RedTiger

If you're responding to me, I don't think you're understanding my point. You're bringing up specifics that I didn't get into. Please read my posts, then read them again for comprehension. ;)

We can accurately represent a weapon system or an aircraft because we have hard, quantifiable data. As soon as you start trying to simulate the human element, it becomes subjective and I start to question it. As soon as the human element starts to intefere with the game play, I lose interest because it is subjective. There are probably no dog house charts for waist swiviling or arm flexing under a given load of body armor. The only exception I make is for moral, like you might see in a war game, and that's only because it can be succesfully randomized and quantified in terms of troop quality and condition. That's the last I'm going to say about it, I think I got my point across.

Thanks Crunch. Unfortunately, the demo doesn't have any such option. On ArmA II I get sensitivity for X and Y axis and that's it. On OA I get the same plus one additional for mouse smoothing. If I'm looking in the wrong place, please let me know.

This is the essence of my argument. The is the *exact* same argument people had about the old GLOC model in LockOn. People would say that it forced you to think about what you were doing and it promoted realistic flying. It also botched up the entire dogfight experience. While the model was sound, the curve was on the wrong part of the graph so that the effect would begin too early. We got a pencil-necked weakling vs. a healthy pilot with experianced, prepared for the onset of Gs and doing AGSM. So...myself and many others set it to "reduced". We traded one unrealism for another. But our unrealism was more plausible. Long story short: eveyone else screams "realism!" and I scream "doesn't matter one little bit if the game/sim plays like poo!" The road to hell is paved with good intentions. ;) If we're going to shoehorn in the sense of inertia into WASD and a mouse at the expense of play control and call it "realism", we should probably simulate sweaty palms and a button I have to hold down to make sure my solider grips the rifle properly. Or maybe an "SCRATCH THE ITCH" button the I'm forced to press at random intervals. Anyway -- moot. I can set it up so that I get 1:1 movement between my solider and my mouse. I just don't think some understand what I was getting at.

Read my post. I said the reaction time on the controls are sluggish. I said nothing about how fast you move. A lot of this is moot. I zeroed out mouse smoothing in the OA demo and much of these problems went away. I'll have to figure out a way to do this in ArmA II demo since it isn't in the menu. I think I'm going to cancel a pre-order of another game and buy this instead since Steam has it for $50 for both. It's probably worth having around no matter my hang ups about it.

We're going to have to agree to disagree here. I agree, you do NOT want Super Mario Bros in ArmA. ;) You want there to be a realistic amount of lag between changing directions. But at the cost of the game feeling terrible? (IMO) I'd just rather not have it if the implementation is actually a detraction. Again, gonna have to agree to disagree. Please, developers, give me a break. Give me the Fisher Price version of the mission editor, I don't care if even if you wanna call it that. What I described could be done with a GUI. Also, I consider the "fly in height" command a "script". Is it hard to do? No. It actually will auto complete for you. I'm just not sure why it has to be there for such a basic thing. I'm not asking for anything fancy like a scripted engine failure or pilot getting killed. Ok, you're right about this, I'll give you that. This makes sense.

Correct. Yeah, but last time I checked, I'm not. I'm pressing "W" on a keyboard and moving around a mouse. ;) The point is you are simply getting rid of one unrealistic thing for another. They are sacrificing the floating camera for the feeling of mass and the accompanying momentum, yet they don't take into account the fact that I'm still using a mouse and keyboard. Now I've got "realistic" momentum but 4 digital buttons and a mouse to move it around with. That opens an entirely new set of "unrealisms". It will *never* be perfect. You have to pick and choose. Since I'm using an imperfect method of control to move a simulated human body, I'd rather you just give me the floating camera to simulate the assumption that I'm a physically fit soldier capable of reasonable agility given my equipment. If I press "W", I want to move forward. It's not like I'm pushing a 500 lbs box on the floor where physics say I should have to push with more force to get it started moving. I shouldn't perceive *any* delay. My brain tells my legs to move and it's instantaneous. I could go a step farther and say that I'd be willing to accept a little bit more unrealisms just to accomplish something more dynamic. As of now, "using cover" consists of stading a foot away from a wall and using track IR to lean around it. I would be willing to have a teensy bit more "arcade" if it meant I could accomplish things that are reasonably realistic. I mean, you already have to switch to 3rd person if you actually want any perifial vision. ;) Auto-switching to different 3rd persion views with different actions would make it more dynamic, closer to what an actual person could do. Sorry, that's incorrect. Please explain. Here's my example; I want to start the mission with my single playable soldier in an AI controlled helicopter carry me to an insertion point and drop me off. In ArmA I can't accomplish this completely with the GUI. I have to put down a helicopter. I have type in a simple script to set it's altitude (but not its basic speed. Why is that? For that matter, why can't I specify it's exact speed in the GUI?). Then I have to plop down my soldier and then script him to be in the helicopter. I then place my steer points, the last one being the landing zone. I then have to put down an invisible landing pad, even when landing on a paved tarmac or runway (?), script the helicopter to land and script my solider to get out. I understand that these scripts are simple, but why are they even necessary to accomplish this? I am in favor of them being available for complex behavior, but for something like this, I SHOULD be able to do this all in the GUI with drop-down menus and sliders. Good point, and I suppose I could randomize my own if I took the time to learn how. TBH, I've never been a fan of 3rd party missions, but this is just a preference.

No, I wasn't aware of the floating zone. That would probably fix a lot of what I was experiencing. As for the vehicles -- aren't they an integral part of the game? Doesn't the campaign have you pilot them eventually? I also could have sworn that by the end of the original ArmA II campaign, you're practically playing a war game in the amount of units under your control. Pass.

Hi folks! Been a while since I've posted here. I've lost interest in flight sims for the time being, but I've been messing with the demos to both ArmA II and OA as well as doing some research on both. I REALLY want to like this game, but there's bunch of nitpicky problems I have with it that just add up to a deal-breaker. 1. The control of your playable soldier is sluggish, just like the original ArmA and OFP. Everything feels like it has a ramp-up time, or like I'm controlling him with strings. I'm not sure why an "arcade" shooter like MW2 can get this right but these realistic ones cannot. 2. The mission editor is complicated to the point of needing scripting to do very simple things. It's the equivalent of needing to script a plane to be on the runway ready for takeoff in LockOn. 3. It would be nice to have an actual random mission generator or have the templates work better. I use a template and I get enemy infantry 1 km away standing in a line in plain sight. I'm aware of the ability to sync to a SecOps module, but unfortunately that isn't available in the demo or I couldn't figure out how to do it. 4. To me, the player-controllable vehicles break my immersion and detract from the infantry portions. Private Ryan, the infantrymen, can climb into an F-35, huh? I can forgive this in something that is obviously a game like BC2, but in ArmA, it leaves me scratching my head. I would rather them put more work into making the infantry control work better and be more dynamic than figuring out a new fighter jet for my USMC sniper to fly. Just a preference here, but why can't we get a game/sim with this much realism on a smaller scale? Something like the original Ghost Recon, for example? I'd much rather leave the large scale warfare in a war game and have something like ArmA really nail the infantry portion down to perfection. It can be a big sandbox world, but one where the action is much more covert and smaller scale. It's a shame, because this game is a step in the right direction. In a market where the next Ghost Recon game might as well be Crysis, we need more games like ArmA.

What I showed you this? http://www.duckbrand.com/ How are your toenails doing? :D

F-15 pilots have been using NVG for years. That's right, not a pound for air to ground. NVGs are standard fair for A-10 and F-16 pilots too. The types of goggles used by the military work on the same principle as the Starlight scope from Vietnam. They gather ambient light and amplify it. What you're thinking of is the old IR illumination stuff. That's been around since WWII.

I agree. Previously, I used a yellow HUD. I actually used this in Falcon 4.0. Now in FC2, I find that the default HUD color is perfect.

To summarize, for my own benefit and others, arbitrary numbers where applied to the sim to get the plane to perform the way it should? In effect, ED worked around the quirks of the SFM and tweaked numbers to inaccurate values so that the actual performance is close to the real thing? In other words, except for the known F-15C problems, we should ignore the values in LUA and use the aircraft in the sim to plot a chart, then compare that chart to the real one, correct?

What's the default bird strike setting on FC 2.0, no config files altered, fresh install?

Wait, first of all...so with a HOJ shot, the R-27 becomes self-homing? Do when know this with total certainty? Sniffer, for your situation, I have seen that in FC 1.12, only it was me and not the AI. I have seen an R-27 continue to track and kill a bandit while I was locked onto another fighter. GG in this thread also suggests that an R-27 can guide on its own during HOJ. Konkussion confirms that he has seen this happen with the AI. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=31223&highlight=Hand-off I can't remember if the bandit was jamming, as this was close to 2 years ago. Its probably just a rare bug.

I hate to say it but this might just be leftovers from older game engines. IIRC, those ILS bars were present in Flanker 2.0 on the Su-27. They were also present for the Su-27 in original Lock On. That was one of the numerous things Flamming Cliffs improved on the Russian planes. I'm guessing that it just has never been changed in the F-15C.

It's not so much about bleeding the missile's energy, it's about causing the launching plane to lose lock. Notching will completely and utterly defeat a SARH missile...at least in Lock On. Notch = completely wasted missile since the missile goes ballistic shortly after the launching plane looses lock. It can also defeat the Aim-120 both prior to going active and after, but the latter is hard to do when it is launched close and of course you lose a SARH lock if you notch. Pilotasso is right. If you launch at long range against someone who knows what they are doing, you're probably going to waste all your missiles.

The one thing at this point that is keeping me from trying this game is the idea of classes. This is the same thing that keeps me from playing Team Fortress 2. I prefer the way "classes" work in MW -- not really classes, just a weapon load-out and a set of perks. Classes work well in a purely co-op game against the computer (like WoW), but I'm not a fan of it in any sort of PvP setting. I'm fond of lone-wolfing, and I pretty much won't play any game that doesn't allow this. If the game has in-game match-making, especially with some sort of ELO ranking, I'm usually already sold. The problem I have is that you're usually gimped into losing if no one wants to play a certain class OR if the people playing the class aren't playing it correctly. If the medic doesn't plop down health packs when you are clearly injured (but will heal themselves), or if the stupid engineer won't set up auto turrets to actually defend, its pretty much a total waste of time. I prefer it when everyone's job is the same; shooting guns at stuff. So, I suppose if classes were all like soldier, heavy weapons, snipers, assassins, that would be cool. As soon as you throw in a medic, I'm not interested. If there's medics, they need to have ZERO offensive capability or have no way of healing themselves. Otherwise, they are game-breaking. Feel free to correct my misconceptions about how this game works.

I was just think about this yesterday. I think that several decades from now we're probably going to look back upon DRM at this point in time with a mixture of ridicule and good-humored disbelief. Similar to the way one looks back at the movie industry when Thomas Edison literally wanted all movies filmed only on his equipment by only his own company. Something has got to give and without saying that I "guarantee" it, I find it strongly possible that the anti-DRM side will win. The odds are stacked so much against DRM, its mind boggling. In the long run, DRM simply cannot win. Its not just the fact that there are potentially millions of people trying to crack DRM the instant the software becomes available, its just the sheer size and scope of the internet. Information itself has become something of an artifical life-form. It reminds me of Ian Malcom in the Jurassic Park movie -- "life finds a way". ;) Nothing can contain it and nothing can stop it. The idea of "control" of it is an illusion, and a dangerous one. The idea of a cold and hot war being fought over its perceived control isn't too farfetched to me. Either the entire set of "rules" of the internet will change (for the worse, IMO), and change forcibly with all the catastrophic consequences, or DRM will have to adapt and allow people to feel like they actually own a product they purchased. Care to bet which one is quicker, actually feasible, and which one a person with a working brain would choose to do? ;) This is all my opinion, of course. :D

35 FPS near a town is actually an improvement. In FC 1.12, depending on lots of factors, of course, you might have seen teens or single digits.

If by "jets" you mean A-10s and Su-25s, certainly. ;)

Doesn't that make sense though? Imagine blindfolding yourself and throwing a dart at a modern fighter jet from above, full plane form view. I'd be surprised if it doesn't hit something vital! There's not a lot of wasted space, probably not much redundancy, and there's practically no armor. You're going to hit an engine, fuel, avionics, control surfaces, control mechanisms, or a human pilot.

No one says you can't shoot your enemy in the face head-on and no one says you can't attempt a snapshot kill. If by 'in-plane' you meant in the saddle and out of plane, that is working as intended. You won't hit much of anything in that case. :) If you actually decide to turn at the merge and start a dogfight, you have to put up what's coming to you. The guns are fine, IMO. In reality, these dogfights would actually be even more deadly if the R-73 actually had thrust vectoring and the sim forced you to premptively use flares against heaters. The gun would be a secondary worry. If you're doing a gunzo tournament or practice, my suggestion is to do a three second pipper on target "guns guns guns" without pulling the trigger and consider that a kill.

If anything, I would expect them to not simulate it in DCS.

Fixed that one for you. ;) Because: Um, no. If you think what has happened in the PAK-FA thread is the same thing that happens in threads like this, you need to re-think that one. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm not holding my breath.