martin_lee

There are certain items that need to be equipped for it to be used, just having it in your backpack or vest will not work. Binocular, rangefinder and laser designator is one of the example. You drag-and-drop it into the equipment slot when you open your inventory (press 'I'). If you have binocular equipped, and a rangefinder in your backpack, pressing 'B' will bring out the binocular. You have to swap to rangefinder in the inventory to use rangefinder when you press 'B'. This is the same for GPS and Drone console, you have to equip one to the slot for it to work. Having either one will allow you to open up a GPS window on your screen ('Right Ctrl + M' by default). Having Drone console will allow you to have an action in the action menu (Scroll up/down). That will allow you to open up an interface to connect to available drones. There are certain things that you don't need to equip to use, having them in you vest (or backpack or uniform) will be able to use them. Grenade, or other throwable items, is one such example. You can have grenades, smoke grenades, light sticks etc, in your vest. You can choose what to throw by pressing 'Ctrl + G', and you can see what you have chosen on the top right of your screen. Pressing 'G' will throw it. Unlike many shooting games, you do not hold the grenade in your hand. You cannot change the throwing strength as well, so you will need some practice to know how far you can throw. Similarly, you can have different type of magazines for your gun. For example, you can have 100rnd and 30rnd magazine for MX rifle. You can also have tracer magazine as well. You choose which to use by using action menu as well. When you choose a different magazine type, you will see a reload animation. If you press 'R' to reload, it will change to the same magazine type until you run out of that type of magazine.

Regarding the weapon sway, it can be somewhat of an acquired taste with some familiarisation needed. I don't know what are the general consensus about the sway, but I am reasonably okay with it, in that I can send bullets where I want. The short version is that the sway is really regular, you can spend relatively short period of time to practice and get really good at countering it. I can hit a man-sized target at 500 m, standing unsupported reasonably well. Which, from what I heard, is something quite hard to do in real life. (some instruction at the bottom on how to learn to counter the sway) Notice that I have no experience with real guns, only airsoft guns (and camera with big zoom lens). When I aim, I don't sway like any video games depiction. What I have is better described as 'twitches'. You can stay generally on target, but occasionally your aim jumps a bit here and there. The thing is that you can kind of 'know' those twitches, you sort of have a (really rough) feeling of when and where the twitches are going to come. You can kind of know the next few moments if you are steady or not. It is a bit hard to put it to words, but let's just say that the twitches make sense to you at that moment. If you take video of it (without image stabilisation), and take a look later, it is just random, dizziness-inducing camera shake. Think about taking video of your pet or kids playing in the park, chasing after them. You know what's happening in front of you at that moment, but when you look back at the video at the end of the day, it would look more like storming the Normandy Beach. What you can summarise from this experience is that: 1. You can stay generally on target 2. Some slight shifts of the aim around the target 3. The shifts are somewhat predictable, something you can get a feel of So, what I look for in game mechanism is whether it can achieve an abstraction of the above three points. Visually-speaking (Point 1 and 2), the twitch I have is more similar to a mix between Arma 2 and Sniper Elite 1. But Point 3 is where they somewhat fall short. Arma 2's twitch is random and you can only hope that the next jump puts your aim on target, testing your reflex to see if you could click on time. Sniper Elite 1's twitch is quite good. It is episodic with a bit of calm in between, which while it is still random, you can catch that calm much easier (after every twitches is done the aim goes back to its original point). It is extremely obvious that Arma 3's sway doesn't do Point 1 and 2, not without user input. While the sway is larger than most other video games, the sway pattern is fixed and can be learnt with a little bit of practice. And when you start to counter the sway, you could mostly eliminate the movement and stay mostly on target (Point 1). You will still need to 'chase the target' a little bit (somewhat a little bit of Point 2), but once you have some muscle memory on the sway pattern, you can sort of know how the sway is going to be, you could anticipate and adjust accordingly (Point 3). In a rather unnatural twist, this sway can achieve the abstraction when you counter its movement. Precision shooting is no longer point-and-click, but requires practiced, deliberate movement. When I play games I am playing make-believe, I look for abstractions that may reflect some real-life implications. This implementation, unnatural as it is, can fulfill the above three points that I look for. Even when I (as in the avatar) am fatigued, the sway became faster and larger, I can still fight to maintain my aim on target, I can still have some control on whether I can hit my target, rather than resigning to fate (chance) like Arma 2. When I (as in me) am stressed because of a jump scare by an unseen enemy at my flank, I can't hit him because I panicked and muscle memory of countering sway didn't kick in. Like I said, it is a bit unnatural, but it can fulfill what I look for. To this day, I am still thinking if there are other mechanics that can do the same job, but in the end I got good enough that I can settle for it. [Sincerity mode, not being sarcastic or condescending] And if you don't like this implementation, you can always find a mod, because that is the beauty of Arma. --- If you want to learn the sway, try it in the virtual armory. Load an MX with marksman optics (MOS, AMS, DMS etc), use the main optics (i.e. not the red dot), and try to learn the sway. Those optics have a higher zoom and you can learn the coarse movement first. No need to shoot for now, just keep the aim on the man at 50 m, then move on to 100 m. When you are familiar enough, try shooting at the man at 100 m, and onwards to 500 m. After that, move to optics like RCO, ARCO with lower zoom to learn to move more finely. p.s. I am kind of curious if this is the intention of the dev or not...

The research I am doing now is atmospheric modelling. While the main results are ran on computing cluster, I often have to do some short runs for debugging on my own computer (No one wants to wait for days, only to find the output is trashed from a bug). So the 32-core macbook pro is very tempting. The only problem? We can't dual boot to Windows! I don't really have any work-related program on Windows, but I do want to play games. I need my weekly Arma fix. And some Falcon BMS, and Steel Beasts... The only solution is virtual machine, with the not-too-well-supported ARM Windows 11... Or spend some extra money to buy a Windows computer purely for gaming. So when my father finally have to upgrade his Mac, it's my chance. It's the one with M1 pro chip, 32 cores. I installed ARM version of Windows 11 (x64 emulatioin only available here) on Parallel. Turns out, Arma 3 can actually run. And amazingly, you can have reasonable graphics as well. Compared to my computer now (2016 Intel Macbook Pro), the graphics settings in the new Mac are equal to or higher. The only caveat is that when the visual field changes significantly, there would be a slight lag when it load something. Not sure what is causing the lag, whether it is loading from memory or loading from disk. But once this is over, you can look back at there without any issues. So overall, I am quite happy with the performance. It is on a virtual machine, with Window emulating x64 software, but still matched the performance of my 5-year-old computer. I wasn't exactly expecting this result to be honest. p.s.: Not all games can run, however. Some throw errors, some simply couldn't start, some say unsupported OS version (my guess is the game's checking what OS you are using and it doesn't match what's in its list in this case).

I was once forwarded an ArmA3 clip, about an attack aircraft taking on a C-RAM on the ground, passing as real footage. Part of that clip was used on the video linked by OP (Around 1:35). The title of that video was something in the line of 'Mig-25 attacking forces on the ground and destroyed' (forgotten the real title it has). The friend who forwarded it to me wasn't into military stuff or Arma, so his red flags wasn't raised. At the very least it should be Su-25, which is a ground attack aircraft, but later on in the video it looked more like an A-10. Also, a single aircraft without wingman, doing a gun run on ground forces that has a C-RAM? That's not how they would do it in real life. Okay, if you somehow missed the presence of the C-RAM, you won't go back for a second gun run when it opened up on you! That has to be fake, and with this suspicion I looked closer at the video and find out that it is in fact from Arma 3, with the highest graphics settings and maybe some visual mod? For casual viewing, without knowledge of tactics and all, probably wouldn't be able tell that it is fake. The details and the feel are good. I mean, the light from a town further away was visible, the sound is good (sound's travel time is there, you hear the impact before the brrrrrt), tracers cast light. Those are not the details one would expect a mainstream video game to have. Add to that, if the video was a little bit compressed and reduced in resolution (like the one I was forwarded), I won't be too surprised if someone thought it was real. As a layman, where do you start debunking the video? Don't get me wrong, I am NOT defending them, at all. My line of work, as a researcher, do not take this type of behavior well. I am now writing a paper (not good at it...). I may have general idea about the topic, But whenever I want to make a point, I have to at least check a bit of literature to see if it is actually true now or not, and make citations and all. It is a time-consuming and grueling process, that is giving me a big deal of stress lately. But even so, getting your idea right and sources straight is definitely your responsibility. I am just kind of amazed that how Arma got many of the details and feel right, to the point that casual viewing may not immediately distinguish it from real footage. It goes on to show that how much easier some people can misusing information nowadays. All you need is something one can't readily debunk, slap a label on it, and off you go...

@pr9inichek for some reasons when I first load this page the video are from 2016, in which the tank's path finding is ... horrendous, to say the least. Those back flips and explosions 😓 When I revisited, the videos are now the new tests. There are still some quirks, but quite a long way we've come in these 3 years

I had been and had seen others being ran over. Most of the time they are moving at some (admittedly not what we call high) speed, and just couldn't stop in time. I'd say if they had hit the brake a meter earlier it would have greatly reduced this problem. There should be a new guideline for all the new recruits (and hopefully, those currently in service as well, compulsory 'refreshment' for their R&R) I did saw an interesting case when a vehicle killed someone while turning. It is in a city when the Marshal tried to turn around a corner, the poor guy is kind of being pushed by the front corner of the vehicle and died after being pushed for several meters. It's not being ran over that killed him, it's the push... p.s. Well, they do have thing for the hearts and minds of the indigenous goat population...

100% agree with this. As an airsoft player, I can tell you that it is difficult to "jump" over a waist-height wall. If I were to get over it, I normally would just step over it (you know, crossing one leg at a time). AT MOST I can just about vault over it, which is NOT easy when you have to use at least one hand to hold your rifle. And more importantly, why do it? Why expose yourself crossing over them? Unless it is the great wall of China, or a waist-height fence, we just get around them. Most of the time they are good cover anyway. Airsoft gears (which are just puny toys compared to real steel counterparts) are very forgiving already in terms of weight. My gun is already on the HEAVY side for airsoft AR15, weighting at nearly 4kg (just about a real steel loaded 16-inch AR15). Our magazines are light, weighting usually around 100-300 g, depending on whether your gun is gas-powered or battery powered (I think mine is just below 200 g loaded), and I carry just 6 of them. My plate carrier (minus the steel plate of course) weights around 1.5 kg (give or take) with all the necessary pouches attached. A replica helmet (just hard plastic) weighting just below 1 kg. Add my phone and wallet into the load and I am carrying around 8kg of airsoft gear. Gun: 4kg magazine: 0.2kg * 6 = 1.2kg plate carrier: 1.5kg helmet: 1kg personal items: 0.5kg With 8 kg you already feel the weight. You are not as swift and agile as you normally are. Imagine carrying real steel equipment (30kg, I think?). This is another good point. Weight is not the only issue, the more important part is, are there any advantage what so ever? Like I said earlier, there isn't really a need to get over things, just run around them. There are not much advantage climbing onto things either (I can only think of climbing onto a crate so you could look/shoot over a wall). Being swift is more important, as you will have much less exposure time to enemy fire. Think about it, if we are running 110m hurdle race, we can just about jump over a 1m high obstacle. And in high jump the world record is 2m, and for that we have to run, cross the bar with our back and land onto soft cushion. Those are 'fancy stunt' that have the sole purpose of crossing over obstacle. Also, we are carrying a rifle, where our arms can't swing, and that has a big effect on a sprint. (try timing your run with and without a stick in front you and you will see) If anything, in the old Arma days, when we see a wooden fence, we have to get out of the way. But in Arma 3, we can cross the fence, we can win. No longer are we to knuckle under (or craw under in some case) to a fence. The only thing I could see as an improvement is for the "step over" animation to be faster, and maybe an action to climb onto waist-height things.

Thanks for the sharing Seems like it is the child between a joystick and a mouse Have you tried using the joystick function in game for, say, flying a helicopter? Does the gyroscope works well? Seems like I may have to start saving up... (And think of a way to survive the wrath of my girlfriend... )

Now, that mouse... God that was expenive... But man is it packed with features. I am very curious about how it performs. Would you share a bit with us when you've used it for a while

(Sorry OP, I didn't see that you want a wireless mouse. So the following is not going to help you. They are all wired.) I would say pretty much any mouse that is marketed as MMO mouse would do. They have more than enough buttons to map my oftenly-used commands. I have used the offerings from Logitech, SteelSeries, and several from Razer. To me, their main difference is tracking and software/driver capability. The later is due to the fact that I use it for work as well, as far as mapping is concerned they are the same. The rest, like ergonomic and button placement, I can adapt to it. Of the ones that I have used, I would suggest the SteelSeries Rival 500. The tracking is the best amongst them. The feel is consistent whether you are moving really slow or really fast. The button placement is not the usual 12-button thumb grid. Most of its buttons are placed around the thumb (i.e. when you grip the mouse your thumb doesn't grip onto a button), and there are a few more next to the left and right mouse button.Software-wise it is stable, I would say. Configurations are synchronised through cloud and it works without problems. The mouse has internal memory to store the currently loaded config/profile. If you ever only need one config, you can uninstall the driver/software once you are done. If you would need to switch to another profile, you need the software. (I kept mine installed) The second place for me is the Razer Naga. I owned the 2014, and the newer Trinity version. The latter is basically incremental improvement over the 2014 version (with one added feature I'll get to later). Main difference is the software/driver. The latter mouse is using a newer driver. Tracking is good on both. The feel is consistent. However, I found that if I move extremely slowly (like a few pixel), it kind of feel "sticky". Maybe it is due to the friction and mouse surface? I am not sure. The button is the standard 12-button thumb grid. They look small, but I don't have the problem of acidentally clicking a different button. One thing I do like is that you can press two adjacent buttons at the same time, if you decided to do so. I mapped the Alt key and the zoom key (mouse button 4) next to each other, so I can make a quick scan around me with only my right hand (I am lazy ). The new driver is mostly okay, but acts up occasionally, and I had experienced problem with cloud sync once, where some macro and config were messed up. Good thing is that you can export all your config, when thay happened I just restore from the export. The newer Naga Trinity has onboard memory for 4 profiles and the macro used. So yes, if you only ever need 4 profiles, you can uninstall the driver should you feel like it. Everything works without the driver installed. THIS IS NOT THE CASE FOR THE 2014 NAGA, IT HAS NO ONBOARD MEMORY AND YOU WILL NEED THE OLD DRIVER. Old driver is more stable, though. The newer version has swappable thumb grip. You can change the thumb grid to 7-button (arranged in a ring around your thumb) or 2-button (like most regular mouse, the mouse button 4 and 5). Although honestly I don't really see a reason to do so. The above should be within your price range, with the new naga being more expensive. ----- I used the Logitech MMO mouse (G600 I think?) but the tracking is horrible. It could not handle sudden and quick movment. When you, say, make a quick movement to the left and then quickly stop, the mouse pointer will oscillate quite a few times. I have tested it for quite a while and I am quite sure that oscillation is not due to my hand. I would assume it's due to the sensor or firmware processing issue. It does have some nice features. There are 3 onboard profiles, and there is a shift button as well, so you will be able to have twice as much mapping in each profile compared to the competitors. I would really like to love the mouse. But the tracking is the deal breaker.

Right now when we use the sight on a mortar, we can get firing solution on targets with direct line of sight. If they make it so that it auto elevates instead of manually adjusting like we do now, that will practically make it dual mode. Well, for players at least

hm... I can't seem to solve the Mk45 issue with the missile artillery Joke aside, I think in the WWII the firing solution is calculated, amongst other things, by inputing the range and bearing into mechanical computer (My secret identity is Captain Obvious, whose rank is less obviously not captain) This is done by some observers with those big weird binoculars (were they called gunlayers?). But then again, for shore bombardment, you just need a map and your location, and then you will have the range and bearing. That wasn't quite unlike a firing computer, and it was able to do some indirect fire. It is not as good as a dedicated artillery due to low terrain clearance and shallow angle. I am unsure of modern naval guns, however, since, as GrumpyOldMan pointed out, missiles filled those roles and have much greater range. Those guns are really now for close range protection I would assume.

@oukej Regarding keyboard controls, I think that, instead of getting 100% input straight away, may be you can set it so that it gradually increase to 100%. That way you can have slightly better control when tapping the keys. Say, when you press the nose up key, the input goes from 0% up to 100% in 0.1s (or may be even faster, I don't know). The same happens when you let go the key, when it gradually return to 0%. I think that's how it is in Falcon 4 if you use keyboard to control the plane. I quite like the result that way. The control isn't all or none, you can have, say, 60% input if you practice a bit with your tapping. You can just about get a relatively smooth, sustained turn. I think the problem is that in Arma, the boundary between sustained turn and loosing speed like a flying brick is very sharp. You either don't loose speed, or you loose it fast. You need to be quite gentle with the control, and finding that sweet spot requires practice. This sharp wall is what made flying somewhat awkward and difficult. ------------------------------- That being said, I fly with mouse in Arma mostly. To be honest, I don't really see why one would need to use keyboard for pitch (nose up/down) and roll when you can do it with the mouse, you got much better control (yawing, on the other hand...). As long as you move the mouse nice and slow, you can keep a sustained turn without stalling. You can also look around pretty easily. The only time I use keyboard for pitch and roll is when I am using the targeting camera (that's the only way to control the plane at that point). But then again, when that happens, my only concern is to keep my nose from pointing at the ground, so I don't need fine controls. The feel and handling could definitely be improved upon. Right now it doesn't quite have the general feel of a flying game. But flying with keyboard and mouse is doable. Practice with the jet showcase, try to shoot down one jet with missile and then dogfight the other one. Or better yet, make a custom scenario, where you are the leader and give yourself a wingman to chase and shoot down (he won't be evading). Use the mouse, keep an eye on the speed, and try to keep it from dropping. Be patient, and suppress the urge to pull hard when when the enemy moved out of view. Your nose is always lagging behind the enemy. When you think there is an opportunity, only then will you pull 100% (and loose a lot of speed) to bring you nose in front of him, and fire a cannon burst.

I think this is quite an amazing implimentation, especially when it can work on buildings and bunkers as well. Spawning fragments on hitting anything could have an unexpected (or expected?) advantage. Say if I shoot at an unsuspecting tank with turned-out crews. My shot falls short, for reasons best kept secret for eternity, the fragments would still hurt the crews. Could you share your computer spec as a reference? I am wondering if a mid-high end laptop would show a noticeable slowdown in the short window when the shell hits. It does sounds promising, though. I am wondering, say I have a few miniguns going off, would that amount of bullets have the same load as the fragments?

A question: I haven't played MP for a long long time... Could human commander switch into another human players' seat in a tank? Personally I am okay with instant seat switching between AI crews. IRL tank commanders have a function that could bring the gunner's view to his own, or the other way around. (I THINK commander could also fire the gun as well?) Since Arma do not have that function (yet ;P ) so I am willing to think of seat-switching as an abstraction. Now that AI tank driving has improved quite a bit, and the PIP driver view available, I am happy enough to be not able to switch between commander amd the driver. If I am playing with human player I'd probably like it if we can't switch seat without getting out.