dslyecxi

Why not look a bit closer to home? The Wargames League mod (which I was just recently introduced; a gaming group I'm in had a HUGE WGL session yesterday) does an excellent job of giving the weapons proper levels of sway, amongst other things. BiA's model is ridiculous, and shouldn't even be brought up when there are already OFP mods (and other games, for that matter) that do it so much better.

Link it wherever you want, the more exposure it gets, the better.

Given the choice between RO's/AA's setup and the one we find in OFP, I have to give the nod to RO. Is it the epitome of realism, on the other hand? No, and I should probably update the article to say so. Glad you liked it, btw. Thanks for the feedback.

Ballistics and kinetics are in, but not penetration. Penetration IS in, we just don't know in what capacity. We do know that it can be material-specific, though.

Yeah. Too bad. You can always order SWAT 4 Gold, it's 20$. I ordered it today myself A mouse bug prevents me from being able to play the demo, so I'm not planning to buy the game. That's the only reason I don't have it already.

What do I hope will be in ArmA? Everything in this article. Will it happen? Nope, but one can dream. There's a discussion about said article in the offtopic forum if you hadn't already seen it.

I just updated the ending.. quoting it here.

I left that out due to it being an unintentional feature. It's not a "hold breath" key, it's just a side effect of how the freelook works. Some might consider it to be an exploit, even. Where appropriate I listed it as an MP-5A4. When I was talking about magazines, I listed it as an MP-5 due to the fact that the entire family of weapons (MP-5A4, MP5SD5, MP-5K PDW, etc etc) share the same kind of magazine. Yeah. Too bad.

...why? Of all the places to have this, the Armed Assault forum is by far the most appropriate. As Chunder said, this is the kind of thing that should be stickied in it - it deals with all kinds of stuff that is CONSTANTLY rehashed in the forum, except it's done in a comprehensive and in-depth fashion. I posted it in the ArmA forum for a very good reason, and the fact that you've moved it to off-topic, when it really isn't off-topic, is a bit disheartening. Please move it back.

I've written an article that deals with first-person tactical/wargames and the best features that have been implemented in them, along with commentary on the genre and some ideas for future implementations. There's a lot of Flashpoint & Armed Assault references within, along with a slew of videos, screens, and pictures to illustrate it. I would highly recommend that anyone who's a fan of this genre (which all of you should be, if you're in the ArmA forum) should check it out. The article can be found here. This should give you something interesting to do instead of endlessly refreshing the forum in the hopes that new screens have been posted. Feedback is appreciated, of course. Discussion is also welcome. Enjoy.

Stickied? That would be extremely cool, here's hoping. Thanks. I didn't spend enough time with Trespasser to notice that, and really, I didn't want to include games that did something "first" but not best. Red Orchestra currently does the "resting weapons on the environment" thing better than anything else, so even if I had considered Trespasser, RO would've still "won" so to speak. All of them. That really isn't hard to do at ranges below say 75 meters shooting at a man-sized target. EOtech sights are a breeze to aim with, and when you combine that with the AR-15's low recoil you can get impressive results beyond what you would expect to acheive via ironsights. I was shooting at a bucket, maybe 1 foot on each side, and probably started off about 25-30 yards away from it. It was extremely easy to hit, even on the move. I would've been farther away, but the camera I was recording that with was pretty crappy and thus I had to be close to get it on film. There's another clip I have where I'm shooting with my Glock 19 at the same target while moving both front/back and side to side, at ranges from 7-25 meters. Same basic story there, 95% of my shots hit the target, two of them landed just short but aside from that everything was a hit.

Stickied? That would be extremely cool, here's hoping. Thanks. I didn't spend enough time with Trespasser to notice that, and really, I didn't want to include games that did something "first" but not best. Red Orchestra currently does the "resting weapons on the environment" thing better than anything else, so even if I had considered Trespasser, RO would've still "won" so to speak. All of them. That really isn't hard to do at ranges below say 75 meters shooting at a man-sized target. EOtech sights are a breeze to aim with, and when you combine that with the AR-15's low recoil you can get impressive results beyond what you would expect to acheive via ironsights. I was shooting at a bucket, maybe 1 foot on each side, and probably started off about 25-30 yards away from it. It was extremely easy to hit, even on the move. I would've been farther away, but the camera I was recording that with was pretty crappy and thus I had to be close to get it on film. There's another clip I have where I'm shooting with my Glock 19 at the same target while moving both front/back and side to side, at ranges from 7-25 meters. Same basic story there, 95% of my shots hit the target, two of them landed just short but aside from that everything was a hit.

Have you seen the videos that show this feature in VBS1? It looks like you could duck if you wanted to.

Most games really don't portray how loud combat in general is, to include most every weapon system there is. Out of everything I've played, I think the FDF sounds are the best for really giving gunfire a proper volume. I wouldn't say that they're louder so much as the sounds are different. A pistol tends to sound like a loud, quick and sharp CRACK, whereas a rifle is more of a lingering, deeper BOOOOM. Agreed! My interest was piqued in pistols the first time I went to a civilian shooting range while stationed at Camp Lejeune. They had a ton of stuff to try out, I must've spent a full paycheck there over the course of a few weeks trying out all the different weapons and blowing through ammo like it was free. I'd definitely recommend anyone who's interested in realistic games to give a shooting range a visit sometime. It'll change the way you look at true realism when it comes to weaponry.

Most games really don't portray how loud combat in general is, to include most every weapon system there is. Out of everything I've played, I think the FDF sounds are the best for really giving gunfire a proper volume. I wouldn't say that they're louder so much as the sounds are different. A pistol tends to sound like a loud, quick and sharp CRACK, whereas a rifle is more of a lingering, deeper BOOOOM. Agreed! My interest was piqued in pistols the first time I went to a civilian shooting range while stationed at Camp Lejeune. They had a ton of stuff to try out, I must've spent a full paycheck there over the course of a few weeks trying out all the different weapons and blowing through ammo like it was free. I'd definitely recommend anyone who's interested in realistic games to give a shooting range a visit sometime. It'll change the way you look at true realism when it comes to weaponry.

I think it's realistic to expect that some features from VBS1 will show up in ArmA in some capacity. I don't think we should expect all of them, though. Set your expectations such that you only expect to see one or two VBS1 features, because I'm sure they'll deliver that. Then, if they end up including more, you'll be pleasantly surprised by it.

This link should work fine: http://dslyecxi.com/bestoftactical3.html I haven't heard anyone else say they had issues with page 3, and I haven't changed it recently, so it was probably just some net fluke.

This link should work fine: http://dslyecxi.com/bestoftactical3.html I haven't heard anyone else say they had issues with page 3, and I haven't changed it recently, so it was probably just some net fluke.

I couldn't give you exact quotes from the devs about it, but I'm sure someone else here could. Soundwave modeling will be in ArmA, and it will include things like objects, buildings, etc obstructing sound. As to the High Dynamic Range Audio stuff, that has also been confirmed but not too much info has come out about it. The rest of it (doppler, speed of sound, etc) is all possible in OFP as you already know.

I couldn't give you exact quotes from the devs about it, but I'm sure someone else here could. Soundwave modeling will be in ArmA, and it will include things like objects, buildings, etc obstructing sound. As to the High Dynamic Range Audio stuff, that has also been confirmed but not too much info has come out about it. The rest of it (doppler, speed of sound, etc) is all possible in OFP as you already know.

Could you be more specific? What did I write that you haven't already heard about somewhere else?

Could you be more specific? What did I write that you haven't already heard about somewhere else?

Thanks for the feedback, Sanctuary. It's appreciated. I was aware of the Ghost Recon prone implementation, but I chose to focus on the Raven Shield one due to the game being more recent and the "true first-person" aspect giving it more "presence" than the GR1 one. One thing I recall liking about the GR1 version was that you could twist your body such that you would be shooting around a corner, with the bulk of your mass hidden behind the cover. That's not really represented in RvS, and I should have mentioned it. Oversight on my part. I was also aware of Infiltration doing the M-203 stuff, freeaim, etc etc. The problem there was that I've never actually played Infiltration for any substantial period of time, and certainly not within the past four years. I didn't cover any games that I wasn't totally familiar with, so Infiltration unfortunately got the short stick. I might add a note about that when I revise the article. It does deserve notice. I didn't include Delta Force because given the choice between WWIIOL and it, I feel the WWIIOL implementation is better. IIRC Delta Force allowed you to do very rapid elevation adjustments, whereas WWIIOL imposes a brief pause between each 100m adjustment. They're so similar that such a small thing puts WWIIOL on top in my eyes. As to the SWAT series, I unfortunately haven't been able to play any games in that series. The most recent one, SWAT 4, I thougt looked very cool from the demo - but, alas, I had serious mouse issues that prevented me from being able to comfortably play it. Thus, I never got the full game, never experienced it fully, and couldn't really write about it due to the restrictions I imposed upon myself when writing the article.

Thanks for the feedback, Sanctuary. It's appreciated. I was aware of the Ghost Recon prone implementation, but I chose to focus on the Raven Shield one due to the game being more recent and the "true first-person" aspect giving it more "presence" than the GR1 one. One thing I recall liking about the GR1 version was that you could twist your body such that you would be shooting around a corner, with the bulk of your mass hidden behind the cover. That's not really represented in RvS, and I should have mentioned it. Oversight on my part. I was also aware of Infiltration doing the M-203 stuff, freeaim, etc etc. The problem there was that I've never actually played Infiltration for any substantial period of time, and certainly not within the past four years. I didn't cover any games that I wasn't totally familiar with, so Infiltration unfortunately got the short stick. I might add a note about that when I revise the article. It does deserve notice. I didn't include Delta Force because given the choice between WWIIOL and it, I feel the WWIIOL implementation is better. IIRC Delta Force allowed you to do very rapid elevation adjustments, whereas WWIIOL imposes a brief pause between each 100m adjustment. They're so similar that such a small thing puts WWIIOL on top in my eyes. As to the SWAT series, I unfortunately haven't been able to play any games in that series. The most recent one, SWAT 4, I thougt looked very cool from the demo - but, alas, I had serious mouse issues that prevented me from being able to comfortably play it. Thus, I never got the full game, never experienced it fully, and couldn't really write about it due to the restrictions I imposed upon myself when writing the article.

If you look at the latest ArmA shots, the BIS ACOG sights seem to be much more accurate than what was seen in various OFP mods. I don't know if it's perfectly calibrated/scaled in ArmA, but it sure looks close.