timmo1982

Just a thought- In order to give achieve both smoothness and get rid of jumpiness, could you make the distance the camera moves a function of the zoom level? I.e. zoomed out, the camera moves 10m a time, zoomed in it moves 1m a time?

I think a lot of people are failing to take into account the effect that atmosphere has on airspeed and ground speed. The atmosphere close to the ground is THICK and hence you will not be able to achieve anywhere near the aircraft's top speed at a couple of thousand feet- The top speed for an aircraft, especially a jet, are achieved at much higher altitudes where the atmosphere is thinner and drag is less. In the case of the CR42 above, the top speed is achieved at 20 000 feet! True, the L-159 has a max speed of 936 km/h (505 knots, 581 mph) at sea level in a clean config but that would at least be a bit slower loaded up. Furthermore, turning an aircraft at high G consumes a LOT of energy, hence the saying 'turn and burn'- throttling up after turning is needed to recover energy/speed lost in a high G turn and there are G limits when carrying a combat load too.

Not really...a mortar round is still at the mercy of the wind so even if your coordinates were perfect and the initial trajectory was calculated and set precisely, there is no easy way to maintain an exact flight path with a 'dumb' munition. My room mate was watching over my shoulder and asked why they weren't hitting....I revelled in the fact that ARMA wasn't laying them down exactly where I wanted them to be. That's real life somewhat.

Yeah but you can't even roast marshmallows on the fire, what the heck BIS? Call this a simulator?! Of course this will be left to mods when it should just be in the game....:o I refuse to play this game until this feature is implemented !!11!!1!!

I think there could be a bit more tail rotor authority....but remembering that as airspeed increases, the 'weather vaning' effect of the body also reduces tail rotor effectiveness so, as noted, turns are mostly made with left right cyclic and supported with the torque pedals. Perhaps the OP could change his technique? i.e. flying circular orbits around the target to keep guns on rather than trying to fly sideways....that has the added benefit of being a moving target and having more forward speed to get out of an area faster if stuff begins to turn nasty.

How would you NOT know this? You either bought the game legitimately or you didn't....which is it?

Yeah, that part is pretty poor to be honest....there aren't too many clues on how to actually use the UAV. I ran out of time here- I can get the UAV up in the sky and navigate around, but dammed if I've found the spotters with it... You need to link the UAV to the controller which from memory is from one of the radio menus? (0-0-?)....sorry, I don't have the game in front of me.

What is this 'listening' you talk of? It's far easier to not listen and then complain....

It certainly would be handy if the author explained what CTI is?!

Yep, I'd like to add my thanks too- I haven't had time to complete the whole chapter yet, but what I have played has been really well done IMO. Definitely a step up in quality.

...Turret I can understand as they are usually hydraulically powered.

1) Even if any part of the rifle could not clip the terrain or objects, you would still have a problem hitting the enemy in the original situation you have shown- You simply wouldn't be able to align your eye and the scope (as illustrated in deadfasts picture). So it's really a bit moot in this case and caused not by a limitation in the engine, but a limitation in where you have positioned your body to fire. It's a crappy firing position- the rifle needs to be pointed at the enemy, the scope is higher therefore your head needs to be higher. This means that on a ridge lying prone, with your eye at the scope and the weapon in your shoulder, your torso needs to be more or less aligned with the rifle as well....which means cresting the ridge to point down at the enemy. For the situation with the rocks, that's fair, but as has been mentioned a few times, you soon get a better appreciation about where your muzzle is in relation to objects and/or the scope....just think scope position + a bit more rather than relying on the assumption that if your scope is clear your muzzle is too. 2)....are you simply trolling with that reference to 'bendy' guns?

All I want is sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.....is that too much to ask?

With single core, yes. With multi-core its a bit more complex- There is extra processor overheard in actually farming out the work to the different cores at the start of the pipe and extra processor overhead and potential delay trying to put things all back together at the end of pipe(s). An analogy might be sending 4 trucks through town all containing a piece of a puzzle- You can only finish the puzzle when all 4 trucks arrive at the destination. If you send all 4 trucks one way (i.e. load up one core), you are almost guaranteed that they will reach their destination at the same time. If you send them different ways (multicore) then 3 might arrive a lot more quickly but you can't finish the puzzle until the 4th truck arrives with the final piece- There are some aspects/groupings of tasks in a sim/game for which it makes far more sense to throw them all down the same pipe.

Nothing to do with the engine, I would say its not (yet) having spent time on capturing a specific animation for that task. You can't do everything when developing something.

Not to mention being able to carry 5 RPGs, a few hundred rounds of ammo, a grenade, 4 mines a pistol and ammo while doing it....all day. What I dislike about BF3 is a sniper can almost have the same CQ ability with a long heavy rifle as a someone carrying a bullpup or small SMG. It's like Look-shoot to get a one shot kill in a split second. Anyway, I digress.

- There is nothing 'defunct' about stencil shadows, they require less rendering grunt and are fine depending on what you want to achieve. It's simply 'horses for courses' and rationalising where the rendering 'budget' is spent.

A tutorial on how to spell check your post before submitting it would also be good. The same 'running around like a headless chicken' that the OP criticises others for is apparent in his posted text.

Yes because it's a light source just like the sun is- One of the advances in Arma3 is that many more light sources can be rendered- You are seeing the reflection of the light source, not the chemlight geometry/model as such. Specular highlights are determined by light sources not other geometry in the environment (in this type of engine). The strength of a 'reflection' is a function of light source strength, material parameters and size of the area reflecting (i.e. a flat surface will have a large area but only a small angle where light is reflected, a curved area will have a small region but a larger range of angles due to its shape)- I suspect the issue here is because the 'lens' on the scopes is actually flat (with a bump map applied to give the appearance of a curved surface.

I would suggest it's this: As opposed to this: It's simply a function of using a 'glass' material (i.e. high spectral value + an environment map....similar to the perspex on the little bird) which shines brightly at certain angles and overlays an approximation of a reflection. The scope glass doesn't have any idea it's a scope, let alone have 'knowledge' of what's around it such as a head (i.e. the environment map isn't a true reflection- reflections are computationally VERY demanding).

? I don't see that?

Just to throw something else in the mix, will CAS still be a piloted aircraft in 2035? I mean, a smaller aircraft able to sustain higher G without a pilot while also removing a pilot from pretty harrowing environments is on the cards for other aircraft 'in the future'. Is it possible that a more manoeuvrable version of a current drone be used given the inevitable advances in telemetry/communication and remote viewing (i.e. oculus type headset for the operator to overcome traditional limitations of piloting such as lack of depth perception) ?

When you start thinking really in depth about the problem though, it becomes vastly more complex and you realise that they do, indeed, need to think for themselves- Simplifying AI thinking by treating them as a squad entity makes sense on the surface but I don't think that can be applied to the actual scenario they face (unless of course no-one is looking at them). Say, for example, a squad needs to move across a field. In this simple case the simplified 'squad think' works fine....but what happens when one soldier in the squad encounters a tree: He cannot just walk through it in order to maintain the simplified/unified movement of the squad, therefore that soldier, every soldier, needs to think for himself to avoid the object. If a Squad encounters an enemy squad: The whole squad can either target one soldier of the enemy squad or each solider can target another soldier in the enemy squad. If it's the former, then it's entirely possible that only one soldier in the squad can see/be seen by the whole of the other squad (i.e. Dumb AI). If it s the latter each solider needs to think for himself: Can I see the target? Can the target see me? Do I need to move so I can see the target or move so the target cannot see me? If I need to move, how do I move without exposing myself and while avoiding the (many) objects. These problems increase exponentially at the larger ranges of conflict that ARMA is known for. It's a bit like a centipede- A squad (centipede) can't walk without all the legs working correctly.

hmm at a guess it's not reading the negative latitude value so thinks you are in the Northern Hemisphere- Does it require a negative sign or a 'S' (south)

What's the logic with using hexagons as the base pixel shape as opposed to just 'natural' curves? It it supposed to confuse digital sensors or something?