Raised weapon sights

[CarlGustaffa]

If changing recoil, the sway should be increased quite a lot. You reduce it temporarily with breath control, but you wouldn't be able to do breath control if you were low on stamina or being suppressed etc.

[Chumba]

I do hear you about sway, but altho I have no problem with sway for certain purposes - ie. wounded inaccuracy, fatigue and being suppressed - my personal preference is for the effect to be kept minimal and dispersions used to actually generate the final degradation in accuracy.

Same for recoil - we have to be realistic in understanding that for most combat rifles - particulary "assault" rifles - a trained soldier really doesn't have to think or worry too much about recoil. There are certain exceptions such as high powered sniper rifles and shotguns but broadly speaking recoil shouldn't factor in a players ability to aim and shoot weapons. OFP does the whole thing very well but ARMA games went in a bit of a crazy direction with recoils IMO.

In fact it's not so much the SIZE of the recoils that are fubar in ARMA2 but the SLOOOOW speed of them - it's mainly the speed that I adjust. Having the sight resettle to a point a tad off the original aimpoint would be a good thing too - this could be made different for various weapons (M16 family could in fact be left returning to the same point IMO).

People overestimate how hard it is to aim properly. I mean AIM, not SHOOT - of which aiming is only part - granny can line up the sights perfectly, but can she pull the trigger properly, spot the fall of shot and make subsequent aim corrections? In ARMA2 the player is supposed to be a trained soldier.... Again, OFP does it all quite well - I never thought about how the weapons handled from day one with OFP but the first time I tried to shoot in ARMA it was "WTF!!". The big issue shouldn't BE about wrestling the sight back onto the target - it SHOULD be about working out where the bullet/s actually went and correcting accordingly... It's a game - we're NOT shooting real weapons - so spending too much time on "realism" is silly - we need to be trying to get the basic mechanics workable and having appropriate and "realistic" RESULTS. Again, they got it pretty good in OFP so it's not like this is uncharted territory.

[galzohar]

Dispersions for inaccuracy? Are you serious? In real life, if your sights are on target when you pull the trigger and your trigger pull is at least half-decent, assuming you're not pushing your weapon to its limits (which is rarely the case, usually it's the shooter being the limiting factor) you will hit the target. Putting the sights on target, though, is often not trivial, especially when standing or crouching. I'd rather have the game simulate the "having a hard time putting sights on target" in places where that is the actual cause for missing, and only set dispersion values for the actual inaccuracy of the weapon itself (which should be very small for most weapons in comparison to the sway).

I agree people overestimate how hard it is to aim properly, but the difficulty of aiming should be simulated as a difficulty of aiming, not a random number sending your bullets off-course. If in real-life having sights on target lets you know that you will hit, it's important to have that effect in-game as well. The random dispersion is one of the main things that turned me off of Project Reality for Battlefield 2, which otherwise has a lot of great features. For PR though they have BF2 engine limitations which seem to prevent a more realistic approach, while Arma 2 doesn't suffer from said limitations.

[wipman]

Hi, in the ArmA and the ArmA2 Demo, when you aim down the sights what did happen was that your point of view went down too much for the common grass height and also the few debris on the citys; what will be a good solution in my opinion, will be to rise a bit the weapon (close the angle that your elbows form when prone) and lower the head to actualy paste your cheek to the weapon stock.
Will be great to have another memory point (on the O2) to mark where the character will put the cheek on the weapon's stock and also... make the characters turn the hip when aiming down the sights and scanning for targets than having 'em moving more the shoulders and arms rather than the hip; that's how you'll do it IRL.
For what i seen on the ArmA2 Demo... there's room for make many improvements on the animations field; aim down the sights animation included. Let's C ya

[Chumba]

galzohar - I pretty much totally disagree with you dude! - check out what I said in the "being suppressed" thread rather than have me repeat it all here. Basically what I've said is that unless you slip or burp or fart or hiccup at the crucial moment or otherwise have some BIG messup - a bad shot is usually indistinguishable from a good one from the point of view of what you're seeing down the sights at the moment you pull the trigger. Certain "environmental" effects need to be applied for sure by way of aimpoint sway ingame - ie. fatigue, wounding - but otherwise, my ability to put rounds on the target point is only PARTIALLY dependent on being able to put the sights on it. If it was as easy as "the bullet goes where the sights are pointed" then 5 year old kids could be killer soldiers. The bullet goes where the weapon finally makes it go - which relies on both direction AND MOTION at the instant the bullet leaves the barrel - the "chase the sway and pull when it's passing over the target" model is fundamentally flawed - ie. when a plane drops a bomb it doesn't just fall directly vertically from the drop point to impact....

wipman - I think the answer to your point and also the OP is to actually have a system where either the stance up and down method is given more "steps" - or still have the three basic stances - ie. Prone, Crouched and Upright - but then be able to step in small increments up and down from each - even prone, which would give the option of being able to push up somewhat and be able to see over grass etc. a bit better - else be able to actually lay fully down with head on ground - tho how useful ingame that last would be might be arguable (unless some stealth / improved cover mechanic is attached to it) - but it wouldn't do any harm - point is that a universal "slight view step up/down" control that can have effect in any of the standard starting stances should be easy to implement because it wouldn't even need to be different for Prone.

[galzohar]

Chumba, my experience with shooting says the exact opposite. Bad shots are VERY distinguishable from good ones. I can tell 99% of the time if I hit the target or not without even checking it as long as the ballistics aren't being a problem (that is, as long as the weapon is zeroed and I know the exact range).

I agree though that pulling the trigger right as the sights pass the target is usually a very bad idea, since it's quite difficult to time it properly. But when you do fire the bullet you should be able to tell if you hit/missed. It's really not that hard and in fact you are told to try and predict where your bullets hit the very first time you go to the shooting range.

[Chumba]

galzohar, yes I can generally tell whether I've blown it as well almost instantly - ie. AS I make the shot - I never said I couldn't distinguish good from bad shots - I SAID that what I see thru the sights is no different - it's the instant of firing the shot that determines the result - so chasing a wandering sight picture is NOT IMO the right way to simulate shooting. I'd rather have a LITTLE bit of movement (some sway is a must - just not huge amounts of it) and have dispersions demonstrate the final accuracy according to situation.

[galzohar]

Like I said, I agree that chasing the moving sight picture is not the right way, but then again the reason it's not the right way is because of the effects of rapid trigger pull you'd have to perform in order to pull the trigger at the right time, as opposed to proper, slow trigger pull. I have no idea how one would simulate proper trigger pull in a game, unless we were all forced to use a special mouse that has an axis (like a joystick, only very small) instead of a fire button (or strongly encouraged to by giving people without one an unfair disadvantage). Anyway, not something we're going to see in the foreseeable future.

Another, more practical alternative, could be to have a random (but very small and nearly unnoticeable) delay between pressing the mouse button and the rifle actually firing, that way you will only guarantee a hit if your sights are on-target for the entire trigger pull, otherwise you'd be risking a miss. Then you can even go further and make that delay vary amongst different weapons, as we all know an M24 has a much more sensitive trigger pull than an M16 and thus is much less prone to misses caused by improper trigger pull (assuming you stabilize the weapon in the same way and fire at the same distance with both weapons, of course).

The sway itself should be there the same way it is there IRL. Just because its negative effects can't be simulated to 100% shouldn't mean it needs to not be there at all - As long as its presence increases realism rather than detract from it.

[Wolfstriked]

I think sway is realistic,after all it happens in real life.Dispersion could be modeled in but dispersion is already in game(I hope)to give differences for say sniper to pistol.IMO what is wrong with adding in dispersion instead of more sway is you take the player element out of equation.You now have player put dot on enemy and just fire away waiting for dispersion to give a good shot.With sway you put player back into the game since they now have to contend with chasing the dot.

Galzohar,I think that would be very bad.The game has an unnconnected feel as is and if you now start clicking on fire and nothing happens it will feel worse.EDIT<<<just read where you said its unnoticable.

Maybe a way to simulate suppression is to remove holding your breath?Who would be able to put weapon around corner,stabilize it and then try to hold ones breath.Maybe instantly put player out of breath as if they just ran for awhile when bullets are striking very close? Also speed at which breathing returns to normal could be very fast compared to after a long run.

[galzohar]

Can't really tell without trying it, especially considering that to get realistic results the delay will have to be very small. Not saying it's a great solution because I hadn't tried it either, just that you can't just rule it out without trying because after all it seems like it would achieve the desired effect when combined with realistically high levels of weapon sway and realistically low levels of weapon dispersion.

The only problem I see with it is that you would have to be able to also do "fast" trigger pulls with lower accuracy for short-range engagements and/or any other engagements where you would choose rapid fire over accuracy. An extra keybinding would resolve the issue but would also make controls very cumbersome as everyone are used to only have 1 kind of fire button. An alternative to an extra key would be to only do the slow trigger pull while holding breath, as I don't know anyone who would squeeze the trigger carefully while letting his breath go freely, nor anyone who would hold his breath but jerk the trigger.