Uziyahu--IDF

Ah, well that solves that! :D

That's gorgeous, mikebart, but can the game handle that kind of detail?

I'm really looking forward to this one.

I don't know if it was compression from Xfire or what, but the SFX seemed to lack definition in this video. Very squishy or scratchy sounding. I had to stop watching, the squad leader's constant "Target that ...." commands were getting extremely annoying. I've been using some addon that decreases the number of radio transmissions. That guy seriously needs to take a breath between transmissions.

Yeah, there are better videos sources from which to rip the bullet crack sound. If I stumble across one, I'll try to remember to post it, here.

I have the employment/extension and trigger firing sound effects for the LAW, recorded from a training LAW, if you want them. http://idfsquad.com/sounds2/lawclick.wav (trigger clicking, needs to be mixed with the "boom!" of a launching rocket) http://idfsquad.com/sounds2/lawextension.wav (this is a recording of the full process required to put a LAW safely into operation, ready to fire, according to US TraDoc from the 80's) In the case of the latter sound effect, I seem to remember someone had a LAW addon that could be extended and compacted (the latter is possible in cases when you didn't fire it). If you didn't need all of that sound effect, say in a case where your addon doesn't have those animations, then you could either use from 0:09+... ...or 0:13+ (extension of the tube happens at 13 seconds). Note that the weapon is ready for firing at 0:17/0:18, when the plunger is pulled to charge the trigger for firing. At this point, the sound effect could continue playing for the remaining 3 seconds, even when fired, and it would make perfect sense, as what you are hearing is the jingling of the dangling ends. I spent a hefty amount for this training LAW, specifically for the purpose of recording this sound effect, so please make as much use of the sound effect as you can.

I can't believe how Dragon Rising has become one major foul-up after another, especially after all of the smack-talking they did against B.I. It's a good game, but it's like CM considers it a red-headed stepchild. (No offense to redheads or step-children.)

These laws are not representative of the REALITY of war, but only of a set of ideals that a certain community has agreed should be put into practice. I think the "No Russian" level in Modern Warfare 2 was highly irresponsible (apparently Germany and Russia agree with me), but I don't think tactical shooters should be forced to depict some kind of Battlefield Utopia, where everyone wears a white hat.

You can't seed the randomizer with user-generated input that would be different on a daily basis? "What day is it?" Seed Number then generated from adding up the numerological value of text entered? File name, for example. Version #.

Sweet addon. So they STILL do things this way in the Army? I would have thought that with GPS and Google Earth type stuff being provided on computers that you would simply let the computers figure it out.

I have an "If You See the Bug, It Is Already Too Late" T-Shirt that I got from B.I.

Regarding Defunkt's comment about people being happy to re-pbo addons with Vilas' proposed fixes... I can't be bothered to re-pbo a darn thing. There should be standardization and only mods that meet that standardization should be able to fly the "Standardized" logo. If you can crank out beautiful work like these PLA forces and equipment, you should be able to keep your troops at or near B.I. defaults, allowing tweaking mods to change your values as the need arises.

What version are you using MadRussian? I don't want him decreasing the bullet impacts even more just because you're using an old version. I was happy with the way they were in the first version.

Yeah, the horizon for me does that "sheer wall" thing, too. I also get some missing object errors. Still, it is playable and the atmosphere is top-notch. The terrain is very dramatic and 3-dimensional, so it would be great for hunting animals...or people. Just needs some WW2 Finnish and Russian soldiers to fight each other.

Very promising gameplay!

This has been happening to me quite a bit, lately, using a VGA or DVI-HDMIorVGA connection on an HDTV. Both times reinstalling my video drivers fixed it. Once I had to roll it back to a previous version and another time I had to update it.

Played with it for about an hour. Really beautiful and I didn't notice much of a hit on performance, if any. It does seem like it might conflict with markwick's fire and smoke addon, somehow, as the smoke from burning tanks would disappear all of a sudden. If the advanced scripters can figure out how to iron out the config and make it play nice with other addons we'll see perfection. I just tested the bullet impacts and I didn't think they were overdone. I've fired an M60 machinegun, which fires the same round as the M240. It generates a lot of dust, both at the muzzle and in the killzone. I had no problems wiping out a whole squad of enemy troops single-handedly with an M240. If you tone it down, I wouldn't tone it down that much, though you might consider 3 degrees of impact dust: small (5.45-5.56mm), medium (7.62), large (.50). I'm enjoying playing around in ArmA, again, thanks to you.

I don't have a problem with releasing a version for kids looking for "fun", but for those of us who are long-time fans of this franchise, BECAUSE of its realism, I want a version that is faithful to real military standard operating procedure. For those of you who weren't around in those days, the first public demo for OFP made the player feel like a clumsy, vulnerable and exposed infantryman, just as it is in real-life. No other shooter (tactical or otherwise) had yet done so. (Well, maybe SEAL Team, but that wasn't a first-person shooter in the truest sense.) So yeah, there is always more room for realism in this sim. Realism offers its own beauty. As I said, if you just want "pretty", then you might want to check out Xigmatek's work on Crysis... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ9csjAf7w0 ...though he has been working on a very nice JDAM effect, lately.

Opticalsnare, thanks for releasing this! I wouldn't get frustrated by the feedback. The Operation Flashpoint / ArmA addon-making community is around 8 years old, so things get taken very seriously. Your releasing it makes it possible for people to recommend bug-fixes and streamlining and also to customize the mod for their own peculiar tastes. This is the most beautiful FX mod that I've seen for this franchise since the ECP mod for OFP. I'm sure it will become a standard by which other FX mods will be judged.

Yeah, the addon that has just a few tracer rounds at the end of a magazine to let you know that you're about to run out is a good idea, but I don't like the idea of having magazines full of tracers for assault rifles (and sniper rifles and SMGs) in the daytime. It might be pretty, but it isn't realistic. If you want pretty, play Crysis. If you want a realistic warfare sim, that is what ArmA aims to be. Of course, tracers for SAWs, LMGs and HMGs (1 tracer every 3 or 4 rounds?) and AA (full tracers?) is just fine.

I don't know about now, but you could assign a flyinheight to a waypoint in OFP:R. A minimum altitude isn't a rail if it keeps the A.I. from crashing into things like they never made it out of Flight School. Additionally, I see little reason for human players to have to constantly adjust elevation if modern systems assist also-human pilots in flying NOE.

I can see you have a pretty good handle on the deficiencies of the A.I. Yeah, I have an idea for a mod to deal with the A.I. perfectly leading a moving target. The rough-draft idea is to have an invisible target (or the real vehicle "target", the part of the vehicle that the A.I. aims at) orbit the vehicle at increasing distance (randomly changing the azimuth of its orbit every second or so) with increased movement speed of its host vehicle. Hits on the vehicle would cumulatively decrease the distance of the orbiting target. This would allow for chance hits and also for the A.I. to correct their aim based on their perceived hits. Once the A.I. had "zeroed in", a significant change of the vehicle's speed and/or vector would require a new zeroing process to be carried out by the firing unit. It could apply to soldiers and ground vehicles, as well as aircraft. Unfortunately, the target's orbit would have to be calculated on a per-A.I. basis, as one A.I.'s perspective on the target would be different than another's. (For example, an AA gunner might be firing on a distant enemy jet while a friendly jet was on its tail. Perceived speed and vector of the enemy target would be different for each allied unit.) The current model of dispersion (which seems to have been partially implemented to keep enemy fire on moving targets from being immediately catastrophic) means that the target is always in the center of the A.I.'s random cone of fire, exactly where an evasive unit would be working to stay out of.

This problem arises from a "realism" introduced in ArmA 1, I believe, the abandonment of the terrain-hugging A.I. of helos in OFP:R. While this allowed more manual control of elevation, it also requires constant correction over uneven terrain, making the flight model a bit more difficult for the human player...and apparently the A.I., too. The sad thing about this is that my UH60 Instructor Pilot Army buddy told me that the Blackhawk will hug terrain much like it did in OFP:R. I flew the sim at Fort Rucker (a computerized simulator up on hydraulic stilts) and that seemed to be the case. A civilian helicopter realism applied to an advanced military helicopter did not result in much better gameplay. Thanks for at least fixing it for the A.I.

Part of human A.I. is A.I. that makes human mistakes. Why don't we ever see A.I. fumble a grenade, dropping it as his feet? Take too long to line up a shot with an RPG?

I really enjoyed the Battlefield 2 helo flight model. It took me 20 total hours of stick time but eventually I learned how to make the bird do anything I wanted.