Strike_NOR

Thanks a lot for your continuing hard work. I can't express how much entertainment and sandbox satisfaction you have provided with your addons. ArmA would not be the same without you guys :) Have a great weekend!

Haha @bis_iceman... well played :) Did the bohemia kitten chew your cables? Here's hoping to a devbranch update later today so my weekend has purpose :) You can do it BI!

Admit it. We have been stood up. These "logistical issues" are getting out of hand. My F5 key has been worn to its limits. ;)

@teabagginpeople you mean to kill all the bugs, yes?

To quote Epicurus: "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for" Thinking about better infantry movement, weapon resting, FFV, sling loading, sensors, underwater terrain.... Accepting that ArmA 3 is coming to the end of its life, I must admit, brings a little sorrow. Watching the changelogs recently is kind of like visiting your old grandma. You try to make meaningful conversation, but all she wants to do is tinker with her thermal imaging textures, rambling on about no exe changes. At least she lived a full life.... full of DLC :D

Calm before the storm? Maybe there were a bunch of tickets on thermal textures and BIS have this huge bucket of post-it notes with all kinds of "boring work" tickets from the feedback tracker. Perhaps the art department recently drew a note saying "fix all outstanding thermal textures"? That's a very specific guess though... If I recall correctly, updates tend to slooooow down before major dev branch updates. Maybe it's time to... Brace yourselves, tac-ops is coming....soon™ (All'board the hype train, choo choo).

Here's a good example video though. An AH-64 firing what appears to be training rockets from just under 900m range (according to cockpit audio). Note how one rocket hits dead center (seems to strike the roof or just behind the truck, it's really hard to tell), while the other one hits far left. The second volley at 600m is, well... off. Unfortunately pilot aiming pipper is not overlaying the gunners view. This doesn't matter however when you are firing HE rockets, because the shrapnel and blast will deal with the target. Most A-10 training videos and tutorials (DCS) I have found state that the hydra rockets are best fired from less than 2 miles (nautical?!). Long range shots are only made for smoke or illumination rounds to mark a target area. I didn't know this until recently, but rockets can actually be launched in CCRP mode and even be lofted (ballistic arc). Accuracy is severely decreased, but the range to target as well, which means you can avoid SAM and AAA threats, but still successfully mark the target for fast-movers :)

I wanted to test out some of the various rockets in-game to see what results I got: SETUP: Three rocket systems were tested with the following platforms: Wipeout: Shrieker HE & DAR (twin pods) Neophron: Tratnyr HE (single pod was used due to high ammo count) HE was chosen to show impact craters (AP did not make visible craters). Ranges: 2000m, 3000m & 5000m. Dive angle: 45 degrees Target: T-100 Varsuk Radius indicators: Pop-up targets placed in circles at 10m, 20m, 30m and 50m. ACCURACY: All flights spawned at the same altitude and distance from target The pylons closest to the fuselage centerline were chosen to increase accuracy. Speed maintained as closely as possible to 450km/h Simulation speed 50% (setacctime 0.5) to improve aiming. Fully zoomed view, using a user-placed waypoint to engage beyond rendering distance. CONSISTENCY: Performed each attack 3 times to see that the dispersion results were similar enough to use as examples. They were. (Three strikes with DAR at 2000m, three at 3000m, three at 5000m, then repeat for Shrieker and Tratnyr). RESULTS: Imgur link with description to each image: https://imgur.com/a/v6Jcz Of all three rocket systems, I personally "felt" that the Shrieker rockets were the most accurate, the Tratnyr second and the DARs were the least accurate. However, it appears by testing that they are all relatively equal. The ideal attack range seems to be less than 3000m, but even at 5000m all but one hit was within 50m radius (this is WAY beyond practical distance in ArmA due to the tiny target size even on my 24'' monitor). Destroying a heavily armed target like the T-100 simply will not happen. Not even below 2000m because of the way current vanilla rockets work (no HEAT). After playing a LOT of RHS with HEAT ammunition though, I can tell you that a single rocket in the right spot can knock down an MBT or even destroy it. Out of all my attacks, I would say over 75% of the attacks resulted in at least one direct hit to the tank. Less than 50% resulted in more than 2 direct hits. If BI implements effective HEAT or other anti-tank warheads to rockets, then the probability of dealing significant damage, even to MBT's is actually quite good. In terms of soft targets, the effect is devastating (all pop-up targets were killed in every attack) and this kind of attack would most likely kill/immobilize anything within 50-100m, using an average of 20 rockets per strike. CONCLUSION: Rockets fulfill their purpose, even up to 5000m in ARMA 3. Getting all hits within 50m of your crosshair, when you are technically engaging "BVR" (beyond visual range) in the ArmA engine is pretty darn good if you ask me. Something is wrong if you expect hitting within 20m with all rockets at this range.

*Sales pitch* ;)

Hello mate! Congratulations on your official release! I've worked on the F-16 for 8 years and I am truly impressed by the work you have done! Really adds the cherry on top to firewills mod! Bravo!

Coming from a land of much winter, I approve of this mod. Can you imagine the spinoff mods? ArmA snow plowing mod Slalom mod Sauna simulator Deadliest catch 2035 Zombie polar bears!

hey sic! Congrats with your update! I like that you added hit-reaction screams. The underwater ones are a nice touch too! Is there a way to determine if your character receives >X amount of damage = no sound? So a 30mm ap round hitting a guy will just insta-kill him? Or a nearby JDAM? People who receive just enough damage to kill them will scream a lot, but people that receive headshots or heavy damage make gurgle/mumble sounds. People that receive extreme damage simply don't say anything? I'm just thinking about ways to further improve compatibility and create more diversity. Think about this: approaching the site of an IED aftermath, the people closest to the bang will be dead silent, the ones further away screaming in pain (not instantly killed by blast). Also, if using bloodlust, there is a damage threshold that will "vaporize" characters. It would be smart of you to remove death sounds at the same damage level at which vaporization effect occurs to avoid "ghosts screaming" :P Either way, keep up with the good work! It's getting better and better :)

What both @reyhard and @dragon01 and myself have pointed out earlier. Direct attack rockets are essentially area effect weapons. They disperse over a relatively wide cone of fire, which in turn leads to poor accuracy at distance, and better up close. Of course, using rockets is only a viable option if your rockets outperform their anti-air weaponry in the range aspect. You would basically not try to go with rockets against anything with guided weaponry (shilka, manpads etc). However, rockets are way cheaper than missiles, do a great deal of damage against a large area, and are multi-purpose. This image clearly shows dispersion happening: Aswell as here: The impacts are all over the place and the shot seem to be less than 1 km range. To compensate for this poor accuracy, rocket pods tend to house many rockets. They are all released in a large salvo to maximize hit probability. So think of your rockets as a shotgun, designed to hit everything and anything in front of you, while the air to ground missiles are your "sniper rifle". A very expensive one-off weapon that is guaranteed to hit/kill. Basically you do this: Kill anti-air threats with expensive weaponry (guided missiles) Kill everything else with airborne artillery (rocket pods). Pick off straggles with gunruns In conclusion: Aerial rockets are inaccurate, they disperse a lot and it was a warm and welcome change to the ArmA series to finally have this properly simulated.

There are a few things that would tremendously improve the AI, which I would hope to see done in ArmA 3 before the devs completely abandon improvements. Driving skills. There are so many times where the AI simply shows it is not capable of following roads, adapting speed, avoiding collisions, avoiding teammates etc. Many times it'll snag onto a fence or something and just freeze there. There seems to be a lack of the AI recognizing that it is stuck and trying to reverse and find a different path around the obstacle. There are also so many poor decisions on hill terrain, where they chose incredible inclines to go up or down. Causing their vehicle to freeze halfway up a hill. Walking in/on objects. The AI seem to be able to move right through collision objects in many instances. Walking through walls, doors etc. Also they really struggle on piers, bridges etc, running off buildings or obstacles and dying. Taking proper cover. AI that get caught in the open seem to favor staying in the open rather than deploying smoke and moving for hard cover. Recognizing threats at different levels and prioritizing them. A grenade nearby should trigger running away from it, a tank approaching should trigger a priority 1 urge to get to concealment, vehicles impending explosion should trigger them running away. Airstrikes, strafing runs etc should trigger infantry to move away from vehicles and spread out etc. The game has so extremely much going for it, and with proper AI, it has the potential to rival anything out there. Yes, I realize that having advanced AI will tax the system further, but that's kind of where dynamic simulation comes into play. By only rendering and calculating nearby AI, a lot of calculations can be done without. There are very many games that do AI very well, even in sandbox games with huge open worlds, but the game has been designed with AI performance from the ground up. Every object is tailored for AI to take cover behind, every corner is known to the AI, every bridge, every roof, every door, ladder etc is known to the AI. It also knows where enemies are and will position itself behind cover. However, these other open world games have a lot less going on at once than ArmA. A typical FarCry 4 scenario is really just an isolated bubble of the environment, restricted to a few 100 m radius. Nothing outside is simulated, only distant terrain is drawn. Enemies within the bubble are normally only restricted to a handful at once and bodies, weapons and vehicles despawn quickly after dying/taking damage. ArmA does not do this, and that's a double-bladed sword. It is realistic, to have everything "exist" at once and never disappear or spawn during the game, but it is also very CPU intensive. I hope that ArmA3 AI gets a thorough cleanup before everything shifts to enfusion, and hopefully, what the devs learn from coding AI on enfusion, can be used to improve arma 3 AI just a little bit more before it is abandoned.

Thank you for a very elaborate answer. I'm not proficient in arma scripting so I will have to wait for an update. I also remember they used to attack civilians just fine, just figured I was doing it wrong ?

Hi @ryandombrowsky ! I am currently on Devbranch running ONLY your mod and I can't get the Zombies to attack Civilians. I am trying to accomplish a ground-zero like scenario where 1 zombie spawns from a spawner module and infects the available civilian AI. However, the zombies refuse to attack civilians and simply ignore their presence. I have checked the following: Zombie settings module: Civilian attacks : ON Zombie spawner module: Side : Tried with west, east, independent, same results. What am I doing wrong? The zombies spawn, attack blue/east (if set to ind faction), but never even glimpse at the civilians.

A friendly tip... don't quote images or entire large posts. ? I'm looking forwards to putting on a good headset and trying it out in game soon(tm)

Hi! I saw your video and here's my take on it: The concept of lingering death sounds is very realistic and a grotesque touch may I add. It goes well along with the bloodlust mod in terms of shock and horror. To some people, this kind of effect may make the game more disturbing. There are, however, some technical limitations here that undersell the message you are trying to send. Firstly, in ArmA 3, once your character dies, it goes complete ragdoll. There is no further movement than the laws of sir Isaac Newton dragging you down. This corresponds poorly to the audio of a screaming and cursing character. Your screams sound like someone twisting and turning in pain, rolling back and forth. In military medical training, we often learn that if you are approaching an area with casualties, you should prioritize the ones who don't scream. Screamers tend to have minor, but painful, injuries, while the silent ones are in shock or traumatized from their more serious injuries. Secondly, the length of the audio files, while realistic, may be too long for gameplay reasons. The longer a character is screaming, the higher the probability there is that the game will randomly activate the same track and overlap (hearing the same audio clip over each other is bothering to listen to). I suggest they are shortened down somewhat. Thirdly, the quality of certain recordings (only listened to youtube, so can't be sure about compression etc) it seems the loudest noises generate some static in the mike, which was noticeable. Especially around the 1:50 mark in your video. This could easily be improved though with some adjustments :) And last point. Gameplay reasons. Imagine you are doing a stealth mission at night. So you want to be stealthy. Silent kills? Not any more. At least for multiplayer, you will hear these victims from a much larger distance, and I imagine the AI does not "hear" these death screams, so they would awkwardly ignore their dead AI friends, who would be well within audible range. My recommendations? Keep experimenting with length, volume and variations of voices to get the right realism vs practical balance. A HUGE improvement to your mod would be the addition of twitching ragdolls (random movement of limbs while they are in the dead state, for about 10-15 seconds). If you coupled the dying sound with twitching ragdolls, that fade out simultaneously, well then you have truly simulated dying. (I think the game "Squad" has this feature - as players die, they bleed out slowly on the ground and sometimes they move their arms and legs a little, while grunting). If twitching ragdolls are not an option, I would save the "loud and angry screams" for non-lethal hits (when player takes damage, have him shout "@$@!"#¤, I'M HIT...... AAAAARGH..." +*intense breathing* (something short). And save the more gurgling, suffocating, moaning sounds for the dead ragdolls. That's my opinion anyways :)

This idea is actually brilliant!

Calm down Icarus! Dont fly too close to the sun ? *secretly sneaks aboard the hype train while nobody is looking*

This is the problem with the ArmA community. We all have imagination... On a serious note though :) I believe RO2 uses Unreal engine, and was designed from the floor up with features like this in mind. We do not have any crew-switch animations in ArmA that I am aware of, you just pop in and out of existence. It's like quantum tunneling, you defy known laws of physics and re-appear somewhere close by. Think a second about all the possible transitions you would have to cover, for all of armas vehicles. RO2 had like, 2,3 drivable tank types? I imagine they were a pain to model, with mechanics, animations and all. If you have a 2-seat vehicle, you only need two different animations: A to B & B to A. It just gets worse with 3 crew positions... A to C & A to B & B to A & B to C & C to A & C to B. In RO 2 you could not get in or out of the tank either... So no worrying about climbing in and out of the various hatches. However, I get your point. The animation system, the interactions and roles you can play in RO2 are simply put immersive. For ARMA 3, it is a dream that will not happen. Who knows what ArmA 4 may bring. I would however suggest the following alternatives to increase immersion/realism: Crew can only switch between seats that are physically available to them (no switching from gunner to driver, if driver is in a separate compartment) Crew seat switch takes more time (give it at least a few seconds delay with a fade effect and sound) Tank interiors so you can see if your crew have been killed Correct hatches open/close when using get in and out action, requiring the animation to finish before you actually exit or enter. (So before getting into a position, the hatch will open and player will enter after that). Hatches remain open once AI/Crew bail out (this as a visual indicator to other tanks that the tank has been abandoned.)

It happened a few patches back. RHS S-8 rocket pods become incredibly cool with this feature (more like a directed cluster bomb, rather than a dropped one). While very performance heavy for a game, many real life rocket pods typically unleash in a huge volley at once, peppering the target area. They always felt like sniper weapons in vanilla ArmA due to their perfect accuracy. I'm happy the devs saw time to include this :) It's a really cool feature. Here's a real rocket attack with Mi-24

To try and answer a few things here. Firstly, I believe the part about maps is a nice idea, but development on Jets has ended and now only bug-fixing and performance tweaks are going to happen. However, the modding community can make maps, and as such, we will see jets-oriented maps in the future :) The second thing you bring up is the HUD symbology. I also asked that BI would remove the UI-style target box etc, but they decided to keep them. I think it may cause issues for a lot of addon makers that do not have an ingame (first person) HUD, and rely on the UI-style "HUD". Also, there are a great deal of players using third person view (for reasons I can't understand, but hey, whatever floats your boat). These need a way to use the vehicles weapon systems as if they were inside, and as such they keep the "UI-style HUD". Of course you could propose that they remove the 1st person view UI, and keep it for third person, but that would lead to balancing issues in multiplayer. The player with 3rd person would have a greater Field of View which the HUD functions in, while the 1st person player would have a much narrower area, constricted to the physical HUD inside the jet cockpit. This is really just a different version of having 3rd person view as infantry. The 3rd person camera can see what's behind walls etc, while the first person can not.

What do you base this on? Not to defend Laxemann or anything, but just think about the following for a few seconds. Helicopter make a wide range of different sounds. For instance: Blade tip vortices (main and tail rotor) Rotor blades compressing air (main and tail rotor) Main gearbox (whining) Engine compressor(s - one for each engine) Engine turbine(s- one for each engine) Engine exhaust(s - one for each engine) Engine gearbox(es - one for each engine) Fuselage aerodynamic noise Fuel pumps Generators Just in this simple list there are a possibility of perhaps ~20 sound sources which all make up "helicopter noise". Here comes the kicker: Each sound has its own frequency and intensity, which make them act very differently depending on the environment. A lot of the low-frequency sounds (humming) will be heard from a long distance, and also through buildings/cover to some degree, because they are not absorbed by air, nor matter as much as high-frequency sounds. (Think of your neighbor playing loud music. You really just hear the bass, not the vocals or other high-pitch noise). A simple chart from sound absorption in air: Bear in mind that in ARMA 3, wind does not affect sound propagation, but it does in real life. If you are standing near a highway in gusty weather, you will hear the volume of the traffic noise oscillate, because wind is "tampering" with the sound propagation. You may hear the gas turbine and whistle really well if you are standing close to a helicopter under calm conditions, but not as much as if the helicopter is standing downwind from you, or a little further away. Youtube is not always a good reference, because different recording devices have very different microphone qualities. Some pick up all the noise, others just pick up a portion of the spectre. Add to that, the cameramans position in these clips, the weather conditions etc. You will "always" have a different idea of what the heli "should" sound like. From personal experience, the F-16 is extremely loud from front/forward angle due to the high frequency of the compressor turning. If you are standing behind the wings, these sounds completely fade out and all you can hear is the low rumble and idling of the engine through the fuselage (all high-frequency noises are filtered). Standing directly behind an F-16, the sound appears to completely fade out and you can't even tell if the jet is shut down or operating. This is because the turbulent exhaust gas actually scrambles the sound so much that it fades out completely before it can reach you. Anyways, this is why audio is so important to game developers nowadays and they have entire teams of audio-engineers to go into the field and record stuff from all angles and distances. In order to have a realistic game, you need more than good visuals. You need to trick the mind that it's hearing stuff realistically too! Look at this video of recording sounds for Halo 4 and think about what it would sound like if you recorded it with your cellphone instead :P So to summarize I just wanted to say that we should show some appreciation of the total product of new sounds for helicopters in RHS, rather than nitpicking at small things that in the grand scheme of things, become less important.

Well. If you look ingame on devbranch there is recoil so your point is invalid. The question you should be asking is essentially, is there enough recoil? There is just slightly less recoil for the HE-T than the APFSDS, which by all means seem perfectly coherent with my calculations. Others have also claimed that the "HE does not have recoil, it must be a bug". No recoil literally means the tank does not move at all when firing HE. It absolutely does ingame. That's why I wanted to get into the depth of this problem and see if it actually needs to be changed in order to reflect real life, or it should remain as is because the physics adds up. Thanks, you are right it's been a decade since I did this stuff in school. Clearly I have forgotten some things. What you say about momentum is true, so whatever momentum is gained by the shell should in turn also be applied to the tank in an equal and opposite reaction. Given the tank's mass it won't be as dramatic as if the cannon was "hanging" in free space, In which case the mass of the cannon is only a fraction of the tanks total mass. But my point still stands doesn't it? That if you have slightly more mass accelerated to a lot less velocity, the momentum becomes lower, and as such the force exerted on the tank also becomes smaller. Edit: I did some tests with Kuma in devbranch now. Set up a simple measurement system with two striped poles. FYI the tank is placed on perfectly flat surface, so I have not included a "reference picture from stationary tank". See link below. The recoil difference remarkably resembles my rough estimation of difference in energy. But still, we know nothing about how it is actually calculated and applied ingame. But it seems to match real life performance of the shells of an equivalent weapon. The screenshot is taken during slowmotion at the maximum compression of the shocks. https://imgur.com/a/iro1Y Edit 2: As @lionhawk123 pointed out, I have used the wrong formula to calculate recoil. Recoil velocity comes from conservation of momentum. In the previous example of a 9kg sabot+rod travelling at 1,575m/s at the muzzle, versus a 11,4kg HEAT-MP shell travelling at 1,140m/s at the barrel, with the barrel alone being the "countermass" to the projectile, I get the following results. M256 weight (only cannon, not mount) = 1190 kg Sabot recoil velocity = 11,9m/s (seems plausible) HEAT-MP recoil velocity = 10,9m/s (quite similar) In terms of percentage increase in recoil velocity, we get a 9,17% increase in recoil velocity. This means that in the 1st second after firing a sabot round, the cannon would move 1 meter further back than if HEAT-MP was used. However, I found that if the entire mass of the tank is included (62 tons), the tank would have a recoil velocity difference of about 0.01 m/s, which still amounts to a roughly 9% increase in velocity when using sabot. If we were to stop right here, I'd say that @Beagle's observations from firing experience would be quite accurate. The average human looking at a firing tank, taking into the account of the pressure shock, vibrations and all interfering with the visual observation at the time of firing, would have serious difficulty in telling the difference between recoil from a Sabot or HEAT-MP shell. 10% is not very much, and a lot less than my incorrect 30-40% difference in Kinetic Energy calculations. A major missing part of the equation is "second recoil" that comes from gases exiting the barrel, like a rocket engine, pushing the gun backwards. This recoil tends to be greater than the one of the projectile (in some cases 30% higher - which is why muzzle brakes are so popular). To shed some light on this the charge weight of the sabot is 7,9 kg, against the much lighter 5,4 kg charge of the HEAT-MP a 47,5% difference in charge mass. To be honest, I am giving up right here. I don't have time to get into computed fluid dynamics, or bernoulli's laws or any of that. The momentum change of pressurized gas leaving the barrel between the two types of ammunition is bordering rocket science. We're talking about the area of a 120mm cannon barrel acting as a rocket nozzle accelerating gas at god knows what speed, density and mass out of a barrel with varying charge. Either way, what @x3kj says is a good point, and from a realistic point of view wrong. However, ArmA is a game that needs to be moddable, and adding realistic calculations to recoil, may pose problems for unrealistic mods. Say I were to make a walking Mech with a 250mm Gauss gun that fires shots at 3000m/s, well... the mech is probably gonna do multiple backflips and make the mod impossible. So you would have to "cheat" the other way and make the player think the weapon is a 250mm gun, but rather put a much smaller shell/speed in the config to attain usable recoil for your addon. A recoil modifier may be exactly the thing that makes it EASY to make/tweak mods with no understanding/respect for physics. While a better recoil calculation make it easier to recreate realistic properties of real world weapons.