Defunkt

I really like the effect in-game but am not so keen on what it does to my map view (over bright, no contrast), is this the same for everybody?

Thanks for the new documentation, especially the adapter and opportunistic examples. Could I suggest that XEH badly needs a one-page summary on the supported events and variations (i.e. Fired / FiredBIS) as well as available filters (i.e. Client / Server / Local (?) etc.).

Great stuff, enjoyed the podcast while walking the dog tonight. If you're ever looking for a topic for a next one I wouldn't mind listening to Olds, Bakerman et al describing the design and development (and difficulties along the way) of the new armour system.

Why doesn't the OP of your ArmA 3 Ballistics Overhaul release thread include any data for 7.62×54, 7.62x39 & 5.45x39? These are (obviously) some of the most ubiquitous military rounds in the world.

I only see people respond negatively to feedback when it's offered in a negative/condescending/belittling fashion (as happened here). When critiquing the work of those who have shared their endeavours for no remuneration the how is all important. If you act like you're owed something (when you're most certainly not) people are bound to conclude that you're an ass and respond accordingly. Polite, constructive feedback is pretty much always well received.

Thanks Toadie, this is a truly amazing collection and doubly valuable because of the way you share with other addon makers. :ok:

Obviously the event was a bit of a damp squib after already having seen the leaked screenshots but it seems to me there's little not to like other than the fact it looks to be a good year away.

We've all thought, Arma looks great apart from that bit stretching from where the clutter ends to where the resolution of the satmap is sufficiently dense to appear photographic. We hoped BI would improve it with A3 but unfortunately that didn't transpire. Aside from looking bad (like it's 1999) it exacerbates issues with detecting units at range, with no clutter and very little noise in the terrain enemy units are all too easy to pick-out at these distances. The issue is that A3's terrain only implements a single, decorative repeating overlay in this region which can be used to introduce noise by darkening the satmap but as the same texture is tiled throughout the entire terrain BI opted to use it only a very lightly (for reasons that should be clear below). Early on in A3's life Bad Benson illustrated how much more effective a heavier mid-detail overlay could be, turning 'OFP-nude'; Full Screen ...into something that almost began to look vaguely 'current-gen' (if you squint); Full Screen And that's the solution most of us who care enough about it probably use (if any). The huge drawback is you get the same heavy application in all the areas you don't want it, in towns, piers and compounds, on roads and on runways (at the distance beyond where they're rendered as actual objects). So instead of concrete... Full Screen ...you get something that looks more like carpet; Full Screen Subsequently a proposal was made that this mid-detail texture should have it's own layer or be applied according to an additional whole-terrain mask. It's still the 6th most voted for issue on the FT but over 2 years on still not acted on. I never thought they'd go for it. Aside from having to make a fundamental change to terrain rendering (and court potential performance costs), I couldn't see them wanting to make whole new layers for the two released islands. Now it's entirely possible BI are going to address this issue with the release of the terrain in the new expansion. But it's equally (or more) likely they aren't in which case I've an idea that could yield a big improvement with next to no development cost. The thing about concrete and roads and runways is that they're all some shade of grey and those organic areas where you do want noise added are all greens and browns. So if the shader that additively applies this overlay did so on the basis of each pixel's hue we might get to have our cake and eat it too. Here's the mask I made for the above scene, there's no whole frame evaluation required, it's just each pixel's hue 'dodged' with itself multiple times in my graphics program. It's the sort of manipulation a pixel shader should eat with just a few extra instructions; Full Screen And here's the result of using this mask to combine the light and heavy mid-detail texture. Full Screen Now I don't think Crytek will be quaking in their boots over the prospect but I would guess somewhere at BI there's some HLSL source that could incorporate this change very, very readily. A further possible improvement would be to allow map makers to config a single RGB value that influenced the weighting to be used in evaluation of the RGB. So if you're doing a desert map where you want smooth sands you could weight the yellow components such that the mid-detail was applied only lightly (and really go to town noise-wise on your green belt). If I use the same process to create the hue-based mask for the first scene you can see that it preserves almost all of the organic detail added by Benson's mid-detail; Full Screen If you think this looks feasible, I have posted the same to the Feedback Tracker for your voting pleasure; http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=24287 ---------- Post added at 00:16 ---------- Previous post was at 00:05 ---------- Hmmm... maybe this should have gone in http://forums.bistudio.com/forumdisplay.php?186-ARMA-3-DEVELOPMENT-BRANCH

Oh right, I'd forgotten that. A2 is also where they added the one-tile-for-everything middle-distance overlay (obviously as a replacement for the removed _mco). Really wish they'd look at this as a retro-active fix. It's a cheat (correlating otherwise unrelated truths) but the best optimizations often are and I struggle to think of any man-made blocks of colour on a satmap other than perhaps a tennis court. Everything else is some shade of grey. I'm totally convinced this could work.

That's surprising, given Arma is always so CPU-bound I'd have thought there was loads of GPU headroom for this sort of thing.

Are you running ACE's compatibility patch for RHS? That's been reported as a cause of hidden M240s.

Yeah... about that, I actually converted it to a Terrain15 map :blush: (it looks fabulous - so I'm really looking forward to your official port). I think it's odd that they added the normal map for a terrain that would have looked a whole lot better with decent middle distance detail. Chernarus' grassy rolling hills didn't really benefit much from a normal map.

I think the pic he posted looks fab, I just didn't think it was particularly pertinent to the discussion (on middle distance improvements) he was responding to. :p ---------- Post added at 12:24 ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 ---------- Aaaanyway... what's a 'Facebook Event' and do you get to witness it if you don't have a Facebook account?

You've got me thinking here. Do you know, did they actually remove it completely or is it just something that's not available with the newer Terrain15 shader? Could you still choose to use one of the older shaders and get a separate surface detail layer (and simply forego having a normal map)?

Sure, a normal map can introduce relief (for the benefit of lighting) at a higher resolution than the mesh (that's what normal maps are for) but can the normal map have a higher resolution than the sat-map? Because that's the only thing that would allow it to add details over and above what's in the diffuse, otherwise it's irrelevant to what we both agree is far and away the biggest issue; the middle distance where the resolution of the sat map (with or without a normal map of the same resolution) is blotchy.

I don't make terrains but as I understand it the normal map mainly serves to make the relief respond to different lighting conditions. We don't really have a problem with the distances shown in your picture (nice as it is), the satmap at that range always looks decent, it's closer in (like in the light aircraft picture) where the terrain system hasn't really shone in A2/A3.

JarHead, back when Megagoth was still on his crusade against loudness I made a wee tool for re-leveling sound config data, if you ever had need of such a thing (to bulk level vanilla data, or your own configs with a modified regex) you'd be most welcome to use it. Basically it searches a section of config for sound file references and reads the amplitude (in either DB or decimal format) and applies an absolute DB (i.e. "-5") or percentage (i.e. "-25%") change before writing it out (always in DB format). http://ionwerks.net/arma/A3AudioLevel_V6.zip

I wondered about that as well but it's hard to say one way or another. The bare dirt in the mine still seems to be pure-satmap (perhaps a higher resolution) but the way the bushes blend into the grass seems better. Either way I'm a bit saddened nobody from BIS has responded to this suggestion, which just seems to me to be a total free lunch.

The weight of numbers suggests it's actually the military players who are 'on the reserve'.

Keys (*.bikey) need to go in Arma3\Keys\ (not in Arma3\@MOD\Keys\).

It's perhaps only tangentially related but my feeling is that the USAF units are still oddly large in the shoulders (compared to Vanilla and AFRF units).

I noticed the bisigns for Phoenix were oddly/incorrectly named, they're missing the 'pbo' part.

Uummm... my first thought was; :blush:

With that goal in mind, could I just suggest that the next person who wants to debate RHS-ACE compatibility starts a thread in A&M;D. To do so doesn't commit anyone to anything but it might actually get something rolling (and the conversation won't get shutdown like it will here).

The solution would be for those who want it to make and maintain a compatibility addon.