FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Anniversary, Update en-route, Firing from Vehicles
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Last Friday, September 12th 2014, was Arma 3's one year anniversary (casually ignoring the public Alpha and Beta phases)! As a modest celebration, we hosted another livestream session. Producer Matthew Lightfoot had prepared a military operation for various volunteer community players and groups to tackle. Designer Nelson Duarte assumed the role of Zeus and curated the experience. And there was cake! Once again we would like to express our appreciation for everybody playing Arma 3. It's been a good year, the game is doing well and together we're improving it - with official additions and user-made mods.

One such addition, coming in Arma 3 Helicopters, was first teased at the end of the livestream: the CH-67 Huron twin-engine tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter. It will cater to large aerial troop movements as well as heavier external cargo transport. Special cargo containers also broaden support and logistics opportunities, by quickly bringing ammunition, fuel, repair and medical resupplies across large distances. We would not ourselves classify the design as 'stealth'. While advances in engineering bring improved rotor blades, reduced heat signatures and some radar-defeating shapes - this beast is certainly too large and loud to hide effectively.

The continued multiplayer investigation has finally yielded some promising results. Our programmers have gone through detailed logs from internal and community sessions on special profiling servers, and identified several problems. A 1.30 hotfix containing fixes and optimizations is being tested, and will also be available on the Steam Release Candidate branch soon (no access code will be required). If broader testing proves this version does indeed work better, we'll push it to main branch.

INTELLIGENCE

Community member .kju [PvPscene] has posted a collection of references on tweaking the Advanced Flight Model for helicopters. Please do note that we will be updating to a newer RotorLib version ahead of release, which will require some changes. When Arma 3 Helicopters is released, all stock official helicopters will be configured for this model, as will the new helicopters. User-made helicopters will need to be configured as this is not be done automatically (it's too complex). The official helicopters should cover a broad range of aircraft and provide a good starting point for modders.

Another great guide was submitted by KingScuba. It appears to still be a work-in-progress, but already covers some useful tips and tactics for attack helicopter pilots.

OPERATIONS

The third big feature we're focusing on during development of Arma 3 Helicopters is, of course, Firing from Vehicles. We are getting very close to having a version ready for Dev-Branch. Hopefully by the end of this week, you'll be able to try the feature for an initial batch of prepared vehicles (e.g. the MH-9 with benches and the offroad car). This is a feature that will require specific configuration and animation work per vehicle, so we cannot just enable it for all vehicles. We're doing our best to deliver backwards compatibility. If you had been using one of these vehicles in your scenarios, they should not break because a standard passenger seat has been upgraded to one that allows for firing of personal weapons. In the first version there will be a couple of known issues that we're working on, but it will be good to get the technology in the game for feedback.

LOGISTICS

Our website now contains a troubleshooting page with information about the Arma 3 Launcher. There are several third-party distributables that the application requires. Steam should install these automatically, but in case it does not, this is where you can find them. Some people also experience other compatibility issues between their OS, hardware and the launcher. Several work-arounds and diagnostic modes are presented on the page. We're interested in finding out exactly what PC set-ups cause these issues, so please post details to Feedback Tracker if you're affected.

Check out this unofficial guide on tweaking performance of the game. Player Terminus goes over several categories of tweaks to try to make the game run better on your own computer. As the author indicates, please be careful with some of the more advanced tips (e.g. overclocking) as they may cause damage.