GBee

OT, but it only reduces performance (or clock speed) when it's not needed. It will run at full speed when the demand exists. It's better on than off, it will be quieter if you have a temp controlled fan and use less electricity.

January... ... 2002. So don't wait around for it. In fact there is only an 80% chance they will meet the January 2007 target (according to Gates in a speech last month). The major analysts reckon it won't be available on mass until the second quarter. Back on topic, the specs don't give a clue as to the bandwidth requirements. Just what sort of connection will be needed for those 100 player games?

I think the best way would be to make these things so good that there is no need to replace them Now that I agree with, though it's an uphill battle with this community. I'm pretty sure no matter how good something is someone will have modded their own version within days of the games release. If people could change the real sky they would, arguing that their vision of the sky is more realistic

It's funny, but I would have sworn it was possible in the early versions of OFP to have AI 'force fire' on a particular spot. However I've never seen or heard anyone mention it so I assumed that I'd imagined it (Probably confusing a night of playing both C&C RA and OFP). The ability to have AI fire on any spot, with any weapon. Thus imitate supressive fire or simply fire through bushes etc at possible enemy positions would be good. It would also be good if AI responded to supressive fire, if they could see the area was being targetted and not run straight into it.

Certainly the most effective way to dissuade cheating is to permanently ban a confirmed cheater from all servers. This generally means a central server registration of all banned CD keys which game servers periodically connect to and update their ban lists against. (This method is lower bandwidth and puts less strain on the central server than checking every player as they connect against the central server.)

I think BIS would have more success by creating their own anti-cheat rather than using a well established system like punkbuster. The reason is simple, punkbuster just doesn't work and it is well known by the cheat programmers. They know how it works and how to get around it, every time a change is made to it's cheat detection abilities they work around them and compromise not just one game but all games based on it. Systems like punkbuster are magnets for cheaters. The very best way to combat cheating is to build those safeguards and mechanisms into the game engine itself. Many cheats exploit bad programming in the original game - not many game developers consider security in the same way that an OS or internet browser developer would. Other cheats exploit the interface between the game and the lower level software/hardware. That's not hard to solve either, it just would require cooperation between hardware/OS manufacturers (NVidia, Microsoft etc). We all know M$ is lousy on this front!

AMD 2800 (for example) is equivalent in performance to an Intel 2.8ghz CPU, the new AMD numbering system is a comparison with Intel clock speeds. Thanks Placebo. I must admit I knew that's what was orginally intended by the numbering, I didn't think it still held true. At least my laptop will _just_ about reach the recommened spec imho

VBS2 has deformable terrian and it looks just like ArmA so maybe the engine will allow it. Extremely doubtful. Two different engines to start with ... My old neighbour looked just like Tom Jones, he couldn't sing a note though

I've not been very good at working out what 2ghz/3ghz actually means since AMD diverged from Intel and measured their processors in terms other than raw clock speed. Exactly what AMD models would fall into the 3ghz category and which below? I'm wondering if my laptop will be ok at something just above the minimum as I'd rather use it than upgrade my main PC.

Online Distribution is fine by me as long as it isn't Steam or any wrapper type system. I'd be quite happy to download a simple, single file installer or even better an ISO! Steam just complicates what should be a very simple process. In my case it makes running games on linux harder than it should be in addition to the huge bloat, the dial-home crap and not to mention the wasted CPU/mem resources of it running in the backgound. I don't care whether it was just 1mb and 1% CPU, it's just unnecessary.

It's a magical bus! The steering wheel is invisible

The difference between a joystick and tir is price. Everyone can pick up a joystick for $20 or less. TIR costs $180 which is too much for many gamers, especially when they've paid out hundreds for computers capable of running the latest games. If TIR cost $10 then no-one would complain because they could all own it, even if they chose not to.

A different team and engine yes, but that doesn't mean they don't share certain work. In this case certain models and textures appear identical in both games, the area in the helecopter screenshot even closely resembles the one used in several earlier Arma screenshots. That isn't a huge suprise though. After all the VBS looked like OFP and shared a lot of the content, in particular the early stuff. Edit: Tioner, there is the game engine and then graphics engine. I'm not suprised that VBS2 looks like Arma, that's the result of the reuse of textures, animations etc and both games will use the graphics techiques which are 1) Available at this time 2) Work well in a game of this scale. The differences will be in things like physics, AI, game world interaction which can't be seen in screenshots.

It's not a notion but unfortunately a fact. A number of people in the sim community where TrackIR has been used for a while consider it gives such a great advantage that it's use is unfair. Read through the 23 pages of this thread and you'll find some who also share this belief. It's not a novel argument. When I played Counterstrike with a Razer Boomslang* the same thing was said, it was a far superior mouse and more importantly expensive. Most gamers, as in life, dislike others having an advantage gained by something they cannot afford. It's not cheating, where the advantage is gained by breaking the rules and dishonesty. However it could be called unfair. I personally don't mind a server side option to ban track IR. It would be impossible to prevent entirely, but you can easily disable the TIR support built into the Arma client. I plan on getting TrackIR and would be quite happy if I were restricted to using servers with only other TrackIR users. * (won by beating the PCZone magazine team in a match )

Paraiso - No D I kept reading it as Paradiso initially, for some reason that's just what I expected it to be.

That was his point. Think about it ...

Ok then, lock yourself in cupboard for 3 years and when you get out let us know if felt the same as 3 seconds I don't like waiting ... every second, minute, hour, day, week, month or year is a moment of my finite life.

Thats not true, ArmA had a release date of Q4 2005, but BIS decided to move it back to H1 2006 and work on the game more which was then moved back to Q3 2006 which seems unrealistic at this stage. Publisher or not the estimated release was delayed. Chicken and egg. You can't release without a publisher and BIS never had a publisher. We can't know that Armed Assault wouldn't have been released last year if they had found a publisher. The fact that BIS continue to work until they find a publisher is as much to do with making the game more attractive to publishers. If they don't find a publisher for another year then they will continue to work on it for that year. If one had been found last year we would have got what was originally planned, OFP:E for the PC. The estimated release dates are meaningless really, the game is ready and was ready. If BIS added 6 months to the ETA tomorrow, it would be because they can't sell the current game and they believe it will take 6 months of work to make it even more saleable.

That's contradictory isn't it? If there aren't any release dates then they can't be put back? As it happens BIS have never delayed the release of Armed Assault, the lack of a publisher has done that.

Yeah, but not in motion We haven't see a recent video with smoke, so we cannot say what it looks like in motion. I talked about John's smoke effects Ahh, my bad

Yeah, but not in motion We haven't see a recent video with smoke, so we cannot say what it looks like in motion.

I have to say that I hope not ... purely from the fact that so much time was wasted imho on OFP:E. I'd rather BIS got on with Game 2 than get sidetracked into another console conversion. Don't get me wrong, I know that the gaming market is moving away from PCs to consoles but let Game 2 be ported to a console if that trend continues. I enjoyed OFP:E but I'd rather have been playing Arma or Game 2 now.

There is a series of adverts running for different branches of the Army here in the UK. At the end they all show the same, well choreographed scene from different angles with all the different branches represented ... if you could somehow mimic that scene you would be onto a winner IMHO. Check out one of the ads here: http://www.army.mod.uk/linked_....rog.wmv Edit: Added a couple of screenshots from the ad http://www.actiongames.co.uk/images/screenshots/uk_army_ad.png http://www.actiongames.co.uk/images/screenshots/uk_army_ad1.png The last few seconds are the bit I'm referring to. You see the paratoopers in the distance, the APCs driving in from the right, the helecopters flying low in the foreground, the tanks, the support vehicles and infantry. In short everything which Arma offers, including the large environment, roads and bridges. If you could capture that scene in a single image on a box cover without being overly busy ... I'm not sure if it's possible though

Precisely. I don't want to turn this into another river/stream thread but rivers and streams would add so much to the tactical realism of the game. That's in addition to the effect they would have on the realism of the landscape etc

Heh ... most people have been fighting the idea of artificial balance as found in the original game. The balance will come from the Northen forces (not east ) outnumbering the Southern/US armies. There is no reason why that same numerical advantage can't be replicated in multiplayer. The Northern team could be bigger with the slightly inferior equipment and vice-versa for the Southern team. It would make for much more interesting gameplay than strict 50/50 teams with balanced weapons and weapon types.