Could Arma 2 become a de facto Steel Beasts Pro PE?

[Cadmium77]

I've been playing the big tank battle in the set pieces with the Russian tanks and it's damned good. It's a bit buggy as you go deeper into the armour bust out mission with vanishing tanks and what not and a clumsy control system that makes it hard for me to coordinate two tanks with 4 crew members that keep wanting to dismount.

But despite that it's awesome realism when it gets rolling.

And my dream is to see Arma get to the point where with 1500 tanks and smoke and artillery, we could be playing a game that rivalled Steel Beasts Pro PE.

But the mod will need an immense amount of work, with coding for a superior supply system to what we have now...one that will make driving suppy trucks a lot cooler...tanker trucks full of fuel in the rear echelons fueling exhausted tanks and then getting hit by Hellfire missiles from attack helicopters... and so on...

[orlok]

Hello there

I dont know if you ever played Arma1 with the ACE addon but it did make tanks alot more interesting to use.

Hopefully (and Im sure it will be) the same when ACE is released for arma2.

I too ache for a mod to bring the tank warfare inline with Panzer Elite (the first sim , not the awful arcade ones they released after).

Multiplayer though, is the best way to have a lovely tank experience, especially when you have people who know what they are doing and not assuming its an expendable death dealing close quarters machine.

Rarely, when I do get a chance to tank, I primarially use it as a long range weapons platform as they can really shine in that dept.

But my main query is, although I am aware of SB, can you really get that amount of units on the battlefield?

Arma2 takes a hefty rig and to have a battle of the bulge (that was the big tank engagement wasnt it?) style scenario, Im sure fps would drop through the floor on even the most hefty of rigs. (please correct me if im wrong).

Also, I too am "gagging" for a descent supply/support role/system to be enabled.

Yes, there are maps which give more actions to the engie and medic,, but these are destinctly Battlefield in scope.

Even something along the lines of WW2 online (dunno what its called now) would be a great improvement.

But back to tanking, I'd love to see a more "tank sim" type of control system, so that it takes skill and practice to tank rather than the hop in and drive system there is now.

But then again, this equally applies to Helos and planes etc.

Alot to ask i know, but it wold be nice

rgds

LoK

Oh btw @ any VBS1 or 2 owners.....

Were there any tank type disks aimed at tanking? I only could afford the vanilla and a couple of the vbs1 add ons back in the day.

[Cadmium77]

Hello there

I dont know if you ever played Arma1 with the ACE addon but it did make tanks alot more interesting to use.

Hopefully (and Im sure it will be) the same when ACE is released for arma2.

I too ache for a mod to bring the tank warfare inline with Panzer Elite (the first sim , not the awful arcade ones they released after).

Multiplayer though, is the best way to have a lovely tank experience, especially when you have people who know what they are doing and not assuming its an expendable death dealing close quarters machine.

Rarely, when I do get a chance to tank, I primarially use it as a long range weapons platform as they can really shine in that dept.

But my main query is, although I am aware of SB, can you really get that amount of units on the battlefield?

Arma2 takes a hefty rig and to have a battle of the bulge (that was the big tank engagement wasnt it?) style scenario, Im sure fps would drop through the floor on even the most hefty of rigs. (please correct me if im wrong).

Also, I too am "gagging" for a descent supply/support role/system to be enabled.

Yes, there are maps which give more actions to the engie and medic,, but these are destinctly Battlefield in scope.

Even something along the lines of WW2 online (dunno what its called now) would be a great improvement.

But back to tanking, I'd love to see a more "tank sim" type of control system, so that it takes skill and practice to tank rather than the hop in and drive system there is now.

But then again, this equally applies to Helos and planes etc.

Alot to ask i know, but it wold be nice

rgds

LoK

Oh btw @ any VBS1 or 2 owners.....

Were there any tank type disks aimed at tanking? I only could afford the vanilla and a couple of the vbs1 add ons back in the day.

Thank you for that comment about close combat death dealing machines. For the most part BF2 Project Reality mod was a bust because of this...the refusal to deal with the tank as a long range death dealer with poor survivability in close contact, like in MOUT, at least without a lot of infantry support. They did have a couple of tank maps, like the redone El Alamein but they weren't popular...everyone seemed to prefer swarming around in a dense chaos where tactics didn't really count for much. I love seeking defilades and getting hull down to pick off enemy vehicles two miles away.

But I see in Arma 2 a really huge potential as a Steel Beasts Pro PE with full 3d soldiers instead of the sprites.

God wouldn't a Battle of Kursk be awesome or an Iraq Iran War with massive tank battles? Or maybe a enactment of the Battle of Fulda Gap in the early 80's that never took place but which would have been an amazing war with the technology of that day...

I love taking advantage of the long range of those big tank guns...

Remember modders...there's more potential to this game than mere MOUT or team deathmatches...


And it would be a mistake to make tanks two man affairs frankly. It's too difficult to find a decent partner online for the most part. Once or twice I've had older guys that were serious wargamers share a tank with me and we kicked ass, a ton of fun, but 95% of the time it was hopeless.

As for VBS2 does anyone here know if it's worth getting? Is it different than Arma 2? Is there a lot of great scenarios out there for it? A good online community?

[arma2disapointed]

I tried Operatiobnflashpoint again, just to find out how many units with full viewdistance and low settings i could have on desert island.
Turned out to bee a whole lot of units, to many to count, the computer was mid nothing special.
What is need to be done is, increasing the viewdistance to 20.000 meters and add everything else from Arma2, but leave the graphics Operationflashpointish.
That would be a very good start.

[Apocal]

The downside to using ArmA is a 2.5km (ish) make unit render distance. Beyond that, you see nothing. A.I., under limited circumstances, will though.

[arma2disapointed]

I bet it´s possible to make it render on 20 km. It´s just that OFP had some 2000 meters projectile dissapear issues. And many of those things is fixed in arma and arma2.
Going to count the units again, post the fps and what comp i have.

---------- Post added at 08:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 AM ----------

To make it clear.
In OPF you can deside to what distance the units will be rendered, its called visual quality and its just a slider, when the slider is to te right it renders to full viewdistance.

Did the test with 400 tanks on dessert island OFP and the Unit render slider to max with full viewdistance, and the result was about 5-7 FPS on my old comp.
400 tanks it´s somthing

Really its all about polygones and model details, i tried to slide the drawdistance slider to the left, 100-200 meters renderdistance instead of 5000 meters, somthing and it just rised the fps by 1 or 2.
It´s about the models are still there, but you can not see them, so it dont affect the fps.
If cut the polycount in half you could have twice as many of them, but they will bee more quadratish.
I like quadratish.

---------- Post added at 08:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 AM ----------

To make it even more clear.
To count polygones, the computer need a fast CPU. Or maybe several of them, as it is not possible to rise Mhz much more now then it was ten year ago.

---------- Post added at 09:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 AM ----------

Other thing to do is.
When see a tank (or other unit) i the distance it is quadratish, but so far away so you cant see this clerly.
One thing to do so you can have more units is to halv this distance of when the tank (or other unit) become quadratish, so instead of beeing quadratish at 200 meters, it become quadratish at 100 or even 50 meters.
It will take off the load to CPU for every unit, and will be able to have more of them.
Even better to let them be quadratish all the way.
In the distance let it just be a cube, dont even need to have the gun.
Aim for 30 fps at 200 units. (tanks)
A wheel can be of four polygones at close distanse, or dont have to bee at all, as it´s very consuming CPU power.

Very,very far distance just a dot.
Very far distance a cube.
Far distance cube with a small cube on top. (so you can see if it´s a tank or not)
I dont even need to have wheels at close distance.

[Murklor]

To count polygones, the computer need a fast CPU.

Dont you mean GPU? The CPU doesnt handle polygons. That's called software rendering and no modern game use it. You would probably render 1 frame per 20 minutes for Arma 2 quality or something

[arma2disapointed]

Dont you mean GPU? The CPU doesnt handle polygons. That's called software rendering and no modern game use it. You would probably render 1 frame per 20 minutes for Arma 2 quality or something

Noticed how the load on CPU rising when the unit count rising?
Pleas try OFP, and you see that you dont even need a GPU there.
Then try 400 tanks and see what the GPU says about that in arma2.
And then try to have 400 tanks in OFP with or without GPU, and tell me the difference. It will bee noone.
The 700-800 Mhz a GPU have is rediculus compared to a CPU. Then you can shade what you want.
The goal is to have 1500 units, and no GPU can help you with that.
Call it software rendering or whatever you want.

[arma2disapointed]

Just tried to do it in Arma2, used 200 tanks in Utes island, the fps where
at 6-7. "same settings as in operationflashpoint"
Arma2 did not render the units as far as operationflashpoint did, and it was clear that the shape of the units (models) was smother, not as quadratish as in OFP.
And it all comes to the cost of redused unit count, as i only used 200 of them.
Render unit at full viewdistance will not have impact on FPS more then let´s say 5%.
So you can have up to 100% more units in OFP then in arma2 with the same FPS.
It seem like it´s going in the wrong direction, or just confirms it.
Every unit must have 100% less polygones.(preferable 200 or even 400%) And the count will increas equally by 100%.(200-400%)
Yes it will not look so smooth and nice, but it´s the cost you have to take, in otherside everything will move 100%(200-400%) smoother.
This has always been the main problem, and i was always locking for a mod that did take away polys from the models, and always find the oposite.
If you want a game with realistic artillery, anti air defance, tank wars, this is the way to do it first of all before you start with other things.
Dont think its wrong to say that this is game physics it´s all about.

[SgtH3nry3]

Noticed how the load on CPU rising when the unit count rising?
Pleas try OFP, and you see that you dont even need a GPU there.
Then try 400 tanks and see what the GPU says about that in arma2.
And then try to have 400 tanks in OFP with or without GPU, and tell me the difference. It will bee noone.
The 700-800 Mhz a GPU have is rediculus compared to a CPU. Then you can shade what you want.
The goal is to have 1500 units, and no GPU can help you with that.
Call it software rendering or whatever you want.

I think that's mainly due to the AI coding.
The problem with AI is that when the amount of bots are increased linearly, the performance loads is increased exponentially.
In this case the difference between 2 and 4 bots is smaller than 122 and 124.

But the GPU is also stressed, only linearly because you simply need to render more characters and their shadows.
If your GPU is too weak, you'll never make it to 1500 individual units.
But modern GPU performance is growing beyond modern CPU performance, unless Intel and AMD come with AVX/XOP, FMA and CVT soon more and more action will run on the GPU and the importance of an expensive CPU will be negligible.