Arma 3 and the real world

I'll concede the point that they took some liberties with the towns; one thing I noticed looking at Panoramio photos there is that there's a lot more multi-story apartment buildings in the region, while in Chernarus the only place these pop up is the large seaside towns, where they reused a few Sahrani apartment buildings. It's pretty fun looking at the Panoramio photos and seeing buildings, telephone poles, etc. they used as reference for game models.

Apart from radically downsizing the towns along the river, and removing the ones at the edges of the map to make for a better transition into terrain synth land, though, it's remarkably accurate, down to individual hedgerows.

I've never found a high res stitch of the ingame map like DrE made for Sahrani, but I'd like to redo that KMZ with a higher res image so you can see how much work BI put into matching the real area.

Don't think I've read anything along these lines but do you think we will get a second smaller map like with OFP, Arma and Arma 2?

Agios Efstratios is 43.325 km2 and 30km southwest of Limnos and part of the same province. According to wikipedia

Agios Efstratios is quiet, isolated and dry, with a population of approximately 300 people. The climate is arid, with little rainfall during the winter months and long, hot summers. The landscape is mostly rocky, with scarce and low vegetation.

Just a thought

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?ftid=0x14a573fb9c3ab141:0x5dcf2bf41e86609d&q=Agios+Efstratios&hl=en&ved=0CA4Q-gswAA&sa=X&ei=IJnaTbH-CNGL8AO1h7VY

I have a question: Were you able to play a little bit with the possibilities of caves?

I have a scenery like this in my mind which is actually taken from Lemnos

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9771702.jpg

imagine coming closer to the island with an ASTUTE sub and then switching to a smaller SDV. You silently approach to the shore and some meters behind it you disembark and swim the rest. You get closer to this sort of cave and break through the watersurface. All sounds get brighter and you see light reflections on the walls as you scan the area and approach unseen further into the island behind enemy lines.

Goose skin? Those are exactly the scenarios that could make Arma III awesome

What about

This for a cave

EDIT: Through google earth have noticed that there is not as many tree's on Limnos as say..Takistan, better frames when not in cities!!!

Well judging by http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1928651&postcount=3, it looks pretty close to 1:1, but that could just be that one place.

So it looks like I have to be the doucher here and ruin all the fun... That's about a 1:6 ratio. If you look at the google maps image, at the bottom there's a little bar that shows size, and it goes to 14m. Now, unless BIS is adding mechas or 'genetically enhanced' giants, the guys aren't 14m wide. Again, I pray that it is, in fact, a life size image, and that the 14m is just due to the altitude of the camera, but I doubt it. On a side note, a large map where choppers ACTUALLY have to watch their fuel, and rides aren't 2-4 minutes long would be VERY much appreciated.

According to this website, the land area of Limnos is 452 square kilometers.

http://alexandros.com/Greece/aegean.html

According to wikipedia, it is 477 square kilometers.

Compared with the 380 cited by BIS, it seems like it's pretty close.

What I'm mostly concerned about is the actual lack of forests on the island...

I hope they don't stick to the dry bushes of the actual place, as I love flying over and hiking in the forest of chernarus.

What I'm mostly concerned about is the actual lack of forests on the island...

Haven't you heard about 2014 Greece Government's reforestation project on Lemnos? :D Maybe BIS heard of that :rolleyes:

wow!

How large is The UK? can the UK be mapped in arma 3? well a similar sized map?

yes, even mapping the world is possible : for arma 2, the max map size is 4096000.0kmx4096000.0km = 16777216000000km2

so what is the size of the real world ? here : 510.000.000 km2

So it looks like I have to be the doucher here and ruin all the fun... That's about a 1:6 ratio. If you look at the google maps image, at the bottom there's a little bar that shows size, and it goes to 14m. Now, unless BIS is adding mechas or 'genetically enhanced' giants, the guys aren't 14m wide. Again, I pray that it is, in fact, a life size image, and that the 14m is just due to the altitude of the camera, but I doubt it. On a side note, a large map where choppers ACTUALLY have to watch their fuel, and rides aren't 2-4 minutes long would be VERY much appreciated.

Yes i think your right... thats what i mean in the Arma world... It feels totally unnatural to walk around there as the scale seems to be... well... i can't even explain it in my own language. Either the soldiers are way to big in the Arma world and walking to fast, or i don't know.

Chernarus felt totally unnatural. The lots of hills and stuff there was even with the normal "walk" animation be able to be climbed in no time. Well i then watched the Satellite image that was posted shortly before ArmA2 went public and when watching some of those hills, i was like "damn"... I know such areas near the place i live pretty well and in no way i would be able to get to the top in like 3-5 minutes at that speed. Rather in like 30minutes.

Why is that? And how can BIS make it better?

The scale is completely worthless in this 3D picture. What if they put the scale on the top right corner? Would that mean the whole horizon was just 14m wide?

The scale refers to the center of the image, not the part at the bottom left. Seriously... :rolleyes:

Btw. the scale of Arma3's Limnos vs. the real world has already been confirmed to be 1:2.4, not 1:6.

I though that was the scale of limnos to takistan. It's the same for limnos to Lemnos?

I though that was the scale of limnos to takistan. It's the same for limnos to Lemnos?

Oh, that is possible. I just remember reading 1:2.4, but I may be confusing it.

In any case, the real island of Lemnos is 477km² in size - at 1:6 scale, Arma3's Limnos would be extremely small, which we know to be false. I believe 300km² is the number that is mostly thrown around.

Limnos is 2.4 bigger than Takistan and the island is arround 400 km square.

Limnos is 2.4 bigger than Takistan and the island is arround 400 km square.

Two pages back, 380km² are cited, so that seems to be the right area. So Arma3's Limnos appears to be around 80% as large as the real thing.

Two pages back, 380km² are cited, so that seems to be the right area. So Arma3's Limnos appears to be around 80% as large as the real thing.

Yeah, that's what I remember seeing.

Two pages back, 380km² are cited, so that seems to be the right area.

Thanks for the answer.

The funny thing is, if the island area has been scaled down to 80% of the original, that means distances on the island should still be around 90% of the real values. (Since the relationship of length to area is exponential.)

In other words, 10km in the real Lemnos would be 9km on Arma3's Limnos. That doesn't sound so bad. :D

I think the map sizes are more than sufficient, I get plenty of spare time for gaming most days but it would probably take the term of my natural life to explore all of Stratis and Limnos by foot.

yes, even mapping the world is possible : for arma 2, the max map size is 4096000.0kmx4096000.0km = 16777216000000km2

so what is the size of the real world ? here : 510.000.000 km2

Id absolutely love this but...

Unfortunately ARMA maps are flat with an infinite horizon (no curvature)

I asked the question but this happened lol...

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?131323-No-more-flat-maps-MAKE-ARMA-GLOBAL!!!

Id absolutely love this but...

Unfortunately ARMA maps are flat with an infinite horizon (no curvature)

At end of video horizon is curved

pHChkmvSbTk

The funny thing is, if the island area has been scaled down to 80% of the original, that means distances on the island should still be around 90% of the real values. (Since the relationship of length to area is exponential.)

In other words, 10km in the real Lemnos would be 9km on Arma3's Limnos. That doesn't sound so bad. :D

Well actually it does when the Unit-sizes stay the same they are. This is what i mean, it kills the feeling for the world.

Imagine our real world would be shrinked to 80% of its original size but yourself keeps your size? Not good. Thats what i mean with a "distorted scale".

And as the Dev said here on the first pages that it won't have the 100% scale because of travel-distances (LOL³!!! This is Arma not COD!!!), it is a bad decision to shrink to overall dimensions to 80% - they should have rather just "altered" the island the way they did on other islands before, but not scale it down, if travel-distances would be a concern...Actually they would only be for a BIS campaign, but not for us mission-makers that later adopt the task, to provide scenarios to the community.

Such statements reminds me always of a statement by Marek Spanel himself, before ArmA2 came out, when i suggested for a little bit longer helicopter startup times and he answered that it won't be done, because it could annoy the casual players.

Really such decision with the scale annoys me more than any bad AI or the other flaws we have had so far in the series. How should the other issue become fixed/overcome/perfect if the most fundamental thing, is not 100% done - the scale of the game.

It is in my opinion a very bad decisions and i hope at least for ArmA4,5,6 they stop doing this eventually. We are playing ArmA here come on' guys, and not some Kindergarten 1st person Ego-Shooter like COD or Whatever.

No rant here or anything, just my 2 cents. I would like to know your opinion on that matter.

Thanks ;-)

At end of video horizon is curved

If the Earth's curvature was really so distinct at that height, the planet would be really, really tiny. No, the "curve" you see in the video is just the edge of the view distance.

@ mr._g_c

your point would be valid if it was just about the limnos island should be real or not, but the real matter is that with a too small shrinked island the proportios of hills and streets are wrong.

THe world isnt shaped like this. Its not round hills and flat lands with some streets. There are far more curves everywhere.

You cannot climb mount everest like a flat egg..

the landscape needs more geometry in my eyes.

real world:

1 http://img.portwallpaper.com/imgwal/hills-of-troutbeck.jpg

2 http://armed-assault.de/screenshots/arma2-in-echt-02-3_1_5690.jpg

but arma 2 comes really close, maybe it just needs better light and more bushes and stuff

http://www.idea-games.com/images/stories/arma_ii/arma2_chernarus_18.jpg

--

about the curve in the video: yes of course its not the earth curve. the earth is far too big that cant be recognized. But your view isnt 1°. in every shooter game your view is stripped. at the edges circles are eggs. thats normal, thats how it works. usually you get the fish eye effect with a too high fov (like 90 or 100)

http://i996.photobucket.com/albums/af88/Phazon88/BC2_FOV.gif

you cannot work otherwise, cause the world is bigger than the 20 inch of your screen. so it must be fitted into this. the more horizontal view you want to fit into the screen the lesser information is about the middle of your view in comparison to the rest. your screen stays the same size so the middle field gets reduced. I really cannot explain it better in proper english.

mr.g-c there are by far more casual players than simfans. Casual players don't like to wait or fly or drive or walk x amount of time, they want simple action, instant-gratificatons and be on top of whatever statistics. BIS can try to stay away from mainstream/casual games but one or another way they have to make some compromises to stay in business. ;)