semiconductor

The problem is that there are no games similar to Arma 3. ;)

Hey Igitur thanks for the very promising mod! I have a little question: what does positional/directional setting means in context of "Array definition" (when I'm creating a platoon that is)?

In my opinion, the map is the only reason to buy Apex. When I first downloaded it I only checked the other content and was disappointed - a couple of VTOLs with questionable design, a dozen of weapons with sealed barrels, a bunch retextured uniforms; the things you usualy find in a half-assed over-priced DLC. But when I finally decided to check out the new map I was astonished. I've seen people saying that Tanoa is the best map ever made by BI and I still didn't expect it to be that good. So yeah, you're basically going to pay $35 for the map. But I think it's worth it.

I agree, it doesn't make much sense for a shooter game to allow 3rd person view, at least by default. Because Washington didn't cross Delaware using third person. [^] ;)

Because thermals are poorly implemented. They aren't challenging, they aren't intresting to look through and they indeed OP in a way that they have outstanding quality and no matter how hot the environment is, people and vehicles are always contrasted with it.

Yes, they died out. Just like the sort of people who were able to search the forums before asking questions or at least give meaningful names to the threads they created. What a terrible loss for mankind.

Well, have you? ;) This daddy is either an actor in some dumb Hollywood movie about Iraq War or a moron of unbelievable proportions because the second he takes that AK he instantly transforms from civilian guy to a combatant. Trying to counter even a team of trained soldiers on active duty in a combat zone (who normally would ignore him because he is not a real threat) is practically a death wish both for him and his family as they will kill all of them (not because they're bloodthirsty psychopaths but simply to defend their own lives) without taking a second thought just because he had that AK. The last thing a civilian want in a combat zone is to became a threat to the soldiers. Last time I checked even the completely illiterate people weren't that dumb to live in a combat area. People don't live in a combat zone, they flee, usually to Germany. Moreover, pretty much any footage of urban combat from Chechnya to modern Syria or Ukraine shows an extensive use of civilian buildings most of which are damaged by artillery/tank fire. It is the combination of streets and buildings which can be used as a cover/firing positions that makes urban combat uniquely intense and unforgiving, not the fact that a certain firefight is taking place at something marked as city on a tourist map so IMO mitrail has a point.

Yeah but a significant part of this expansion is, however, indeed a bunch of hastily ported or reskinned weapons. To make it clear, I'm glad to see those weapons just like any of you here but I'm somewhat disappointed that we had to pay a full price for them. <_<

I don't see how. $30 is kinda okay price for a DLC that consists from a bunch of hastily ported or reskinned weapons and a (hopefully) decent map. Well, apparently 19999 rubles equals to $300. One would expect a really good DLC for that sort of price. ;)

...or it gives them ability to significantly reduce the cost of development therefore increasing profits. And since apparently the majority of weapons is either reskin or port I'm not really sure that BI went the way you're describing. The weapons themselves are not a bad thing, I agree. The problem is that we had to pay a full price for something that is basically a reused content from the game some of us already paid for.

Wait, what? BI didn't even bothered to make a bunch of new weapons and simply copy-pasted them from another game or retextured default ones? Now I'm really starting to regret my decision to buy Apex. Last time I checked Hind looked like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Mi-24_Desert_Rescue.jpg The thing in the screenshot is - to put it mildly - a very weird reinterpretation of a classic design. But then again, tastes differ I guess.

The rest of content is kinda-sorta okay but this... oh God, why. BI, you have to stop raping the design of a most beautiful helicopter ever made. Just. Stop. That's enough, try making something original for once. This vehicle looks like a three year olds first attempt in drawing. Even a GTA V has more reasonable Hind redesign.

Well... I don't know how to put it but this does not look... consistent, I guess? Chinese, French (wut?), a criminal organization, a police faction (double wut but I guess that it has been made to pander to Altis Life crowd), NATO - all of this put together at some tropical paradise? It just doesn't look right to me. :huh:

Well, I think it safe to say that thanks to the BI's Visual Upgrade, CUP team's operativeness and this bullet purveyor's post the issue brought up in this topic has been successfully resolved. :) http://imgur.com/a/bREgC Here are the prostprocess settings (courtesy of bullet purveyor): Oh, and you have to set overcast value to at least 60% (for Chernarus).

Since Arma 3 is about to receive a visual upgrade I thought that time has come to discuss a lighting issue that had been bothering me from the release of All In Arma Terrain pack: Mediterranean lighting, distance fog and skybox are unsuitable for European/Middle Eastern terrains, especially during the day. Here are two screenshots made under same in-game conditions (October 10, 2008, 11:00am, 25% overcast) at the same location of Chernarus using the same Takistani T-72 tank: http://imgur.com/a/bivzr Arma 2's lighting has more contrast, a bit more saturated colors and a proper Eastern European skybox. Arma 3's lighting has less contrast, dim colors, has this unpleasant light-blue film of distance fog (I believe it simulates Mediterranean humidity) and completely lacks any skybox whatsoever. Another, but closely related issue is the color of the fog: in Arma 3 it has a light blue color and while that's completely acceptable for an island in the midst of Mediterranean Sea, it must have a soft white tone at maps which represent locations in (roughly) northern hemisphere. Personally, I find the Mediterranean lighting quite immersion breaking because not only it feels out of place on many maps but also because it causes models to look plastic, "weightless", flat. The following is my subjective impression but the T-72 on the first screenshot looks like it made of steel, it feels massive and looks dirty; the same T-72 (with the exception of couple of improvements made by CUP team, of course) looks like it made of plastic, it feels light like those inflatable Russian decoys and it doesn't look dirty despite having the same texture. The same goes to the Chernarus itself: in the first screenshot, it has a proper skybox of correct shade of blue with clouds, the terrain looks like actual Eastern European terrain with colorful grass and clearly noticeable patches of soil. Notice how much more pleasant the colors and contrasts of the barn on the left are in Arma 2 compared the exactly same barn with exactly the same texture in Arma 3. The pending overhaul is in my opinion a step in a right direction but the new lighting is being made with Tanoa (a tropical archipelago) in mind therefore it is still doesn't quite cut it (at least at the time of writing): http://imgur.com/a/HphfL The first screenshot was taken with unofficial port of new lighting to CUP terrains by metalcraze. Without getting into too much detail, it's clear that the brightness, contrast and color balance is still way off even on Altis. The new old lighting could especially come handy in light of (pun intended) tremendous progress made by Community Upgrade Project that allows mission makers to port or recreate any of their favorite missions on Arma 3's engine. Not to mention that the great deal of missions created specifically for Arma 3 is set in Chernarus or other older maps and these missions could benefit from "European" lighting too. Moreover, the new lighting might be useful for desert maps like Takistan beacuse, if my memory serves me right, both Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead shared the same lighting. So, in my opinion, Arma 3 will gain massively in terms of immersion, amount of missions set in northern hemisphere and the player base shall the typical European lighting and weather conditions be added. Summary The problem: both current and upcoming lighting aren't suitable for locations in northern hemisphere / Middle East. Proposed solution (based on my limited understanding of Arma's engine possibilities): Addition of generic "European" lightning preset similar to Arma 2's one into CfgPostprocessTemplates or making it available to mission or map makers through any other means (trough "official mod" probably?); Addition of a generic "European" skybox for map makers to use in their maps; Addition of an ability to remove and/or change color of the light-blue distance fog for mission and map makers; Addition of an ability to change the color of a usual fog for mission and map makers (I believe it was possible at some point during Alpha); Unfortunately, I'm unable to create a corresponding ticket on Feedback Tracker right now due to ongoing maintenance. TL;DR: BI FIX TEH SUN IN CHERNO NAO PLOX THX

Holy shit man, thank you for posting these! It’s been my long-time dream to bring that old Arma 2 look to A3's Cherno (I even made a thread about it recently) and today it finally came true. :D Well, it seems the new update isn't that bad after all, good job BI. :) The thing that confused me at first is that I wasn’t even thought that changing an overcast value can have such drastic effects. When I first launched Arma after the update, I opened Chernarus with default settings at 25% overcast and it looked like this. No matter which settings I chose it just would not get better. Turns out it looks amazing at 65% overcast with your settings. http://imgur.com/a/2EzhV The second screenshot is probably one of the main reasons many people (including myself) are complaining about the new update.

Sadly, I have to agree - the new Instagram Filters Pack DLC visual update is indeed quite disappointing. There are several technical improvements but the end result simply doesn't even mildly resemble the world I see with my own eyes and that kinda defeats the whole purpose of these improvements. And yes, I've tried to play around with Postprocess values, all to no avail.

Same. Moreover, Eden interface actually ignores the general interface setting despite changelog stating the direct opposite.

Then I don't know what we were arguing about. ;)

Well, it seems that we're actually in agreement so either I'm missing something or you're unable the grasp the concept of suggestion. Just in case it is the former, could you please specify where exactly did I stated that solving the lighting problem should be a priority or that I demand or at least expect BI to solve it?

If I understand the inner workings of Arma's engine correctly, one don't need an unbinarized source to use certain resource in one's map. But it seems that for some reason it isn't enough to just reference an old skybox resource in new terrain's config file to get it working in Arma 3. I see, however your personal expectations, life experiences or notions of sufficiency have nothing to do with the problem we're discussing so please try to stay on topic. Thank you.

Well, yeah, maybe BI could approach lighting problem from this direction. As I stated in the first post, I'm not exactly well-versed in terms of Arma 3's inner workings so my proposal was more like a general idea rather than solid solution. Anything that helps mapmakers to finally tackle the problem will be great. :) That's exactly what got me thinking that it might be an engine's problem: why would CUP team or kju use the default skybox if they apparently had all the sources on their hands? I even tried to change skybox on Takistan myself just to see how it works and got no results (then again, I'm not a modder so I might have simply screwed up something). But however that may be, it is quite clear from the first pair of screenshots that Arma 3 uses the default skybox despite CUP's Chernarus apparently being configured to use an Arma 2's one. Please cool down a little, I'm not assigning guilt to anybody, I’m looking for the ways to solve the lighting problem. Yes, maybe they should and maybe BI could help them a bit. Yeah, it would be. And while we're on the subject, allow me to clarify again: I'm not demanding anything form BI, I'm only suggesting my idea as per BI's own invitation to do so. I know that most people don't read beyond the title but come on, the word "suggestion" constitutes like 1/4 of the thread title's length.

Probably they can but I never saw a lighting setting that even mildly resembles Arma 2's one during the entire time of Arma 3's existence. Same problem with skybox - almost every map out there uses the default one. If it were a problem of a single map then I would have contacted the author but pretty much every map uses default skybox/lighting for some reason. And since BI is already working on new lighting, maybe they could find time to implement European lighting too? No, my suggestion is to implement certain features (including those which, I believe, were already implemented by BI earlier), not fixing any particular mod. See the "Summary" section for more details. To clarify: this thread is not dedicated solely to the CUP TP lighting. The only reason I used CUP in my examples is that it allows me to use the same picture to compare lightings in Arma 2 and 3. I could have used any other map instead with the same results.

Due to 15-y.o. game engine. I'm completely agree that Arma's bullet impacts/explosions/other similar effects are outright awful. I can't stand that goddamn slow-paced "generic cloud effect that vaguely resembles an explosion of some generic ordnance" and "generic fire ballon that meant to represent a burning vehicle". Arma's visuals are bland, boring, non-immersive and simply isn't something that player would like to look at. I really hope that BI will adress this problem, at least partially, in upcoming expansion.

Arma is neither a military nor bureaucratic simulator.