dslyecxi

I would reserve the bravado until you've actually done it, versus just "discussed" it. Ripping on other mod teams in public like this is rather poor form, especially when all you've shown is a picture of three white infantry with the rest of the scene looking exactly like the "gray nightvision" you're so readily slamming.

My group has about 20-25 prior or current military, mostly US branches but with some non-US thrown in as well. I'm prior service myself (USMC). As to your other question, ArmA is a virtual world with some interesting features, possibilities, and limitations. I would not say that it is the perfect representation of what this sort of stuff is like in reality by any stretch of the imagination, but it is closer than any other game and it's used in military training tool form (VBS2) for good reason.

Have a look at the below link: http://stats.swec.se/server/list keep checking it at busy times and you can make up your own mind about if there are 100+ players server or which is the busiest server.... I have never found that site to be particularly accurate on the playercount. Both Gametracker and Game-Monitor seem to be more reliable for playercounts/activity history, whereas the one you linked to seems to be better for other things (ie: mission history, but even that does not seem to be terribly reliable).

Congrats, Frederf, you've figured it all out. Now, if you would like to take this to PMs, feel free - otherwise I really don't see how you bitching about me is relevant to the topic at hand. I also don't have the time or inclination to argue about it with you. I stated several points that are pretty much indisputable. I'm not going to argue about your reinterpretations of them or restate what I've already gone through. You can take it how you will. You can continue with the personal attacks if you think that will accomplish something, but I'm past the point of spending time dealing with such people in a public forum.

You disagree with me and then agree with me later in your post. Interesting. You also then decide to speak for someone else, explain what they "meant" (which is not what they said), and throw in a few personal attacks along the way along with a nice dose of strawman and hyperbole. Lovely. Excuse me if I bow out of this "discussion" at this point.

Sorry man, this is nonsense. There is nothing realistic about being forced to choose a position carefully to take out your binos because you cannot move with them out. There is nothing realistic about being forced to take cover before drawing your pistol. Nothing at all. It's nonsense to argue otherwise - I have transitioned from rifle to pistol while on the move in live-fire real-steel weapon training a great number of times. It's a standard thing to practice. If your primary rifle goes down, you transition to your pistol and move to cover so that you can get your primary rifle back up and into the fight. You don't stop and casually draw your pistol, either - you move quickly off of the danger area and draw while moving. Arguing otherwise is fine, as everyone is entitled to their opinion, but arguing it from the angle of realism is not accurate at all.

It "feels like it" when you're under fire because: 1) You cannot move while 'changing to sidearm'- you can't dodge, duck, run, or anything. 2) The animation is slow and lazy, and oftentimes you will get some odd behavior where it will go through another animation first. In short, it's not even remotely close to anything that can be construed as realism. The sad thing is that we have people trying to justify this behavior as if it isn't an obvious game limitation/bug/oversight. You completely misunderstood my post. I said the exact opposite of what you think I said.

I could drop any object in my hands and both move out of the way and draw my pistol in a ridiculously short period of time compared to how ArmA "models" it. Same with my rifle. The current binocular behavior is an animation issue with how ArmA was done, and the ArmA animation system. It probably wasn't high-priority to fix, or was too difficult to do after-the-fact. I hope that ArmA2 addresses this. It would be a welcomed change. Really, though, all the arguments in this thread so far about the "realism" of being locked in one place while drawing/putting away binoculars are completely and utterly ridiculous. It's almost as absurd as the arguments about how you can't reload and move at the same time in reality - utter nonsense arguments that attempt to justify a "feature" that is actually an oversight, bug, or simply an underdeveloped aspect of the game.

The kind of implementation you are asking for is a pretty complex thing, and at least at the moment it is not even under consideration. Perhaps in the future when every other potentially interesting avenue of development has been exhausted. Assuming, of course, that ArmA2 does not do this already and make such a system redundant.

It will be streamlined compared to WGL. Exact details are still WIP. Possibly, it hasn't been worried about yet. There are bigger fish to fry currently. Yes, as appropriate, and as time/prioritization allows. I doubt it. There is functionality in ArmA to allow for bullet penetration already. Doing more than that is likely futile and a waste of effort, at least at this stage. This is a very loaded question. ACE will bring over a lot of WGL stuff and implement many new things. WGL was a multi-year project, and while ACE is taking much from it, ACE is by no means a straight port and you can expect some things in WGL to not be in the initial release.

You're talking about stamina and such... that's another feature of ACE, actually. The weight of your gear influences your stamina, as does your movement speed, posture, and the type of terrain you're moving over. Carry less and you will have more "energy" so to speak, carry more and you'll tire faster. You can drop your loaded rucksack to the ground at a rally point before an attack if you want, taking only the ammo and supplies you need for the immediate moment so that you'll be able to move more rapidly without tiring yourself out. Or just carry less to begin with, or whatever. It's up to you.

Getting scripting support to muck around with VON settings, create new channels, etc, would make it possible to do any kind of radio simulation worth doing in the context of ArmA. It's been asked for. Time will tell as to whether it will show up.

Minor tweaks are possible, but if you're expecting some miracle, you'll be disappointed. The main limiting factor is the ArmA animation system, and secondary to that is the presence of proper replacement animations to use for any given aspect. Personally, I see no reason to spend what is ultimately limited time changing the death animations. Changing the way animations work and transition while alive and moving, on the other hand, is potentially fruitful.

There is a VBS2 forum for any VBS2 customers - questions like that really belong there.

I'm not sure I follow you here. A volume limit has a place alongside a weight system. ArmA's current system basically represents a soldiers load bearing vest. All of the items in your inventory are typically things that would be carried directly on your vest, in mag pouches, grenade pouches, general purpose pouches, medical pouches, dump pouches, etc. This is pretty much exactly how the ACE inventory system works. The rucksack is an additional carrying capacity - you can have an unlimited number of items in it (in theory), but in practice it is limited by volume and weight of the items. Again - already done in ACE. It has been modded into ArmA, as mentioned above, and the interface for it is friendly and easy-to-use. Additionally, you do not need to sacrifice anything to use the system - it compensates for everything. There is no downside to using it. Now, as to whether any of that type of stuff will be in ArmA2, I don't know, but as I said, we will have it in ArmA1 and we will port it to ArmA2 if need be.

Have you passed the details of this to anyone?

The Cobra has this already, and it's quite cool. As to other vehicles, it's probably WIP at this stage. Really, it's just a matter or prioritization - some things may not be in the initial release, but they are planned to be implemented, and it's just a matter of finding time to put them in.

I am going to assume that you are not aware of this fact, since you have said you are not familiar with real nightvision systems. On real NVGs, the lens cover typically has a tiny pinhole in it. This allows for the NVG device to be used in full sunlight. Because of this, your example of 0430 "whiting out" the NVGs is pretty much the exact opposite of realism. An NVG user in that situation would simply put the lens cover onto the NVG device and continue operating. Really, though, the point at which the NVGs become unusable without the pinhole cover is likely to correspond with the point at which the person could take their NVGs off and operate normally. I think that there is some merit in working out a system to make the NVGs not suffer so badly from the moonless/overcast situation where light sources cause them to over-darken. However, I don't think that it's a good idea to disable the HDR effects entirely.

How's this for a basic look at some of the features? I wrote it a few weeks ago - much has changed (in a good way) since then.

This will be minimized as much as possible. It may not ever be an issue, but at the same time, we will not sacrifice great functionality just to maintain compatibility with existing missions. ACE is such a different style of play that you will want to design scenarios specifically to account for its feature set, anyway. The BAS Mission Framework will be updated for ACE as soon as possible, too, and that should facilitate mission making for everyone. Yes. I don't believe that that has been discussed in such terms. I personally don't see much use in that right now - the AI isn't really designed to work that way to begin with, it's not like they have a character sheet that gives them a +5 to piloting but a -3 to MG/AT usage. Perhaps some things will be done to give the illusion of this and get the same end gameplay result.

That's the basic idea, yeah. There are 'trial' versions of VBS2 that use HASP keys that only have a limited amount of 'life' to them. You demo the software to someone with your company's personnel, help them learn it and show them the potential, then leave them with a system + copy of VBS2 + trial HASP key and let them play around with it for a bit. They show it to other people, the other people evaluate it, you come back for more questions and demonstrations, and finally they buy it and get a full HASP key and the full set of software, hardware, etc.

Oh, I know. We, as a team, know that. A few negative or demanding people are to be expected around these parts, after all. The negative people will not be an influence on us. Thanks. I think it's going to really impress people. I can't wait to write my first ACE After-Action Review from ShackTac's full-scale experiences in it. I haven't really noticed much of a performance impact from ACE at this point. We'll be able to say more about performance once the beta is available. If there are any performance problems, we'll address them, but I don't expect there to be any major ones. Some things, like the enhanced visual effects, might drop you down a few frames when things are really thick (lots of smoke, explosions, etc, covering a large percentage of your screen), but other than that you should be good.

Phaeden goes out of his way to make a good, lengthy post about ACE, and the best you can reply with is basically a demand to know in percentage points how "complete" it is, and what the estimated date is?

People don't seem to grasp the economics behind the pricing. VBS2 and ArmA are sold in different markets. Different markets command different prices. In the entertainment market, you can sell a million copies of your software, so you can afford to price it at $30. In the simulations market, you wouldn't even sell a tenth of that, so your price must be set over 10 times as high to still bring in the same profit. VBS2 also has effectively twice the development team of ArmA (BIS + BIA), and it has to provide much more customer support compared to the entertainment market, so it costs more to produce. The pricing is set by basic economics, just like the price of everything else in the free world. I don't think that's even the issue here. The point is more that some people see VBS2 as a magical cure-all for anything wrong with ArmA, and somehow manage to work themselves up to the point that they can justify spending an absurd amount of money on it. It's simply not worth it for a civvie, due to ArmA's existence. I never said that the pricing is too high - it makes perfect sense for the market it's aimed at. That market is not the same one as what ArmA is aimed at, obviously, but as I said... I don't think that was ever brought into question in this thread.

None of the above. My professional real-life job involves VBS2. I do scenario design for a simulation company that uses VBS2 as the basis for live-fire and virtual (laser-based) firearms training. In a completely unrelated note, I also participate in the ACE development as a hobby. There is no relation between ACE and VBS2, no shared development, nothing. ACE is for ArmA and ArmA2, VBS2 is for the military, and VTK is for VBS2 and has absolutely no association to ACE.