Weapon posturing

[Psychomorph]

I've seen some ArmA3 footage and weapon posturing seemed similar to how it is often done in games, where the weapon is held that high, that it obstructs the center horizontal line on the right side. No soldier does that in real life. Less of this, more of this. That means that no matter how large the sight is, the gun posturing should be adjusted to have the center horizontal line (height of the crosshair, spanning from the left to the right of the screen) always unobstructed. From a gamer point of view it's just not so good for awareness.

Generally I'd prefer to not even have the rifle pointed forward all the time, but held in low ready, where you have more unobstricted view and realistically need to bring up the sights to aim, or tap the fire key to quickly point the muzzle forward and shoot. Like this, or how this guy does it at 2:55. A crosshair wouldn't even be necessary, but I know that's just a dream and wont see the light of day in ArmA. Maybe a mod will finally make it.

[InstaGoat]

Doubletap ctrl to lower the weapon. The new stance has the rifle where it would be irl in that position, too. Arma 2 has the rifle lower and further to the right, which results in the weapon on the soldier being pretty far away from his face.

The new stance is better. If people want the old one back, they can put that in again, I guess.

[Smurf]

The guy has a point. There should be a intermediary stance, bit lower (standard not looking through sights) + animation for bringing up the weapon and moving the head a little low to aim through sights, which is missing since... ever.

[Vespa]

Hello. Good point OP, I'll see what can be done (as usual - no promises). The problem with most weapons is the optics, we have them pretty massive and they reach right at the horizon line. However with just ironsights or a collimator, every weapon meets OP's requirement even now.

[Scoggs]

Hello. Good point OP, I'll see what can be done (as usual - no promises). The problem with most weapons is the optics, we have them pretty massive and they reach right at the horizon line. However with just ironsights or a collimator, every weapon meets OP's requirement even now.

I love you guys!

[Vespa]

And I love YOU, random citizen!

[metalcraze]

Yeah lower-ready stance would be interesting to try actually. May as well solve the issue of navigating inside buildings due to long weapons - if there will be no auto-lowering.

[InstaGoat]

Yeah lower-ready stance would be interesting to try actually. May as well solve the issue of navigating inside buildings due to long weapons - if there will be no auto-lowering.

If a low ready could actually be implemented, I´d mostly welcome it because of better muzzle control for the AI. Everybody muzzlesweeps everybody in A2, and more proper weapons handling both for players and the AI would be great, because friendly fire is a massive issue right now in A2, especially in close quarters.

[Rye]

For this to work the transitions must be able to be done whilst mobile otherwise it would be stop-start, stop-start.

[Psychomorph]

There should be a intermediary stance, bit lower (standard not looking through sights) + animation for bringing up the weapon and moving the head a little low to aim through sights, which is missing since... ever.

This.

Hello. Good point OP, I'll see what can be done (as usual - no promises). The problem with most weapons is the optics, we have them pretty massive and they reach right at the horizon line. However with just ironsights or a collimator, every weapon meets OP's requirement even now.

Thanks for the reply. With my first sentense I indeed made it sound like all weapon postures in ArmA3 footage were too high, while as you say, the reflex sight looks good. My point was that if you should have a scope, which is even larger because of the on-top reflex sight, the first person should adapt and compensate, that means the weapon model should be moved slightly lower and the characters head (view) maybe a slight bit higher, because you're never going to put a scope right infornt of your eyes, unless you want to aim it. At any point you keep your eye level above anything that is mounted on the gun. Things like that aren't just there to add realism, because things that happen in real life happen for a good reason, same as why the low-ready is the basic weapon posture, because it moves the gun even more out of the operators view, while it is still there ready to be aimed in a split second. Open view is awareness and awareness is control. Why should that be any different in a game?

The low-ready, fully implemented in the first person (not just for 3rd person aesthetics) has been a looong time wish of mine. That one game, Ground Branch, made it one of its main features and that sit quite well with me. A great mil-sim like ArmA simply needs to have that stuff, too. Maybe it finally will at some point in the future.

As for the weapon posturing. Personally I'd love to see it being moved a bit more to the center (horizontally), kind of to give the user a feel for holding the rifle with a tight grip. Like this. But as said, I'd love to see the low-ready as the basic posture. If you have a picture viewer that can scale up/down pictures and you can easily switch between two, then do this with these two pictures and see for yourself how nice and smooth the transition beween the low-ready and unaimed shooting is. Quite similar it would be with the transition between low-ready and aim. See how you have a more open view with the rifle at the low-ready.

Speaking about postures. I think I saw in one ArmA3 footage video an aiming pistol. One thing I totally hate about games is if the aimed pistol is held so close to the face, that you don't even see arms (this made me laugh hard when I saw it), in that ArmA3 fotage the pistol had some distance so that you could see the wrist. That was very good. If I remember correctly the unaimed posture had the pistol to much at the right side. Usually pistols are held (also at the low-ready but) somewhat close to the chest, so basically they are far more in the center (think a bit about the old DOOM pistol posturing, but of course not quite like that), this is about what I think would be cool for pistols (Picture1). And just to compare, the aimed pistol should be held far enough away from the view (Picture2). Also use here your picture viewer to see how nice a transition between the two postures would be.
I mean imagine that in CQB in ArmA3, that would be basically this, done correctly, in a game... for once.

You know, I actually often just go to YouTube and watch old R6: Rogue Spear videos (talk about dwelling in the past). The 3rd person animations, for a game that old, is brilliant and seeing the hyper realistic/authentic weapon posturing (low-ready, muzzle down checking rear, muzzle forward when shooting/aimingzooming) is just a blast to watch and never gets old. I don't remember another game that did this stuff that good and I am impatiently waiting for a game to step up and do it in the 1st person also.

Check it out and enjoy.

This is not just something that belongs into a CQB game, that's the basic way to handle guns (at least it's popular), no matter if you're in a room or out in the desert. Only in a desert you might want to use a carry posture more often, which ArmA had since the beginning already.


I see that's a bit too much for once. I certainly don't expect a reply or agreement from the development team, just want them to think about it. I am 100% sure that a more realistic and authentic weapon handling and posturing can be done in a game, in a simple, very comfortable to handle and fun way. Should other community members agree, it would be good if they'd support it. That way we could make a point. I know many want this stuff in an ArmA game and as said, I'm absolutely certain that it can be done in a way that even the casual gamer wont see a problem with it.

Yeah lower-ready stance would be interesting to try actually. May as well solve the issue of navigating inside buildings due to long weapons - if there will be no auto-lowering.

Definitely agree. Trained soldiers are kind of professional with the gun, that means they can turn around and quickly lower the muzzle and raise it back up when there's an object in the way. An actual first person low-ready posture would contribute to it aesthetically very much, as the lowering process/animation would be shorter and look cleaner if the rifle is held at a slightly lowered (low-ready) state already. Win on both ends .

If a low ready could actually be implemented, I´d mostly welcome it because of better muzzle control for the AI. Everybody muzzlesweeps everybody in A2, and more proper weapons handling both for players and the AI would be great, because friendly fire is a massive issue right now in A2, especially in close quarters.

Oh man, I hate that muzzle sweep stuff! Though, I'm not sure if it would actually contribute to the savety of the team members, as the way I envision the low-ready situation, you'd be able to - let's say - double tap the fire key and the gun would be raised and muzzle pointed forward extremely fast and actually fired (pretty much as you fire unaimed in games, only you'd have a slight animation involved). That would be the unaimed point shooting in "extreme cases", like when you run into an enemy and simply react. The basic and main way to fire the weapon, however, would be the aim. A low-ready posture would contribute to using aim preferably, instead to lead the gamer to a point shoot (and miss) behavior caused by an always forward pointed weapon and a crosshair, which is misinterpreted as instant accuracy (BF3 style...). Aim or die, point shooting is for extreme/unusual cases (I think, don't misinterpret me as an expert, correct me should I be wrong about something).