EricM

You guys crack me up... "Lack of love of detail" ? "no vital improvement to core game element" ? Will all due respects, the detail level in the game is pretty impressive already and BIS can be pretty anal about it. You have 200 square km or land painstakingly reproduced almost up to the smaller rocks, bushes, flies and mushrooms. And what about the new insane FLIR ? Don't get me started on vehicles or weapons : we have almost everything from carriers to bikes and from artillery to hand guns. Guess what ? a screw is misplaced on the 30th scar version ? Live with it... Sound samples are pretty nice to me, especially vehicles and environment. New ones are getting even better. Weapon sounds ? I don't know, I'm no expert in this, but it does the trick to me and probably to 80% of the players which don't spend their time on a shooting range. No vital improvement to core game since OFP ? How can you say that ? - Graphics : Obviously a major improvement and being worked on constantly - Sound : it's in the work, but many sounds are already top notch. - Animation : quite improved (reloading, binoculars, track IR...) - AI : micro-AI and new tweaks in every single patch - Gameplay : warfare, Flir, Join in Progress, VON, UAVs, high command, conversation systems, backpacks, Random Town Generation, sight adjustment, battlefield clearance, flashlights, secops module, civilians... - Physics : not top notch, but they do the trick for me and are MP friendly. + new destruction models. Is there still more to do ? certainly with a game of that scope, and I have my own list of pet peeves (3D editor with special gear and briefing interface, Picture in Picture...) but sounding like BIS is slacking and refuses to correct obvious flaws while the allmighty community would make it in a breeze is not only disrespectful but plain wrong.

Still no mention of a working 3D editor yet...

This one isn't working well for me. Everything was fine in vanilla 1.05, but now I see the ground suddenly popping right under my feet when climbing the slopes of Utes, its very disturbing. It was a lot better before. It seems that the radius of the circle defined to draw the parallax mapping on slopes is now way too small and not progressive enough. Repro : Open Utes, place a man on the beach down stelka( 044019) and climb the slope to the village. You'll see the rocks suddenly growing off the ground, while it was much smoother and subtle before.

It works here. Perfs are largely unchanged, maybe slightly better but it could be placebo. Same benchmark results as 69645 but without the white/transparent ground bug for me. Question about the poll : should we compare to vanilla 1.05 or the previous beta ?

@ the US cover... Could we have any more cheese ? Not to offense anyone or hurt any patriotic feelings, but what's with the flag ? I mean, this isn't about invading the US (like in World in Conflict), it's about a central-asia UN operation... The international cover was already a bit heavy on details, and the screaming guy was cheesy, but at least you could see the settings. Now you don't even see the mountains anymore... I really think it's trying too hard. I don't think a US developper would go that far... Even America's Army website isn't spreading the star and stripes everywhere... What's next ? Chuck Norris ? What's important is the game, not the box, but I miss OFP's simple and elegant covers...

UN has to be under "independent" as they have to be set as "friendly to anyone" (at least at first), being peacekeepers. They cannot be Blufor or they would get shot by Opfor all the time... Thus defeating their purpose.

@Stun : I have Q6600 @ 2.66, running Arma2 on SSD under Win7 64b. However, as I now corrected in my previous post I was largely fooled by this : [66997] Optimized: Grass not rendered when flying high and fast, should reduce stutter. On foot, it's about the same... (benchmark mission still show an improvement though). Very hard to tell then...

I've been playing some more in the editor, flying alone with all sorts of jets, and the difference is stunning for my old G8800GTX. Even more than in the benchmarks... (no CPU bottleneck with the AI)... I get over 50% performance increase (+15 fps, with steading FPS between 45 and 55 @1600 VD). This beta is miraculous for my rig... If it wasn't for the ground texture bug, it would be perfect. Actually, all the fps improvement I've experienced seem due to the grass rendering being shut down when flying fast : [66997] Optimized: Grass not rendered when flying high and fast, schould reduce stutter. No wonder I suddenly had a super FPS boost in the F35 ! When on Foot, the FPS seems largely unchanged however (maybe even 1-2 fps less in some situations)... It was too good to be true...

Repro video link added to bugtracker.

Disappearing ground set aside, I have around +30 to +40% (+7-9 fps in the bencmark mission1 and flying alone in the editor) with Q6600 @2,6Ghz and G8800GTX and VD@1600. This is the first time I can fly over chernarus with an average of 35 fps and many peaks over 40 ! It appears though that the crappier your PC, the higher the benefit for you. I see people with monster rigs that see no real benefits.

Repro is an easy one for me : reboot the game, open benchmark mission 1 with vd@1600m, watch the ground disappear on the slope of the hill and at the end of the camera movement near the house. It's systematic. Edit : I've recorded a simple video showing how it appears again exactly at the same time, at the same place, each time in the benchmark mission 1 for me. No user input needed, 100% reproductible for me.

Haven't voted yet as I have more test to do, but running the benchmark mission 1 multiple times, I get up to +40% performance increase with the new patch, going from 23-24 fps to 32-33 fps. At first, I get the missing ground texture bug aswell, but as with other people found, cranking up the draw distance over 3500 and then reducing it to 1600 for instance solves the problem for all subsequent tests. Rebooting the game makes the bug come again. Running : Q6600 @2.6 stock G8800 GTX - 768 Mo Win7 64B - SSD disk. For me this patch is clearly on the right track. No stuttering either, but the SSD might help there. Edit : with a bit more testing in the editor, flying the f35 over chernarus, I get around from 7 to 9 fps more on average (this is huge for me) and a much improved fluidi feeling due to better loading management (reduced micro stutters).

It seems from the polish pics that everyone gets new cool hi-def faces, not just the "heroes" like in Arma 2... The locals look very nice as well. Zagrabad doesn't look that big though from the map... it may feel different ingame (the pics made it feel bigger), especially if most buildings are enterable (lots of places to hide).

The blue streak is the view distance fog before you see the skybox and fake mountains. It appears blue in some screenshots because it's probably a leftover from chernaruss. It doesn't appear in other screenshots, so it's maybe even fixed by now.

To begging with, Takistan looks very much like "Deluxe" South Sahrani (dry, sparse vegetation, oil field, oriental squarish turf houses), so it makes sense to have similar camo for similar environment.

I think it's this one... and they have some nice stuff contrary to what you may think. http://www.milpictures.com/photos.htm

The content and cover are indeed a bit of a mismatch. But I don't really care... Arma = rather classy latin name for an "elite" sandbox milsim. Cover = Mission Battleshock Force - Ultimate Overkill Badass Company I actually loved the OFP/resistence covers... Simple yet elegant. It tells you : this is a game where you need to think before shooting, not a a fast paced screaming shooter. NOTE : The Arma 1 505 Games Edition in Metal box was nice though...

The new faces look superb, but they may be "Hero" characters just like Team Razor. Razor's faces were quite good already, it's just the regular grunts who looked like plastic models with collagen-filled lips. Let's hope they changed this aswell. The rest looks pretty sweet.

It's a new engine they are developping. Not Real Virtuality, though it shares some algorithms and linda vegetation.

What exactly are they going to distribute ? The preview code to more magazines ? Or did they strike another worldwide publisher for the full game ? I guess that means we will see more screens and stuff popping out very soon...

I agree it's not a bad idea to release an updated all-inclusive version, and 29 euros is ok, but those vendors who sell it at 50 euros or more is borderline a scam.

@bummer : Only with the high command module AFAIK.

Can you remove those videos ? For some odd reason, videos of people getting killed (legitimate or not is beside the point) makes me uncomfortable. I play Arma because it's a game and it's harmless, not because I want to rehearse for the real thing or because I want to see real people slaughtered. Thank you.

Precisely for that very reason. Because Marines are already in Arma 2 and the story of Arrowhead is about the army, what's the point (storywise and business-wise ) to include the Marines for free in Arrowhead ? - Storywise it is not needed. We don't even know if there is a sea front in the maps provided. A little change isn't always bad. - It is an incentive for people to buy Arma 2 as well is they want the complete pack Army + Marines = more money for BIS - For those who already have Arma 2 they don't feel screwed to have paid a full price [insert bug rant] game with half the content if late Arrowhead buyers get everything and more cheaper. I might be wrong, but that's how I expect things to be as an entrepreneur.

@ shifty : you don't need Arma 2 to play it, it's stand alone, but if you do have both, you will be able to use the extra content of Arma 2 in Arrowhead (talibans in chernarus, or russians and marines in takistan...) So, NO Marines by default in OA standalone, but YES if you combine the complete package (Arma 2 + OA), which is the way to go. As for factions, it will be at least Blufor (including US Army, UN, Czechs and Germans sub groups) and Taliban/mujaidin style opfor + possibly a third armed group (probably a local low-tech conventional force a la CDF/Chedaki) as they touted a new 3 way warfare. The latter is speculation on my part though.