dm

lol you know what they say about assumption...

Not true at ALL. The Americans removed the Longbow from their Apaches deployed in Afghanistan in order to save weight (since the hot & high conditions reduce performance). The Brits, with their more powerful Rolls Royce engines were able to leave the Longbow installed, since they have vastly more power available. There have been many many reports from British Army Air Corps pilots that the longbow has been invaluable at locating mortars and even heavy machineguns inamongst the ground clutter. The system is integrated into the Apache in such a way that they can automatically slew the visual sensors onto the target to confirm what it is (with the strict RoE this is a procedural requirement, not a targeting one - once the radar is locked onto something, you can plop a hellfire onto it without any further input).

Again, not so with radar hellfire. The way the tab system is presented in Arma is very close to how the longbow system works in reality. By the time it has presented you with the target square (which it does IRL) it has already worked out its firing solution for you. Supposedly it will also tell the difference between t-72, shilka, abrams, challenger, etc etc (understandable, as it is a millimeter-wave or "imaging" radar) so assuming you operate different hardware to the enemy it will also do IFF for you. If you're all running around in the same (or very similar) vehicles, then some visual IFF would be needed. I have heard stories from the Brits using Apache in Afghanistan that the radar is good enough to pick out an 80mm mortar tube or a DShK from the ground clutter... So for systems that use this kind of radar (assuming we'll get the radar equipped Comanche in full), then the current representation is perfectly fine. (I'm sure many of you will disagree, but then it wouldn't be authentic otherwise...) Agreed, systems like laser hellfire, or optically guided TOW (or their funky A3 equivalents) require human in the loop, for sure.

Because, as we've seen elsewhere, BI is flat out fixing things already. And the flight model would be a higher priority fix than the tab-lock system.

Also getting it back to front I see. I'm going to avoid going deeper into the car maker analogy (everyone knows European and Asian cars have been vastly superior to American ones since the Model T). However, using the car-engine analogy, the hemi is more like RV, and the tuned engines are more like cryEngine, Unreal, etc etc. The hemi allows you to up the performance from the baseline, because it is not already working at its maximum potential. If that means you overstress the drivetrain or the chassis, or burn out the tyres, well thats the risk you take when exceeding the initial spec. The tuned engines are more like cryEngine, Unreal, etc where they are already working at their maximum potential for the chassis/drivetrain/tyres they were designed for. Well in the case of RV it is totally bullshit. As is this thread. For one very simple reason: You're working on the assumption that BI wants to be an engine-provider. As far as we can tell, based on the fact that BI does not push the engine as a solution to peoples game-creation needs, BI is happy just using their own engine(s) to produce their own projects. As far as we can tell, they have zero desire to expand beyond what they are doing now - projects that interest them, and make them enough money to do more projects that interest them. Beyond Deans wild ramblings, BI has not really expressed any interest in moving the Arma series onto console. They tried with OFP Elite, and learnt a lot of things, but it has been stated since that Arma (and by extension the RV engine) is PC exclusive. Ouch, burnt by my own typos :butbut: The fact that they have not tells me you are. :) Again, your argument is based on the idea that they want to expand and be a big AAA player. Maybe they're perfectly happy with the status quo as it is? How are you not getting that just throwing more hardware at the problem (i.e. the "what is there" part) is not going to be a magical performance solution? Would you be making these assumptions if RV3 (Arma 2) then RV4 (Arma 3) had been fully utilising all cores on a multi-core CPU at the same performance level? Is this request based on some kind of placebo effect? "Its not using ALL my cores, so it must be under performing!" Thanks for re-posting some PR drivel in here. My timing seems fine to me? So when your hardware is not capable of running those quality options, it is clearly the engine at fault? Superb logic. Sticking with the car analogies: my car isn't big enough to transport the 8 friends I want to go somewhere with. Should I tell some of them they cant go in my car (turning off options) or should I complain to the car manufacturer that the car is poorly designed/optimised? I prefer "reason" rather than "excuse" ;)

No, seems to be right over your head actually. Your analogy is crap. A hemi engine is not powerful because it is good from a technical standpoint. A hemi 426 is powerful because it is large (7L infact). Meanwhile, other engines (specifically Audi, BMW, Mitsubish, etc) are producing WAY more power for the same 1.6L 4 cylinder. Jaguar, for instance, have just released a concept (but actually manufactured it) engine thats 1.6L and produces more than 500hp (supposedly over 800 when combined with electric motors). Kinda blows your shitty hemi away really. (tho this is way past the original point of the topic, cant help it if your analogies are crap tho...) Anyway, if anything, the RV engine is more like the hemi than the tuned engines - it has a huge amount of overhead available for expansion into. Just because the current chassis/drivetrain/wheel&tyre technology can't cope with the torque doesn't make it a bad engine... I'm not saying multi-core is not good technology. What I'm saying is (and has been explained by Maruk and Suma), simply throwing more cores at the problem does not equal an instant performance fix. Say you split the AI across 2 (or more) cores. Great. Core 1 does its calcs and has results, but if core 2 is stuck doing something complex, you'll still have to wait for it to finish, then you still have to combine those results back together. Same goes for physics, same goes for pretty much everything. And until its actually out there and tested independently, its just PR bullshit. 1. I think you'll find its spelt investor. And you think it is easy to magic one out of thin air? In the financial climate we've had for the last 5 years? If BI struggled to find a publisher (typically the investor in game development) what makes you think it would be easier to find an independent financial backer? 2. Yup, it does more than pretty much any other engine out there. That a bunch of chuckleheads with more money than sense struggle to get good performance on their expensive rigs (for the record, I get a stable ~30 fps on my 4 year old, $900 rig) because they automatically try to max everything out. Well thats their problem, not mine or the engines'. Protip: you can max out 99% of other engines because they are designed with the limits of the xbox 360 and/or ps3 in mind. 3. I don't know how to respond to this... Both Marek and Suma (the guys that wrote the engine...) have stated that "spreading RV out across more cores will not magically provide more performance", yet here we have you saying that they should spread it across more cores because it will give more performace. I know who I'm inclined to believe... Nope, I tend to avoid most of the bullshit threads :) And nor does your bullshit drivel of "put it on more cores!!1!!11!!" No shit adding more complex calculations to the simulation adds more overhead to the processing cycle. Going back to your car engine analogy, thats like putting your hemi into a big rig, and still expecting it to be able to move 40 tons of cargo around with the same performance as when its in a normal car...

1. Oh noes, people on the internet have a different opinion to you! Life sure is hard... 2. Your comprehension of my posts is simply mind boggling... Where did I state that I am happy with the current situation? Quote me saying that I am happy with the current status quo... Quote me saying that I do not want improvements... Oh right, you cant, because I never said that. All I am trying to get across is the actual situation of the company and what options it has for doing things. I'm trying to make you understand that simply stating "just rewrite everything like crytek did" is not an option for BI with their current staffing. Maybe they could roll back some of that delicious DayZ money into making these improvements, maybe Marek will just retire to a nice Caribbean island. We just don't know. Thats who needs 20km+ I think some interesting news will surface soon about that. But that is for a different thread... You are a business genius, BI should hire you to make all of their long-term strategies! [/sarcasm] You think they haven't already considered something like this, even if it were possible with the different company structures/ownership/etc?

Ok, so their project team for a single game is 250 people. The company as a whole is around 600 - 900 strong (wiki lists closer to 600, based on information I know from people who have recently visited crytek the number is now closer to 900). The team working on A3 at BI is closer to 60. The "hefty 200" figure you've quoted is wrong (as pointed out by Chortles) and is a company-wide figure based on inclusion of BISim (who work exclusively on VBS), and all the other offices (who work on things like DayZ, Carrier Command, Take on Mars, etc etc) So on both counts, the teams are ~4 times larger than at BI. And that does not give us a breakdown of how many people are programmers working exclusively on the engine. I'd wager a pretty high percentage at crytek... And as I said, no more than 10 people are working on the engine at BI. Again, around 4 times the manpower. For real, and thats what they are doing, within the limits of the manpower they have available... lol, crappy american car engines are crappy ;) Germany and Japan would like to teach you how to make proper car engines. This is a most ridiculous statement... I'll start my retort with my usual: If you know how to design such an amazingly perfect game engine, why don't you form a team and do it yourself. Oh wait, thats right, you don't... 1, who is to say (besides BI) that they even had the money in 2008 to invest in such a thing? 2, RV4 is a powerful engine 3, According to Marek, RV is already scaling across as many cores as it can, and using as much RAM as gives best performance. I'm not going to find the interviews for you, nor am I going to re-explain the technical aspects. But going 64-bit or offloading processing onto more cores is not a magical performance resolver. I know it can't, but unlike you I actually know the technical reasons behind why it can't. Again, I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to you (because it would be an incredibly long post) but suffice to say, my previous answer covers it: throwing more cores and more RAM at the problem is not the solution.

Yes, one office. Of a company that has 2 products: the cryEngine and crysis game series. Their overall staff (which works on the engine) measures in the 100's. I guess you've never watched the credits at the end of any triple A title... They typically have more people in their UI design departments than all of BI Studio has staff...

So the thread title is a bit of a misnomer then? The latter part is quite evident :) As to the former part, well thats exactly what BI has been doing. The problem is they have a ~10 man programmer team, compared to the ~600 man team at Crytek or the however many 100s worked on the IW engine for CoD 234231. So any changes they make are much smaller on scale and slower on time. On one hand you willingly excuse the age of the IW engine and CryEngines' core with the excuse "its been significantly rewritten", yet the same kind of rewrites (RV4 now uses directx 11, rv3 using dx 9, etc) on the RV engine dont count? Yes, the re-writes to RV have not been as significant, but see the reasoning above - 10 vs 100's. Oh, I guess you mean physX... Oh, thats my bad, I'm too used to VBS (where 20k is certainly possible, and used regularly) I'm sure you could edit the arma 3 cfg file in your user folder and have 20km view distance. My original point is/was that all the other engines you've listed render a few hundred meters out to maybe a couple of km. The RV engine is quite capable of going even further. I know, right. :)

Yes, this was kindof my point. He was saying the view distance is limiting, but really the limit is there is no hardware out there capable of rendering it - the engine is capable, the hardware not.

It can, the engine is perfectly capable of supporting interiors for all vehicle types. The "problem" is (as described over and over again) one of cost vs reward. The amount of time it takes to make an "RV4" (Arma 3) quality interior is just not worth it for what it actually adds to the gameplay. If BI were to do "Take On Tanks" then they would no doubt spend the vast amount of time it takes to create interiors to this fidelity. Since it is not a priority for their vision of Arma 3, they will not bother. ---------- Post added at 14:44 ---------- Previous post was at 14:43 ---------- "We" want a lot of things that they simply don't have time to include. Just because you want something, means they should drop all their current tasks and fulfill your wishes? I think not.

As I say every time this is brought up, this is ONLY realistic for TV/IR guided missiles. For radar guided missiles, the tab-lock system is actually pretty close to what they have in real life.

Awww yiss, another one of these threads. You know thats exactly what everyone else does, right? The CryEngine can be traced back to 2005, IW Engine to 2004, iD Tech to 1999, etc etc Re-writing from scratch is not something they can ever hope to do... So you're saying OFP, Arma1, Arma 2 and Take On Helicopters never had any Physics at all. Wow, I wonder how I ever drove a vehicle and collided with objects before now! Wow, just wow... Tell me again, aside from flight sims what other games have a 20km+ view distance. You would get an E for effort, but actually get an F for failwhale...

Not my time, but Endstar isn't registered on here: Endstar's time for the Red Drill:

This is just pure bullshit. It is VASTLY more work than you think it is. Porting from DayZ is out of the question, because they use a completely different skeleton and animation set (as mentioned by Dean in one of his 54684646464 interviews. Porting from A2 is pointless, as the female animations lack the relevant weapon/combat animations (which is why they are unable to hold weapons). I would imagine the A3 female was exactly the same - just movement animations, no weapon/combat anims. On top of that, you have to: * develop systems to allow for the different skeletons/animation sets to be used in cargo anims for vehicles (you cant use the male anims for an altered female skeleton - as the A2 skeleton was - as it will cause treeple) * develop systems to allow for the different skeletons/animation sets to be used for getin/out anims for vehicles (you cant use the male anims for an altered female skeleton - as the A2 skeleton was - as it will cause treeple) * develop systems to allow for the different skeletons/animation sets to be used for the weapon IK/reloading animations (you cant use the male anims for an altered female skeleton - as the A2 skeleton was - as it will cause treeple) * create duplicates of ALL trouser, shirt, vest equipment models - you cant use the male skinning, and even if you could, the smaller female model would not fit well with the larger male clothes. * probably other things that I have not even thought about... Adding females that are not simple female heads slapped on the male body is a fuckload more effort than any of you have even thought about. And this is why proper females are pretty much not going to happen in A3. You might, if you're lucky, get the the previously mentioned female heads on male bodytypes. But no doubt people will complain about that too...

Since English is not your first language, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but it seems like you did: Do not get me wrong: I would LOVE to see tank interiors. I am simply providing a realistic set of reasoning as to why we are highly unlikely to see them in A3. They don't have the time or the manpower to "waste" on assets which will only be seen for 0.0000001% of overall playtime. What, equally, is the point of the "woe is me, this is the worst thing to ever happen" style of post? Maybe I just understood your post wrong: The optical system on the Comanche is (was) an evolution of that on Apache. It works (would have worked) the exact same way as on Apache. If they wanted to, they could move the gunner in Apache to the rear seat. As far as I know, a Comanche with an actual sensor package never actually flew, so we'll never know. Yes, this is a disappointment. How can it be "leaked" if it was never promised in the first place? Well thats nice, A3 has been in development for a little under a year (if you consider how much technology was scrapped after the Ivan/Martin "incident" and the Joris/Jay takeover. How big is your team? How big is your budget? I'm sure you will have to sacrifice or "leak" features once you draw near to release also. I look forward to seeing your product, and seeing if it really is as good as you claim it will be...

Aww yiss, I love these "registered 2013 and know exactly how to fix the game" people. Well you heard wrong then, Arma 3 does not have a new 3D engine, its the same one thats been powering RV since Arma 1. Like I said, this has been possible to the current level of detail since Arma 1, the super shader introduced in Arma 2 helps a lot with extra detail, but that has been around since Arma 2. Lol, "fact" eh. I hate to tell you, but the same technology that drives the high detail interiors for the helicopters and wheeled vehicles is what works for tanks too. So it is completely possible, BI chooses not to do it because its not worth the effort. Drama queen much? lol, there is so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin... 1. The Comanche would still be using optical sensors for the gunner, in addition to the radar (which was a modified Longbow system, as found on Apache) 2. The Comanche is not the only helicopter with the pilot in the front seat. Eurocopter Tiger is at least one other aircraft I can think of off the top of my head that has the pilot in the front seat... Erm, weapons have attachments? AI is vastly improved over A2. Was an advanced wounding system, bipods, or anything else you list ever promised? It sounds like you are the worlds best game designer, so why don't you rather than whinge about it, go design the worlds best military simulator?

Still failing to comprehend the amount of work needed to achieve this. It doesn't matter if its that way in real life, if the amount of work needed to achieve it is too much, it wont happen. Also, where are female civilians confirmed as features of the final game? I have not seen anything... Yes, there was the clip of the bikini chick swimming, but that is certainly not confirmation of anything...

Much more than a variant of a character model ever will. They open up the underwater aspect (important when you consider the entire map is surrounded by water) for use. Where before it was entirely unusable. Tell me, please, exactly what gameplay improvements female character models will add? Yup, and I'd rather they fix these issues before wasting time on alternate character skeletons, etc. Interesting of note that the female character models in one of very few a3 tickets with more than ~1% of NO votes. Infact, that it has 40% NO votes is very telling... And this is the very same reason it is highly unlikely to happen. BI is already overloaded with the current development they have to do (to the end that already "confirmed" features are being cut), so the complex task of adding a variant skeleton and animations is even more unlikely to be achieved. 1. You clearly have little idea of how the work is distributed amongst the dev teams/studios/projects. 2. You clearly have little idea of the complexity involved in such changes. 3. They are already set apart from other developers, based on their dev style, modding support, community interaction, etc etc etc. 4. Oh noes, someone on the internet will be disappointed if a game doesn't have the feature he wants. The world is ending!

Yes, a Take On style clickable switch would be good for this. As would a hotkey on the keyboard. No point. They don't do this for the vehicles that currently have interiors modeled, let alone ones that dont. This is a system that would require quite some extra development by the devs (rather than just the artists adding interiors). No point. Yes, I could see this. The problem is (as I "discussed" with legendkiller back in one of his derpy threads) that the PiP screen ingame would be too small (in terms of overall screen resolution) to be of any actual use. You would have to switch into the full-screen 2D map for it to actually be legible. Example: even if the PiP screen took up 70% of your visible interior area (making the rest of the interior rather... superfluous) it would still, on the average 24" monitor @native res of 1920*1200 only be ~1000 x 600 of actually usable map-space. I just dont think it would really work that well. For instance - the moving maps we [bAS] added to the MH-60 and MH-47's only showed you a very approximate (due to the size of the map) location, which was achievable because it was marked with map-width crosshairs. Replace that with 3x3 pixel markers and its not really that usable... I'll give you the point on that tho, could be quite nice if there is enough resolution to use. Not without significant programmer effort in developing the functionality needed. No point. The vehicles ingame which do have interior modelled dont even do this. So not without significant programmer effort in developing the functionality needed. No point. One out of 5. Try again plz. Definitely not, I'm a tank fanatic, and would love to see these things. I'm just a realist. BI has like 10 programmers working on the functionality for A3, and they're already way too busy to deal with the current tech, let alone implement a bunch of complex new systems. What made the series great was always the engine and what you could do with it. Never the core content that came with the game. Adding interiors (tho not to the level of complexity you list above) is already possible in the engine. BI chooses not to do it for MBTs because the amount of gameplay reward is not worth the effort needed to create them, for a system where you spend 99.99% of your time in optics anyway... Edit to add: As I've said before, if interiors are SO important to tanks, why have we not seen any community addons for A2 add tanks with them? Surely, if they were that important to the tanking aspect of the game, we would see every tank addon released comes with an interior model, yet none do? Indicative of the effort/reward balance? I think so...

Can you imagine the IFF difficulties if all 3 sides used the same MBT, APC and MRAP? If the only thing that differentiated them from each other was the colour/pattern of their camo scheme. A pattern which, beyond ~200m renders as one blob of average-coloured pixles. You would be the first to complain that "I cant tell the difference between enemy and friendly vehicles, we need more models BIS!" This is such a strawman argument. In any MBT you operate it by aiming at the enemy vehicle through the optics. Aside from the shape of the controller and the position of the buttons on the controller, they all (in real life) work the same [or incredibly similar]. Since we dont have any option for controllers other than a mouse and keyboard, I would suggest that BI be better served putting maximum effort into the optics and FCS of each tank (so that they have some unique function) rather than some pointless eyecandy interior. Honestly, list for me 5 items of functionality that could ONLY be achieved through a fully modeled interior for an MBT.

Because the size/shape of the mesh is "controlled" by the animations. The animation system in RV is both incredibly powerful AND incredibly limiting. To have any meaningful difference between size/shape of the character models, you really need to create a whole new set of animations, since the animation matrices stored in the RTM files are absolute - so if your mesh differs from the pre-determined size/shape for a character model, then you're in for a world of pain (and tree-people). On top of that the animations are tied to the skeleton, so to make any meaningful changes to the size/shape of the character model, you must have a new mesh, new RTMs and a new skeleton (even if it has identical bone structure to the existing one, its just a limitation of the engine...) Then what is the authentic reason for having women? If they are the same height, build and volume of the male characters, why even bother having them? Just up the pitch of the voice and slap a female face texture on if thats what you want? BI want to do things properly this time round, Joris and Jay have made that much clear in their interviews. Globally, men are, on average 10 - 20 cm taller than women. This would need to be reflected ingame if it was to have any authenticity at all. Yes, this introduces a whole new set of problems for PvP, which is another tick in the "lets not bother doing it" box. Yup, and I fail to see what relevance that has here? Or do you expect the bakery to add in extra slices of bread to that loaf once you've bought it? Do you expect a car manufacturer to add in, say, air conditioning to your car, for free, after you've bought it? Just because people have paid for something, does not mean they have any right to any creative input at all... Because they do not have such strict creative control on DayZ development? Its already a year late, and is likely to be pushed even further to accommodate all the random shit they're adding in (like, for instance, females) Maybe the creative team on A3 have evaluated the changes being made to DayZ, and decided that the technology is too incomplete, too risky, or too much effort to port at this late stage of development? Just because functionality is in product 1, there is no reason to assume it is simply a flip of the switch to enable it in product 2. There are so many more things to be considered in terms of functionality, reliability, interoperability that need to be tested and fixed before you can just plonk something new into your game... So many of these responses indicate a complete lack of understanding on how game development works... :j:

You don't need to be a developer to see this. The interviews, the sitreps, the spotreps all provide more than enough information to piece together this picture. Everyone is looking at this from a gamer perspective: Want want want want want. I'm looking at if from an experienced perspective: There is a project with specific goals. Does this addition add to the project in a meaningful way at this stage of development for the amount of work required? No, ok, lets not do it. Simple.