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kostaatanasov

A vacation on Altis - or - To Limnos and back again.

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Thanks to all of you guys!:)

654wak654, I think overland to Kavala might be cheaper for you than a direct ferry from Turkey. The prices from Turkey to Greece are mad!:)

Did the residents know the island had been included in a video game?

Yes! All of those I asked about that had heard about it, but none had played it. They had read about it somewhere. I was left under the impression their oppinion of that was mixed, since its a wargame and all. But I guess at least I'm the living proof its good for tourism, haha.

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654wak654, I think overland to Kavala might be cheaper for you than a direct ferry from Turkey. The prices from Turkey to Greece are mad!:)

I'll be one of those people on the news that tried to swim the border.

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Great pictures, and great work by the devs to replicate the island.

Thanks for taking the time to do this!

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wow those pictures... i wonder why the devs have gone for such a desaturated and dull look there?

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About the island reminding you of Italy, during my holiday/vacation to Salou this year. Travelling from the airport to the town and through the countryside to Barcalona. I felt as though I was on Altis :p

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My wife and I married on santorini visiting Mykonis on the honeymoon a few years before Arma 3 was released. The game felt VERY familiar while playing the Alpha;)

BI did a great job capturing the feel....even down to the unfinished buildings that dot the countryside:)

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wow those pictures... i wonder why the devs have gone for such a desaturated and dull look there?

Yeah true also some more contrast would help too , irl it has much more colours and much more alive obviously lol

One of the reasons is probably because of rv engine doesn't support colored specular maps which adds colours into models when shines

Edited by RobertHammer

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Thank you guys! Remembered I forgot to write about this, so I added it:)

P.S.

When you do go there, make sure you are very careful NOT to photograph military instalations. We tend to be enthusiastic about it, because we are gamers, but those are actual military, not ingame ones, and we should approach that with respect - cause there can be actual repercussions to that.

We all remember what happened to the guys from BI - that was very unfortunate and nothing is going to give them back that time that they lost. Because of what happened to them, I was very paranoid and did not even POINT my camera in a direction where a base is located. This is not an easy task, since there are many military installations around the island. I made sure not to have any photos of anything even slightly military, since usually I was climbing the barren hills on foot to get a nice shot and probably stuck out like a sore thumb ( I did try not to skyline of course, but trying to be inconspicuous sometimes can be more conspicuous than actually sticking out like a sore thumb and being the typical tourist - which I was ).

I remember one time, I was standing on a hilltop and photographing a small town that will remain undisclosed, when I overheard a nearby sheepherder ( accoustics on the island are amazing, you can hear everything from 300m away ) call somebody on a mobile. I recognized "photographia" several times from all the greek words he spoke, so I guessed it was related to me - he was also looking straight at me, as he spoke. Just a minute later I stumbled upon what was a meter and a half square hole in the ground with a camo painted concrete border, covered with a net. Metal stairs were going down several meters, then a concrete corridor with stairs, going deeper into the ground and ending into a metal door. If that's not a secret entrance/exit, I dont know what is. I was out of there in a flash.

Some major differences ot the real life and ingame island I spotted:

-In real life the visible horizon is much further. Of corse, that depends on your settings ( duh ), but IRL it is very far - you can see from one end of the island to the other, in certain places.

- There are no biodomes near the airport IRL ( But maybe they will build them in the future, who knows, right? Same goes for the other points. )

- There are no Large solar stations or large solar towers IRL

- The size of the roads IRL is... well, a car could barely go through most of the village steets - not all of them - they are that narrow. Naturally, they had to make them wide enough for the MRAPS ingame.

-Houses are not located in the exact same spots, neither are they the same as shape, but that would simply be an impossible task to complete - plus you cant make the roads twice wider and keep the houses absolutely the same.

-There is no large castle in the north-northwest. Probably no village south near the castle as well, since that part is dirt roads and hard to get to.

-I think there were no wind turbines on the west of the southeastern tip, just in the west, and there were just a couple there.

-Overall there are MORE points of interest in Altis, than in the large barren areas of Limnos. BI made sure to fill the empty space with some stuff here and there, to make running for miles in the digital version more interesting.

One more thing. Stratis is also there, its called Agios Efstratios. I think theres pretty much nothing there, although there is a ferry to it from Myrina ( the ingame Kavala, not the real Kavala ). I did not manage to get there, cause I running out of vacation and was alone, and that would be way too boring. But if you are with friends, I guess that too would be a cool place to visit and spend time exploring.

For me the entire time on the island was a fantastic experience. It really is an amazing place to visit, I could not recommend it enough!

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Some major differences ot the real life and ingame island I spotted:

-In real life the visible horizon is much further. Of corse, that depends on your settings ( duh ), but IRL it is very far - you can see from one end of the island to the other, in certain places.

- There are no biodomes near the airport IRL ( But maybe they will build them in the future, who knows, right? Same goes for the other points. )

- There are no Large solar stations or large solar towers IRL

- The size of the roads IRL is... well, a car could barely go through most of the village steets - not all of them - they are that narrow. Naturally, they had to make them wide enough for the MRAPS ingame.

-Houses are not located in the exact same spots, neither are they the same as shape, but that would simply be an impossible task to complete - plus you cant make the roads twice wider and keep the houses absolutely the same.

-There is no large castle in the north-northwest. Probably no village south near the castle as well, since that part is dirt roads and hard to get to.

-I think there were no wind turbines on the west of the southeastern tip, just in the west, and there were just a couple there.

-Overall there are MORE points of interest in Altis, than in the large barren areas of Limnos. BI made sure to fill the empty space with some stuff here and there, to make running for miles in the digital version more interesting.

- there are women :pet1:

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Damn, BI really did a great job recreating the island. 0o

Thanks for sharing with us. :)

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Out of interest, did you notice any scale related differences?

Altis is only 2 thirds (I think) the size of Limnos.

Cheers

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The big two things that I can see is that the reality seems to have a more vibrant colour pallette. Far more bright greens and yellows compared to a slightly more drab selection of colours for the grass on Altis. Also, the tiered and appartment-block-filled capital! Wow! I'd love to see Kavala more built up that way into a horrible RPG-alley :D

Also, this is one of the few rare times where looking at someone's holiday snaps is actually really interesting, so kudos! Sounds like you had a great time, and I honestly kinda wanna go there myself now.

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Thank you:)

Out of interest, did you notice any scale related differences?

Altis is only 2 thirds (I think) the size of Limnos.

Cheers

Scale - not that I could see, although there may have been places where the terrain differed vertically - like smoothing out some rocks, that otherwise would not be accessible without climbing gear ingame:) Also, its really difficult to judge, because of the distance view settings of the real world, and me not having a pc around to compare:) I'd even say the island felt smaller than in Arma, but I could be wrong on that.

In regards to the colors of photos vs screens - keep in mind I did some color corrections of the photos. This is usually done in photography to bring out certain aspects and make things look more appealing. If we were to compare the original photos to the screens, they would look more similar and more desaturated.

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Thanks for sharing this... great post... blown away at how close the game screenshots are to RL.

Would be an awesome trip on a bike :)

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Sounds like you had a great time, and I honestly kinda wanna go there myself now.

Lol....Kosta is the new official travel agent for BI

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The size of the roads IRL is... well, a car could barely go through most of the village steets - not all of them - they are that narrow. Naturally, they had to make them wide enough for the MRAPS ingame.

Seems to be a common theme on the mediterrainian islands... its partly the same in sardinia. The bigger towns/cities not so much but the villages definitely. And that main road that connects the north with the south. If there is a truck coming in the opposite direction to you, you fear for your life (/your car) as a car driver used to german roads ^^ And that was with a compact car... not VW/BMW/Mercedes roadtanks

One of the reasons is probably because of rv engine doesn't support colored specular maps which adds colours into models when shines

I dont think its just the colored spec maps... if you check out the VR map, everything is much more brighter there, more contrast, higher specular values, normalsmaps feel alot more powerfull etc. So it must be something to do with the lighting/scene settings of the map. Maybe a little bit over the board in VR, but a middle ground between the VR setting and the Altis setting would be a good improvement i think.

Colored spec maps would also be nice, of course.

Edited by Fennek

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I'd love to go there too! Next year, perhaps! P.S. The comparison that opens in your links is between completely different pics:) You may wanna mark that NSFW:)

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I'm not sure which is more impressive, your ability to balance a motorcycle with a camera, drive offroad with a cruiser, or how amazing a job BI did on the island.

Those cramped streets would definitely make CQB a bit more interesting though. I could see a multiplayer CQB mission locked in a blocked off neighborhood there being very interesting (and with lots of chokepoints)!

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Great pics! Think I need my passport now.... A helicopter tour around the island would be sweeet!

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Very nice post, didn't know BI done the job this good.

I want to go there and see it all myself next sommer :)

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