Radic

I play OFP with the EECP mod - I edited the vehicle engine config sections to reduce the volume overall - still get "thudding" and "whooshing" noises very loud from time to time - gearshifts and airbrakes?? - if I can shut those down I'll be happy but haven't managed to locate what they are / where they are yet. Overall I've turned down vehicle engines and firearms volume so that overall sound can be up such that overall environmental sounds are at a hearable level without engines deafening you and drowning everything else our or gunfire causing neighbours to call cops - not keen on SWAT smashing down my door in the middle of the night.

I've never seen this before - I was playing the "Battlefields" single mission and was crouched near the bulwarks with an RPG and a Russian came up on me by surprise from the side - only weapon to hand was the RPG so I blasted him (expectin both of us to be obliterated) - and he absolutely LAUNCHED - stuck to front of rocket and flew up and away at rocket speed - little man shape disappearing quickly across the valley into an explosion was curiously hilarious!!

A64 3700+ (2.4Ghz) Socket 754 7800GS 256 (AGP) 1024 DDR PC3200 RAM (CAS 2.5) 80Gb HDD Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 rev1 Mobo (onboard AC97 sound) Cyborg Evo Joystick Logitech MX700 cordless mouse Generic Keyboard 17" CRT Monitor (LG710S) CPU Benchmark figure in the OFP config app = 6849 Autodetect Geometry Performance figure = 6991

hmmm - well I'm scratching my head now.... - I've just played thru all the helo missions in OFP (ECP) and RockofSL's friend's comments notwithstanding I really think the OFP flight model is pretty much spot on / what I'd expect the real thing to be (except for the collective being more like a height control rather than lift control). I guess the cyclic "mush" in ArmA is worth keeping as a salve for the masses to make them at least think there's some skill involved and stop just anybody from being a good flier straight up (arguably a good thing - shrug). Tho it'd be better to have hard option (with excessive mushyness) or easy option (just like OFP) IMO.

bugger - yeah, it's wierd to pick up an AK and still have orange tracer. Further to what I was saying above about them being more like "specks" - a good example is that in full daylight they're pretty much not visible unless against a darker background or on the bounce where the eye picks them up due to the lower speed. I'm playing the PMC Fury campaign in ECP and am REALLY enjoying the heck out of these tracers - beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!! EDIT - this is really ghoulish I know - but just saw footage of Ciacescue's (ie. the Romanian dictator) execution and the tracer bouncing around as he and his wife were machinegunned were very much like these bn880 ones I have now in OFP.

On a slight tangent - you know about saving anytime by holding left shift and pressing keypad minus then typing the word "savegame" (without the quotes of course) ? (just be careful of bindings - ie. in my case left shift is stance up - so I have to make sure I'm in a location I can safely stand up when i want to save)

The comments above about the gfx card only going so far are spot on - I've played OFP: RES for years and progressed thru systems from 2.0 Ghz P4 and Ti4200 256 card thru to current A64 3700+ system and 7800GS 256 gfx card - the progression all along in my case has been gfx card first then cpu so I went from the Ti4200 to Fx5900Ultra then went up in CPU from 2.0 Ghz p4 to A64 3200+ - then went up to 6600GT gfx then up to A64 3700+ then finally up to 7800GS - overall the graphics cards seem to make very little difference!! The big effect is CPU - tho from what I saw when I "upgraded" to the 6600GT - the gfx memory may be very very important - ie. that 6600GT was only 128Mb and really showed no visible improvement in OFP over the old 5900U 256. I would really like to see how a 7800GS 512 goes.

Well, actually it's probably more accurate for me to be calling these in game tracer effects "specks" as they're really quite tiny (tho they can be enlarged I think?) - I use the term "blob" to differentiate clearly from line type streaks - they move hell fast too so essentially I guess they look more like streaks unless following them downrange for quite a distance and at the right angles - or more accurately they are definitely solid little "specks" but they "streak" along. The most impressive thing tho prob not particularly realistic is the slow effect - ie. riccochetes and bouncebacks etc. Anyhoo - I'm looking forward to someone like bn880 making them for ArmA. Unfortunately that config for the bn880 tracers does go by man class - it would be much better to have it according to weapon - I think I read of people doing that with either or both the bn880 and the wbtracerfx ones - but unfortunately those configs I haven't been able to find or understand and apply. Â Once again a lot of these mods are made by modders for modders - i find it frustrating that any mods made are not in the first instance supplied in a form that they can be put into the original campaigns quickly and easily by casual players.

For OFP .pbo's I use a program called WinPbo (google for it - I think it's on ofpec) - don't know if that will work for ArmA as for example one of the options is something about do you want it packed for resistance - worth a try tho - just don't check the pack for resistance box. I've got the bn880 tracers working again for OFP: ECP - I gotta say they are absolutely gorgeous and add and indescribable "something" to the whole experience. They are not obtrusive - much less so in fact than the original streak tracers - and are just.... lovely. I know sniper rifles shouldn't have them but for example: in the Battlefields single mission I often wrap up by getting hold of the Dragunov from the sniper up on the hillside - using that with the tracers is awesome - utterly beautiful watching that tracer travel "downrange" and hit. And overall just the atmosphere and look of various tracers zipping (they are blobs but man they are moving! )about during the firefight and ricochetes arcing up etc. - Lovely, lovely, lovely stuff

Had a similar thing happen a few years ago - happily playing when all of a sudden ear splitting "BANG!!!" and all power in the house was lost. German Shepherd pup had chewed into a power cord in the bedroom (he was ok, just badly frightened - like me! )

Had a similar thing happen a few years ago - happily playing when all of a sudden ear splitting "BANG!!!" and all power in the house was lost. German Shepherd pup had chewed into a power cord in the bedroom (he was ok, just badly frightened - like me! )

Just the nice tracer will do - AI chatter, in vehicle radio background chatter and lovely explosions with periodic secondary ammo cookoff explosions like ECP would be nice too tho.... Not talking about crazy stuff anyway - when I had the bn880 tracers in OFP they weren't actually all that spectacular (not talking about thousands of blobs pinging all over the place) - every now and then they would stand out - ie. when there was an especially nice ricochete - but in general they just became a natural part of the overall experience. I just found the old bn880 tracer thread - in that he reckons he's going to do that mod for ArmA too, so looks like I'll have the tracers I'm after eventually!! I've now got the config lines so am going to try and get them working again in OFP: ECP

Why would tracers activate after velocity drop and/or impact? Why not make them behave as they do in real life? "Blobs" look fine in real life because your eyes do not have a hertz/fps limit like your monitor does. On 60hz blobs will "skip" across your screen.....remember we are talking of exit velocities in the area of 8-900m/s. My hope is that BIS makes the tracers correspond to your ingame eyes (like the HDR) meaning during night the tracers will elongate because of your eyes trying to take on more light thus giving the tracer a "laser" look, and during the day they should be pretty short and harder to see. Ummm - well firstly you've answered part of your own question - it's only further out / at lower velocity / and in riccochetes / at lower velocity - that "blob" type tracer effect will indeed look half decent (close to origin it is all just streaks and sparks). I'm thinking use velocity as the regulating parameter - but perhaps just time interval would be just as good - and I guess more realistic as the real thing takes some time / travel distance to "light off" (velocity also seemed like a good trigger in the context of ricochetes etc. - ie. at longer range the effect would be activated already before impact but we'd at least still get the pretty arcing sparks effect in close firefights too :-) And in general I'm after GAME ENHANCING tracer - notsomuch true realism as such - any reference to realism from my point of view is in the context of "it's so far from realistic already that surely this type of tweak won't hurt?". Â AND I stand by what I've said with respect to tracer really looking more loke moving blobs rather than streaks - perhaps more appropriate to say "that at intermediate and longer ranges" yadda, yadda. At close in range tracer will be just streaking and sparks - THAT's why once again I suggest implementation in a fashion that makes it worthwhile - ie. longer range engagements and for riccochet's. Â Some time ago I did implement WBTracerFX (or it might have been the BN880 one? - can't recall exactly) successfully in OFP: ECP - I set it to every 5 rounds and it was absolutely awesome - particularly the bouncebacks and riccochetes. Unfortunatley I didn't play OFP for an extended period then buggered it and had to reinstall and lost the config section for it and haven't found the code again yet (I found the config code paragraph in a forum somewhere - in fact I think it was BN880's as it had settings for interval and colour etc.). I hate HDR - I personally find it really annoying and UNREALISTIC (I wear sunglasses IRL to get rid of that affect!!. Refresh rate is a good point - I found I had to address that issue with the tracerfx in OFP too - but I generally play at 75Hz or greater anyway.

Yeah, that's why I reckon if enough people want it, it might become one of the design priorities? (can only hope) For those guys it would probably be all of 2 hours work to implement this - and then of course include it in the next patch.

I much prefer to play these games than churn away for hours modding them - I wish BIS or some other modder would implement this sort of thing. In OFP I play the ECP mod these days - in that I've modified the sound files to quieten down forground really loud sounds like gunfire and vehicle engines so I play with the overall sound volume up very high - so I can hear riccochets and bullet hits, footfalls, all the comments and noises of other soldiers (ie. all the environmental sounds). I also modified the smoke definition parts of the config so that the destroyed vehicle smoke is taller, denser and lasts longer - and I changed the visual model that's used for the M1 Abrams so that it's one of the more recent beaustifully detailed ones. But those sorts of things are relatively easy to do - this tracer stuff is way beyond me. Like I say - lets all press BIS to do it!!!

Thanks RockofSL - I'm a little disappointed to hear that - but point taken - I personally felt that the climb/dive tradeoff against forward/aft cyclic positioning was much better represented in OFP which to me makes OFP helos seem more correct according to my experience as a passenger in helos and in line with my technical knowledge of helo control systems and aerodynamics. Thinking more about it - the collective is most definitely porked especially in ArmA - keep in mind we are not given power control so evidently the "collective" is a combo collective pitch + power control - I don't know which follows the other in ArmA's flight model or how they both separately relate to the player's "collective" input but however it's done it's not right. And back to my first para above I'd much rather have the definite climbing and descending effect with collective change as it's represented in OFP - IMO the way you have to really pull up collective as you pitch forward and accelerate and conversely push collective down when you pitch back and decelerate feels more real to me - not to mention is exactly the way I've WATCHED pilots fly in the real thing. I know this effect is indeed there in ArmA - just not as pronounced as I think it should be - in all the collective is really watered down and weak as well as just not working right.

After reading all this, I personally would like: Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!! EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS :-) You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks?? Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

RockofSL,s post I think pretty much wraps it up for me - that pilot friend of his pretty much nails it all exactly in line with my feelings on the matter - the yaw control is NOT right - there should be more authority at virtually any speed - the changeover shouldn't be like a switch being thrown tho there should definitely be an effect due to forward speed increasing - and rolling caused by yaw input as happens with the MI17 should simply not be happening (I do have the controls bound correctly). The collective I wasn't going to get into but yes I too feel that it's far too "mushy" - and also it seems that the collective is setup almost as a height lever rather than an actual collective control - ie. to be close to the ground my collective ends up at a lower setting and to be higher it's set higher - in reality (altho ground effect does play a part) you should need a certain amount of collective to maintain height - ANY height - which will be defined by forward speed and aircraft allup weight rather than the height itself - heavy ship plus low forward speed will require a heap of collective regardless of whether you're at 2000 feet or 6 feet. Mind you, this I think is the same in OFP - probably the biggest pork in that flight model overall too. I think part of what's happening is that IRL you have cyclic, pedals and collective PLUS POWER CONTROL (usually a twist grip) - in OFP and ArmA the power setting is just linearly indexed to collective position which simply isn't right - tho even that doesn't explain it entirely. The one thing they may have about right is the cyclic "swimming" - that does indeed take developed feel or "skill" to master (like skating I'm told by real pilots - tho they reckon you get rustier on flying than skating when you haven't done it for a while) and this is reflected quite well I think in ARMA (more an approximation taste rather than particularly precise tho?) - but the rest they should simply replace with the old OFP model - I still stand by saying that in fact the OFP helo models are much more like the real thing in general terms - harder does not by default mean more realistic!!! If they fixed the collective in OFP it'd be spot on IMO. RockofSL could you possibly get your friend to try out OFP and comment?? I'm a little frustrated overall as the two things that I think they had really nicely in OFP were ground vehicle controls and Helicopter models - and yet in ArmA they've spoiled both IMO!!! (in OFP I could run a rally race with the mouse and a fast car - but in ArmA even driving a bloody humvee down the road is a pain!

There's definitely something wrong about the way tailrotor (technically "anti-torque control") works in at least the ArmA demo - I am at pains here to make it clear I've only played the demo. Also, with the MI17 they're obviously demonstrating that tailrotor control loses a heap of authority to forward airstream over the tailfin at a certain point - but should it be as sudden as the sim suggests?? - and below that speed I find it hard to believe that even the MI17 would have such crap yaw control - tho not having flown an MI17 IRL perhaps the position of the rotor axis makes the MI17 roll at the same time as yaw IRL (??). IMO they should offer a "std" control option which works much the same as OFP which IMO is quite real enough for a sim whilst still making it enjoyable to PLAY - as well as a "high fidelity" model for the sticklers - which should include the FULL control authority/interaction required between collective and anti-torque control (if you don't know what I mean by that then you don't know the half of how actually difficult/complicated REAL helicopter flight is!! ) - pilot wannabe's would really know they were alive then ;-) Â - the harf arsed option we get IMO is simply frustrating and pointless in the broader concept of the GAME. sorry for errors - I'm actually suffering another attack of vertigo this last week so just seeing the PC monitor properly is difficult ATM- letalone typing properly.

Just because it's not easy doesn't make it unrealistic. It's far better than the OFP flight model. Practice. Haha - and to the contrary - more difficult does not make it more realistic ;-) I'm actually an aircraft mechanic by trade and have a fairly good understanding of how helicopter controls and aerodynamics work - I understand what you're saying and I do think the general control dynamics are very good and realistic - but as I've said - there are a few things - particularly to do with how the tail rotor systems operate - that are simply not right (in the demo at least) and this frustrates me. As I said - hopefully they'll get on top of it. I can in fact fly both the Blackhawk and the MI17 in the demo quite competently including landing on buildings - just like the real thing it has been a matter of lots of time and practice - but still doesn't change the fact that it's (in the demo at least) NOT quite right.

I notice there's a comment about changed helo controls in the latest German patch - I hope this fixes it as IMO from the demo they have helo control and/or flight model WRONG in ArmA (UH60 is closest to correct - MI17 is bunged and I'm not surprised to hear other types are wrong too) - they had it pretty damned good in OFP so I don't know why they buggered with it!!!

Is there a way of setting tracer to specks/blobs rather than the unrealistic lazer streaks??

Unfortunately, altho there is a LOT of very useful/vital info around regarding modding and making/using addons, I've yet to find anywhere that anyone concisely and clearly explains how OFP works - instead, all of what I call "THE BASICS" one seems to have to pick up by inference during heavy sessions of tutorial study - ie. I recently wanted to replace the original M1 Abrams physical model with a nicer one (the KH/Inq one) - I did not find out the BASIC fact that the .p3d physical model then has links to other files containing the textures until I was half way thu reading a tutorial on making models. Would have been much nicer to have read somewhere the statement that: "The 3D models in OFP work like this - there is a physical model created with a program called Oxygen and as part of this process the textures/colours are created in other files (using paintshop etc.) and attached to the various surfaces within the modelling program" That's a very rough and probably basically flawed example as I have still not learned anywhere the actual BASICS - but I'm sure/hope people get the point I'm making?? Such a basic grounding would be nice in relation to all the various aspects of OFP - including how mods are created and how they then work within the operating framework of the game. I guess what I'm saying is that IMO there's heaps of info on "How To Do It" but not enough/almost none on "How It Works" - and the how to do it part would be a whole lot easier to pick up if one started out understanding how it works in the first place!!

I'd like to second both panther762 and whipman in also desiring a realistic tracer mod / addon. Also some of the features from OFP: ECP such as DSAI, background radio in vehicle chatter and beautiful vehicle explosions plus ongoing secondary explosions (ammo cooking off) type stuff.

Can anyone help me out to get the Uwar grass addon to work in the original OFP RES Campaigns? - I guess what I'm asking is step by step info on what lines to put into existing configs etc.