Fiasco

Red Kite & Suma, Thanks for the more cordial replies. I'm glad you tried to understand my point. My SA isn't helped by the fact that I play on a 15" laptop. I do have a TrackIR which helps some but not having a 1:1 ratio on head rotation to game world rotation takes getting used to. If you had 5 people in a line spaced 20 feet walking across a field they could easily maintain that formation or course following a "leader" without having to repeatedly look back and forth betweem the various members of the group. It's a spatial awareness that is very difficult to translate to a screen. IMHO (and it is just my opinion) a basic transparent indicator of your group units in direct proximity to yourself would greatly assist in spending less time trying to stay in formation with your group and more time scanning the horizon for targets.

I'm not talking about a ground map. Just a transparent 170 deg arc that shows an indicator for squad members within a very tight distance. The same type of awareness you would have if you were walking in a group at that range using normal human perception. I'm not talking about the call of duty or BF minimaps, this would be a range of 150 feet or less. Thats my point. In real life you would not have to turn your head and look at someone walking near you to know where they are or pull out a map to find someone 100 feet from you. You could see them with your nearly double the field of view normal human vision without turning your head. It isn't a magic minimap. It would only show information that your normal perception would permit you to see in real life in the same situation. When I'm walking down the street with the wife I do not have to constantly look at her to know she is there and where she is relative to me. This isn't some unrealistic add on. It would only give you the normal awareness you would have in the real world for people in that close of proximity. Having a fixed 90deg or less FOV and having to fix your gaze to get your bearing on close objects is decidedly unrealistic.

Why are so many people so obnoxiously abrasive in ArmA? Any comment or suggestion about ArmA that goes against their judgement demands an immediate post with some type of insult or slight. Balschoiw, where in this thread did I ask for an opinion? I didn't, that's where. Why bother reading a suggestion thread if you don't want to attempt to understand the concept being put forth?

I think you mistake the intent of a "mini-map". It's sole point would be to indicate the position of fellow unit members that would be detected visually by you in real life but because of the limitations of looking through a 90 deg FOV monitor are not visible to you in the game. Artificially making situational awareness more difficult then it really is in life for the sake of "realism" is hypocritical.

Of course this is not a flight simulation. But, some basic physics should still apply. It doesn't have to be a hi-fidelity flight model, just good enough to be convincing (ala, a early 90's helicopter game flight model). A big part of ArmA (or OPF) is immersion. The more convincing the environment, the more you forget it's a game. In the case of the motorcycle, something modeled that badly shouldn't be included in the game at all. Nothing knocks you back to reality then having to use a motorcycle (first SP mission after training). They do promote operating vehicles as part of the game and if they are going to include them they should be somewhat passable.

Having been a big fan of Operation Flashpoint I was really really really (x10) looking forward to Operation Flashpoint 2 and was pretty excited when I found out about Armed Assault (Operation Flashpoint 1.5). I had to import a copy of Armed Assault since it's not available in the US. I played the demo until it arrived. My setup: Asus G1 2.0 Core 2 w/ GeForce 7700go 512mb TrackIR 4 Pro CH Fighterstick, Pro Throttle, Pro Pedals My impressions: Pull the demo off of the internet ASAP. The demo is bug ridden garbage. It will do nothing but scare people out of buying ArmA. (although it is a semi-accurate indicator of what ArmA is) BI would be better served by letting the youtube videos speak for the game. The terrain is flat out gorgeous. WOW! Unfortunately, that is the only thing good. Player movement is obnoxiously kludgy. Trying to shift left or right a few inches to improve your view through a window or around an object is an exercise in frustration as you move two feet past where you wanted to stop and have to repeatedly tap left or right to adjust. The gunsight or scope square jerking around the screen during motion is also annoying. This should either be smoothed out or the sight should just be removed during motion. Is there mouse lag artificially inserted into movement? There should be some kind of mini-map showing your immediate area and friendly units within it (150 feet). A limited FOV through a monitor limits your situational awareness and a mini-map would make up for the limitations of viewing the world through a monitor. There are absolutely no real physics in the game. No ballistics, misaligned sights, falling through floors, 5 feet drop is enough to kill. Vehicles are a cruel joke. (Helicopters roll around the x axis like an airplane) eject in a chute at no altitude and high speed and live, upside down helicopters on the ground ect ect ect ect. That two foot high fence over there? No, you can not lift your leg over it.... go around. Bugs, Bugs, Bugs. It is remeniscent of the Derek Smart much hyped title "BattleCruiser 3000AD". The sound quality is downright abysmal, if my sound is working at all. Gunshots sound like pellets rattling in a tin cup. Sound intermitantly cuts out. I can hear birds and my squadmates but the helicopter overhead is cutting in and out or I hear it ten miles away and not up close. The Feild of View and fisheye lense effect are extremely annoying. Buildings are still worthless obstacles difficult to maneuver through and just feel weird when inside of them due to the aforementioned FOV/fisheye. There are also numerous lighting problems. I contantly have to muck with my gamma and brightness to either see because it's too dark or see because the screen is washed out white. (and both will happen in the same mission....) Multiplayer is a farce. 1 disruptive person can ruin the whole scenerio. People are downright rude on every single server I have been on. All of this would be forgiveable if this a 1.5 release made shortly after Operation Flashpoint. It is many years down the road now and the standards for FPS, iron sights, FPS physics and interfaces have been established. There is absolutely no reason all these years later to be mucking around in the same clumsy movement/interface. Even if the bugs were fixed we would still be left with the clunky interface and the extremely whack player movement. I was really hoping to get some of my clanmates to convert to a squad level tactical game (from Call of Duty 2) but the Demo that I convinced some to download promptly made them mark a big red X over ArmA as a game purchase. It's a huge disappointment....

If helicopters being able to roll axialy about the X axis is "more realistic" someone shoot me now.....

I'm just using a default trackir profile but in iron sights in ArmA the game prevents my trackir from slewing my head around. I'm not sure why you are able to still.

Disagree. For most games sure, the high end machines should play them fine, but there's a small subset of games that require a longer term goal. ArmA is one of course, Flight Sim X would be another. They're made with options that stretch the current high-end beyond endurance, with the knowledge that: Available technology will catch up and The game will still be played even after a few years. Another thing to realise is that ArmA is built not on an ordinary game engine, it's goals and aspirations are different. It needs to handle the entire island all at once, and all the AI all over that island all at once. It's more of an open free world that ANY other game out, at a price. To get the game you want would mean to chop up the game (the campaign) into several episodal chunks, with only small parts of the game world loaded. I think the game is remarkable in it's achievements myself, certainly not the product of an extremely poor engine. It just doesn't do the things YOU want it to do. OPF and ArmA don't hold a candle to the much earlier released Falcon 4.0 as far as large scale battlefield simulation. Falcon 4.0 simulates an ongoing battle over the entire Korea region if you are there to see it or not and we are talking about a game that came out 5 or 6 years BEFORE operation flashpoint. You are way overstating the demands of simulating an "entire island" and all that AI. Falcon 4.0 also gave you the game without having to chop up a campaign into pre-scripted episodal chunks. ArmA is no better an "open free world" then Far Cry. (Except Far Cry has actual physics)

So, is that a 5 out of 10 then? He was right... too kind.

I do still hold out hope for the game.....