Echo38

You've got to be kidding me! It often takes two hits to the head to kill a moving CSAT soldier (sometimes three, if you're using a suppressed carbine) and several more hits if you don't manage to hit the head each time. It takes, what, two seconds between the times when the sight wanders from on-target to on-target again? Which makes about six seconds to kill a moving CSAT soldier, if all my shots hit. In the meantime, I'll be long dead, because they typically one-shot you in the head. Besides, I don't think it's even subconsciously possible for me to not fight the weapon wander, given how unnatural & unrealistic the weapon wave is, and how fast-paced my shooting needs to be to have a reasonable time-to-kill. Right now, the most effective way to kill an enemy quickly with iron sights is full-automatic. This is a problem. Full-auto should never be easier to control than single shots, especially at longer ranges. It isn't in real life, and it isn't in any remotely realistic simulation of shooting. I've always used semi-automatic, from Operation Flashpoint to now, but it's looking like the only way for me to "adapt" to this BS is to start spraying like a Call of Battlefield player. It's rewarded more than careful, precise aim. Realistic, my arse ... In real life, aiming and firing isn't. Holding the rifle steady is. Shooting is by no means natural to me, nor am I an expert shooter. However, the difficulty is not how much effort I have to make at holding the rifle still-except-unavoidable-tremble. Holding the rifle still like that is low-effort. The primary difficulties comes from dealing with recoil and the imprecision of the weapon zeroing (which is not nearly as cut-and-dried on my AR-15 as it is in Arma). There are other things, but the great difficulty in shooting is not the amount of brainpower required to hold the rifle still-except-tremble. Holding the rifle still like that doesn't take that much more thought than standing upright. ---------- Post added at 04:46 ---------- Previous post was at 04:41 ---------- However -- and I feel this merits a separate post -- after a stop by the virtual shooting range today, I must concede that my character is, in fact, a significantly better shot in Arma 3 than I am in real life. Even with the current ridiculous cursor-chasing minigame. The problem isn't hitting the targets -- it's hitting them & their full-body-coverage armor enough times to take them down, before they one-shot you with their aimbots. : / So perhaps the drunken wave isn't the big problem here. It's the armor-protecting-things-it-shouldn't and the A.I. not being affected by the weapon wave. Primarily the first one. I still don't like the drunken wave. There's got to be a better way of simulating the difficulties of shooting, because this is not a realistic simulation of shooting. Give us wind, give us the fast-shaking ~1mm weapon tremble that we can't do much about (like in real life), make us drag the sights down all the way after each shot. That sort of thing. That'd be a fairly realistic simulation of shooting. 1mm too much/too little? Adjust it for virtual muscle tone & fatigue. Whatever. Can't possibly be worse than this. (Also, fix the damn body armor covering places it doesn't actually cover and stopping shots it shouldn't stop. But that's another story, isn't it?)

Yes, but it's automatic, like standing up. Technically, you have to spend effort to keep yourself from falling over, IRL, but it's pretty automatic for anyone past the toddler stage of life. It's the same with holding a weapon still. Just like with standing still, all I have to do is intend to hold the rifle still, and it happens "automatically." There's always a tremble that you can't get rid of, but there really isn't much you can do about it -- no amount of concentration is going to make a significant impact on this tremble, which has exclusively to do with your heartbeat and how good your muscles are. Really, this insisting on having a mouse-chasing minigame to try to simulate the fact that you have to exert nominal force to keep your weapon reasonably steady IRL is along the same line of saying we should have a key-mashing minigame to keep our characters from falling over while standing upright. "It's too easy to stand upright in the game -- in real life, you have to exert effort, while in the game, you don't have to do anything at all!" Same deal. Both take primarily muscle strength to do well, and concentrating & putting hard effort into trying to do it better isn't going to make a significant difference.

I don't think that's possible. I haven't specifically tried an offroad, but all of the other vehicles I've tried to get on top of still have the old Real Virtuality problem where it just doesn't like it -- you slide off no matter how careful you are and no matter how flat the top of the vehicle is.

There's an odeon ruin on the north coast of Altis. Depending on what kind of speech event you're thinking of, you may want to consider doing it there. Of course, if it's a press conference type thing, then that probably wouldn't be appropriate.

I believe it has to do with expectations. When you make an intentional control movement, you expect the result. If you're simply riding and someone else makes the same control movement, you don't expect that exact result, even if you know the general idea of what maneuver the vehicle is about to perform. Your brain is taken by surprise, even if your conscious self is not. Hence the dizziness and/or nausea.

Probably not what you're looking for, but remember the original purpose of the odeon ruins. : ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeon_%28building%29

I felt some "simulator sickness" in a full-motion simulator in which I was not in control of the ride, but in the other one where I was in control, I was fine, even when I was hanging upside-down from my shoulder straps and tumbling wildly. This is likely the same phenomenon due to which pilots of jet fighters sometimes tell their inexperienced passenger to take the controls for a while if the latter feels ill, because being the one who causes the motions can make the person feel less nausea than being purely on the receiving end.

I've found that by entering the water deep enough that your character holsters his pistol, then leaving the water, you can run around on land with your pistol holstered. This allows you to sprint quite a bit faster (~5 kph, about 25% faster, with a light load). However, finding a beach so that I can holster my pistol is naturally a kludgy method at best and impossible under most circumstances. Anyone know how to voluntarily holster my pistol and/or put my rifle on my back so that I can run faster? I currently use the workaround of putting my pistol into my vest or uniform in my inventory, but this isn't the same. It doesn't work as well, because I have to open my inventory to draw my pistol, which takes longer than drawing it when it's holstered with the "water method." It also now requires free space in my vest or uniform (the "water method" doesn't, which makes sense, since a holster isn't part of your vest or uniform pockets and thus shouldn't be counted as such). Furthermore, there's no way to do this with a rifle unless you have enough free space in your backpack. Solutions? Workarounds?

I don't want unrealistically-easy aiming any more than I want unrealistically-difficult aiming. A proper simulation of aiming, on the P.C., will -- by necessity of differences in hardware (mouse vs. gun) -- be different from reality, but as close as possible. Such a simulation, I have concluded, does not need to have a greater workload on the hand than the real activity it attempts to simulate. The current one does have a much greater workload on the hand than does the real activity, and this is my primary objection. I hear your point about carpal vs. running, but this is different; aiming is done with the hand, both in reality and in games. For that reason, the differences between aiming in reality and aiming in a proper simulation will not be large as they must be with a mouse & keyboard simulation-attempt of running (which is done with the legs in reality but the hand in games).

I'm "sensitive" about it because every time I'm forced by poor game mechanics to point out on an Internet forum that said mechanics are making it impossible for me to play the game due to hand pain (not that this happens often, as most games & sims don't have a drunken aiming simulation), I get snarky remarks like yours. I'm not embarrassed about my hand injury; I'm sick of dealing with people who don't know what it's like to have a permanent pain crippling all of their hobbies, and I don't much care for { having to give you ammunition with which to mock me } in order to point out the difference between the faulty simulation and reality. I had minimal hand pain from playing Arma, until the last patch made { holding the weapon steady } super-unrealistic and excessively taxing on the hand-mouse workload budget. A proper simulation of aiming wouldn't be hurting my hand. This shoddy one does, and as a result, it's looking like I'm going to have to quit playing Arma indefinitely. Naturally, I'm not happy about this, as I've played the series thoroughly since 2001. Do you get it now?

Since holding a real-life firearm steady doesn't hurt my hand, I can blame the game mechanics. If Arma 3 were doing a good job of simulating the difficulty of holding a firearm steady, then it wouldn't hurt my hand any more than the real deal. (And, no, this is a long-term problem, not an acute injury that's going to get better -- again, not that it's your business.) ---------- Post added at 17:21 ---------- Previous post was at 17:17 ---------- The arcade-simulation difficulty slider for accurately shooting a rifle at 100m with iron sights, while crouching with left elbow on knee: ---------------Halo-------Battlefield & CoD------------------------------------------------------------------------real life--------------------------------Arma Arcade <-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Simulation It ought to look more like this: ---------------Halo-------Battlefield & CoD-----------------------------------------------------------------Arma & real life Arcade <-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Simulation : )

I have thousands of hours in the Arma series, all on Elite difficulty. It isn't a question of practice. As for my hand hurting, I'm suffering from complications from a hand surgery (not that it's your business). It isn't that I have to move a 5 oz. mouse; it's that I have to fight a 5 oz. mouse. (Unrealistically.) The fact remains: holding a weapon steady in real life does not hurt my hand, while trying to hold the same weapon steady in Arma 3 hurts my hand (and I still can't get it as steady as I can in real life). That's enough proof for me that the game is horribly wrong here. As for realistic shooting results: with the current version of Arma 3, hitting targets is harder than it is for me in reality -- and I'm not even a trained soldier IRL. : / That's exactly my point. When it's easier to keep a 10 lb. rifle steady in real life than it is in the game, then the game's badly in need of correction. Do I need to make a video, showing how steady I can hold a firearm in reality, and put it side by side with a video of how steady I can hold a firearm in Arma 3? I would, if I had the equipment to record it. The correct solution, I think, to the "too easy" versus "too hard" problem is to simulate it as accurately as possible. That would mean removing the unrealistic drunken sway and adding a realistic tremble. One wouldn't be able to significantly counter the tremble -- just like reality, it'd always be there and it'd always keep your aim from being 100% precise while not resting the weapon, but it would be fairly slight. Enough to make shooting progressively difficult at longer ranges (again, like real life), but not exaggerated beyond realism to the point where one is forced to unrealistically wrestle the mouse with far greater difficulty than the real deal in order to get a fraction of the steadiness of the real deal.

I don't shoot at 1 km. I generally can't even see targets at that range, because I use iron sights only. What I'm concerned about is short & medium range shooting -- out to 300 yards. That's where my real-life shooting experience is, and that's where I see Arma 3 falling ridiculously on its face in the simulation category, currently by being far more difficult to keep the weapon steady than in reality. And, no, "use a scope" isn't a solution.

My hand is literally hurting from trying to get my rifle to be steady in Arma 3. It doesn't while holding a real life weapon steady (and that's steadier than I can get in Arma 3, I might add). It isn't even half as difficult in real life to keep a rifle steady. So, that isn't what I'd call balancing itself out. The game is, as I said earlier, wrong. It isn't "fine," and it isn't "balancing itself out."

There's roughly five times more weapon sway in Arma 3 than I have in real life shooting. ~5mm deviation measured from end of barrel, compared with ~1mm deviation. I'm afraid a 500% error isn't fine. For a more dramatic example of a 500% error, imagine an automobile that's able to go 120 MPH in reality, being able to go 600 MPH in the game. Quite a big error, isn't it? : )

Since the last patch added randomization of headgear for the FIA, it appears to have broken headgear selection & retention for the player character in the second campaign. Regardless of what headgear I choose at the armory, when the mission actually starts, I'm randomly given different headgear. Every time I restart the mission, it's a new randomization. Aside from taking away my ability to choose my headgear, this is also going to result in continuity breaches, where my character compulsively switches headgear at a time where he shouldn't reasonably be able to. (Where did that hat come from?) Anyone know how I can fix this problem, preferably without downloading mods? Some sort of config file I can enter a fix into? One of the developers posted a fix to the randomized headgear, but I only can figure out how to enter it into missions I've created, not the official missions. ---------- Post added at 20:02 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ---------- By the way, this same bug (or "undesired feature," if you wanna be cute about it) is also hilariously broken for Stavros and Miller during the same campaign. Stavros's beard enormously clips through the masks and Miller's hair clips just as badly through most of the hats. (I don't mean like a couple of little spikes, I mean the whole top part of his head.) Methinks this headgear randomization needs to be rethought and, at the very least, temporarily removed pending any fix simple enough to implement (such as making certain characters/faces exempt from having random headgear forced on them). Surely, a simple reversion to the pre-patch state (no automatically randomized headgear) would suffice for now. Is anyone at BIS even aware that this is a problem? I looked through all threads in the relevant sections of the forum since the release date of this patch, and couldn't find any mention of this.

To customer support? This doesn't seem like the right place for this; is it?

Good post! Unfortunately, I don't think there's much chance of it being implemented by BIS, but I do hope that they'll at least consider it.

I support the suggestion in the O.P. (Not that I think that my support matters ...)

Elite, with the few aids that are on by default at this setting turned off. So absolute max difficulty, except that I've turned the AI down to regular. Since the AI still cheats like hell at this difficulty (particularly by seeing through grass under all conditions), I consider this combination of settings "maximum realism."

In reality, when you aren't breathing hard, there is no sway at all. Merely a slight tremble. It really isn't difficult to keep the rifle mostly-still in reality, even while standing, when you're reasonably fit and not exhausted. (Compare to Arma 3, where it's beyond difficult to keep the rifle mostly-still while standing or even crouched, even when fully rested.) Again, there's always going to be a little tremble -- heartbeat, if nothing else -- but it really isn't at all difficult to keep a real rifle mostly-still. Arma is wrong in this, and those of us who value the accurate simulation of physical reality dislike the unrealistically-difficult about as much as we dislike unrealistically-easy.

Put me down as one of the real-life shooters who agrees that the current weapon sway is unrealistic. When not fatigued, there isn't even half as much wandering of the sights as there is here. Even a not-particularly-fit shooter can, while standing, hold the sights more still than the soldiers in this game. As others have said, the "simulation" in the new Arma 3 weapon wave is a simulation of a drunken marksman. That's the only time a normal, healthy, not-fatigued shooter will have sway like this -- after having six drinks or so, consecutively. Real-life "weapon sway" is more of a trembling than a sway, anyway. You can see this by holding a ~10 lb. log in front of you, like a rifle, and looking down the top of it as though you were aiming it. It doesn't wander around much, it simply shakes a bit on a tiny scale -- we aren't even talking millimeters of motion, but like half a millimeter deviation.

I just realized -- you may be putting the laser on Charlie squad themselves. Charlie squad is two soldiers on a hill just east of Girna. The enemy will be on the hill across the valley, to the northeast of Girna. Make sure, after you find the soldiers with thermal, that you switch to direct camera and identify them by their uniforms. You'll want to switch to the UAV's "gunner turret," as that camera has a higher zoom ability. I'm betting you're lasing the wrong targets -- I mistook Charlie squad for the enemy on my first playthrough. : ) I don't know for certain, but you may need to leave the laser on the targets until they're dead. It may be coincidence, but the two times I turned off the laser immediately after Charlie acknowledged the targets, the latter failed to engage. Every time I've left the laser on, Charlie's done their job. I still let go of the UAV controls (leaving the laser on and pointed at the targets, presumably) the moment Charlie responds to my laser, and then I run up the hill towards the enemy spotters, just in case Charlie doesn't do what they're supposed to. (It's also the area where you need to go anyway for your next objective.)

Agree that this situation is B.S. (the A.I. in Arma cheat like hell), but I should point out that a suppressor does not make a gunshot silent. Suppressed gunshots are still quite loud clicks at thirty meters, in real life. If you have access to a firearm in real life, work the slide briskly. That's pretty loud, right? A suppressed shot sounds about like that. It's at least as audible than the famous trope of a person stepping on a stick and breaking it, alerting the enemy.

As Jona said, the laser needs to be switched on, and it needs to be held on one of the targets for several seconds before Charlie lance will engage. The UAV should have clear line of sight to the target when you hold the laser on him; if there's a bush half-obscuring the target, it might not work. If you decide to take out these enemies yourself, you've got to move fast; you barely have time to get to them before the mission fails. Note that one of them appears to be scripted to sit there staring stupidly (such a dedicated spotter) even as you run up to him and shoot him, but the other will engage you effectively. On a side note, you get to keep the UAV to use for future missions. When you're told to retreat from the town, run to the corpses of the two spotters, lie down, and take control of the UAV again. Fly the UAV over to your location, land it, and disassemble it. If you remove all of the items from your old backpack, you can put your empty backpack inside the UAV pack and take both your backpack and the UAV (in its pack) back to your base. : )