Col. Faulkner

As discussed in the "Anit [sic] tank weapons" thread on this forum; the reload times are way too fast (by a factor of about 5) to make them "realistic". Whether superfast reloading like this is good for "gameplay" is an entire other debate. It certainly looks ridiculous when the little guy kneels down and pops off three rounds in about 7 seconds! Yes, in OFP you had a realistic time to locate the AT threat and engage it, now if you're hit by an RPG you can generally expect the next two to arrive on target within the next 4 seconds or so! In OFP I always understood the "reloadable 66mm LAW" to represent several rounds being carried by the soldier (ie. several rockets packed in their launchers - back in my own army days carrying two apiece was not unusual). In reality carrying several "disposable" RPGs would be unheard of. The real life RPG-7 is easily reloaded (in about 15 seconds or so). Slightly OT but it seems that the AI ATk soldiers in ArmA will now also fire at infantry targets of opportunity if no vehicle targets are present. I've just seen a troublesome "sniper" get taken down like this by the AI - KABOOM! very impressive (and "realistic"). Â

No, because you are usually carrying a rifle in the other hand. With the nooby "cursor" turned off there is no real assistance with aiming thrown hand grenades. You just need to get used to the "throwing physics" in the game, but it only takes a little bit of practice for accuracy to improve. I can now pretty much lob them where I want them - and they do have quite a large blast radius.

I'd like to say that personally I'm quite pleased with ArmA and am looking forward to see how it develops now. My PC is a couple of years old and does not boast of a high end graphics card (it is a 3.2 GHz machine with an ATI Radeon 800 SE). I am playing with everything set to low or middling settings (but with "postprocessing" set high) and still it looks visually impressive and interesting to me, and runs quite satisfactorily smoothly. I bought the German edition and applied the 1.01 "performance patch" (I left it in German language). It does not strike me as a "new" game, rather as a revitalized Op. Flashpoint with many of the features I had often wished OFP could have had; better weapon sights, better character animations, leaning, rolling, a better "inventory" system, more pleasing graphics, better "immersion". The most immediately and strikingly apparent change is of course in the animation and modelling of the human figures. The quality of the modelling and texturing can be seen in any of the hundreds of screenshots that can be found here and elsewhere. The variety of physical actions the soldiers can now perform by default is superb and streaks ahead of anything in Flashpoint or any of the community "anim" packs. The game characters are now able to move and behave much more convincingly like real people and not like horrible gimcrack toy soldiers as they always did in OFP. The "motion capture talent", according to the manual credits, included Czech special forces soldiers, and their expertise is apparent in the way the characters handle their weapons and generally disport themselves. Right now I seem to find myself in "3rd person view" a lot just admiring the appearance and the animation of my character!   I have not played too much of it so far apart from some  firefights and other simple situations set up in the mission editor (The BIS-supplied missions or campaigns do not look interesting to me so I have avoided these for now), but based alone on these first dabblings with it I can state now that I would be most reluctant to have to go back to Flashpoint! I know the software still has many problems, I also know of several things I wish I could still change or improve, and sadly not everyone who is interested in it is lucky enough to own the requisite hardware to enjoy it, but I'll echo many others in saying that I'm sure that most of these issues could be resolved as time goes on. I certainly do not so far find it "unplayable" by any means, as some have asserted. I should say that I play OFP/ArmA mostly for the infantry action. Vehicles and aircraft tend to mostly be "supporting actors" for my in-game activities, so the bugs related to vehicles and aircraft are not of overwhelming concern to me for now. They work well enough, enough of the time to satisfy my current modest requirements. I'd also just like to say thanks to all at BIS for the sterling work they put into this so far, under what I'm sure was considerable and mounting pressure. I sure if we all continue to support the game, it'll only keep getting better. As far as I am concerned, there's still nothing else out there that even comes close to it! Thanks for reading.

That's precisely what they do. Â They go straight out of the barrel and start dropping. Â The accellerate towards the ground at 9.8 m/s^2 in addition to what else they are doing- this includes travelling upwards. Â Guns zeroed for any range further than zero meters point up slightly in relation to their sights. Yes, gunners knew this in medieval times already.

What about British troops?

A bullet never rises above the axis of the barrel though. I've noticed that the M4 with iron sights is way off too.

Yay! Appreciation at last! I was pleasantly surprised that it worked too! It's definitely a new experience in a FPS but it'll take a bit of practice and acclimatisation. The aiming "awkwardness" amounts to you having to keep your target in view while you swivel your - virtual - body and raise your weapon to your shoulder. Personally I only find it a bit weird when I'm turning to engage a target spotted by looking almost "over my shoulder". I soon got the hang of turning to aim at targets out to half left or half right.

It's just a simple texture (always the same one) that gets replaced when the man is hit. At least it's an improvement (somewhat) over the "tomato ketchup" wounds in Op. Flashpoint.

Sights should be set for 300 yards for battle

I have a TrackIR 2 with driver version 3.13 (I downloaded the driver off the Natural Point website) and it works fine in ArmA! It doesn't have the "lean" function, of course, but looking around is great! Â Â OK, so that's all other FPS games ruined for me now (just like I can't play any flight sim games now without TrackIR)! Â Edit: I have to admit it's going to take quite some getting used to, though, since you are now controlling your virtual body, head and rifle separately. Those susceptible to motion sickness beware! I agree with the poster above who says that aiming can be awkward and his suggestion sounds appropriate. If I hadn't already owned the TrackIR unit for some years already I doubt if I'd have rushed out and got a new one just for this (I was happy enough with the "free look" feature in Op. Flashpoint - and ArmA - as it is)

Forgive my ignorance but is there a conceptual difference between a TK ("Team Kill"?) and an "honest" blue-on-blue? I've popped one or two friendlies by mistake on the virtual battlefield myself - fortunes of war and all that...

That's maybe because OPFOR took away all their women...

Bah! I've cut myself worse while shaving!

The M203 has a "BF2" style magic floating crosshair looks like: _ Â _ Â || - Â - Â || - Â - Â || - Â - Â || If you have crosshairs turn off you won't see anything since it doesn't have a 3D/ironsight mode. Same with grenades. Nah, the "crosshair" was the first thing I switched off. What d'you think this is ...Ghost Recon!?

The same would go for ballistic helmets and body armour on the soldiers.

Royal Sahrani M113 roaring across the field like a god of battle, spitting fiery death from its mighty 50 cal MG..... until it hits a tree head-on and gets stuck, tracks pathetically churning while enemy RPG grenades rain down on it. Â

The GL has no sights anyway so it's all a bit sucky trying to "qualify" with it. Until we get that "modded" I think I'll be leaving hoying grenades about to the AI boys (they seem pretty good at it too). Nice to see the American 300m M16 qualification range in the Flashpoint "universe", though!

Talking about AT4s; the "AT4" gunners in the game can, of course, fire 3 rounds in about 5 seconds too! Foom..Foom..Foom!

AT4s aren't reloadable. They are basically a one-shot disposable Carl Gustav. edit: but just assume for the sake of example that it actually was a Carl Gustav then they should be bopping them out every ten seconds or so (with a no.2 loading, of course)

Speaking from a "realism" point of view; the AI RPG-7 gunners in Armed Assault reload far too quickly - only about 2 seconds or so! I laughed when I saw one attack an enemy vehicle; Foom...Foom...Foom rapid fire!

In both Op. Flashpoint and Armed Assault the binoculars have a cross hair graticule that features a small black vertical mark at the left side. Does this mark serve any practical purpose? picture of binocular graticule

I simply disabled the magnification on the sights view because I preferred it that way. I am well aware of video display unit limitations, and about the distorted field of view in the Op. Flashpoint game, thanks. @Kirq. Yes I agree, that "bionic zooming eye" effect in your video looks ludicrous.

Yes, I agree, that stupid "ironsight zoom" was the first thing I disabled when I made my addon weapons.

Does it absolutely require TrackIR 4, or will earlier TrackIR models still work (at least for looking around - obviously not for "leaning")?

Babel fish is crap. It probably actually said "Delivery 2nd to 11th December". According to Amazon.de the game is currently "in stock". I preordered mine from there too and I got the same delivery estimate. I expect it to arrive in the next few days - probably so will yours.