FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Update 1.26 coming, RotorLib tweaking
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
In the midst of the summer holidays and heat, the team has pushed on full steam with their work on Arma 3 Helicopters and more. A release candidate for the 1.26 update has been mastered and is close to release. As has become usual, we're staging the update on Steam's hidden RC branch. Keen server admins, modders and players can try it using access code Update126Arma3Splendid in the BETAS tab of the Steam client. The central feature of the update is the roll out of the so-called guaranteed network messages. See the LOGISTICS section for a bit more on this multiplayer optimization. Another, more trivial addition, is the set of sounds for opening / closing doors of various materials (and therefore technology to add sounds to other objects with animation sources). This update does not include the RotorLib flight model yet! The final version of that technology is to be released in a game update alongside Arma 3 Helicopters. We'd like to remind players to consider running a Steam local verification and defragmentation on HDDs after updating to solve potential file corruption issues and to improve performance.
INTELLIGENCE
We're reminded by Bořivoj Hlava that you can use keyboard combination Left Ctrl + / to copy basic information about your game version to your clipboard. You can then proceed to paste this info into any report you post to Feedback Tracker, which will help us identify your exact version.
Community member Clawhammer asks on the forums how much Arma people have actually played so far. There are some staggering numbers being presented there. We're also interested in seeing where you spend your time, be it singleplayer content, multiplayer, the editor, user-generated content, ... the video options?!
It's motivational to see Polygon re-review Arma 3 based on its current state, after the campaign episodes, Zeus, Bootcamp and everything else. They have raised the score from 6.5 to 8.0, which tells us we're on the right track. There's room for improvement and we'll continue to work hard on making the Arma 3 platform all it can and should be.
OPERATIONS
As an addendum to his OPREP, designer Karel Kališ reports on the progress on RotorLib since its release on Dev-Branch: "The advanced helicopter FDM is available in dev-branch for some time now and we're gathering your feedback on this new functionality. Some issues were already solved. For example, collective and pedals in all helicopters should be fully animated and responding to your inputs. Transmission in some helicopters wasn't properly configured so rough handling with the Stress Damage setting enabled wasn't penalized. These days are over and now you can severely damage your helicopter when torque rises over the limits - keep your eyes on the TRQindicator!
We've also fixed some of the problems related to landing gear. Wheels should properly roll while taxiing and the behavior of ground contacts was tweaked. You can now land at higher speeds without damaging your helicopter. Speaking of damage – this is one of the most mentioned concerns on the forums. We're afraid a full overhaul is a huge task which would need to be resolved taking in consideration all vehicles, not just helicopters. We can't promise we'll be able to tackle this in the foreseeable future. We are however committed to improve the various aspects of helicopters and will bring a lot of new fixes, Sling Loading and tweaks to flight models, instruments and the rest. Stay tuned and please keep providing us with valuable feedback."
LOGISTICS
The BattlEye anti-cheat engine now handles bans across Arma 3, DayZ and also new SteamID-based bans issued in Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead. So, for example, a ban in Arma 3 will also apply to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and conversely.
Previously described in SITREP #00058, the coming 1.26 update enables the use of a new method of sending multiplayer network messages. Brought in from DayZ stand-alone, the aim is to send less data over the network by sending only the difference compared to the previous state of such messages. While the same amount of messages need to be processed, the reduced traffic may help servers with large player numbers. After a good period of testing on dev-branch and our special profiling servers (splendidly administrated by David Foltýn), we're now ready to get this into the main game.