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I believe it's the count of new users who have named you when creating their account on the forums. As in, you introduced or "referred" them to the forums.

Yes, I was being super-subtle and not mentioning the island that we rarely mention. After some fairly rough work on Google Maps and in the Gimp, I came up with this: The scaling is done from the 5km mark on the Original Image and the scale marker from GMaps and I was fairly careful about it. The result shows that Altis is very close to 75% of the size of a very similar island. Which leads to it being 56% of the land mass. And, no surprise, 270 is very close to 56% of 476. It'll be interesting for anyone trying to use real GPS co-ordinates in-game (particularly people doing ultra-accurate checks of the solar and lunar cycles, and starmap).

Huh. I just checked the land area of a very similar island (its name rhymes with "Shlemnos"). According to Wikipedia and WolframAlpha, the land area of that island is 476 square km.

JgBtl292: You can enter/toggle "Slow" mode in ALL directions. You don't need to set up any custom keybinds. The default keybinds are W+S and S+W. That is, hold W to move forward and tap S while still holding W. You will have toggled "slow walk". Now, even without capslock (or whatever you've bound slow-forward to), you will move slowly with any of W, A, S, or D. Do the same (W+S) to toggle back to "jog".

That's good to know. My mental model of 3D rendering is certainly closer to the circa-1992 procedure. It's an effort for me to remember that the process has evolved since then, and that GPUs aren't just crunching matrices faster than before :) I'm not too concerned though. My point was mostly in response to the focus (unintentional pun, truly) people seem to have on stereoscopy being the only thing relevant to 3D rendering. Rapid response to small POV changes from head movements and the focal distance of each eye are much more relevant. The first is addressed by the Rift very well. The second is a very difficult technical problem to overcome (which is why no-one's done it, I guess).

Think of the channel selection as the one you're Transmitting in. You're always Receiving in all channels (as long as you're in the Side of people transmitting in Side, the Group of people transmitting in Group, near people transmitting in Direct, etc).

With any distance over ~12m, stereoscopy accomplishes very little. That's one of the reasons 3D TVs suck so badly. The greatest immersive effect is from changes in perspective from small movements of the head. I'd be quite confident that stereoscopic rendering of the player and weapon (in 1st person) but single-rendering of the environment would accomplish 80%+ of the results required, with a minimal impact on rendering load. As for seeing the controls, with a gaming mouse and keyboard - you can do without looking at the keyboard ever in game. My G600 and G510 combined do the job admirably - I never need to lift my hands from either. I know not everyone has gaming mice and keyboards, but if you're in the market for a Rift (or equivalent face-hugging display) you're more likely to be one who does go for the peripherals that allow you to use it properly.

As long as you realise that logic cuts both ways: Due to the your failure of the server host for putting a simple marker on to learn to recognise your allies if I shoot a friendly you get kicked and banned because I'm not sure they won't accept that I say tough cookies. If I don't know you choose not to put the effort in then it's not my your problem.

Didn't zoom in? What video were you watching? The camera bumps off rocks. Two clicks - one to Youtube, one to the thread he's linked to - will take you to the Outerra forums, where this video was originally posted. The static screens in there with vehicle models give a good idea of the scale. No-one's saying "Yo BIS, Outerra's in ur base killin ur game engine". Nor criticizing BIS for not using Outerra. I think the post just demonstrates that fractal terrain geometry & good texturing: can be rendered real-time, and looks exquisitely good. It's something BIS everyone making a game engine that renders outdoors ought to aspire to, even if they rightly choose never to achieve it (there are better places to spend calculations before we get to terrain that finessed). I would love to play Arma on that terrain. I know I won't for a very long time. I'm ok with that, but it won't stop me dreaming.

The point of Steam is that you can move the account from one PC to another seamlessly (as long as you don't mind re-downloading or otherwise moving the data files). Go for it.

Huh, Arma27 preview video. Seriously, that's gorgeous. Not sure my 660Ti will handle it...

Edit: see replies above.

Keep a straight face, and make eye contact. But not too much eye contact - that'll make them suspicious. And if you can include some details it will be more credible. But don't go overboard! That's a dead giveaway. (hur hur hur) Seriously though, the default key for Prone (lying down) is "Z". Is that what you mean?

My issue is with this line from the OP. Buddy (actually, all of you who are crying because they have some sense of entitlement - you know who you are) it's not just an Alpha, it's a FREE Alpha. If you chose to pay for it, rather than suck it up and wait for a few days to try it for free (there's a thread full of people trying to hand out their Lite invitations), then YOU CHOSE to take the risk. If these posts were along the lines of "I had higher hopes for Arma 3, and am disappointed that it isn't what I expected. I hope it improves. If it does not, I will choose not to buy it" then I would have no problem. To say (and I paraphrase) "Wah. BI owes me" doesn't make sympathetic in the least.

I don't agree. Frankly, I don't care what my FPS is if the game feels smooth and playable. If the game running at 1 FPS somehow did the job, was fun and not distracting, and my machine could get 2 FPS, then hooray! I checked my playability against video settings and settled on those which maximised the quality but felt smooth and playable. Only then, and only out of curiosity, did I bother turning on FRAPS to get some numbers. Turns out that 20 FPS is all I care about. I can just get it (this pc) with everything on Ultra, PP Disabled, AA Disabled (I see little benefit on 2560x1440) and HDR on Normal, view distances 3500/1800. With PP set up to Low, I managed to get it down to 10 FPS with ~20 AI in combat, plus me firing from Little Bird into water with island and trees in background. I shouldn't have done it, because it looked gorgeous and now I know what I'm missing :p

I approve of the above post a whole lot. Top work.

After grenading myself 4 times (it was lucky the last two were smokes) in the Infantry showcase in 8 minutes, I rebound my keys: Ctrl+G : Grenade Ctrl+R : Change grenade type. Problem? Solved.

Hmm. I turned up everything to Ultra, and I'm actually pleased by what I saw. It seems there is a sort of 'detail' overlay (quite faint, but definitely there), which makes things much nicer to look at. You can see HERE (that's at about 250m) that things are actually much better than they ever were in A2 (be sure to maximise it to 2560x1440 - it's not as good when the browser downsamples it). And HERE at a longer range (600m?). The crisper edges of the faux-random pattern makes units stand out a lot less than before. For reference, HERE it is, unscoped.

I love it. Especially that the camera is actually mounted to the right of the helmet - it's not just the other character's view rendered.

I'm not sure how this works: surely "GTA mode" is playing against AI? Anyway, if you're still struggling to see the point of ArmA (or if you're someone else reading the thread who's struggling to see the point), my two suggestions are: Do play through the Infantry showcase, at least once. If you want, you can pretty much ignore your team-mates and blast away at the enemy. It's a decent introduction to movement, cover, and combat. The mission may not be up your alley, but it does do a good job of demonstrating the basic mechanics of the game (which is why it's a showcase, I guess). Give MP another chance. As mentioned above, all MP servers are just running on normal clients right now (no dedicated server exe has been released yet), so performance will suck (which goes a long way to explaining many of the "OMG Arma is teh suXX0rz" threads around). That said, there are servers around which are quite playable. Try different mission types. The one mentioned in your post is "Wasteland", where you spawn with only a pistol. It's about the closest to GTA mode that you're going to get in ArmA. Wander around, pick up vehicles and weapons which are scattered around, and either team up (playing as BLUFOR or OPFOR) or go solo (as Independent) and blast some doods. There are some Team Deathmatch servers around with a miniscule play area around Agia Marina. It's a bit too BF3 for me to want to play it too long (frankly I think BF3 is better for that style of gameplay), but it's good if you want some non-stop shooty action while getting to grips with the controls and target recognition. There's another mode (I forget the name - maybe Blitzkrieg?), which is a sort of staggered Capture the Flag. It's good for a medium-paced game which encourages teamwork in a moderate but not artificially-limited play area. Armaholic can be a bit intimidating and confusing if you don't know what you're looking for. I haven't tried the forums lately, I guess there's a bit of an influx of new players with the Alpha release - I wonder how that community's taking it? Hopefully they've set up an "Arma for noobs" section and are giving people a bit of guidance (I expect so). Actually, that's not a ridiculous idea at all: portable mortars were implemented in ArmA2 (definitely in PMC, at least). I expect they'll make an appearance in A3 as well, so you can rest easy. And as for ways to get into the game: if the videos posted earlier in this thread are no help, you can try looking at Dslyecxi's videos (some are HERE), or watch the Arma3Official twitter feed. They've been linking to some good guides. ---------- Post added at 07:18 ---------- Previous post was at 07:14 ---------- Actually, V is "Vault". You can climb over low obstacles with it. Once you're done, you will be left standing up. Z toggles prone and X toggles crouch. Best way to work it out is to fire up the editor, double-click (you'll automagically place a Rifleman which you will play as) anywhere on land, then click Preview. You'll be alone on the island. Then go to 3rd-person view (Num-Enter) and mash the Z, X, and V keys. Shouldn't take long for it to click.

I think half the issue in this thread is the title. It implies that you (teweedo) don't understand what the crosshair is doing (I know you do, but we all know how many people actually bother reading a whole thread before replying). The other issue is that some of the replies (like mine) weren't necessarily to the OP, but are relevant to anyone reading this who has the misconception we all thought you had. There will be players new to Arma who've never had to deal with bullets coming from their gun, rather than the centre of their screen. The worry that I had was that there would be a bunch of people who'd get the 'smart' crosshair (for want of a better word) removed and replaced with a screen-centre crosshair, and then that would lead to a whole lot of "Teh aiming in arma suXX0rs" threads and youtubes as new people post 'evidence' that the Arma engine is 'broken', because all their bullets are pinging off obstacles they didn't expect them to. Of course, I see the attraction of screen-centre crosshairs. I'd be happy to see them added as an option, but would hate to see the current ones removed.

No worries Gorbachev. Like ruhtraeel said, it's called a DIY vidock, or a DIY eGPU. It's a kludge (there are cables all over my desk), but it (usually) works. The place I found most information about them (Will your laptop be capable? Which adaptor should you buy? Will your laptop work out of the box or will it need to be configured specially, and if so how? What PSU will be you need for the GPU? etc) was on the TechInferno forums. Start at THIS THREAD, and then browse the rest of that forum. nando4 on that board has a lot of experience with them, and is pretty amazingly willing to help people.

On my vanilla A2:OA install, Veteran definitely did include 3rd Person. If there was any "dumbing down", it happened in a patch between when you stopped playing vanilla A2 and when I started. Not in A3.

Just to be clear, you do realise that if this were turned off, and you only had a crosshair in the centre of the screen, it's quite possible to both: > Put the crosshair on the guy's head and have your bullet hit the rock behind instead, and > Put the crosshair on the rock to the left of the guy and have the bullet hit him in the face instead. ,right? I love that they've brought this in. The number of times I've been peeking over rubble in A2 and popped off a shot only to have it ping off the garbage in front of me is staggering. Now I can be confident that all my misses are because I suck at shooting, not because I didn't notice my gun was buried in cement. Edit: Okey doke, you ninja'd me with your post above. My only worry was that there'd be people squealing because they didn't understand the "bullet comes from the gun" concept. Yep - as long as it's optional, then I can totally understand the desire for a crosshair fixed in the centre of the screen. Gets a bit odd with headlook and aiming deadzone, but that's not insurmountable.

A laptop + desktop GPU + ExpressCard adaptor + 27" monitor + ArmA = Awesome Laptop: Lenovo X230T i7-3520M @ 2.90GHz 8GB RAM 250GB Corsair SSD + 500GB SATA Win7 x64 GPU: Asus GTX660Ti + Monitor: Dell U2711 27" @ 2560x1440 ArmA auto-detects most things at Ultra, but dropping Post-processing back to Low makes it quite playable.