FROM: Creative Director
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Advanced Helicopter FDM Deployed
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

It's been an exciting time on Arma 3's development branch as - alongside our usual line-up of tweaks, fixes and additions - we've just rolled out the first version of the advanced helicopter flight model! Rotorhead-in-chief, Karel Kališ, found the time to put together a splendid OPREP, which outlines the changes to helicopter flight, customisation options, controls and GUI elements! Together with Lukáš Miláček and Vojtěch Hladík, we're keenly awaiting your feedback on our official forums!

Looking ahead, we'll aim to deploy our Sling Loading and Firing from Vehicles features once we're ready for your feedback. And, speaking of future updates, work has continued apace on Weapon Inertia. Programmer (and part-time animation exorcist), Šimon Kolčiter, has continued his close cooperation with Sandbox Designer, Radko Voda; together, they've made some good progress on 'sight misalignment' (a key part of the feeling of inertia) and - with the help of the rest of the team - we're evaluating a version that we hope to deploy to the dev-branch soon™!

INTELLIGENCE

Next week, a motley crew of Bohemia's Top Men will descend upon GDCE in Cologne. Proud citizens of Westphalia, hide your beers and your gaming-folk! If you'll be in the area, give us a tweet or - if you get the chance - yours truly will be presenting an overview of our team's experience with the (relatively new) Early-Access model of development.

In other news - for those that like to dig a little deeper - social-media scan-bot, Borivoj Hlava, uncovered a detailed guide to getting the most out of Arma 3's many configuration options, while long-time/suffering community member, NouberNou, presented 'Carma', an object-oriented programming extension to SQF. Splendid stuff!

OPERATIONS

As we teased last week, Tools Commissar (and temporary Project Lead), pettka of House Bounce, shared some additions to the Arma 3 Tools development branch yesterday: Game Updater, Bulldozer Configurator, fixed Addon Builder + cfgConvert. On a semi-related note, if you strive for documentation of Doors, you may find it rather soon in Arma 3 Samples on the dev-branch of Arma 3 Tools.

Yesterday's dev update also brought word of a fix to 'speed of sound' simulation. It's a relatively complex under-the-hood change to the ordering of samples, which caused an issue where some samples were played in 2D, rather than 3D with attenuation. One useful example of what's changed is an issue where you could hear reloading across the island after the shooting, but the shooting sound came later than reloading sound. This problem should now be addressed. As promised last week, more updates should emerge from the re-purposed Audio department in the near future!

LOGISTICS

As we mentioned previously, localisation of the Launcher has been in progress! We should now support Czech, German, Spanish, French, Italiano, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and British English*. Should you encounter any unsightly errors, please do share your feedback (aside from the inclusion of extra vowels in words like 'colour'. I'll just force people ignore those**).

Last but not least, we can thankfully report that Arma 3 Project Lead - and all-round Dutch Dreamboat - Joris-Jan Van 't Land should return next week, no doubt refreshed and infused with vigour and vim (after the jet-lag wears off)! It has been a pleasure to temporarily sit as Guardian of the REPs and the Splendid Men, Lord of the Iron Throne of Mnisek, Royalty of the Exiled, Changer of Logs and Breaker of Games; yet, normal service shall soon™ be resumed!

* Disclaimer: it's actually En-US; aka, English (simplified)
** Disclaimer: I don't have this kind of power. Yet.