CptMacMillan

I would like to see Horizon Islands going full circle. I mean, I'm not sure if the whole Horizon Islands size can be fitted into ArmA, but some of the main Islands or something like that could be added, with more ships (i.e. LNG/Passenger and Small frigates, + more and bigger subs), and maybe try to put a large urban area into the Mix (given that rendering open Sea might help FPS, which in turn might help to have larger buildings with internal rooms and such). One can dream, but at this point I've nearly seen all the stuff I wanted (Carrier Grippens, IDAP) added into the game, so throwing the idea out for whoever is reading this. Now ... off to the Contact campaign!

This is not entirely accurate. I understand this is a bit off topic, but we should be able to discuss certain elements from the current dev build before the main release, specially if there are changes and tweaks that can improve and can be implemented. Someone actually did some science on this, granted is not the same "breathing apparatus", but is practically similar to the SCBA: (Meaty stuff @6:37) I understand that the oxygen tank might not work underwater, however if the mask can be made functional it will be pretty awesome. Specially because the will be more usable stuff underwater for the player, and makes for interesting gear combos: Just my +2 cents, I really love the stuff that you guys do and all you can do with it.

So hi, former ArmA 2 free player since 2008, pretty much looking forward to the new expansion and the new assets for the vanilla game, and Livonia thus far looks and plays amazing!!! Enjoyed a lot LoW and this seems to be in a similar vain. Now, I have been working on a vanilla assets-based campaign, to make it more accessible easier to get I decided to just use data is included in the base game (all DLC and game data collected so far), upcoming assets look promising and I had a bunch of ideas that I think i can integrate with the new assets, however I do have a couple of questions in regards to the new content (not sure if this a request at this point) : 1. Will there be more custom animations such as an NPC chocking or similar effects to someone not wearing CBRN? 2. Will there be additional modules/functions to use with the CBRN gear? I know these questions might convey spoilers, however I was thinking about a module that can be used with the CBRN gear, lets say ... an area based triggered, attached to a "chocking animation" that might be triggered if the player is not using CBRN gear when he gets withing the area. Now, I'm not that sure about how hard could that function be integrated with the DLC release so soon to be released, but it would be really useful if such "modules" could be created so we can have a more extended use of the CBRN gear. My 2 cents, looking forward to the new content to be released, but yeah it would be pretty cool to have such modules available to use.

I usually play mostly Vanilla for Invade and Annex game modes and King of the Hill, Most of the servers I've seen full are the King of the Hill (which started just with RHS, but they have been around for a couple of years I think or some averaging 100 players almost all the time, running vanilla ArmA of course). I own all the official DLC but I try not to play it with mods, for one ArmA 3 is pretty heavy (storage space wise) and those mods are not that light (RHS is like 20 GB), a lot of people might have 150 to 200 GB SSD drives, and is not usually just ArmA stuff. I'm also making some missions that use only vanilla, I think most people don't go through all the process to run a mission with mods (sure, ArmA launcher almost does this automatically but most don't have the patience and the HDD space to run more stuff). I think a lot of people still play vanilla, Altis live servers are popular but usually KoH are about the same, that's what I usually see on the game server browser anyways.

Purchased Apex the other day, Invade and Annex really did get cool overhauls. (BTW nothing is scripted, was a public server invade and Annex map)

No mods, official Jets DLC.

Question a bit OT. Is there a system set up (regardless of price), that can run everything in Ultra at 1080p, and object distance+view distance @10000?

Is not about about what is logically correct when argument 1 is intermediately counter by "you're wrong and therefore your logic is not right". Is a matter of opinion, opinion A vs opinion B, the sweet irony of it is that when opinion A is criticized while opinion A is indeed a criticism, opinion A on itself doesn't hold up to be a factual statement, which is what this whole "buildings devoted of life" is trying to be. I think everyone would like to see interiors, but is it really necessary? or in fact does it make the game less complete? Of course not. ArmA III turns out to be the most stable release of the series (people who played ArmA II 1.0 will know what I'm talking about) and thus far the assets tent to be the more balanced in the series given the engine in which it is working (granted, they are not complete but ArmA itself was delayed, and then it's beta and full release were provided in 3 different states at 3 different prices, Alpha for 20 USD, Beta for 40 USD, and final release for 60 USD). The problem relays on perspective, you cannot expect someone like Sony, Microsoft, EA or Activision going for something with the same scope of ArmA, but people tent to treat the game in the same way of an ordinary FPS for consoles, which is pretty childish on itself. Secondly ArmA and OFP has always being WIP, given all player requests and what people expected to see after they played DayZ and ArmA II OA people just tent to loose the conception of what the series is all about: authentic warfare simulation (or a proxy of it, since the actual thing that is given to the real military is the virtual Reality Engine, which is the closest approximation to real warfare). CQC is something people wanted to have, and is now given now that the freedom of getting into any building has been given. But now people also want furniture ... because it looks pretty? the smallest round in the game can penetrate ordinary wood, so it serves nothing to the gameplay or realism level, the engine itself and the objects that are in it are already overloaded (and IMO pretty well optimized, given the set ups in which I've seen it work), and for a mission designer it serves no purpose because the AI would get stuck on it, the scale of some battles would have to be reduced because of more crap thrown to the engine that increases the game load. My opinion is my opinion, but people who have a different opinion will simply shot down the logic behind such opinion for the mere fact of ignoring these basis, in favour of diminish the game for not giving them what they want, which in itself is based on what FPS players on consoles want. And that pretty much tells a lot of what this thread is all about, a mere request and dismissal of the progress of the game based on ... thin air. It would make sense once CQC on ArmA is perfected, but given the state in which it actually is ... is more important to focus on actually more important issues.

And people still condemned the A3 development progress as "beta" or half "asset" for not having ... furniture? That's pathetic.

Bad Benson ... you clearly have no idea how the Real Virtuality Engine works; is not like Frosbite or Source or the Cry engine. So do yourself a favour and and play the game, figure out how it actually works, check out the tools and then maybe ... you can work on the furniture yourself!

I just happen to be a 3D modeller myself, and what Bad Benson tells is just wrong, let me elaborate why: 1. So interior modelling, how many objects, what are the proprieties of these objects, their states: if say ... a tank strikes the house, the house falls, what happens to the furniture, get smashed, the you will have to work not in 1 set of meshes, but two. Aside that animation for those meshes, also their textures, more game data that needs to be mounted in the ram, more processor usage as it needs to visualize not only meshes, but textures and also all the engine proprieties like lighting, weather, post processing effects... the more complex a mesh is, the more demanding is for the engine to process (part of the performance drops in ArmA games is due to the pre-load data that goes into each object, whereas is an AI, a player, a static object, it is a value added to the game matrix that handles all these calculations, ergo it creates both loads on the processor and GFX). 2. Resources: normally a dev team for a triple A game like say ... GTA V is composed by maybe around 40 to 60 modellers(who create the meshes, map the textures, animate the objects, etc...). BIS is not as big as 4 Rockstar studios(San Diego, North, and the UK branches) and my estimate is around 30-40 modellers (at best, and this number in itself is an exageration), so you have a team of 40 people to make meshes for objects, vehicles, weapons, water masses, clouds, textures, mappings, animations, etc ... This group of people would need to create several LODs for each object, since each mesh for different graphical settings means 1 mesh per graphical settings, you will find at least 7 basic meshes, not to mention distance to them, and so on and so forth. Integrating furniture would mean a creation of 3D objects that has all these characteristics. 3. Performance: so you know that a new model means adding all this data to the Processor and the GPU to be processed, imagine adding 5-6 meshes for each house, it will increase the amount of polygons, more textures, more animation, more game data to be loaded to these two, and ArmA III isn't primarily designed for higher end machines, there are also caps and benchmarks they have to reach in order to offer a playable experience for people with lower end PCs. You can make the test yourself, take some of actual furniture that the game editor has and populate a map with them, just create a house with a basic set up with these meshes, then ctrl+c -> ctrl+v in any "house", considering that each town in ArmA has around 40-50 buildings(estimation), add all these objects in a town, enter the town and run benchmarks to actually attest how much performance you lose, even if it is the same object multiplied several times you will find a pretty nasty experience as the game will drop it's frames in favour to load these objects. From every logical standpoint (specially if you see it as a game planner) you will find that is not worth the effort, the game itself has to deal with more urgent matters (Complementing the weapons-vehicles catalogues would be the first thing, then making all these objects AI usable and add their respective proprieties to them), the team also has hands full in the campaign and additional content that might be planned and developed in the following weeks. It is pretty stupid to give priorities to such trivial objects, while from a planner standpoint you could use such resources to introduce new vehicles, weapons and modules that would be better welcome for the community. So common sense people, the game is modifiable for a reason, if you want to waste a team's effort into making such a thing, you are free to do it on your own, the devs provided all the tools already, and if it is that easy to implement, why don't you do it yourselves? BIS has more pressing matters, this BS is just stupid.

HD 7850 for me and I got the glitch in the update before the MP hot fix. Drivers are updated and the integrity of local files is correct, so this time around it might be an issue with either the mesh or the texture tiles. I should also add that this glitch only occurs (for me) when you zoom-in the fuselage of the plane, first person view is not affected, only the textures in the fuselage of the plane once it's zoomed in.

Question, is it possible for FIA to fight with AAF as both independents? I mean ... it was easy in ArmA 2 days with Cherno/US Guerillas/Russia ||US/BAF - guerillas/PMC - Taki Army. But I tried in the editor and they won't fight each other, given the backgrounds I think they should be sided in some way to make them both allies with each other and enemies with each other. I honestly quite like AAF, and I like the ability to play against FIA, in the mission I'm working on having both of them fighting is quite fitting. Then again ... no idea how canon works and how the story between the two goes, so I'm kinda ... blind in that regard. I see AAF as bluefor myself, but given what I gather from them I think they should both be independent, which arouses a bunch of problems.

I honestly would be impress (if not AMAZED)if they manage to put the PAF-KA and the "counterpart" F-35A, although TBH those are fighters and the whole idea is to have jets as multi-role towards CAS roles. One thing that would blow me away would be the Grippen, not quite sure if CSAT can get-develop a facsimile, but it would be a beast indeed for NATO, thinking and coming up with a fixed wing that makes those roles in 2039 is hard to predict for the OPFOR, PAF-KA seems a bit too much, maybe a J-17 could fill that role. Still, if they put the PAF-KA BI would get ALL my money, it sucks that all logic indicates that it wont be due to it's characteristics. (how people compare it to the F-35, their role and capabilities are WAAAYYY different, a match for it would be an F-22, and even that would struggle, no idea how a PAF-KA would be a CAS and would operate in such scenario, this is not Battlefield, at least here the bother to make some research about actual plane roles and what fits into what, hence the lack of CAS fighters, is just .... logical, future multi-role fighters are not designed for CAS, only multirole missions, that's all, people should get the scope of things sometimes, geez).

Okay, after reading through the thread (and all the non nonsensical/sensical stuff that goes with with) I think there are two sides of the coin. For one, I should remind people that this is not chernarus, neither takistan, ergo things like the Su-35/A-10/C-130 will be decommissioned by 203X, however it is planned that the F-35A would take over the chair of Air Support roles that the A-10 lefts behind, so I find it odd to have it out of the list. Another reason while I mention Chernarus and Takistan is because of the CAS purposes that each aircraft was build to do, i.e. something like an A-10 in the future is non-viable due to more advanced AA systems, it just can't get close enough without being engaged by Titan or RPG-42 missiles, same for the Su-25's that were introduced mostly due to replicate the Georgian war of 2008. Landmass of the map would certainly be not enough for semi-realistic engagements between ... say F-22 and Su-35MBs, so the map is big, but not big enough for that kind of thing, however mid range mutirole fighters (Rafale/Grippen and F-35) are suitable for that kind of terrain due to their speeds and roles, which makes me think that is an odd decision by BI to remove the F-35A from the list, is an ... odd decision. However what people forget the most is the new helicopter range, and ... voilà those things called helicopters, they are suitable for landmass, manoeuvrable enough and suited for that kind of land size and terrain, there is not point in having fighters when you have the new Hind and the Blackfoot already covering 7+ miles of terrain. I'm a bit baffled by the lack of the F-35A TBH (having an opfor counterpart), however I do get where they are coming from, and TBH I find little purpose with what people is purposing here (F-22/PAF-KA/Eurofighters) which are designed for battles of much much larger scale, and even the SU-34 demonstrated how odd CAS work in such an overpowered plane in ArmA 2. I had dogfights between SU-25s and A-10s, but that's the closest to an enjoyable dogfight, and even then I was using Gatling gun, so 70 years of advance were reduce to fighting like 1944, maybe an F-35A vs Opfor plane might work in such scheme, but other planes just .... doesn't. +2cents, Bohemia please do try to incorporate the F-35A again, it was a balanced framework for bluefor/opfor assets(or it seems that way).

Well, I was wondering how oxygen will work for other things outside ... underwater missions. This comes from a bit of research, and one of the things I noticed was the lack of fighters on ArmA III builds; Now one of the things I see in IRL fighters and jets is the usage of oxygen masks and pressurized suits, same for HALO jump operations, this makes me wonder about the usage of such mechanic in the final builds of the game, I personally would like to see such a thing happen, however while most of the things I expected from the game are being introduce after each build, I still wonder if a pressurized suits for bot fighter jets and HALO jump operations. Any thoughts about this from the devs, or maybe the community perhaps?

A-10, Su-25, Su-34 and F-35 pilots have to use pressurized suits and oxygen masks, a different gear from UH-60/Apache/Mi-28 gear (which use helmets and comms gear with standard flying suits). I do bring this up because the F-35 will make an appearance and it's fly dynamics are completely different from the ones of a standard chopper, I've seen scuba diving showcases and for underwater operations there is the usage of neoprene suits with breather gear, so I do wonder of the application of such things will be parallel with jet flight gear (pressurized suit with breather/oxygen supply).

So, ArmA III. First off I should mention that I started playing ArmA games back in 2011, with the release of ArmA II Free and the amazing flexibility of the game I became quite attached to it, so much that I joined a tactical realism unit, experience with previous games (Operation Flashpoint to be precise) got me quite disappointed, however ArmA II's simplicity and design make it a flexible/easier and more entertaining way of playing OFP. As such, most of my experience comes from playing ArmA II 2011's stages of development, good hours went into it from playing the campaign, to multi-player, to editing and scripting. Now, most of my gripes with ArmA II were the same gripes everyone else had, clunky controls, dodgy gameplay, awkward design and bugs, not to mention the lack of a few things like proper physics and an actual ragdoll-like engine, the way the game was designed by BI was pretty damn confusing, even the tutorials weren't clear enough in a few things, and other components components lacked tweaking, not to mention the performance, which was atrocious. Now, finally having the chance of playing ArmA III (on it's 0.54 build, lite) makes me think that this game will make me sink way more time than before, and more time than any other game I've played. There are amazing things; the controls are sharp, realistic and intuitive, so is the movement and the overall feel of the game but is not as arcade as to think of an FPS, rag-doll physics are great on a game like this, so is the new item carrying system, new edition tools, game GUI is better than ever, so is the performance considering the scale and the quality of the game, even the AI is way better, is more organic and reacts better, is also more tactical, is still an Alpha and there are so many cool things about it, more flexibility in the edition (which hasn't introduce JAVA yet, that might come in the future, or might adopt a similar Object Orientated Programming scheme, which I don't mind), new graphics engine makes the game feel more sharp, but more realistic, diving is great, so is flying and while the driving model could use some tweaking is still great as it is. ArmA III exceeds my expectation from the series, and from a PC game even. Having owned ArmA II and OA makes me think that I've been playing the best games for PC in the last few years, and I feel that ArmA III might very well be one of the best games of 2013, the way the game is design, the way the game is structured, how it plays, how it runs, how it reacts to the player, every aspect of it has been taking care of, sure it can do with more work, however as it is, and on it's current shape it's shaping to become a really great experience for PC, I can't wait to see the full Altis, and everything that the games will be offering in the upcoming months. I'm pretty exited about this game, and I'm just waiting for the 25th so I can finally purchase the full Alpha and start messing with Chernarus and Takistan, worthy of revisiting with the new engine.

Question, are they going to model the watermass between Lemnos and Stratis? Also, I can see a huge potential for air combat being modeled/design within that engine for those spaces, however BI tent to model out of realistic deployable units, which means that no Fighters will be modelled, but rather multi-purpose aircraft or portable aircraft for ground assist and mobile deployment (as in ArmA II's Ru and Taki factions had Su-25s as support aircrafts, US had A-10 and Av-8s, only higer capacity bomber was the Su-34). I expect to see about the same for ArmA II, I don't think they will be any Su-35s or F-22s, there is no space for it, but seeing maybe a Gripen or a Rafale in the game would make for good multi-purpose air combats (I'm not sure the Rafale would be it but the Gripen seems like a good candidate for BI interactive, it fits the design and tone of the game, it fits it's place on the theme set for the game), a dogfight between a Gripen and a F-35 could be a good/realistic encounter if OPFOR would be included which such a plane, which seems like the only thing offor would use(Takis had the L-39, so why not?)

So yeah, long time ArmA II user here, and here is the thing... >CPU: i3 2120 ->Getting either a i5 2500k or i5 35XX equivalent (in a month or so) >GPU: (HD5570) -> Getting either a HD6950 or EVGA GTX 560ti (in a few days). >8 BG RAM 1333 running on Win 7 pro >1TB 7200prm HDD I know by a fact that I can't play all in ultra at 1080p, maybe on high fiddling with it (viewdistance, HDR, The new AA settings that seem to be heritage from ArmA II's AA settings). Having experience by tweaking ArmA II myself I have found that stuff like Takistan and empty maps do tent to run well, even with grass and a few settings in low end cards, HOWEVER I've been using the i3 2120, which AFAIK is one of the most eficient low range gamming processors due to it's raw power and dual core architecture that in most cases beat stuff like the AMD 4 core 955BE gaming wise, but now ArmA seem to utilize 4 cores more efficiently, so it seems that the low i3 might not be as good as it was with ArmA III. I've been wondering what the i3 with a 560ti would do running at 1080p, I know it won't do ultra, or high AA or 2500+ viewdistances, however I wish to know if it would do well on reasonable high settings, at 4xAA, 2500 view distance, postprocessing or whatever effects are in effect at medium. I want to see if I can stretch this i3 to run it at 25 to 35 fps at 1080 with the 560ti, doesn't seem that impossible given the settings but I would like to hear from people who have the beta already and are playing the game right now. (haven't bought the GFX or the game itself because I expend all my paycheck on a 1080p samsung TV to ... this and Watch_Dogs)

I'm pretty sure you guys at BI have created guidelines for most of the assets and elements that will be included into the game, I'm also pretty sure that most of the stuff mentioned here wont make it until the final release due to inconsistencies with the design of the game, and the Engine's complexity. But, being open to suggestions do arise a window to some assets/features to be implemented, and since the solider weight/load parameter has been modelled for ArmA III, as well as different suits and gear set-ups I would like to suggest to include a HALO jump gear (mask, parachute/emergency parachute, oxygen tank, feeding lines, altimeter, etc... it can be found of Wikipedia but first posts don't allow hot-linking, anti-spam mechanisms I'm guessing). Having a HALO jump script and parameters for it seem like a good set up to include these assets, I'm not sure if you guys let some room for assets modelling, but it would be a nice addition to the game. Besides, I'm pretty sure that one of the campaign designers(or the community itself) could create a good HALO jump based mission, with gear/set up parameters that are more realistic and of course making the most of the changeable suits/setups for the kind of infiltration missions that HALO jumps usually involves.