Journeyman

I think BIS is working on a fix for this in 1.05. Well they did mention something about animals! Â

I think BIS is working on a fix for this in 1.05. Well they did mention something about animals! Â

Nice find Walker!

It's really about immersion and having unexpected fleeing of wild deer or foxes or birds in a forest for example could add hugely to the tension of sneaking up on enemy positions and such, and as someone said these things can give you away IRL so why not stick them in a sim like ArmA? There was already lots of talk about animals last year before the initial releases so I'm hoping that BIS has not shelved it! Â Â

Spot Mt. Apo .... High Res (1.59mb) Here's a clue .... High Res (1.82mb)

Full View (1.89mb) Full View (1.86mb)

Collision response seems to be the main problem with choppers ATM. The flight model might not be perfect but I have been flying the Blackhawk and MI-17 in the demo with my Saitek joystick and found the model to be pretty OK if you use it as you would expect to. If you go making deliberate crashes into trees etc. then things start going bad! I had the Blackhawk nose on the ground going round a tree like a hedge cutter and then I managed to get it up again with no damage! Whether BIS improve the crash/collision effects and damage models is something we can only hope for! Â They are also able to fly too fast IMO which is probably why tail rotor effect is lost so quickly! What is the speed measured in.. MPH, KPH or KIAS (Knots in air speed)? Anyone know?

Infantry AI is also pretty crap at understanding the threat of an enemy tank 5 metres away or an enemy gunship hovering only within spitting distance! There reaction is as if there was nothing there! I know they won't respond unless they have anti armour weapons, but FFS they should at least run for cover!

Anyone else have mip mapping like this? I've played with the settings (AF etc.) but it is still the same! Also managed to get stuck in some brickwork! here and here! Awsome demo though! Â System specs: Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs). 2 GB ddr400 RAM. GeForce 6800 GS 256.0 MB (slightly tweaked). Forceware Version: 9371. AGP 8X M.board. Realtek AC97 Audio. Windows XP Home Edition Svc. Pack 2. DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904). Page File: 3072MB. My demo graphics settings! ... FPS 17-30 ave. except in trees!

Same here! And yes, please bring back the old mouse control of vehicles - no auto centre or make it optional! Thank you BIS for releasing the demo in time for the Xmas break! I have had a chance to spend some quality time on it and I am overall very impressed with the work that you have put into it! The graphics are awesome for this kind of large-scale environment. And all this even with my AGP rig: Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs). 2 GB ddr400 RAM. GeForce 6800 GS 256.0 MB (slightly tweaked). Forceware Version: 9371. AGP 8X M.board. Realtek AC97 Audio. Windows XP Home Edition Svc. Pack 2. DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904). Page File: 3072MB. … It is still playable at between 17-30 fps average (slows down in trees and when lots happen on CTI mission). I've spent much time tweaking and found that I get the best performance from these settings here! Also, I hope it is just the Demo Version but when I host a LAN game I don’t expect to be joined by players on the Internet! I have to have it password protected on LAN to prevent this from happening in the Demo! Please sort out the HDR too I’ve improved it by tweaking the Gamma and brightness sliders but it is still odd the way it keeps going light and dark in strange situations! Sun glare is good though! The AI are also a little too elite IMO with their X Ray vision and supper shooting! Otherwise I am looking forward to the full game in February!

You’re right about that! In other sims that I fly FSX/X-Plane the chopper will slide away quickly on those sort of rolls. Also the choppers pivot from the base of the rotors instead of the C of G, which is wrong! Choppers should pivot from their centre of gravity. The response to input should be slower too with regards to roll, currently it is still too immediate. The helicopters also speed up and slow down much faster than they should in response to pitch input! They also bounce and do funny things when they hit objects such as trees instead of self-destructing like IRL!  But hey, I've recently spent some time on the demo choppers and TBH I have had some reasonable fun with them! There is no other sim that I can fly choppers and then get out and drive tanks/cars/boats/walk as infantry etc. so I congratulate BIS on their efforts so far! Any improvements to the current flight model will be most welcome but it is not quite as bad as I had expected!  Most urgent fix IMO should be to sort out the default controls. I already knew to change the default controls so I was on a head start! Anyone new here though will just jump in and crash then moan like f***k about the handling because of the way it is set up so badly. That could so easily be changed! Â

Gigantti, Finnish store (not gaming one, general one) www.gigantti.fi Since I bought my first PC from PC World here in UK I've never bought another 'stock' comp from anywhere since! I've had four computers built since then from small PC companies that will build your specs to suit. This way you get what you want in the way of hardware according to your requirements and if they are good they will assist you with those requirements. A general PC store will just try and sell you any package that they want to sell you in order to make a sale and it will probably not only be unsuitable in hardware specs for your gaming needs, but also not very 'upgradeable' either! Some of these general packages have 250/350 power supplies for example, which is just too low for many good gfx cards that you might want to upgrade to and often the pc cases themselves are unsuitable for upgrading because of limited room. Then there is your mother board also probably with limited slots etc. and made really just for the casual pc user! Moral: Get it built or build it yourself if you are clever enough! Â

It is also a Celeron processor where you would be better with a Pentium for gaming. 1 gig of ram these days is considered the minimum for most new games 2 gig would be my choice or higher if you can! I'm not sure either about the ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 as I'm not too familiar with ATI but it sounds like a very medioca card to me! Where are you buying this PC and is it just a general PC store rather than a gaming store?

…LOL … blackdog~  ... Now Placebo can’t leave the building – his head won’t fit through the door! Well it does seem you will be deeply missed around here Paul! The words Placebo and BI Forums seem almost welded together! Good luck with your career move and all your future plans! Oh, and thanks for adopting my new sig!  Cheers ... Red kite.

Sure FSX isn’t perfect and has its fair share of issues as did FS2004 and I was aware of those funny moments, I’ve experienced some of them myself mostly in FS2004. When the flight model breaks down it is usually a result of attempting something which wasn’t expected of it, taking off at ridiculous high speeds etc, but I know MS are working on many of these issues and are promising a patch for early 2007. Also when the physics goes wrong it is very obvious and you cannot compare something that is obviously programmed into the sim with an occasional glitch in the sim mechanics. I’m not bragging about FSX, only using it as a comparison to ArmA as I don’t have the real deal to play with! If you are into real life low and fast though you can watch this short video for a thrill courtesy of alexisparkinn.com!  The Crazy Boys!

I hear a lot of talk about diminished tail rotor effectiveness at high speeds or the total loss of etc. Tail rotor effectiveness will obviously change at high speeds but I was never aware that it would become ineffective! This would not make sense as the whole chopper not just the tail is subject to aerodynamic forces and ‘wind resistance’ thus this’ wind vein’ effect of the small rudder assembly is not as impossible to overcome as some of you make out. Also given the important task that the tail rotor has in keeping the aircraft from being spun around by its own rotors it needs to be fairly powerful in itself. I’ve also heard stories of how pilots can use hard rudder at speeds to make braking turns and fast 360s etc. I’m not a RL pilot and don’t in any way make out to be, but I’ve clocked up a fair amount of sim hours on various different chopper software! I’ve never not been able to use the rudder pedals effectively at high speeds in any helo sims that I’ve tried and I though I’d put it to the test in Microsoft’s latest flight sim FSX. In this short video that I made you can see me making a hard right on the pedals in the bell JetRanger at over 100Knots. Then a cockpit view of me doing the same manoeuvres in the Apache first to the left then to the right. The red number on the left of the HUD is the airspeed in Knots (KIAS). In both instances I only used pedals (tail rotor) and did not move the cyclic, I was also on full collective (throttle) throughout. The effect seems to be what I would expect and that is of forcing the chopper to fly side on into the wind. The effect on killing speed is amazing although this would probably be quite uncomfortable if you were a RL pilot! FSX High Speed Rudder Turns  .. (Right click and Save target as)

That is probably because BIS have made it MORE realistic! Â Lol, sorry but a single man with PK would shoot you down at once during your hoover beside the convoy. Yeah, I was a bit disappointed in the AI response to the presence of a hovering enemy chopper within a stones throw of a grenade! They didn't even dive for cover! Â

If you check out my latest FSX video: FSX Robinson Fast & Low  .. (Right click and Save target as) …you can see me making some low-level fast flights and turns in the default Robinson that is similar in size to the Littlebird. I found that the rudder (rear rotor) was needed together with the cyclic to being able to make effective fast turns, and there was a noticeable loss of banking response from the cyclic stick at high speeds. In fact I had trouble keeping the chopper from banking to the left at overspeed, and even though my stick was right over to the right I could not get the aircraft back upright without pulling back and killing speed. The response to cyclic inputs especially banking (rolling) was noticeably more and more sluggish the faster I went, completely unlike that video of the Littlebird released by Dslyecxi today! In Dslyecxis video there seems to be no effect of speed on the rotors and the aircraft can continue to make amazingly quick banking manoeuvres despite the very high speeds. This doesn’t happen in FSX and I think I can understand the dynamics and reasons why!

Moved to correct thread! BTW nice videos everyone! Â

Yeah, now try that in an MI-17!   Seriously though I felt a bit sick after watching that - I never was very good on the swings and roundabouts!  All I can say is it looked fun flying that low and that fast but it just felt a bit odd the way you could bank at 90 degrees to the ground for quite some time and not loose any altitude. Centrifugal force alone would not compensate for that. OK I don't expect FSX level of realism in an 'all round' sim like ArmA, so this at least looks enjoyable and I'm sure it will only get better. I might just see if I can fly the Robinson Beta2 like that in FSX as this it would match the Littlebird somewhat in weight at least! …. If you don't hear from me for a while I'm probably stuck in a tree somewhere in FSX land! Â

Reading this thread is like watching the ball in a tennis match! So BIS has amended the heli flight model and as a result has pleased some but pissed off others! Please can someone configure your controls as advised.... ... Then make a flight video of the Cobra going through all the control inputs in sequence (as with my FSX and BlackAlphas physics videos), so that us ArmAless souls can get some idea of the changes to the FM? Â

What! Â Â Are you kidding! .... FS2004 heli model may not be as good as FSX but believe me from what I've seen so far the current ArmA model isn't a patch on FS2004. You are comparing a new mil sim with an established flight sim! No chance! Hopefully though this new model from BIS will narrow the gap quite a bit! Â

Thanks for that video! The new chopper dynamics looks a bit better I guess, but without pulling off a lot more manoeuvres I cannot say just in a simple flight video! A few questions about this new clip pro! I currently use the standard clip attached to the top of my headphones. Apart from looking much cooler is there any other advantage in this new clip? Also is that a wire I see coming from it? Where does it go? Does it have batteries? Is it less likely to loose contact with the sensor etc. Or is it just another cool 'must have' new device to show off all your friends? My wife has got quite used to me looking like a butterfly with the old clip on top of my headphones so this is not an issue for me! Â

@ SpaceAlex the detail in those pics you posted in the CP thread where awsome esp. with those framerates! What is your specs? Â

OK so the 'ArmA photography - Questions&Comments' thread is where we can safely discus all pics posted in the 'ArmA Photography I - No images over 100kb' thread? Would it not make sense then to have this thread pined too? With the constant stream of new threads being generated it soon gets pushed to the back pages where it has to be searched for! Â