TheHarvesteR

Thanks for the idea!! Posted as feature request. http://dev-heaven.net/issues/8881 Cheers

Nice!! I had a set of 3D goggles (from E-Dimensional) myself once. They worked well in some games, but the toll on hardware was way too high for it to be practical as an everyday gaming device. The one thing I noticed, and IMO it detracts a bit from the immersion you would expect, is that everything appears to be a miniature when in 3D. Things don't seem to be full-sized. So it kinda looks like you're looking at little soldiers in model vehicles :rolleyes: Well, that's just what I thought back when I played with 3D goggles... I figure having a larger screen, and adjusting the FOV to match your eyes would cancel out this effect... Of course having your screen FOV set to align with the cone made by your eyes and the screen bounds would result in something along a 20º FOV... which doesn't really work for playing... The best solution IMO, would be either a huge screen, or better yet, some kind of dome projection display :bounce3: Cheers

I was playing around yesterday and found out a way to experience a 3D effect without using any tools... It may sound silly, but all you have to do is cover one eye up and then move around a bit in the game (leaning left and right works best). What happens, is that after a few minutes with an eye closed, your brain will start to try interpreting distances based on perspective, instead of relying on the sense of depth provided by the different perpectives seen by each eye. The brain can judge distances with a single eye by using motion parallax, which is the ability to determine depth by shifting your eyepoint around (ie, leaning left and right). So, what this means is that one eye can be fooled into thinking it's seeing an actual 3D image on the screen, while with both eyes open stereopsis would prevail and you would see a flat screen ahead of you. I tried it for a while yesterday and it totally works... the obvious downside is that no one would fancy playing with an eye-patch on... but it does work for experiencing the effect for a few minutes. BTW, I loved the 3D images. :) If anyone is having trouble viewing them, try using your thumb as a focus point first, move it back and forth until you realise you can see 3 images in the background, then try shifting your focus to the center image without losing focus of the thumb (the 3D image will seem to be hovering about where the thumb is) Cheers HarvesteR

For me at least, tanking is missing two key features: One - detailed interiors. Like many vehicles already have, and like OFP used to have them, with working periscopes and the radar overlay for the commander and gunner, even while not in optics view (to emulate being able to use the instruments). These would be perfect for increasing the situational awareness while turned in... As of now, the only way to get a good grip on what's going on around you is to be turned out. Two - A better way of navigating around and moving. Currently, to move the tank you either have to use the map, or the WSAD orders, or the 'Move Here' command... neither of which is practical in every situation... With the map open you can't see around you, but the Move Here and WSAD commands don't work too well for long range orders... For me a good compromise would be a clickable GPS. simply click anywhere on the GPS and it will order the tank to move there just as if you had clicked the map. just my 2 cents Cheers

Yeah I really liked the nuclear winter effect too... AFAIK, the ACE mod nukes don't have that effect... I tried it once on a slow server playing warfare... got killed immediately upon deployment, but it was a lot of fun :D I didn't try the other mods, so I can't say anything about them. Cheers

They are a good fit for Chernarus, but I assume they were put in there because Utes is supposed to be somewhat close to the chernarussian shore... It does it's thing, but I suppose that for addon islands this will impose a geographical situation that might not be what the author intended. Cheers

yeah, I saw the videos... the problem is that people got all hyped up for something the author himself later said wasn't real. He eventually scrapped the project, stating that the ArmA engine has no support for planes with turrets... so the gun cam we saw in the videos were actually mounted on a helicopter. So, it seems that if we want to see an AC-130, we're gonna have to wait until BIS does their part, or some modmaker finds a way to bypass that limitation. For me, I would really like to see one in the game. The stock C-130 is cool, but it's role is kind of limited in the game... It mainly serves for deploying paratroopers and cargo, which are roles that any AI can do... no need for a human player... Adding a combat version of the aircraft would be a good way to have it used and enjoyed by players. Cheers

I bought myself a TIR5, which arrived just this week. I must say, I don't know how I played before it... after a very short adapting phase, it just feels natural. A few tweaks I did though: I set the TIR5 'precision' mode to be turned on while I hold the second mouse button... this is to avoid any crazy fast disorienting movement while zoomed in. Worked to perfection :) Also, instead of mounting the TIR to the top of the monitor, I set it atop a pole that rises from behind the monitors so the TIR is sitting further away from me, giving me a wider range of motion. I really have no complaints about it. there are no downsides to using it if you're accustomed to playing using a headphone. I bought mine with the Track Clip Pro, and attached it to the headset microphone I always wear for coop play, so it's completely unobtrusive for me. Granted, it doesn't make you look any less geekier... ;) (º_º)': * Cheers

Binding the zoom to a joystick axis is the easiest way of doing this... ArmA doesn't restrict you much when it comes to FOV settings... I myself have a joystick slider for zoom plus the trackIR which allows me to move closer to the screen to increase zoom. The control bindings you wanna set are the Zoom+ / Zoom- entries (the ones where the trackIR is assigned... those are the continuous axis bindings). Anyways, one other thing you can do is hit the numpad minus key twice so the FOV locks at the open position... it's a quick way of removing the tunnel vision Cheers

Agreed 100%. As I see it, there are two distinct and utterly incompatible trains of thought in the gaming industry now: the argument whether a game should allow you to do more, or tell a better story. The mainstream industry is moving steadily towards the latter, why? Well, it's cheaper, safer, and they have the certainty that there is a large brain-dead audience ready to consume yet another sequel. Developing static content for a game is relatively easy... All you need do is hire a huge team of artists, modelers, animators and writers to make essentially a semi-interactive action movie, and you're set. One more identical FPS title released, the challenging work being done 15 years ago when the genre was invented :p All the players need to do now is press the right buttons at the right time to watch the action movie progress. Now, there's the other side of the coin... granted, a much smaller side of the coin... the few brave developers who really go outside the tried and proven ideas and take a risk to try new things... BIS is one of those developers. These guys put their efforts into developing a truly new and interesting experience... uncompromising realism over player-centric action sequences... something that requires patience and intellect instead of the cheap thrill of instant gratification... This is what ArmA is for me. It's more than a game... it's a statement that rings out over the mind-numbing trend I see developing in the mainstream market. As for the lack of recognition it gets... well, my personal opinion is simply that most people haven't the brains to play this game... they're better off playing their brain-dead shooters... at least they don't come bug us and tk us here ;) Cheers

I've noticed ACE made some changes on how the assault helicopters are used... from what I could understand from the documentation it seems the pilot no longer can tell the gunner to switch weapons and lock targets. This left me wondering about how this is going to work with AI gunners... my preference has always been to fly with AI gunners, but now it seems they can't do their jobs anymore, since they won't respond to commands... Or am I missing something? how are we supposed to lock targets in ACE with AI gunners? One more thing: I read in the doc that ACE makes use of Mando's missile GUI system, but going as a gunner is a chopper I didn't see any new actions for targeting... do I need to download it separately? My apologies if this has been discussed before, but my search didn't return anything useful. This thread has over 2000 replies and the discussions are very fragmented... :P Cheers

I use an X52 Pro and the Pro Flight Rudder Pedals from Saitek, and I must say, I can't imagine not playing with them... The degree of control you have over helicopters with it is awesome. hovering and picking up cargo is easy now, and maneuvering around in combat situations is a lot more controlled. If you can get one for 50 quid, get it!! It's a lot cheaper than what I paid, and I still think I made a good deal. I also got the Track IR 5 for christmas now... it hasn't arrived yet (stuck in customs) so I can't really say anything about it apart from what I've seen in reviews... but it does look awesome. Cheers

Hi, I'm having trouble getting ArmA to patch up to version 1.0.5 with Steam... Usually (on previous patches at least), the Steam client would pick up on an available update and download and install automatically... this time, it's failing to do so. Manually searching in Steam for an update shows no new patches since september, which IIRC, was when the 1.0.4 patch came out. Is there no patch for the Steam version? or has BIS changed the way patches are deployed to Steam users? either way... can I simply download the patch installer from the nets and be done with it? Cheers

More or less so... the skybox doesn't need to be a huge cube with an actual ceiling... it's more practical to have it as an object tied to the camera that has it's Z index set at the last position, meaning it always gets drawn behind everything else most game engines have the option to tie a skybox to the camera, so it doesn't really occupy a particular point in space... it's a rendering trick. So the skybox is infinitely high ;) Cheers

No big news, really... but an interesting read anyways. The pathfinder image was really cool to see... Very interesting to see the A* plots and the influence map at work but anyways... the pathfinding in ArmA 2 bugs me... if the path is precalculated, why does the AI keep veering off the road so often? shouldn't it just follow the waypoints? Cheers

Hmm, I can confirm here... just CTD'ed on sahrani domination, just as I got into a bike Apart from that, I seem to get CTDs mostly as a mission has just finished loading... It's rare for me to CTD when I've been on a server for a good while. Also, I seem to CTD more often in domination missions... I gather that the combination of vehicles in that mission might be causing it more frequently. I'm running the newest patch (60257, or something ;) ) on a Core i7 @ 2.66Ghz with 6GB DDR3 RAM, Intel DX58SO Mobo, a Geforce 8800GTX 768, running Win XP 64 Graphics are mid-low, but screen is at 3072x1024 (using triple head). Cheers

I find the altimeters in the cockpits quite useless actually... They have only a single needle, and it goes all the way around in just ~300 meters... there's no way of knowing what hundred you are in, since without a second needle, the altimeter pointing to 6 o'clock could be anything from 500ft, 1500ft, 2500ft and so on... Cheers

This is just the russian way of doing things I believe... It's the same story with the space pen myth (I think it's a myth anyways): When the americans reached space in the 60's, the astronauts realized that their pens wouldn't work in low gravity. The american government supposedly then spent millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write upside down, or in zero G. After the fall of the wall, when the american astronauts met the russan cosmonauts in Mir, they showed their pens to the much impressed russians. The russians then showed their way of writing in space: a pencil. :D That's probably not true, but it shows the russian mentality of not messing with things that are already proven to work just because they're outdated. :p Cheers

The UI readouts are in meters and km/h, but the instrument panels vary... The A10 panel, AFAIK, measures speed in two ways... the airspeed meter in the cockpit measures in km/h, but the HUD airspeed apparently is in knots. For the altimeter I couldn't exactly figure out it's units, but it apparently measures altitude from sea level, as opposed to the readout that reads height from ground, the HUD altimeter though, reads the same as the UI readout... It would be best if all units were the same... but I guess BIS went metric in their "area", but for realism left the american instruments as imperial (doesn't explain the HUD altimeter though) Cheers

Yeah, rivers are probably out of this version because the AI seems to have big problems crossing them... Sahrani did have a few bridges (Dolores had a few), and the AI had major troubles there... to the point of ruining missions... So I would bet BIS made the terrain layout like that intentionally, well, that and the real world elevation data ;P Cheers

Like a kid on christmas eve :yay: :D Cheers

I unfortunately live in Brazil... the land of all taxes... (really, if you think YOUR taxes are high... try living here for a while ;) ) At least I get cable net here... although I am probably paying 3 times what it's worth :P Anyways... hopefully I'll be outta here early next year Cheers

While itsme's views about ArmA are, to say the least, laughable in this community, what greatly concerns me about the gaming industry is that this view is so deeply ingrained in the mainstream mind, that it nigh on impossible that it will ever change soon... you are obviously not the target audience for this game, but what troubles me is that even people who should at least grasp the concept ArmA presents, fail to do so... case in point: my college teachers.... I'm a game design student, graduating this year... for a final project we are making a game that goes by the ArmA style... no instant gratification, no small, rat labyrinth map, plenty of room to think and play out tactics... what do we get for it? bad grades!! Yes, even these post-graduated, overeducated teachers are utterly failing to understand what we are trying to achieve with our project... they are having us redesign basic concepts of our original premise so they can see the frenetic, unrealistic pace of mainstream shooters... because they can't accept anything different... it deeply concerns me about the future of the gaming industry as a whole... Will we ever be constrained to these instantly-gratifying, narrow-minded, cookie-cut (well said ;) ) husks of games? The console mindset has pushed the big names of the industry into making disposable games, bent on the sole purpose of making money, and being ready with a sequel when the pre-allotted hours of gaming are over... Will a game programmer's job be reduced to tying a new shiny UI together, and calling methods in a game engine editor? While artists are being hired in bulk to keep up with the ever growing need for static, unchanging content? What eases my mind is that BIS is here to prove the world wrong with the magnificent title that is ArmA... we CAN have better, more intelligent games!! we CAN play a single title for more than a preset 40 hours of game time!! we CAN have it our own way!! Welcome, OP, to the world of ArmA!! I trust you will enjoy your stay ;) Cheers

I just saw the changelog!! OMG!! I'm just speechless!! every single one of my gripes with this game appear to have been addressed!!! Thank you BIS!!!! This has totally made my day!!! Bravo indeed!!!!! Cheers!!! EDIT: spent the whole day playing!! controlling the helis with analogue throttle is a whole new experience!!! you do feel like you're piloting now, not just pressing keys to climb up and down!!! THANK YOU BIS!!! haven't found any bug in this build so far... will keep playing and post if I find something Cheers