Schoeler

I beg to disagree. I live in the desert and I am surrounded in real life by the very same species of Washingtonia Robusta and Phoenix Dactylifera, many if not most that are the same size or larger, and they do indeed sway in a stiff breeze. In a light breeze, you are correct, the fronds just wave around.

That's not sunlight, but a flash from an explosion or a muzzle flash. Look at the shadows of the barrels of the tank cast on it's body, they go perpendicular to the light source on the side of the tank. Those are the ambient light shadows, so the bright light is from another source. Notice only part of the turret is lit, but the whole side of the lower part of the tank is reflecting light. Definitely not ambient light there.

Look at that picture a little closer though. Notice the raised bumps on the grass. That's not the standard BIS grass carpet from OFP, that's actual vegetation. Also, look at the tracks left by the tanks through it. Another improvement over OFP. Considering these are older screenshots being released just now, I think we are all in for a surprise. Since when has BIS ever shown us their hand so early in the game? They always hit us with a big surprise right before its actually released. I think when they do finally tip their hand, we are just going to be shocked by what we see.

Did you guys notice the terrain detail and the vegetation from those aerial shots? Looks pretty good compared to OFP. Also, was that a road, or a stream in the one shot? If that's an actual flowing stream, we're in business. Small waterways are going to add a lot to realism. Imagine streams, rivers, rice paddies, etc... Smaller terrain detail might mean being able to implement realistic trenches and earthworks as well. I'm getting excited all over again.

I neither can see the weapon used, nor is the range close. Close range is 10 - 15 m´s. It was from a Dragunov sniper rifle. I remember seeing that when it happened. Modern U.S. body armor will frequently stop a 7.62 round on the plates, which are now ceramic and not steel by the way. That guy got up and returned fire afterwards, so the newer body armor is a whole generation removed from the stuff used just five or six years ago.

I'm modelling 3WX stuff in the current O2 exclusively in hopes of releasing it for Armed Assault. Good stuff is on the way as soon as I get my hands on the proper tools.

The scooter has always been one of my favorite Navy/Marine Corps aircraft of all time. It's just a beautiful little workhorse of a plane. Nice job! It would be great to see someone do a Blue Angels skin for it.

Well, some leaves are greener than others. Certain plants have waxy coated leaves that make them bright and vibrant compared to others. I think dulling down leaves to make them match up with other overly dull leaves in the game actually detracts from the reality. We should aim to make things look more real, not more uniform.

Berghoff, I have a lot (dozens and dozens) of tropical vegetation textures I was saving for a 3WX project down the road. As long as your nature pack is publicly released and can be included in our plant nursery for mapmakers I'll send them to you.

You mean one with buildings like these? I have to study for the lsat exam, but after october 1st, its open season for 3wx and we are aiming for an iraq feel to our first island. If anyone is interested in helping out, drop me a pm, I could use it.

Wow, absolutely amazing. It makes me want to work harder on creating realistic environments to go with these projects. You know what would really rock in that video? If someone did a cigarette smoking animation. It would have been spooky cool if the Russian soldiers standing around watching the interrogation in the beginning were taking drags off of cigarettes and then flicked them away or crushed them under their feet after the execution as they began to walk off. Someone should think about adding this.

I've got O2, 3D Studio Max 6, Speedtree, Xfrog, Onyx Treestorm and NatFX.

You can create an alpha channel quickly by selecting all, copying, pasting into a new selection of the same size, then inverting the image, then go to channel mixer, select monochrome and slide all the sliders to the max to make it black and white. Then simply create a new channel in the original image and copy and paste the alpha into it. But, by using an offset color, if your alpha is a bit off, it will pick up the similar color in the image and the eye can't differentiate between the alpha and the actual texture.

What was meant by using a two color alpha is to use a green that is slightly offset from the green of the foliage for the leaves and a brown that is slightly offset from the brown of the trunk as your alpha channel colors and it will eliminate the "glowing" edges you are getting. This will save you a lot of time from hand editing your alphas to correct the problem. Listen, if you are serious about this project, I can give you speedtree for 3D Studio Max and a crapload of professionally done textures from Marlin Studios and ImageCELs. Also, I have Xfrog and textures for that application as well as a range of RPC 3D textures that are readily converted in photoshop. The only thing I ask is that the finished products go into the 3WX Nursery inventory upon completion for the community to use at their will.

Since this is going to have Vietnam as a theatre, I felt it was appropriate to suggest soldier models of different size and stature. Vietnamese men are much smaller in height and body mass than Caucasian men are. We need fat/thin/short/tall soldier models.

Artillery would make the game virtually unplayable if there aren't folds in the terrain, trenches, foxholes and shellholes to hide in. If you are going to implement one, you need to implement the other. This problem could be solved if they allowed us to create terrain variations down to the square meter instead of the monster size differences that are allowed in the current game.

For those interested in learning to texture, this site is invaluable: Photoshop Tutorials

Here you go, make the folds yourself, it will look better: How To Make Folds In Photoshop

Armed Assault sounds fine to me. Armed Conflict or Modern Conflict would be cool too.

I think it just defaults everything outside the view distance to its most distant LOD, so it eats up less processing power than it would with a larger view distance. A smaller view distance is more efficient on the CPU, since everything within the larger view distance isn't being rendered at closer LOD's

Terrain streaming means the terrain ahead of you is not rendered by the cpu yet until you get near it, and the terrain you leave behind dissappears unless you head back towards it. OFP renders the entire map, so it drains cpu power for objects and models you cannot even see.

Bud, you might want to read up on the past few days news and then edit this rant. I'm sure once you're informed, you'll be feeling a bit sheepish.

How can you be not impressed? A. You haven't seen more than a dozen screenshots of this new game. B. BIS went through the trouble to give you something to tide you over until OFP2, and C. all the improvements the mod community was asking for the original game have been delivered until the next engine comes out. What does it take to impress cheapskates like you, flames blowing out your ass? A bevvy of hookers and a thousand gallons of beer? If you don't want to spend the money, keep playing OFPR, the rest of us I can guarantee you, will be playing AA.

Just from looking at screenshots and reading the press release I can see a few improvements. 1. Improved graphics: AA has 3D trees and bushes, not billboards or 3D/billboard hybrids. 2. 100km X 100km maps total out to 10,000 km^2, which indicates streaming terrain. This means modmakers like myself can now create extremely detailed environments. 3. Improved engine for physics. I see water in waves on the ocean, something unheard of in OFP. If it uses the improvements added to VBS1, we can do a lot more for the community. What I hope it includes: A. Better collision detection and clipping problems solved. B. Allows smaller terrain details and water at multiple levels. C. Better AI.

I'm perfectly happy with O2 now, though it took a lot of effort to learn. I would like to know what if any changes need to be made to the models we are currently making as I now intend to coincide the next major 3WX release with the release of AA. I've just stepped up my work into overdrive.