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This is not from a chain mail or another website. This happened to me, Bill, this morning. On my way to work this morning, I found myself adversely impacted by the idiocy of another driver. Now, while we all think everybody else is an idiot, everyone needs to look closer to home. As in, look in the mirror and evaluate is there an idiot driving your car. The most dangerous thing on the road right now fits into the palm of your hand, and many people have it located in their palm when on the road. That item is a cell phone. I was in the right lane, abiding by the speed limit of 40MPH. A person driving a bright yellow pickup with tinted windows was driving in the left lane. The weather was lousy. Raining and overcast. The driver in the left lane had their cell phone up above steering wheel height. Apparently texting or looking for the correct number to dial. More concerned with their own little world than the one they were driving in, they started merging right. They did not use their blinkers and they definitely did not look in their mirrors before starting the merge. Unlike the car my wife drives, mine does not have Traction Control nor a pristine ABS system. I hit the horn and started stepping (not slamming) the brakes. In the wet conditions though, all four tires locked up putting me into a 40MPH skid with traffic ahead, beside, and behind me. The skid carried me into the curb. Had I not taken an evasive driving course in the military, I have to wonder if I would have lost control of the vehicle and gone into a spin. I was able to maintain control and limp it into the parking of the Madison County Human Resources building. The damage to my vehicle is both rims on the right-side are bent and need to be replaced. Luckily, I do not use my car as a status symbol, so my rims are stock steel rims. Both tires will need to be replaced. Additionally, my steering is now out almost 10 degrees left. The driver of the pickup continued their merge even after hearing my horn. I did not get their license plate number. I was a bit more intent on maintaining control of my car as to not spin out in front of oncoming traffic. No use calling my insurance company. The rims, tires, and front end alignment will probably run the same amount as my deductable. So, some idiot just cost me about $500 for the sake of a text message or a phone call. For the sake of other drivers: 1) Unless you have a completely hands free, voice activated cell phone system, leave the blasted thing alone while you are driving. Don't even look at it to see who is calling. Wait until you are at a stop light or stop sign. 2) There are mirrors and blinkers on your vehicle for a reason. Use them! 3) Don't stare at the radio or GPS in traffic. If you don't like the song that's on, turn the radio off instead of fiddling with it while looking at the display. Program your GPS in a parking lot or, better yet, before you even leave. 4) Forget about your little world when driving in the big world. Not paying attention to the big world can bring an abrupt end to your's or someone else's little world. 5) Wait until you are at your destination to take the lid off of that scalding hot cup of coffee or open the wrapper on that triple-decker hamburger. I don't really care about your little world. I care about mine. I don't want your inability to pay attention to the big world to cause my little world financial strain or to come to an end. Please pass this along to those you know. Maybe someone who is an idiot will realize they're being an idiot and maybe, just maybe, stop being an idiot.

Hmmmm.... 1986 I was 15 yrs old and on Quantum Link on the Commodore 64 using the ever powerful 300 baud cartidge modem (that's 0.03K for those who don't remember baud rates lol!) It had shopping, chat, etc so I guess it counted as the internet. Aside from computing (gaming, programming, etc) I rode motorcyles, dated, played pool leagues, etc Now I am married, still riding, have a recording studio, a band, a job... It's all about balance. I definitely remember life before cell phones. I miss it sometimes lol!

It goes by state and sometimes only by the individual cities over here. I have a smart phone like many others. I am a program manager in biomedical, and I get calls constantly from biomed techs needing assistance. Unless I have my hands free system hooked up, I don't answer it or make calls on it while driving. They can leave a voice mail.

When it comes to open ground sims like ArmA2, combat flight sims, etc there's one solitary reason why the major populace of shoebox shooter players stay away: They can't handle the fact that some old fart, slow reaction time player like myself has the room to whoop their butt by out smarting them rather than relying on twitch reaction skills alone. They are vulnerable out of the shoebox and we're vultures in the trees....waiting :D

Nah, it's because most popular games these days are the exact same game play. Just different buildings and skins. Hard to be a noob in a world of nubbed down shoot em up's :D

Actually, it was the sunlight. I had a verocious sunbeam hitting my camera square on. Given my limited set up space, there was nowhere to move my camera to. I had a light filter, but not as effective as the ole floppy media. Good call on that one :) Love the ole DIY though. I'm an engineering technician with construction and stage handling experience as well, so I pretty much DIY most everything I do :D My latest is a custom switch panel I use for different flight sims, but make it versatile across the different sims. Also restoring both a 1926 Kennedy Model 20 radio and a 1986 Honda magna VF700C :D

I dunno. This time around ArmA2 got much more press than ArmA did. Granted, it wasn't running TV commercials like MW2 and L4D, but it was #2 on Steam downloads for a good bit. Where's all those folks now? I knew 14 who got it. 11 didn't like it becuase it wasn't a shoebox shooter like they were used to. They only paid attention to the eye grabbing videos and screenshots rather than reading what ArmA2 really was. 1 of the 14 loves it, but his system is under spec'ed, so he's waiting til he can upgrade. The other still play.

Many of the troubleshooting posts are repeats and due to failure of individuals to use the "Search This Forum" function. For most any PC game, there's going to be a bundle of problems in the tech area. For the past four years of technology: take every chipset, CPU, GPU chipset, soundcard chipset, memory type, and motherboard chipset. Now multiply all those number by each other and that's the total possible combinations of hardware. There's more though. Take every version of every CPU, GPU, motherboard, and soundcard chipsets. Now multiply all those number by each other and that's the total possible combinations of driver combinations. There's still more. Add in every OS from Win XP on up and then add in every possible level of updates to each version of those OS's. Add that in as well and you're going to start coming up with a staggering figure of both hardware and software architectures. And BIS was brave enough to tackle creating a military combat simulator utilizing an extremely large playing area? Yes. They know it takes patches to fix compatibility issues that's not possible to find during QA testing. Yet another reason for public beta testing of patches. They did the same in ArmA. The 1.14 patch in ArmA was voted "Patch Of The Year" by IGN. No patch for any other game compared to the amount of fixes and improvements in that patch. Was it that way at release? Nope. They have to rely on community feedback in order to know what compatibility issues need to be fixed. ArmA2 runs fine for many of us, great for others. It runs poorly for a number of people and some still can't get it to install. BIS is keenly aware of each of each issue posted and reported. They always have been and address the most critical first. As far as being DX9, most of us have no problem with that. Once the SDK for DX10 was released, it was realized that it wasnt quite as much of the bomb as originally touted. In reality, DX10 can run under XP 32 ;) Vista was a nightmare. Windows 7 is Vista un-buggered. It only took the largest software company in the world how many years to fix their software? There's folks who still can't get MW2 to install or run (of course IW doesn't have a dedicated tech support forum, they prefer those threads get buried) If you haven't bought ArmA2, then you have no idea if you will run it well or not on your laptop. Coming in here with bashes and insults before you even try it, then you have to expect to get some heat from the community. It's not that everyone here are fanboys, your first post was just outright rude as your subsequent posts have been. There's plenty of people here willing to help you out if you need it. But there's absolutely no need to come into these forums on your first post as if you're the god of all things computer gaming. Stop being so rude and you might get some decent responses.

While the Crytek engine is a great piece of work, it's definitely not the best engine for benchmarking (altho many do since the name is erronously synonomous with such a task). The draw distances and rendering details (read polygon counts and shadings) in the ArmA2 engine are much more complex. Just because it doesn't look like bright, shiney plastic as the Crytek engine does, does not mean it's not a graphically intense engine. You could also load X3: Terran Conflict and, at absolute max settings, use it as a benchmark as well (some of the smarter, more intuitive review sites use this as their benchmark).

AMD 5200 Dual core XFX nvidia 8600GT 2GB DDR2-800 memory The above system was my rommates system until he got his quadcore built. It ran ArmA2 just fine at normal settings and maintained an average of 28-32 FPS well into the 1.04 patch. I ran it with Windows 7 release client on my Intel Q9650 Quad core w/ 4GB DDR2-1066 and an 8800GTX 640MB card going thru a matrox triplhead2go on three 20" monitors. I ran normal to high settings and maintained 27-30 FPS (keep in mind that I run a 3072X768 resolution so that's a major FPS hit). As far as your laptop, you need to remember that laptop hard drives are generally much slower than desktops and usually do not have the buffer size that a desktop drive does. ArmA2 is VERY dependent on data streaming from teh hard drive. If you have a slower hard drive with a smaller buffer size, then the game will stutter like heck for you. You may want to check out the following thread: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=88388 Also, next time you post a thread asking about a game, try not to hold the developers accountable for your lack of knowledge and lack of using the search function.

MW2 is a fast action console game with almost no learning curve. Straight twitch reaction frag game. That's a certifiable niche in the gaming industry, but the ease at which one can just jump in and start playing (lack of learning curve) has killed most other niches in the FPS realm. Personally, I got bored with COD4 after 3 months and didn't even think about buying MW2.

Forgot to post a pic of my first freetrack inception: I used 12 guage copper wire for the braces and 28AWG wire to the LED's. I used a dremel tool to file the LED's down to a flat front, rectangluar shape (for more precision tracking). The battery pack was eventually mounted to the desk as the weight was too much. After forgetting to switch it off many times, I went USB powered (used the cable from an old mouse no longer in use). The next modification was when I went to IR LED's (linke din my previous post). From there I went to the side clip design to ditch the hat. From there, I got tired of fighting the poor lighitng conditions in my room and went TIR4 w/ proclip. Gave the freetrack system to a buddy of mine who plays in total darkness no matter what time of day it is. He's still using it :)

I used Freetrack for some time. Started off with the hat and went to the clip. My main problem was that the window in my computer room faces west. So, when I'd sit down to start gaming, the sun would be setting on that side of the house and changing the lighting conditions. I found myself having to re-tweak my freetrack settings several times until it got dark. The worst was during the summer when the sun took longer to go down. Even with the blinds shut with the flaps upward I had the problems. Other than that, I had no problems with it other than the chipset of my webcam getting 5c hotter with the IR Filter removed. I was on my second webcam when I decided that the constant adusting due to my window problem just was too much hassle. I went on ahead and bought TrackIR 4 w/ proclip (TIR5 compatible btw). Worked out as ArmA2 was originally released with only TIR5 support. I'd suggest Freetreack to anyone, but I'd also suggest using a USB port to power your LED's. Much less obtrusive than a battery pack. I kept forgetting to turn my battery pack off, so that's what drove me to go USB powered. I'd also suggest using a wide angle FOV IR LED instead of standard LED's. With standard LED's, they would reflect light on my LCD's. Kinda drove me up the wall. You can get a nice, 180 degree, 950nm, flat-faced IR LED from Digikey ( LINK ). If your room is prone to sunlight glaring in towards your setup though, I would suggest buying some thick and heavy curtains. Generally though, good curtains like that are expensive. It was going to cost me more for the curtains than the TIR4 clip bundle. I found that with TIR4, I did not have to adjust my settings each time. One setting does it all.

It doesn't even have to be a hardcore mil sim. Heck, anyone who played Tribes 1 or 2 back in the day know what I mean about working to acquire the skill ;)

At one time, PC games had a learning curve and....lo and behold...that was GOOD! Over the years though, the learning curves have been leveled in lieu of quick sales. Load it, launch it, start killing stuff, and get stats. Even worse now with games being developed for the consoles and then ported over to PC.

The game was released in much better shape than ArmA 1 was. The things that needed patched we the things that pretty much only those of us really familiar with ArmA 1 would have recognized. Patched in it's current state, it still would not have anymore of a player base than it does now. It's not a shoot em up console game. Those are what sell and those are what drive the market in the shooter genre (aka MW2, L4D2, etc) Best we can do is contact old friends who are totally burnt out on run and gun shooters and assure them that they can find a niche in a niche game.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=782974#post782974 Will make DCS Blackshark and Lock On: Flaming Cliffs compatible online (WOOHOO!), add aircraft, and many fixes! Combat flight sim'ers have been waiting on this for a long while :D

Matt, I know people who JUST upgraded their CPU's to an AMD 64 3200. It may not be 2003, but there's many people out there who can't afford to live in the here and now :(

Looking at the images that were released for the A-10 Module a while back, grass is quite apparent in those images since it's showing infantry. As far as the tree issue, it's a double edged sword. Making them objects and it can be a huge frame hit, especially when the viewdistance for flying needs to be what it is (not everyone has a gtx 260 Core 216 or better). Alot of it depends on the mission as well. I find that infantry hiding in the trees is extremely difficult to find. I enjoy Blackshark, LockOn, as well as ArmA2. IMHO - the three best games there are to play at the moment.

Most of the concentration is always on the center monitor. The outter two just provide peripheral vision. Although that peripheral has saved my butt several times in ArmA2 and combat flight sims :D

Sure as heck beats my set up lol! Although my triple monitors (seen here: http://vimeo.com/7323157) are a godsend!

THIS is one of the better simpits I have seen for Blackshark. Also waiting on Oakes and a couple of others to get their's done. Oakes' pit is going to be basically a replica as he owns a machine shop and is CNC'ing every piece.

Heh, I forgot all about OFF :D Camel Jockies rock :) Rise of Flight was a bit of a disappointment. Still have hopes for SOW:BoB though. All in all, 2009/2010 is a good period for sim and tactical games :)

Meh, any topic on LOMAC will always become LOMAC vs Falcon 4 or LOMAC vs Jane's F/A-18 then it will eventually get back on topic. One good plus to this is that many of the enviromental physics that were put into DCS Blackshark will now be in LOMAC which is really gonna have an effect on flight dynamics. Also, then sensor fixes are LONG overdue.

I don't mind the SF protection. Seriously, how many times does one have to reinstall the game? Also, if you make a backup of the registry key, you can reinstall without reactivation unless you reformat. Falcon 4.0 was indeed great, but it's community has pretty much disappeared :(