dslyecxi

This is a very unrealistic suggestion. Falcon 3.0 is a "study sim", which is to say that the efforts of an entire development team were oriented and focused towards making one specific thing (aircraft) be the best it could be. It takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and research to get a aircraft avionics, flight models, weapon performance, radar, etc, to be up to the level that you're asking for. It is not a realistic request to make of BIS - they are not doing a "study sim", they're doing a combined arms game. Can the air aspect of ArmA be improved? Certainly. However, it is not realistic or even fair to compare ArmA's aircraft to those of LOMAC, Falcon 3/4, or any other sim that is oriented exclusively around delivering highly detailed aircraft.

i've seen footage of an RPG knocking a fucking abrams on its side. furthermore, STRYKERS HAVE TIRES PEOPLE. if you hit RUBBER with an RPG, they blow up, thats simply common sence. if you want to try to say that strykers are a high quality machine, you obviously have no millitary experience and have never done your fucking research. stop being a die hard fucking american millitary victim of their propaganda and have the brain capacity to think for yyourself . fact is, strykers simply cannot handle an rpg shot, they are a kevlar REINFORCED shield, not designed to take rpg rounds. .50 cal would penetrate it. it was designed to take small arms fire, as well as a marter blast from like 40 feet away. that is written in the design modifications for the vehicle that it is simply not designed to withstand a direct explosive impact. end of fucking story. if you think that strykers should take 2 rpg youre a fucking retard. plain and simple. cheers Haha. There is so much bullshit in your post it's comical. If you think an RPG explosion can make damn near 70-ton tank get "knocked on its side", you have lost your mind. Also, the quote is from a reliable source - something which, based on your comments, you are not. Go crawl back to whatever internet hidey-hole you were previously nesting in.

Have you ever read about how survivable Strykers are? Here's a good anecdote for you. This nonsense about an armored vehicle being utterly and catastrophically destroyed by a single RPG is, quite simply, wrong. Lesson learned: It's a very good idea to be familiar what the reality is before complaining about how "unrealistic" a change is.

There is a lot more to proper weapon simulation than just the ArmA-style recoil system. For it to be a truly accurate representation of how real weapons behave in the hands of a skilled shooter, it will require a bit more work. I have hope that ArmA II will address this - for ArmA1, I am fairly happy with the current 1.09 recoils but I would like to see them address things like having different recoil strength in different stances (too much stability is currently present when standing and crouched). Maybe bump up the overall recoil a bit as well. I don't know what to expect from MG recoil fixes - it has been mentioned a lot in the past, but as far as I can tell there is no system to allow for accurate and proper machinegun recoils, so I don't hold much hope for that in ArmA1. There are quite a few other recoil- and weapons-related features that need to be implemented or tweaked for ArmAII to get it to sim-level weapons behavior, but, again... I don't think it's realistic to expect them to show up in ArmA1. You would do well to come across a wee bit less strongly, OKO. You make it sound like you believe these changes herald the end of the world. Not only are you overreacting to changes in a beta, you're doing so in a very narrow-focused fashion. Vehicle survivability is improved because in previous iterations of the game (and in OFP), armored vehicles were complete and total deathtraps. Ideally there would be a robust damage model for infantry and vehicles to account for this and make for an even great overall system, but guess what? That's not how things are, so some compromises have to be made. We had a scenario develop in a recent MP session where an enemy player shot one of our team's BMPs in the tracks. This did the following: 1) Destroyed that track, damaged the track on the other side. Total mobility kill. 2) Heavily damaged our hull 3) Wounded every person inside of the vehicle to the point that some could not stand 4) Disabled the turret The gameplay resulting from that is infinitely better than "instant catastrophic and complete vehicle destruction" and is much closer in line with reality. I would much rather play a game that errs on the side of good gameplay than falls into the "too severe to the point of unreality", like ArmA 1.08's damage models. Also, look at Strykers. They're another good case for improved vehicle survivability. I could post some anecdotes here of cases where those vehicles have taken incredible hits without losing crew members. The same is NOT true in ArmA 1.08 and prior. So, please - understand that a lot of this is closer to reality than you think. Combat against armored vehicles is not nearly as cut-and-dried simple as "AT-4 = win".

This has been possible since at least 1.05 if not earlier. Any player can talk to any other player simply by standing near them and speaking. That's the value. There is no "need to scream to be heard" with the direct speaking VOIP. If you have people split into more than one TS channel, the value of this should be clear. My group doing a coop mission can span five or six (or more) TS channels, which would make communication between low-level elements (ie: Fireteam members) difficult if the two people trying to talk were from different squads. This aspect of VOIP addresses that problem very, very well. It's useful beyond the "user-friendly" aspect of it. My group establishes TS channels by squad. We use the "Group" VOIP to talk within each element (which is a fireteam, one "in-game" squad, three fireteams plus a squad leader element make up one full squad), and use the TS channel to talk to the entire squad. So, Bravo One (first fireteam, Bravo squad) can use Group VOIP to talk to everyone in that fireteam. They can then use TS to talk to everyone in Bravo squad. TS does not allow for that kind of hierarchy, and even if it did, it would not be flexible enough and it would not be integrated into the game as ArmA's VOIP is. It makes things much easier when dealing with vehicles in general. Loading people into helos from different squads, for example, is much simpler now - they can all discuss helo-specific plans during the flight, which everyone in the helo can hear. The pilot/gunners can talk to the passengers, the passengers can talk amongst themselves, etc. There is no comm barrier caused by Player A being in TS channel 1 while Player B is in channel 2 and the pilot is in channel 3. Your two suggestions (HQ channel and second-screen VOIP) are probably out of the scope of ArmA1. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them.

VOIP allows for: 1. Direct Speaking - Players talking on this can be heard speaking from where they are standing, with the volume being based on their distance from you. This is enormously powerful and is a very immersive way to communicate. This alone has been the single most significant teamplay-enhancing aspect of ArmA compared to OFP. Imagine how useful it would be in any kind of game type to walk up to anyone in the environment, talk, and know that they will hear you. 2. Group chat - VOIP that is based on the in-game group you are in, automatically. Very useful in situations where you want to say something to your group but not anyone else. TS does not offer this unless you subdivide channels, at which point things become more complicated. 3. Vehicle chat - VOIP based on the vehicle you're in, automatically. Same as group chat - this is very useful and relies on integration with the game that is not possible in Teamspeak. VOIP has been a part of BIS' games since Operation Flashpoint. It has been in need of bugfixing for YEARS. Excuse me if I would like to see it actually work the way it was intended to work. There is an enormous amount of potential there and I personally am willing to invest the time and effort into testing it to try to bring it up to speed. Complain to the server admins, there's a server config option to turn that off. Even when it is on, it only takes up one line of text. There are annoying people in every game ever released. Utilize the mute feature (did you know there's a mute?) and move on. That's a horrible reason to not like VOIP. Idiots will spam Teamspeak as well, the only difference is that there's an entry barrier into doing it because of the user-unfriendly need to figure out the proper TS server and connect to it. I am reluctant to continue discussing this with you based upon your self-proclaimed lack of experience with VOIP in ArmA. I hope what I've said has been even vaguely enlightening.

Sorry, but you're misunderstanding. EVERYONE on the server will see the green group chat when in the lobby, because EVERYONE is considered to be in the same group at that point. The issue you are citing does not actually exist. As to the VOIP - once again, this is a beta release. Testing VOIP is not over. If it's not working in the final release, yeah, gripe about it. In the beta, it is more productive to try to figure out why it isn't working, find ways to reproduce the issues, and get it looked at by BIS.

Even in its currently not-quite-finished state, the ArmA VOIP has added an enormous amount of potential to our (ShackTac) MP already. I can't imagine how someone can use the Direct Speaking VOIP in-game and still think that Teamspeak somehow offers the same abilities. My only guess is that you play gametypes where VOIP wouldn't matter to begin with, or with small playercounts where TS suffices. In-game VOIP is a huge boon when you're dealing with a playercount of above, say, 25 or so. It is still quite significant even at lower playercounts, as it generally simplifies things when compared to TS. TS is a good thing to use as well (we use both, each for different things), don't get me wrong, but to say that it offers the same functionality as the in-game VOIP is simply wrong.

This is not a bug. When dead or in the lobby, players speak over the "group" channel. All dead players (which is what everyone in the lobby technically is) will be talking on group, which shows up as green.

Thanks for the info, but let me clarify. Reproducing the VOIP issues isn't terribly hard. You can simply play the game with a good chunk of people and over time you will experience each aspect of the VOIP bugs. The problem, and what I'm looking for, is finding a 100% reliable way to reproduce any given bug on-demand. We know that there are specific types of bugs. What we don't know are the best ways to repro them, which tend to lead to speedy fixes. Unfortunately it needs to be more detailed and reliable than "play for x-many minutes with x-many players JIP'ing over the course of it".

Some of the VOIP issues are hard to repro. We've been looking for reliable ways to repro some things (ie: static chat, broken-up chat, not being able to hear specific people) for a bit and haven't figured it out yet. Bear in mind too that this is a public beta for a reason - the sheer number of people involved can find issues that smaller groups cannot, due to the number of man-hours available. If you find repro for any of the VOIP issues, post them - they'll be addressed. As far as how reliable it is, we've been using it to good effect with 40-60 people. There are issues (as noted), but so long as you have TS as your fall-back for anyone who is suffering from the issues, it still adds a lot to the experience. The current status is best described as buggy, which is a good deal better than the "utterly unusable" state that it was in previously.

Does this change the vehicle volume levels back to 1.08 intensity, or to 1.09 vanilla? The reason I ask is that vehicle volumes were dropped to allow for vehicle VOIP to be audible. If FDF "breaks" that, I won't be able to use it anymore.

Disable hardware acceleration and you will be fine. To reemphasize this: If you have HARD REBOOTS (computer reboots without warning), all you need to do is disable hardware acceleration. That will stop the hard reboots. It has been 100% effective from what I have observed.

Does AT recoil really matter, though? There are no rapid-fire AT weapons, so the recoil is pretty much a moot issue.

I'm really liking this change in particular : It really helped to get rid of that sluggish feeling the mouse had previously. And, as mentioned, the rest of it 1.09 is great. I'm looking forward to seeing what all is tweaked and change between now and the final "1.09" patch.

Server admins, just to be clear, the new difficulty options are: DeathMessages=0; //Death messages off NetStats=0; //Scoreboard off until mission ends VonID=1; //VOIP talking indicators on VonID is an important one (IMHO) because it allows you to see who is speaking over radio VON and it color-codes it based on the chat channel. If you intend to use VOIP you will probably want to use that setting to minimize confusion. The other two are useful if you like playing like that. edit: Also, re: sound mods, things have changed in 1.09 that might give you odd performance from them. They will likely need to be updated to account for 1.09's new sound settings, but it is of course up to the individual authors to decide whether they want to modify it now, or wait until the final patch is released to ensure that nothing else changes.

I'm really happy with how 1.09 turned out. The number of fixes, tweaks, and features added to it were beyond what I had been expecting. Overall, the game plays much more smoothly, we now have VOIP that is much closer to working perfectly (though it still needs more debugging), lots of gameplay aspects have been tweaked (AI, recoil, damage resilience for vehicles, etc)... overall, I can't help but give this patch an A+. It is clear from the change log that BIS has been listening to the community and has been implementing what is feasible to do in a patch. And remember - it's not even the final patch.

Good to see it out. Here's hoping the community will be able to help find any remaining issues and get them resolved so that it can become a "real" patch.

A number of videos from ShackTac can be found in the following article. http://dslyecxi.com/articles/arma_109_voip.html Highlights are: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec10_voip_mout_bd.wmv http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_voip_Forest.wmv And, if you don't mind a bit of silliness and language: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec11_madcows_breakdown.wmv http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec12_lazy_sunday.wmv

It seems you can´t understand the reactions your thread caused. Try to see it from the perspective of someone who doesn´t have the chance to playtest 1.09 and has quite a number of questions on his list. Would you be happy to get just a little chunk of info while there are so many unanswered questions and at the same time being told that this a one feature exclusively discussion thread ? Considering that the exact same topic has been discussed with zero issues on other forums, I think it is very clear that the issues arise from the ArmA forum specifically and it's userbase. It is a quality issue inherent with this community, and it's rather disheartening that of all places, such a conversation is least likely to be successful on the ArmA forum. Perhaps it should be expected, but regardless, it's still disheartening.

The number of topics that were open to discussion were pretty significant. You seem to have turned it into a VOIP-specific issue, but whatever. You get to run this community. Thank god we have alternative places to discuss ArmA.

This topic will be covering the upcoming 1.09 patch for ArmA, as experienced by myself and some fellow ShackTac members. I'll post some info and videos and then answer general questions about the patch for anyone who's interested. Bear in mind that I will not do the following: a) Post the entire changelog (as it's still WIP) b) Get into very fine detail about anything other than VOIP With that being said, my impressions of the 1.09 patch at this stage are that it's going to be a very good one for this community. I think the most telling aspect of 1.09 testing is how frequently our players want to "test" it. The amount of depth and fun that is brought on by the enhanced VOIP is incredible - it has been awhile since I have had so much fun, or laughed so hard, as when testing 1.09 VOIP. Moving away from the VOIP briefly, I'll touch on a few of the other changes in 1.09 that are particularly significant. - Framerate has improved a good deal, especially in North Sahrani. - Ballistics have been enhanced. - Recoil has been tweaked to be more responsive (you can see this clearly in my videos) - Vehicle damage models have been tweaked for better gameplay (more survivable). - AI has been improved in several ways (ie: they do not zero in on your so accurately based upon sound, their dispersion is related to their skill more clearly now, and a few other things). The best way to sum it up is that the AI is more fun to play against now. - NetStats difficulty option. This allows you to disable the scoreboard during a mission, and see it when the mission actually ends. ShackTac has been running a mod that totally removes the scoreboard for awhile, and this actually ends up being better than that - you prevent people from seeing their scores during the mission, but still allow for the possibility for people to see those scores when the mission has ended. - Kill message difficulty option. Another favorite of ours - now, instead of having to use a stringtable mod to disable the death messages, you can disable them server-side. There are a bunch of other changes in 1.09 - BIS has been very responsive to suggestions and comments on it. As I said, I'm not going to go into the full changelog. There has to be an element of surprise, after all. And now... moving back to VOIP. VOIP in 1.09 is amazingly cool. We've been testing it extensively, oftentimes going through five builds in a week, with each one addressing issues noticed and implementing feature requests or tweaks that we've suggested after our test sessions. The pride and joy of VOIP for me is that we finally have a "Who's Speaking" indication . You will not see this in the videos (afaik) because it was literally just added, but our initial testing of it has revealed it to be very, very handy. This is set as a server-side difficulty option in case any groups don't think it's "realistic" to have an indication of who's talking over VOIP. The indicator works like this: - When someone speaks on Direct Speaking (locational chat), their name does not show up. You can hear their voice coming from their body instead. - If someone speaks on Global, Side, Group, or Vehicle chat you will see their name display at the bottom of the "chat" bar. When they stop speaking, their name will linger for one second and then disappear. The name is color-coded based on what chat channel they're speaking over - white for global, blue for side, green for group, yellow for vehicle. If more than one person is talking at once, you will have their names appear to the right side of the first speaker, in the order that they started talking. Because of this, you can have many people talking at once and still be able to figure out who's who, while screen real estate is preserved due to the fact that it lists them horizontally instead of vertically. Think "Teamspeak Overlay", except integrated into the game by default. It's an awesome feature. Oh yeah - when you die, you can speak in VOIP with the dead players, without the living players hearing you. The same thing happens with text - dead people's text cannot be seen by the living. Admins can still transmit to all players, though, if they choose. Here are some videos of us testing VOIP. Bear in mind that this is obviously prerelease test footage and that there are elements in the behavior of VOIP that are still being tweaked and addressed. The first video is a simple "Battle Drill" mission of ours that is meant to train MOUT fighting and movement through urban areas. This mission shines with VOIP - the amount of communication fluidity that is present now due to the VOIP is fantastic. This is the video you should probably check out first - I went through after the mission and subtitled what I was saying, due to the fact that (as is to be expected) my voice was not recorded via FRAPs. Hires: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec10_voip_mout_bd.wmv Lores: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec10_voip_mout_bd_lowres.wmv Next up we have a mission where our squad is moving through a forested area to try to locate two captured pilots. My voice isn't subbed one this one, but you can see where I'm talking (due to the VOIP transmit indicator showing up). This is a pretty neat video as well and is fairly typical of our VOIP experiences thus far. Hires: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_voip_Forest.wmv Lores: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_voip_Forest_lores.wmv And, finally, some stupid outtakes and such from our testing. Things can't always be serious, after all. If you have sensitive ears or no sense of humor, you might want to avoid these. http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec11_madcows_breakdown.wmv http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec12_lazy_sunday.wmv http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_boss_battle_outtake.wmv Here is some further information I posted at SimHQ which some of you might find interesting: So, there you have it. That's the basic story of 1.09. I will try to answer questions to the best of my ability, keeping in mind the caveats made above and my own schedule.

Ok, perhaps there's a misconception at work here. VOIP is not the only thing being worked on. Other things are developed in parallel with it. For those that think the delay has been exclusively about VOIP, that's not the case.

Haha. As if on cue...

The point at which someone dismisses VOIP because "TS2 does the same thing" is the point at which it goes from 'reasonable discussion' to 'baseless, uninformed bashing'. If you want to take this as anger, hey - that's your prerogative. If I were actually angry, I wouldn't be spending any of my time replying to this topic. Not presently, but it's something that has been requested. Here's hoping.