Strike_NOR

I remember walking on decks in battlefield 1942. You could run for the AA guns when being attacked, hop out and repair the hull, board enemy ships etc. It was really cool. The game had a core mechanic for walking on moving vehicles. In battlefield 2 they removed that possibility. Thing is, it was very glitchy. You constantly would hear sounds of being crushed, and the player operating the vehicle would see the infantry "lagging" several meters behind their actual position. So on small ships, they appeared to be hanging behind the vessel. I must honestly say that while it would be cool to be able to walk on moving decks, it would probably result in random deaths all the time. Heck, after many years of ArmA I'm scared to death of stairs, ladders and even rocks. How many times have I gotten stuck in a stair and launched into sudden death, or tried for the 100th time to enter a ladder only to fall 30 meters, or glitched inside a rock. And you would like to see this movement system on a moving ship? It'll be a ghost ship in no time :D

Actually I have no problem believing that. It's just less obvious in ArmA than in games like Battlefield. Word!

There are so many variables to consider in real life, that even DCS-quality simulators have to make sacrifices. Consider that arcade style games use a simple hitbox/hitscan damage model. You fire the gun, a random line is traced from the gun based on "accuracy" properties and the engine detects if the "line" touches a hitbox. If it does, the hitbox has a damage coefficient that draws from the players HP pool. This is good old Call of Duty or Counter Strike mechanics. Then you have Battlefield. It uses ballistics, so each bullet physically travels through air with a trajectory based on muzzle velocity and gravity. It does, however, deal a fixed amount of damage when it collides with a hitbox. Finally you have ArmA. And please correct me if I am wrong, but here the bullet is fired from the gun, with a certain muzzle velocity, projectile mass and air-resistance. This projectile travels until it hits something. Once hit, a whole new set of parameters are calculated, such as bullet energy, target material and angle of impact. This determines what the next step will be: will it ricochet? Will it penetrate, and if so, how far? What happens after penetration? Does the bullet exit with less velocity, a new angle etc? Additionally you have different damage types in ArmA, indirect damage (explosions) and penetration damage (based on hitpoints, firegeometry etc) which determine what the projectile will do inside a vehicle. The point being, all of this requires heaps of CPU power to calculate. Now imagine a minigun in ArmA, firing at 2000 rpm, that's like a whole CPU benchmark. Many games, like battlefield, "simulate" miniguns by shooting relatively few projectiles per second (maybe 4 RPM), but they deal splash damage on impact. When coupled with visual effects (like many tracers and many impact effects) it gives the appearance of firing 4000 RPM. The game, however only fires 240rpm, which saves LOADS of CPU power, but is not realistic at all. This means that if you are standing next to the point of impact, you are really taking splash damage from the minigun and not direct damage, like in ArmA. In ARMA, it is the actual bullet that kills you. One thing ArmA does not do by default, is generate shrapnel projectiles. Some mods manage to do so (ACE mod), but they are resource heavy. A real life experiment with a 155mm artillery shell showed that it produced about 2000 fragments. Think about computing that in a full-blown artillery strike in Arma, where each fragment has calculated trajectories, air resistance, penetration, ricochet and energy. I believe what ACE does is a compromise where it scans the area for objects within the fragmentation radius, then sends X amount of fragments towards those objects. This gives the impression of 360 degree fragmentation, but only uses resources calculating the ones that are likely to strike players. To get to my point: As far as I know, planes in ARMA 3 can ricochet projectiles. I have seen this when firing 50 cal tracer at attacking aircraft. If I strike them at an angle, the tracers may actually bounce off the plane. As far as HE ammunition goes, I am not 100% sure, but I do think they can ricochet also. Bullets to calculate penetration on ArmA aircraft, for instance you can shoot through the floor of a helicopter and kill the crew. You can shoot through a wing or tailfin also if the caliber is high enough (or rather if the weapon penetration is high enough). However, ArmA deals with explosives in a strange way, which, if you ask me, needs to be updated before Tanks DLC. To my knowledge it relies on Indirect fire damage, which is an exponential damage that correlates with distance to target. The closer you are, the more HP you lose. This is fine for high explosive weapons that simulate a blast/shockwave. But what about missiles? Most Anti-Tank missiles, for example, are designed to kill by a high-explosive blast that is focused on a tiny spot. These come from so called "hollow charges" or "shaped charges". Some weapons also create Explosively Formed Penetrators. These charges are designed to penetrate very thick armor. I have not verified this, but I heard a rumor that BI have implemented "submunitions" for missile-type weapons. This means that as a programmer, you can make a missile spawn a high-velocity projectile upon impact that will rip through the target and cause direct damage. This is way better than using the previous indirect fire damage that will deal splash damage to everything within its radius. Overall this gives a much better simulation of defeating armored targets. When it comes to Anti-Air missiles, they are most often designed to kill by fragmentation. The companies that develop these missiles acknowledge the fact that hitting a highly maneuverable target, moving at high speeds at great distance is really hard. So chances are that you will physically miss the target. Therefore, many Anti-Air missiles come with proximity fuses or built-in software that recognizes a near-miss. This will cause the missile to detonate, even if it's ~10m off to the side. An AA-missile's warhead is usually a quite small amount of explosive, wrapped in either metal rods or pellets that create a "cloud" of shrapnel. These will easily shred through aircraft aluminium and damage internals such as fuel systems, computers, wires, engines, hydraulics etc. However, ArmA does not simulate the individual projectiles. The great news is: We now have more hitpoints. We now have the possibility to damage more things on aircraft. This makes jets extremely more vulnerable to small-arms fire and AA guns. Missiles will probably still continue to deal only indirect fire (splash damage), meaning that if your right wing gets hit by a missile, everything within X amount of meters from the point of impact will take damage, no matter what. But, consider what I said earlier about mods. ACE does simulate fragmentation, so imagine they just copied the code to Anti-Air missiles and lowered the explosive damage. This means that missiles would work more like in real life, where fragments can kill the pilot and damage individual hitboxes (systems) more randomly. Either way, Aircraft Hitpoints is a huge win :) I recommend anyone curious to the damage of Anti-Aircraft missiles to watch the conclusion of the dutch air crash investigation video on flight MH 17.

Pfft, I heard some autonomous ocean barges have a glideslope of nearly 90 degrees! *Laughs in Space-x.....*

That's amazing. I also set up a mission where 3 vehicles spawned straight ahead of me. I brought up the Titan AT and no joy... tried locking, but nothing. As the tank drove off, still nothing. I started switching views to TI and NV, and then BINGO! I found a lock. So I thought you had to force TI/NV vision to get locks, but then when I switched to TV view again, it still locked. Huh? Didn't realize that the vehicle had to sufficiently warm up first ! That's awesome! In lack of better terms:

LGB's are far simpler in my opinion. They have no propulsion and so do not require the firing platform to "set up" within the missiles capabilities in order to guarantee a hit. The thing that makes LGB's different though is that they usually only guide the last few seconds before impact. This means that the pilot essentially drops it with CCIP (continuously calculated impact point) or CCRP (continuously calculated release point), as if it were a "dumb bomb". The result of this is that the bomb follows a ballistic trajectory towards the target area and does not guide. The TGP of the aircraft does not emit laser energy until the last few seconds before impact. The laser then goes active and the bomb picks it up, meaning that if the bomb is off-course, it will adjust towards the laser in the terminal flight phase. The reason that an LGB normally never guides from the start, is that the laser guidance system is quite crude. It will basically zig-zag in and out of the reflected laser energy, causing massive drag and reduced range. The other reason, of course, is not to alert enemies of your laser guided bomb until the very last possible moment. Some huge advantages of LOAL is that if the designator is by FAC, the aircraft dropping the bomb can go defensive immediately after release. You can also "lob"/"loft" bombs over hills or terrain (which means dropping the bomb in an upwards trajectory so you "throw" it into a trajectory. Although this is seldom or never practiced with LGB's, there are other GBU types, such as JDAM (GPS) guided bombs, that are excellent for this purpose. Naturally, since you can't see the target during these attacks, they are commonly used on buildings because they have a low probability of moving around. :)

Did you know there are already at least two mods that feature clickable cockpits? The AH-64 by NodUnit and Franze, and an A-10C mod by Peral. It can be done, but adds a ton of more work and customization to each jet, since no cockpit is identical.

AWACS / IFF Helps a lot :) And true, Radars can discern geometric shapes from ground clutter, but not identify what the object is. Some radars can produce detailed images, but they still require a human operator to evaluate and assess the information.

let's just say that they are super top secretly capable *wink*, but they still have one major drawback. They alert your presence. Ever wonder why highway patrol quit using radars to catch speeders? Because motorists started buying radar warning receivers. Now they all use laser. At least where I live

Not to mention expensive and require large amounts of power and cooling systems. What's the point of putting a BVR radar into an A-10 (futurehog) if it's only going to fly low and slow. Besides, radar is way less stealthy. Radars emit loads of energy which alerts everyone nearby that you are here. A sneaky TGP with toggle-able laser is way harder to detect. Also the A-10 produces less noise due to the high by-pass ratio of the engines.

Yes more or less, I just expanded a little on it theoretically and applied to ArmA. I know it CAN be done in ARMA, because ACE mod 2.0 did it for ArmA 2. You could bring up an MFD and set the laser code. The FAC operator would also set lasercode in his Laser Designator, and as such, the bomb/missiles would only follow the correct laser. They even made it so you could launch Hellfires beyond visual range, and then they would fly "blindly" to the target area and lock on once the laser came into the missiles field of view. After in-flight lock was established, the missile then dove straight into the laser spot. So it can be achieved in the arma universe, and the sensor upgrade will probably make it easier for addon makers to script/mod, but I would really like to see this native to the ArmA 3 engine!

There are some tactical and gameplay enhancing benefits of using a more realistic laser system though. Think about the following scenario: A jet is tasked with destroying a tank by use of Laser Guided Bomb. With the current system player must follow these steps: Enter TGP view and find target Stabilize TGP on target and activate laser (through weapon menu) Select GBU and lock the laser target Fly over target to a point where target is about 45 degrees under aircraft nose Acquire lock Release bomb Bomb guides onto target. Now this is a very clean way where it is easy to verify that you are making the correct steps along the way. However, with the new sensor upgrade, the enemy tank will be alerted to the laser already at step 2. As soon as the laser is painting the tank, the tank is alerted and may pop smoke and retreat into cover. This is actually realistic from the tanks point of view and would much likely be the result in a real life situation. The result is, very high chance of failing to hit the tank. Let's make a few tweaks to the system and use different laser mechanics. In the next scenario, lasers work differently. Lasers can be toggled by keybind, time to impact is displayed in aircraft HUD together with TGP aiming point. Bombs also lock on to your laser post-launch (LOAL - Lock On After Launch). Let's refly the scenario: Enter TGP view and find target Stabilize TGP on target Select GBU Fly towards HUD indicator that shows where TGP is looking Release bomb by CCIP or, since CCRP isn't featured, by gut feeling in level flight. Wait until Time to Impact shows 5 seconds or so and activate laser Bomb guides onto target This approach requires more pilot skill and experience in order to pull off correctly, but allows for more dynamic weapon delivery. The big difference here being that you are not required to lock on to the laser before launch. Therefore you do not have to lase the target too early. In this scenario, the enemy tank will not be alerted until step 6. And when he is alerted, he will have 5 seconds to react and move. This significantly increases the probability of a kill. This is also how one attacks modern battletanks with GBU in real life. It would be very nice if players got an indicator in the HUD that shows where the TGP is aimed, like a small diamond, circle or cross. This way, you would be dropping your bomb towards that point. The accuracy may be quite high, but by activating the laser just before impact, the bomb only makes a final adjustment and hits dead center. One of the major reasons this is done in real life, is because a GBU will actually oscillate when it's tracking. This causes a lot of drag and reduced bomb range drastically. When it is dropped as a dumb bomb, it actually follows a ballistic trajectory with very little drag. During the terminal flight phase, the laser is switched on and the bomb homes in. This has minimal effect on drag, doesn't alert the enemy too early and improves accuracy and range. As you can see, it provides more dynamic weapon delivery. It forces you to think a little bit more about your decisions. If you are attacking a convoy truck, you can lase all you want and they won't know what's coming. But when attacking an IFV or tank with equipped laser detectors, you have to start being cunning. Otherwise you will find that the tanks disappear behind smoke and cover before you can get within dropping range. This would, however, require ArmA to feature some way to make laser designations unique. Otherwise, an area full of lasers may cause the bomb to follow the wrong one.

First of all. To me, ArmA 3 was always a realistic Infantry simulator, with bonus elements of tanks and aircraft. Since release, bohemia have added Marksmen with in-engine weapon resting. They have added FFV, to allow us in-engine support for firing from vehicles. Helicopters provided us with a realistic flight model (though I assume they already did most of the work for that with Take On Helicopters). Most of the improvements have greatly polished the infantry combat experience, but for all I can see Bohemia is really ramping up the game on the previously mentioned "bonus elements"; namely aircraft and tanks. In my opinion, they are doing the right thing by implementing new mechanics with the sensors upgrade and dynamic vehicle loadouts. These features will drastically improve vehicle warfare, which will also bring the entire platform to a new level. However, one has to make some sacrifices along the way. An advanced flight model, would do amazing things for fixed wing enthusiasts, like myself, but bring very little to other areas of the game. Unlike sensors and dynamic loadouts, the advanced FM would only matter to the fixed wing pilots. While I would give an arm for an advanced FM, I recognize that BI would have to create one from scratch. I believe the current flight model may be created in such a way that it is hard to simply "add code" in order to bring it to a new level. It may very well require a complete rewrite of the aircraft physics, which affect all current vanilla and mod planes. If they decide to revise the current FM in the future, that would be very welcome as far as I'm concerned, but at the same time I can easily live with the current FM after the other features from Jets are finished. If I would have to pick three things that I would like to see for the future of fixed wing aircraft it would be the following: Aircraft weight changes with fuel and payload affect handling Better low-speed aerodynamic simulation Weather effects Regarding my first wish, I feel that aircraft in ArmA do not have intertia. When turning, aircraft feels like it's "on rails". In real life, there is a substantial amount of inertia that causes the plane to appear to "drift" or "sink" into steep maneuvers. It is at this point that so-called "angle of attack" occurs, where the aircraft nose is offset in relation to the incoming airflow. Everyone has probably seen a jet taking off and know that when the aircraft pitches up on the runway, it keeps following the ground for a while before lifting into the air - that's the inertia I am talking about. I'd like to see that in ArmA, and I'd like to see aircraft configuration affect that. A jet with only A-A missiles and internal fuel should be significantly more agile than a jet with bombs and external fuel tanks. There is always a trade-off, though. The light jet has no A-G capabilities and can fly for a shorter duration, while the heavy jet can stay in the AO much longer. This would absolutely force players or mission makers to plan according to their objective, and defeats the "Jack of all trades" style that ArmA has now. As an example of personal experience, Viper pilots have told me that flying with internal fuel and A-A Missiles is like driving a sportscar, in contrast to bombs and external fuel which makes it comparable to driving a fully loaded dump-truck. In terms of the second point, it collaborates with the first. At slower speeds, aircraft often become more sensitive to inputs, and increasingly dangerous to fly. In ARMA, planes seem to just become unresponsive and fall straight down with the same attitude when entering "stall speed". In real life, this resembles aircraft with a computer-assisted flight control system. However, aircraft experience various phenomena when flying marginally close to the limits of the envelope. Sometimes aircraft experience "buffeting" where turbulent flow makes the aircraft shake. Often an aircraft will stall on one wing before the other, causing inadvertent roll. In a turn, usually this happens to the lower wing first, causing the plane to roll upside down. These effects would be nice to see in ArmA. Finally, It would be amazing to see wind effect aircraft. This would force players to take off in headwind, compensate for crosswind and also give extra challenges during attack maneuvers and landing. We already have a good HUD with flight path markers to aid us, so it should be very easy to get a hang of it. I'd love to see turbulence effects during bad weather and having to land a damaged jet in poor conditions. It would really bring some extra level of immersion to the game! Anyways, whatever the future may hold, the current implementations on dev-branch are nothing short of mind-blowing in terms of what I was expecting to see in ArmA 3's lifespan.

If we wanted realistic laserguidance in ARMA, It would probably confuse non-flightsim enthusiasts and make the game "unplayable" (i.e "I refuse to learn this mechanic") for the general player base. I know for my self that it would be amazing to be able to set the laser encryption on the bomb to match the FAC laser designator, or your own laser designator. Very realistic, but how necessary is it for ArmA and how much does it add to the overall experience? Right now I believe GBU's act just like the Titan-AA when it comes to locking. They Auto-Lock when the seeker can sense the target. For a GBU this is not very realistic, but it works and it gives good feedback to the player. The only problem I can think of right now is where multiple lasers are being used in the same area. How can a player distinguish what laser to track and lock onto? That is where encryption has a value. An easy way to address this problem is to attach the playername or unit-ID of the unit that is designating and display it in the aircraft/vehicle sensor HUD. It would at least allow players to communicate which designation needs a GBU pronto ASAP. I would also like to see a few handy TGP features: Laser spot track When in TGP view and piloting a jet/heli, allow the player to use a "Laser Spot Track" key bind to search the TGP sensor Field Of View of active laser designations, and slew the TGP to that spot. This will allow pilots to quickly find a laser designation and start asessing the target. Slave to coordinates This would allow the pilot to set a point on the map, and have the TGP ground stabilize at this location through a keybind. This way, only fine-adjustment is required upon entering the TGP view. Just a few ideas :)

Carpet bombers incoming!

I love this fact! This now forces pilots to fly higher than the tanks can elevate their guns, which in turn poses a significant threat from Anti Aircraft fire. If you want to bring your jet into the mud, you better be hugging terrain and performing pop-up attacks on enemies. Give the enemies the least possible amount of time to train their guns on you before you zoom out of there again! Excellent!

I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to hand over your ArmA 3 pilots license. I'll keep it in my custody until your vision has been re-evaluated. Of course I'm joking. To be honest I hadn't thought about issues for people without 10/10 vision. Maybe thay can include some option that overrides the ingame hud colors? Who knows!

I just realized Ababil-3 backwards nearly spells "Ali Baba" :p coincidence?

This sounds a little arcade-ish to me. That would require installing an entirely different hud projector in real life, all for the sake of color. To deal with this issue IRL pilots may usually select brightness to suit their needs. With brightness set to max the hud symbology is really intense and glowing. This generally becomes a problem only when facing the sun or diving at a snowy area. Flying into the sun has always been a tactical maneuver to disorient enemies, no? Sunglasses/visors mandatory!

I would very much like to see a simplified autopilot in ArmA 3. What I mean about simplified is that it works as a level stabilizer. Old IL-2 sturmovik had an arcade-ish approach for this which made it easier for a single player to operate all crew positions without worrying about crashing. It picture it would work in two possible ways: When activated, it will keep the aircraft trimmed with 0 roll and 0 pitch, but it would still allow rudder movement to allow for small course-changes (handy for level bombing). When activated, it will keep the aircraft trimmed with 0 roll and 0 pitch, but allow pilot to override by using stick. When pilot releases stick (to center position) the aircraft will automatically return to 0 roll and pitch. I could really see the benefit of having something equivalent to "auto-hover" for helicopters. Fixed wing aircraft could get an "Auto-level" function, that keeps the nose and wings level with the horizon. This would allow the plane to automatically maintain course and altitude while the player can focus on other things, such as map reading, TGP operation or just simply cruise from A to B without manually flying. "Auto-level" could be either deactivated by selecting it to off in action menu (or keybind), or by moving the controls to a certain threshold to automatically disable it. On that note, I would like to address the "Landing Autopilot" feature. As far as I know, most military jet fighters do not have autoland, and especially not the type that is in ARMA 3. I believe the intention of the landing autopilot hails back to the old days of Operation Flashpoint, where flight models and max view distance were equally poor. When you can't see the airport, or orient according to it due to game limitations, it becomes necessary to have landing autopilot. However, with arma 3 we now have extended view distance and better flight models with HUD ILS and virtual runways overlayed. This removes much of the need of a landing autopilot. The fact that aircraft physX suspension is making its way into arma also removes the need of a landing autopilot, because landings will most likely be less prone to damage your aircraft. In other words, maybe it would be the right time to remove the landing autopilot in its entirety? Or at least re-make it so that you have to manually fly the aircraft into the glideslope/ILS beams, before the "landing autopilot" action becomes available. This way it would better mimic real life autoflight, where you have to guide the aircraft onto the ILS system, before handing it over to the autoland system. Share your thoughts?

Same here! It would be amazing to see configurable loadouts on helicopters and even ground vehicles too. It would be cool if they included various loadouts for tanks, so you could set the amount of APFSDS, HEAT, MP, Canister, Missile etc. Maybe even gun calibers? Imagining a world war II mod using this to configure a tank. Maybe a Sherman with 75mm gun, and another with 76mm gun, just by using loadout editor :)

There's one thing that would greatly improve helicopters. Which is if they fixed it so that helicopters do not instantly explode when rolling over. They already got the rotor destruction correct, but it would be amazing if they fixed the rolling over explosion. That is totally fake news stuff right there :p

As for what pilots want it strongly depends on the mission and what enemies you face. You are right on the account that adding forward weight may increase stability, but reduce agility up until a certain point. I have manually loaded AIM-9s so I know they weigh as much as a full grown man. What makes it special is that AIM-9s are rail launched, while bombs are dropped. That means that a rail type "launcher" is required for AIM-9 and a "pylon" with hooks is required for most bombs. While it may theoretically be possible to load bombs on the center pylon, it may not be practical in any case. I guess to settle it we would have to talk to someone who works on the jet, as I can't dig up anything more specific than the jet having 7 hard points. This has anyways been a huge digression from the intention of the thread so I am ending the debate as inconclusive until proven by a credible account. cheers ?

With all due respect, what makes you so certain? I've checked 4 sources now and they list all models of the L-39, none of which equip anything but 23mm gunpod or reconaissance pod. I could not find a single mention about bombs or missiles on the centerline pylon. When it comes to aircraft weight and balance, it's part of my job. I don't have access to L-39 W&B charts, but I know that on smaller aircraft, placing a 50kg bag in the aft compartment may shift the CG outside limits and cause the plane to crash on takeoff. Also remember that a 250kg bomb equals 1750kg at 7G's ? That's like hanging an SUV from a small point under the cockpit. buuut, since the jet in ArmA isn't real, you could probably do whatever you want to be honest. edit: I see the L-159 super albatros can hold about 2300kg on center pylon, but no mention of bombs specifically. edit2: After extensive searching I have only found pics of gunpod or nothing on centerline pylon. Although it says it can carry 2300kg, it may hold restrictions due to airbrakes or other things as previously mentioned

While I am not familiar with bomb release mechanisms of eastern military aircraft, I can speak of western designs. From a weapon release standpoint, most hardpoints or "pylons" use pistons to physically push the bombs away from the aircraft. Not only to create some distance between the aircraft for collision avoidance, but also to ensure that the weapon releases with the correct angle. If a bomb is released with two much "nose down", it may oscillate upwards again and strike the aircraft belly/tail. Often there are small explosive cartridges inside the pylon that are responsible for creating the gas pressure that act upon the pistons to "discharge" the weapon. I don't really think that this is the primary issue here. I think it may be a design limitation due to either weight distribution (center of gravity) or structural limitations. Compare the size of the wing pylons to the center pylon. They are much larger. Also remember that the wings generate upward lift, which means that they "carry their own weight" during flight. The fuselage does not, and any weight added to the fuselage will counter-act the upwards force of the wings. This creates a lot of stress on the structure, which is also why the center body fuel tank of large aircraft is usually emptied during taxi, before takeoff. The center of gravity may shift too far forward, causing the aircraft to pitch down. This requires a lot of trim to compensate for. If the aircraft is flying close to the trim threshold, it becomes a risk to even attempt to fly it. A typical eastern russian GP-bomb weighs in at around 500kg, whilst U.S bombs weigh typically either 250kg or 1000kg. This may very well apply several tons of rotational force on the aircraft`s pitch axis. So while adding a bomb to the forward pylon may seem like a simple task, it may actually be physically impossible due to such factors. Here's a little bonus to you that shows failed weapon release tests from USAF. It can get quite hairy!