because they want to play them anyway. that's not rocket-sience it's a simple fact. and it's something developers and publishers should start thinking about when considering to push that garbage on their customers. elaborate and confusing cracks? you obviously have no idea what you are talking about, but i guess that actually speaks for you. gtaIV has an "alright" online activation? seriously what planet are you from? it was so bad and annoying that even the magazines reported negatively about it this time. try reading the posts you respond to instead of just skimming them and you'll see that i was talking about installing the game. copy protection has nothing to do with game design. and yes, i think the "world" would do good to think about potential customers who don't have access to the internet. after all, those are "automatically lost sales". if you follow the logic of the game publishers, that is. you know, just like every "pirated" game is a "lost sale"... why are you so "pro-online-activation" anyway? it's funny really, with all your ranting and ignorant replies you haven't really provided even one good argument for online-activation. here's a little challange for you: finish the following sentence "online-activation for offline-games is a good thing because..." the first person to finish that sentence satisfactorily gets a free copy of arma2. oh, and "...you don't need your disc in the drive" is not the right answer.;)

this topic has been debated to death ever since the release of bioshock and frankly i'm amazed to see that some publishers still even consider using that crap. there are so many reasons against it so and so few for it that it should basically be a no-brainer. the best argument publishers seem to be able to come up with is "...but you don't need to have the disc in your drive anymore!" great. let's take a look at the con's securom/online activation: - does not "protect against piracy" no matter what sony dadc says - potentially prevents the user from installing his product if for some reason there is no internet connection available or there are problems with the activation server (never mind those people who simply don't have internet) - actually makes pirated versions more appealing and user friendly than the "real thing" (people love to pay a lot of money for all those problems caused by so called "copy protections"! it really makes them feel appreciated.;)) also - securom causes installation problems with many disc-drives that fail to recognize original discs as such (i'm speaking from experience here) - limited activations destroy any resell-value of the game and heavily limits usability compared to what gamers used to buy in stores, yet the pricing stays the same long story short: if arma2 uses online activiation i won't be buying it.

exactly. i wonder what nvidia is hoping to achieve by buying that physx crap. the only realistic hardware supported physics solution would have to be one that works on ALL cards. that ageia physx engine never really impressed me anyway. the havoc physics engine usually feels a lot more "on the spot" and it also doesn't require any drivers to be installed. but my guess is that BIS isn't unwilling to support physx because of the ati users but rather because they don't want to license a 3rd-party physics engine for financial reasons... the lack of hw-support for sound is really somewhat disturbing. i'm mean people spend their money to buy these over-the-top soundcards that can produce 128 voices at the same time with little to no hit on cpu performance and then they don't get supported. eax has all the solutions for realism in sound already laid out: occlusion, obstruction, reverb, echo, 3d- positioning,...*sigh*