vran.

I fully support penguin autonomy and sovereignty on Antarctica... ;)

If it would it could be much like the Yugoslav wars were. But you must understand that in those wars there was deeply rooted hatred behind (Serbian Chetnik revival, Croatian Ustaša restoration, Bosnian Muslim Jihadi currents, historical hatred between Kosovo Albanians and ethnic Serbs, hatred of former Communist state) which manifested in all those wars and atrocities. I think there is no such historical hate between Ukrainians and Russians except for the Ukrainian hatred of Stalin and Communism and the Russian hate of Ukrainian collaboration with Hitler and Nazism. The bad thing is that both sides seem to provoke each other with such symbolism, opening old wounds and fears. I don't think any side would really benefit from a full-scale conflict.

Well you answered the question yourself - the AI in the game is a real performance killer, but so are large maps with lots of objects on them. Add to that advanced physic simulation, dynamic weather changes, large view distance and various scripts and you bring down performance on every system. It wouldn't be really fair to compare the game to some other open world games out there which have a lot more primitive AI and such. The CPU utilization and MP performance issues were debated and it was mostly agreed that they'd have to be improved upon.

Here's Titan.im, the upcomming competitor with VBS: Larger scale than ArmA/VBS but you can already notice some heavy frame rate drops. It's never a wise idea to compare a simulation game to an arcade game because of all the things that are being calculated in a simulation game.

Actually, this forum is pretty 'open' and tolerant these days. You probably don't remember the pre Arma 3 and pre Day-Z times, these forums were a lot more strict... ;)

Numbers 6 and 8 are partially true. It's possible to kill a paradropper with a direct hit with the body of a plane. If you know the mission 'Gunship', you can easily test it out there. There is an altitude limit but I have proven in some other thread it's actually possible to get past it with some scripts. The problem is only that you're pretty much 'frozen' and can't control the vehicle anymore. OFP AI was improved a lot in mods like WW4, WGL, ECP, SLX, BINMOD and so on but still lets some things to be desired. Although I don't think there will be much more work done in that direction anymore, with a possible exception of 'Cold War Enhanced', the successor mod to Binmod, if it materializes. Here's my contribution - the max size of each side is 63 groups with 12 AIs per group, but when placing all of them in the editor you will get a 'out of memory change of code required' error. So it's not actually possible to have over 3000 AIs at the same time, but well over 2000 is possible. Don't ask about the framerate though. ;) Well and here's another - noone in the game knows how to swim. ;) Swimming was made possible with addons such as CoC diver and some mods like FFSX 2007.

We could have the illusion of many AIs but only with scripted, pre-determined behaviour patterns and spawning around the player only. Here's the crowd simulation from Hitman which doesn't take away much CPU resource: Well and here is the crowd tech from Assassin's Creed:

Dragon Rising was awful though. Felt like a more open CoD but without the action. Codemasters missed completely what made original OFP so good. I think a sollution could be more reliance on scripted AI in different situations, especially in single player part. More advanced AI is only going to eat even more CPU resources. Taking away more command options would some describe as 'dumbing down' the game. Maybe better voice command integration is the future of things. Question is just how AI would recognize voice commands. The command system from Full Spectrum Warrior was pretty good and efficient:

To atleast another five years of this great, visionary, open-ended engine that allows for so much creative freedom and possibilities... ;)

Well that's modern gaming for you, pretty but boring and generic games designed for the broadest audience. :p The times when games still had something 'more' going for them are over:

I have a similar PC to yours and I feel no wish to upgrade just for Arma 3. But if you want better pefromance here are some options: 1. OC your CPU. A faster CPU will yield better results. 2. OC your RAM. Faster RAM is better. 3. Trade in your CPU and get a better one (e.g. i7 4790K). Changing your GPU will do nothing unless you're playing the game in some very high resolutions.

Burning people like in some OFP mods would be nice too: The 'king of gore' remains the good old Soldier of Fortune though ;)

To me, these statistic show more that the majority of the player base rather plays the 'other' game modes than the traditional military themed ones. :p Is the dedicated, realistic and team-based ArmA co-op experience an endangered species? I don't know, but I do think the franchise would be a good template for some 'more serious life sim'. Here is some interesting A2 Island Life footage: Of course the experience is completely dependant on the players themselves and this holds true to all other game modes.

Yeah this is bad. But to be honest I think most PC developers haven't yet gotten the grip on multi core development and rather develop for less but faster cores (i.e. Intel CPUs). You should see better results on AMD CPUs once developers start making better use of multiple cores.

@lesscubes: don't forget the Cuban missile crisis in '62 when the world was a step away from obliterating itself. :p Here's how the missile site looked like: http://www.rb-29.net/html/77ColdWarStory/cwsscans/Fig.8SA2SITE.jpg (104 kB) Turned out that reason prevailed and it didn't happen.

Why stop at blood and gore in combat though? If we want 'authentic war sim' then there must also be beheadings, rapes, genocides, atrocities against civilians (including childern, women and elderly) and it must all be uncensored and graphic and allow the player to do it too. All for the sake of 'authenticy', even if it would mean that the game would have been banned in several countries and gather unwanted attention of censorship bodies and the public. :p

I don't think vanilla ArmA will ever have realistic gore because, let's be honest here, it would only turn the game into a gore and sadism simulator like Soldier of Fortune was. Don't missunderstand me, SoF was a fun game, but it's obvious the majority played it because you could cut open stomachs with your knife in it. And I don't think BI want to turn ArmA into a gore sim. Most mature players of the franchise play it for the challenge, tactics and team play rather than to 'experience war' on their screens and it's not a 'war sim' anyway, but more a 'combat engagements sim'. Now there are those who wish for as authentic combat experience as possible but for that there are mods such as ACE, SLX and similar. Although I do think the franchise could touch upon some more controversial subjects. OFP had a strong anti-war message which was a bit lost in the newer ArmA games in favour of more sterile 'military simulation' that even played a bit on the patriotism (see Operation Arrowhead cover). Not to say that war was portayed as positive or even glorified, but it also didn't really explore any more sensitive subjects.

There's civilian packs such as Dr. Pepper's civilians ( v1.0, v1.0 women, v1.1 ), Farmlands civilians ( v1.01, v2.0, v1.30 ), Philcommando civilian pack and Faceplant civilian pack. There's also several other packs with civilians like Ocean Island, Tonal/Tonal Redux (African), VTE/Jungle Fever/Unsung (Vietnam/Asian), Afghan and Arab packs and so on. As for more realistic behaviour and sounds, you'd need some scripts or mods to achieve that.

I picture ArmA 4 like this: - made after ArmA 3, released c.a. 2016/2017 (no major expansions for ArmA 3, only smaller DLCs and focus on ArmA 4) - new version of RV engine, allowing for even larger terrains, more interactive/destructible stuff, higher altitudes, simulation of fluids and wind, advanced physics model in general, improved A.I. suitable for close quarters and jungle combat and driving of vehicles ( ;) ), better utilization of multi-threading and modern day GPUs - Pacific/South East Asian setting, lots of tropical islands, beaches, palms, exotic vegetation, dense jungles, wild life, civilians, cities (one of them a big, modern one), traffic, better civilian life simulation in general (cars, choppers, planes, boats, trucks, bikes, cops, fireworkers, criminals, ect.) - more emphasis on naval warfare, the water element to come to bigger expression - continuation of the futuristic yet believable setting, a conflict revolving around a near future expansionist/defensive battle between the involved fractions (e.g. NATO, PLA, Rebel Army, Civilians, Terror Militia), more creative freedom - improved 3D editor and basic editing tools available to public, more options, more features, more possibilities Something along those lines. :)

Vietcong for sure. Other Nam themed shooters don't even come close to matching it's atmosphere, mission diversity, characters, feel of guns, soundtrack, ect. It was also one of the first shooters to successfully render jungle environments, pre-dating the likes of Far Cry. Unfortunately the sequel was not very good due to performance issues and uninspired mission design although it still had a decent multi-player part.

Well that's the difference between a simulation game and a 'regular' arcade/action game. :p The average action game focuses more on graphics and spectacle while being easy to get into whereas a simulation game is more demanding of the player and focusing more on things that don't matter that much in your average action game such as advanced A.I., detailed physical simulation that affects gameplay (not just 'eye candy' visual effects like in action games with no real purpose other than visual stimulation), massive world rendering, terrain deformations, ect. It's also why simulation games tend to be very heavy on the CPU which is not a priority on the modern console systems or otherwise (PS3's Cell was the exception here but it was more an early hybrid CPU + graphics co-processor in one, a sort of predecessor of the modern 'APU'). And looking how the modern game industry revolves more on console-centric games or games built for the largest possible audience, it's expected that the majority of 'mainstream' games don't put much emphasis on these things or under-utilizes them. It's also why there is a missconception that advanced games such as ArmA or DCS should perform the same as your average action game does. So yes, these games may not make the best usage of multi-threaded processing or have some archaic code left in their base engine, it is still reasonable to expect a simulation game to perform worse than your average action game due to all the things it is doing and processing in real-time.

How about some 80s metal? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecv0BVaWqBM

Yes, CoD 1. The Volga river scene was very atmospheric but then they started repeating the same thing over again untill Modern Warfare aka CoD 4 which changed the setting to modern times and now with Advanced Warfare to future times. But the fundamental gameplay mechanics remain practically the same.

Well I tried out the free Steam MP version, the first CoD I tried since CoD 4. Opinion is - it's a solid console deathmatch shooter but done many times now. The novel thing seems to be the futuristic stuff which actually fits quite well in this franchise. The best CoD for me remains the original one which, despite being overrated and short, was a very atmospheric experience. Later on they focused more on the consoles by adding auto health regen, aim assist, low FOV and such which turned me off from this franchise.

So the project is actually related to Bohemia Interactive/Simulations and the people who founded it, nice. :)