Echo38

I've been enjoying the campaign. However, the lack of the usual save in this mission is game-breaking. I've spent over thirty hours trying to complete this last mission, and still haven't finished all four objectives. A few minutes ago, I got farther than I ever have before; I rescued all of the US and FIA soldiers and finally got them out of the swamp without being shot through the fog by the apparently always-thermal-all-the-time specop enemies, and was approaching the helibase excitedly when ... game crash. Seriously? The lack of a save would be bad enough if the game were stable -- what with the enemy A.I's good old still-sees-through-stuff-it-shouldn't B.S. -- but when you factor in game crashes ... and you can't even resume if you have to shut down the game, but must complete the mission in a single sitting. This mission isn't literally unfinishable on Expert -- a colossal amount of playtime coupled with a large enough helping of good luck could do it -- but it's very close to being unbeatable, even with an enormous degree of care, effort, and skill on the part of the player.

I've played the series since Operation Flashpoint and bought every main title as well as several expansions. However, I will not buy any game "sight unseen." At the very least, I must know first-hand how well it will run on my system. I guess it's back to checking in once or twice a year to see if they're thinking of doing a proper demo.

So! Still keeping an eye on Arma 3, but waiting for a demo before I decide whether or not to buy. Any news?

At last!

Is there any way to configure my game so that I never again see the reload icon which pops up when there are no more bullets in your weapon's magazine? Even on Expert, there is no way within the game options to remove it. Perhaps a value in a config file somewhere?

Agreeing with Scoggs's sentiment.

I can't wait until the damage stops being done.

This sort of determination is great for learning how to play BIS games. It's also just about a requisite for learning how to fly real helicopters as well, should you ever decide to try your hand at that (or, at least, a more complex sim-game like ToH).

Compared to a realistic helicopter sim (or even a reasonable approximation thereof, like ToH), yeah, Arma helicopters are very simple. However, on the other hand, compared to helicopters in popular low-realism shooters such as Call of Battlefield, our Arma 2 helicopters can be quite tricky, for those who have not had any experience in either BIS games or realistic flight simulators. I've shown the ropes to several people who've never had any experience with virtual flying before, and they almost invariably end up crashing horribly about a dozen seconds after leaving the ground. As for Extinctsquirrel, I had the opportunity the other day to do some practice with him, and I discovered to my surprise that he'd already taught himself almost everything, in the few days between when he made this thread and when we got together. I'm not sure I actually managed to impart anything to him at all, because there wasn't much to tell him about the Arma helis that he didn't already know. Autorotation being the possible exception. Although everyone can use more practice, he's good enough to assist others here, so anyone else needing help might want to ask him and see if he's willing.

Eh? As I indicated in my previous two posts, I do play on Expert. In fact, I've never once had my difficulty setting set to anything less than Expert, from Operation Flashpoint to Operation Arrowhead. The problem is this: even on Expert difficulty, there is no option to remove unrealistic HUD elements such as the bullet counter and reload notification. To put it shortly, there is absolutely no way, without modding the game, to get rid of the arcade-style bullet counter and "YOU NEED TO RELOAD" icon, even on Expert. That's the problem. For a military sim game, that's kind of boggling. (If I'm wrong and there is a way to disable them without installing a mod, then please do correct me--that was, after all, the original question of the O.P.)

Two problems is better than one problem? I don't quite follow your logic. o O I'd love to be rid of the bullet counter, too, but I doubt there's any way to do that without also removing the fire selector switch state indicator. And without the selector switch indicator, there's no way (unlike in reality) to tell what your weapon's selector switch is set to. A big problem, not the least because the game unrealistically resets your selector switch every time you switch weapons, pull out your binoculars, get out of a vehicle, etc. (And also because the game unrealistically groups hand grenades and things like that in with the actual fire selector states.)

Yes, thanks. I'll have a look at the files and see if it's something simple enough that I can edit it myself into the Day Z files. I hope it is. The problem is that there shouldn't be an icon, or any other indicator, which gives you the information that your magazine is dry. On Expert difficulty, I expect "the most realistic military simulator ever made" (in the words of the developer) to mimic reality in--at the very least--basic firearm mechanics. It's disappointing that the chamber is not modelled, and though it's heartening that magazine capacity itself is modelled, there are several errors with the way it works. A notification that the magazine is empty, when I would have no way of knowing that fact in reality, is one of these errors. The primary function of the icon is irrelevant to this point, because another effect (intended or not) of its presence is to unrealistically give the player this information, with no option in the difficulty settings or even configuration files which could allow a serious player to be rid of the unwanted aid.

Thanks for the link. Can you tell me a bit about this mod? Does it work with Arma 2 original, Operation Arrowhead, and Day Z? Or just one or two of those? Is it multiplayer-compatible with people who don't also use it?

Well, I can partially answer one of my own questions, after fiddling around in the PBOs a bit: ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead has some music that is not contained in ArmA 2. Can anyone confirm if the expansions for Operation Flashpoint also contain additional music not found in the unexpanded game?

Most of the music Mr. Matejka created is in the game files, of course, but there are also some trailers which he created music for. There's no way to hear this music without also hearing the sound effects from the trailer--I don't want to hear sporadic gunfire and helicopter rotors over his excellent music. Is there anywhere that I could somehow find all of Mr. Matejka's music which he created for the series (including the trailers and other related media)?

The good news: I'm a virtual flight instructor with thousands of hours in the most realistic flight simulators I can get my hands on. (I also have a few hundred flight hours in Arma's helicopters, although I would not call this a realistic simulator.) I enjoy sharing my love of flight (real and virtual) with others, and trying to help them learn to fly, as others helped me learn in the distant past. The bad news: I'm kind of a crappy communicator; my brain operates on a different plane than my mouth does, and I can be strident in my suggestions to my students. I'm also going to be constantly making comparisons between Arma's flight model and the real deal. I consider it important that my virtual flight students understand that, due to modelling errors, various techniques are good in the simulator or game, but very bad in real life (and vice versa). Many of my virtual flight students have found the information to be excessive. So, I'd be happy to try to hook up with ya and give you some lessons on flying the Huey in Arma, but you might end up wishing I'd shut up. Let me know if you're interested or not; if I don't hear a response within a week or so, I'm going to delete this post. Last few times I've made this offer, giving the pros and cons, it's been ignored, so this one's only going to be open for a while.

I'm afraid I don't really "get" social media. I don't even use Facebook. Anyone know of another way to contact Mr. Matejka? Is he comfortable with English? I really would like to see about getting some of the music he did for trailers; in particular, there's a piece from a trailer for ArmA 1 which I don't know the name of, but contains the lyrics "semper fidelis." There are others, though, as well. Another question: if I install Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, ArmA: Combat Operations, and ArmA 2, will that give me all of the music from all of the OpF and ArmA games themselves? Or do the expansions contain music that isn't contained in the original games? (E.g. do I need to install OpF:CWC only, or do I also need to install Resistance and/or Red Hammer in order to get all of the music from OpF?)

I just played this for the first time and was astounded ... a new take on the old nuclear missile bomb trope. It was not at all believable*, but this didn't hamper my enjoyment of it. I--without exaggerating--had all the hairs on my arms stand up repeatedly during this. It was actually rather horrifying. Things were so surreal that I wondered if the player's character had died in the first blast and was in Hell for the rest of the campaign. Unfortunately, I suffered from one of the game-breaking bugs near the end (the one where the co-pilot refuses to stay behind on the dock, and points his gun at you forever), and so was unable to complete it, but, while searching for a fix, I read that I was pretty much at the end anyway. Well done, whoever made this campaign--even if there were one or two serious bugs that got through, and even though the plot did not follow logically--it was still a very immersive and original piece. Hats off. *E.g. the pilot surviving the crash, all sides shooting at the pilot, the Spetsnaz sparing the pilot but killing everyone else, etc.

Which is what I frantically scream over the mic whenever I see one. I hate these things--am deadly afraid of them, in fact. Um, there are a couple of things I'd like to discuss about the Tunguska. Firstly, evasion techniques. Well, I'm a highly experienced sim-pilot, with thousands of hours in the most realistic aerial combat simulators I can find, so I'm not being stupid or careless around these Tunguskas. While flying my A-10, I usually keep my altitude below 100 meters and my speed above 500 K.P.H., and I try to "beam" enemies (keeping them to my 9 or 3 o' clock) when I am not shooting at them, circling gently around them in a wide, fast turn. When I have to fly directly away from a threat, I jink back and forth as hard as I can without losing too much energy. Most importantly, perhaps, I try to limit my time over a target area--as I instruct my less-experienced friends, "Don't stay in line of sight of an enemy for more than a few seconds. Make a quick attack run, then get out of there low and fast." My gun-runs almost directly mirror those of real A-10 pilots (with a few modifications because of errors in Arma 2[/i's modelling of certain things); I make a shallow firing pass, then I immediately break turn ~90 degrees, duck down behind a hill or below the treeline, and bug out while keeping the target area approximately to my 4 or 8 o' clock. Due to these techniques, shoulder-launched and static Strela missiles are not a significant threat to me, nor are AA cannons. I can fly in 500 K.P.H. circles around a Strela launcher (either player-controlled or A.I.) and evade all of the missiles they throw at me. Despite my best efforts, however, I am regularly blown out of the sky from a single missile from a Tunguska--almost always one which wasn't showing up on my radar (which an A-10 shouldn't have, but that's another story) until it was too late to do anything about it. Now, this is in CTI mode--specifically, "Superpowers." I created a quick, simple mission in the editor to try to practice my evasion techniques, placing a flying A-10 as player and a manned enemy Tunguska in a randomized location. Well, funny thing--I can't get the Tunguska to shoot me down in this mission. It's only hit me once with missile, and that only after I'd been circling it for a few minutes at different speeds, ranges, and altitudes. Haven't been able to reproduce it since, even with minutes of circling from as close as 500 meters and as far as 3000 (all within LoS). In order to get it to hit me with its cannon, I had to drop flaps and slow down to about 200 K.P.H., which is absurd. I've tried this with the Tunguska set to 50% skill level in the editor, and also at 100%. My A.I. difficulty level is only at 34% in the game options, but it's the same when I'm playing CTI--so why the huge disparity in effectiveness between playing CTI and playing my own mission? The Tunguska knows about me at all times when I'm circling it (I can even see it firing its cannon at me and missing every time), so it can't be related to the Command Mode find-an-enemy "cheat." I'd like to open up "Superpowers" and see what they're doing to the Tunguska--one thing that's occurred to me is that they might be spawning it without a cannon, although I'm fairly sure that I've been hit from a cannon from it while playing "Superpowers." (Might've been a static defense ZSU, though, near the Tunguska.) However, as I've posted in another thread, I can't get any of the PBO programs working. So, does anyone have any suggestions, either for evading & safely spotting Tunguskas, or for why there is such a discrepancy between the effectiveness of the thing in "Superpowers" and its effectiveness in a quick mission I made with the editor?

Something I've been noticing while flying is that the guns fire to the low 12 o' clock position, rather than directly ahead. I can tell because, when flying straight at a stationary ground target with the pipper exactly on it, the cannon rounds all fly over the target and hit the ground well beyond it. This is due to the aircraft's forward velocity affecting the gun's downward-and-forward velocity, causing it to not hit where the pipper is. In real aircraft, the gun is aligned approximately along the aircraft's boresight; due to the AoA of level flight changing with speed, it is impossible for a fixed gun to be always exactly aligned with the aircraft's direction of travel at different speeds, but at "normal speeds," it's going to be very close. In Arma2, however, the difference in angles is extreme, which makes aiming difficult even for an experienced shooter (this is why the real aircraft have the guns aligned close to the aircraft's direction-of-travel, rather than angled downward as in Arma2). As I said, I was able to discern this problem very quickly simply by observing the pattern of the bullets during strafing runs, but I decided to test it to be certain. Sure enough--when fired in static tests on the ground, the guns for all fixed-wing aircraft in "vanilla" Arma2 (except for the Su-25) fire down into the ground just a few feet in front of the aircraft, rather than forward toward the general direction of the horizon. Furthermore, the angle of the actual firing line doesn't remotely match the angle of the barrel, as one can see if standing behind the barrel as it fires. Only the Su-25 fires out toward the horizon as it should, and only the Su-25's tracers approximately match the visual model of the barrel. Curious to see if this problem was fixed in A2:OA, I looked on Youtube for videos of A2:OA A-10s flying. As far as I can tell, it hasn't been amended, judging by the HUD--the gunsight reticle is in the same place relative to the aircraft boresight indicator (about five degrees down, which may sound small, but it has a catastrophic effect on gunnery). Can anyone with A2:OA perform the ground test to confirm, and record it on video? The test is simple: fire the gun while the aircraft is stationary on the ground. If the rounds impact the ground a few feet in front of the aircraft, it's wrong. If the rounds fly out toward the horizon and hit the ground in the distance, it's (at least approximately) correct. I do hope that this error is corrected in Arma 3, but that's sort of another discussion for the other forum.

What's ACR? I'm not being funny, I really have never heard of it until this thread.

I'm not sure I can agree that making something extra-extra unrealistic is a fix for the problem of something being unrealistic. BVR is the reality of most modern aerial engagements, and entirely eliminating BVR is the exact opposite of a move toward simulation.

No, it was a cooperative CTI with all human players on my side.

Not in vanilla Arma 2. I've tested this. If another member of the squad (even if he is half-way across the map) is in combat, all members of the squad will ignore move, board, and action commands, and instead waste minutes pausing to scan the horizon every couple of feet.

I was host. That's usually true, but a Tunguska one-shot-kills me. Very rare for mere airburst damage from this weapon. As noted earlier, the big problem is from ones which I don't know about because they aren't showing up on radar. I have no way of knowing about these, because the friendly A.I. won't tell me if they see a Tunguska. Unless they happen to be a member of my own squad, which isn't going to happen, because I generally don't use combat A.I. in my own squad. They usually refuse to follow any sort of orders, get killed almost immediately without accomplishing anything, and are generally a huge waste of money. And even when I do use them, they seldom inform me of a specific unit, usually being content to holler "enemy tank" instead of telling me what kind of tank.