ActionMan

Yeah vehicle tracks on the ground are cool (doesn't make much sense on roads though!) However, in Arma2 vehicles leave dust trails, which a visible for quite some time after a vehicle has been in the area -- you can use this to track them instead.

Waiting for the sun to set

I'm thinking about getting a Matrox TrippleHead2Go just for Arma (I already bought a TrackIR5 just for arma ;) ), but I'm wondering if it will work for a mixed-monitor set up. I've got one 2048x1152 (16:9) monitor, and two 1280x1024 (5:4) monitors. Can I mix 16:9 and 5:4 screens like this? Or would I have to force them all to the same resolution - e.g. 3 x 1280x1024 - and if so would that mean that the middle screen (the 16:9 one) would be horizontally warped?

I'm so impressed with Arma2 + SoftTH that I made a few videos in case anyone else is interested. SoftTH: TrackIR + SoftTH: Many thanks to BI and Keijo "Kegetys" Ruotsalainen :D I would thank NaturalPoint as well, but they're a bit evil these days with the encrypted data-streams locking out 3rd party devices, etc... :p

Uh, no."legacy code" is often a euphemism for "that horrible code that I wish we didn't have to keep around". At some point, the cost of maintaining that horrible code becomes larger than replacing it. At that point, you start fresh. Look at ID Software, they start fresh every generation...

There must be something that makes this look different on different systems?!I've seen so many people say what you're saying, but it's just not true from my own experiences. I also have a TrackIR so I use free-look *constantly*, and I can still see fine while sprinting/looking around. The edges of the screen get blurry when sprinting, but I can still see what I'm looking at... Maybe I'm just lucky and it "works" as expected on my PC, but blurs things into obscurity on other PCs??? Lol, yes it is overdone sometimes. Another thing is stars at night with NVG.I still think it's an important effect for adding a larger range of perceptible luminosity though.

I don't mind the terrible voice acting, because I'm used to it I guess... Whispered voices would be cool, but as people have said, before expanding the voice system it'd be best to polish/fix it first! I've been trying to get my friends involved in Arma, and they're always interested until they hear: ALL go, to THAT... tweee. AT. fiveoclock! After that my friends just can't stop laughing... :/

I don't get all these people that hate the PP effects! I refuse to turn them off (and also grass) even if it will give me a competitive advantage. I prefer my realism/immersion thanks ;P The motion blur in this game is wonderful. At first it was really obvious, but now I don't even notice it. It's completely natural. If it turn it off, suddenly everything looks like a "video game" not a simulation. Also, it makes lower frame-rates acceptable. With blurring off, low-frame rates look choppy. With blur on the game looks smooth even with crappy FPS. Human eyes can perceive over 200 frames per second. A game rendered at 60fps looks fake compared to real life. A film running at 24fps looks real though, because of motion blur! Games are starting to use motion blur because it allows images rendered at low frame rates (i.e. <200) to look smooth, as if there were lots of frames averaged together. The blooming also adds realism. Without bloom, a really bright pixel is just a white pixel, but with bloom on, bright pixels "bleed" into neighbouring areas, like in real life, allowing the game to have pixels that are "brighter" than white. Depth of field is also immersive, but can make things look more like they've been shot from a video camera instead of a human eye. Eyes can change focus really quickly, so you only usually notice DOF effects from cameras.

I just tried SoftTH and it works perfectly, so I don't think I'll be shelling out the $$$ for a Matrox box any more ;)

Well technically, OpenCL/DC can be used to run traditionally-GPU work on a CPU, as well as running traditionally-CPU work on the GPU ;)

Disclaimer: I voted yes on the free-track poll, I own a Track IR and I'm employed as a game programmer. To me, it's fairly obvious that BI should support free-track, as BI is only of the only FPS-developers who actually implement head-tracking in their games, and free-track is an open, free alternative to the closed/proprietary solution (Track IR). HOWEVER, even if BI's staff agrees with this view, adding a new peripheral API is not that simple. They can't just flick a switch, or copy&paste some code to do this! Before integrating any software in a commercial game, you've got to: 1) Run the license past a lawyer (yes even for free software). 2) Allocate time to train an engineer to do the integration. 3) Acquire a variety of free-track hardware to test the integration. 4) Develop and execute a QA test cycle. Each one of those steps can cost thousands of dollars, and more importantly, it takes time. From what I can tell, free-track has become a controversial issue here (e.g. closing free-track posts) because a minority of users were basically flaming BI over their so-called "decision to ignore you". These users obviously have no idea what is involved in their request, because if developers acted on every request like this they would go bankrupt. Just to put it in perspective, lets say you've got 50 staff, on $20 per hour, doing 8 hour days, 5 days a week (probably doing more hours than that, but overtime is unpaid). That's $40,000 per week to keep your business running (not including ALL OTHER EXPENSES). Now try running a business that expensive for years at a time without a steady income -- it's a very hard balancing act, and requires a lot of discipline and control by the management. You've got to realise that making game is a business, and not a very profitable one either. Just look at all the studios that have been forced to close in the last 12 months. I'm sure there's people at BI who would love to integrate the free-track software, but for all we know, they could be working 12 hour days of unpaid overtime just to get this expansion pack finished by it's deadline, AND working on fixes for the next patch. In other words, free-track is probably not currently on the list of the 10 most important things to be spending time on.

That only happens to me when I tell the AI to go prone -- when I do that they will stay prone until I tell them to get up. Also if I tell them to use stealth they go prone a lot. But I've never seen them crawl around for no reason when in 'alert' mode.

Is the multiplayer nearly bugfree? Or: Aren't there any huge problems to play online? Playing on local (low-ping) servers I haven't had any problems. I had some weird stuff happen when I tried to play with 800 ping though :p How many people can play against each other on one server? (OfpDr: only 32 players lol) Largest I've played was 30 vs 30 Are there any field/map restrictions? Can i move around and around the whole Island? (in Ofp: DR a limitation to 2x2 km² is planned lol) No. You can go anywhere. How much action is one multiplayer game? Does it take over half an hour to finde someone and then you get shoot by a sniper? And when this happens, where will you be reborn, or will you stay killed? In DM-type games, you're constantly killing and being killed ;) In a really large coop game, you might spend 10 minutes manoeuvring without seeing an enemy. In good team vs team games I usually don't go more than a few minutes without some action. There's usually a base or a vehicle that act as a respawn-point. Even in large-coops you can usually get back to the fighting very quickly after dying. How much is Arma2 about tactics? Is it important to plan the mission, with one leader and oder Squad-leaders? Or is it just like "lets run to the marked area and the shoot everything"? Depends - on many public servers people just run to the marked area and shoot stuff ;) But if the other team is using tactics, guess who will win... :D In team games and small coops you definitely need squad tactics. I have a few friends that also play this game, and it is so much more fun (and more effective!) to work together as a squad rather than "every man for himself"! Can i join with a german key (yupp im german ;) ) any foreign server? Yep, I've seen German-speaking people join servers in Australia.

Every game uses shaders these days -- they are the 'default' method of rendering in modern graphics APIs...Technically, it is possible to make a D3D9 game that doesn't use shaders (i.e. you can use the fixed-function pipeline instead) -- but your graphics drivers emulate the FFP in a shader program! so even in that rare case you're still (indirectly) using shaders.

position = u.t + 1/2.a.t^2 :D

The current system blames ONLY the pilot for any mistakes (or deliberate griefing) of the gunners.So the current system neither blames the right person, nor does it blame the "team" of people in the vehicle. It just blames one single person who often-times has no idea why their gunner is being a tard...

Yeah back in the Half-Life 1 days he was known to be a big Day of Defeat fan. He's also seen around GDCs sometimes (search for the Robin Williams Spore video ;) )

To everyone who doesn't get this issue - its about AI acting the same as players -- or about players on low-detail acting the same as players with high-detail. If a high-detail human player can't see something, then it should be hidden for low-detail players and the AI also. In other words, everyone should be playing by the same rules. You obviously don't play PvP COD :pI play both OFP and COD games, and the difference between cover/concealment is very important in hard-core COD4 too (i.e. the "realism mode"). Most of Dyslexis guide is applicable to CoD as well ;) Guns like the M60 have a lot of penetration in CoD, so even brick walls are really only concealment when up against smart players.

Well the Utes map loads a hell of a lot faster than chenarus does.

Yeah theres a few threads on the forums about that already, have a search and u should find one.I use a program called VAC to issue commands in Arma ;)

Yeah, an updated version of a 2 year old racing engine If it turns out to have better modding features than our beloved 8 year old engine, then Arma could be in trouble...

Which mission are you talking about?

You can do that with a head-tracker ;) (or if you bind analogue look to something).I go into iron sight mode (r-click), aim downwards at the ground (like in your picture), then use head-tracking/analogue-look to look straight ahead (up above the weapon). Then if I see someone, I can lift the sighted gun up into view and fire immediately.

That's a good point. There's a lot of anti-OFP:DR, anti-BF2, anti-COD people on here.... but even if OFP:DR is a terrible game, it is built on an totally new engine, which I hope equates to better modding potential.For starters, BIS still uses their own proprietary scripting language, which is a real pain for modders to use. Compare that with DR, which is using the industry-standard scripting language Lua! Not only is there infinitely more resources on how to use this language, but it is easier to learn, easier to write/maintain, runs faster and supports modern programming paradigms such as OOP. If DR is more flexible in terms of modding, then it could be potentially turned into an "Arma Killer", even if it is an inferior product. Just for the record, Morrowind uses the original version of Gamebryo (NetImmerse), which is very different from the version used in Fallout/Oblivion.Gamebryo is also a very rock-solid piece of software -- all those bugs and crashes come from the bad engineering practices used by the developer. In many ways, graphics was more complex back then - OFP was written back when graphics cards were only just starting to be able to do "T&L" (transform and lighting) in the hardware, so they had to do many of these operations on the CPU, and support many different code-paths for different types of cards.Nowadays, pretty much all cards support the fully programmable SM2.0 or SM3.0 standards, instead of a variety of subtly different fixed-function register combiners. Also software engineering has come a long way in the last 10 years, to the point where developers can write better (faster, less buggy) code in less time than ever before. Unfortunately, many games companies lagg behind the 'curve' by 10 years, so much so that companies like Bethesda and BI are renowned for buggy products. Again, it comes down to money though. If you're going to hire a few people with up-to-date skills to speed up development, you're going to have to fire the rest of your entire team and throw out all of your bug-riddled tech :rolleyes:

+1 I'm often in a plane and just glance up at the health bar and realise I'm almost dead! There's no sound or feedback at all when you get shot...