I've gone German...apparently.

First impressions of Chernarus

Walking around the towns and villages was amazing. There are plenty of screenshots out there now but you don't really get the same feel from static pictures as you do walking around. It really does feel far more realisitc, thanks to some of the new tech BIS has developed or adopted. The new parallax mapping system now gives you far more detail than ArmA1 ever managed. Some of the buildings are textured so well you need to check twice to see if they are actually modelled or just textures.

Much has been siad about the lighting. It really is pretty good, shadows are deeper and far more natural. In the default time of day in the editor it looks just like a crisp autumn morning in eastern Europe (and some parts of South London with the wrecked tanks) but the effect is slightly ruined by the overdone HDR bloom effect. Now, it really isn't game shakingly bad and dont listen to the guys screaming 'it blinds you". Thats just pure bollox. But its just a bit too much and after a while I found it pretty distracting. But not to the point it ruined gameplay. (I'd like to understand the reasons why that "feature" wasn't seen as a problem?)

From a modder's point of view i can see the work that has gone into ArmA2. You have to credit BIS for that alone if nothing else. The attention to detail is amazing. The sheer number of new buildings and textures. The effort required to produce all this monumental and it really has been worth the wait. You can happily spend ours walking, driving or flying around admiring the scenery and snooping around the houses and factories.

Chernarus the "island" is 15360.0m x 15360.0m with a 7.5m grid pitch which gives you some very impressively detailed terrain. For those of us that closely followed ArmA2's developement this is isnt really a huge surprise. But I have to admit its far better than i thought it would be.

As i said in the 505 Preview Chernarus' total area (235.93km2) is smaller than ArmA1's Sahrani (419.43km2). But the total usuable landmass is much greater. More than twice what we are used to. This is going to have a huge impact on the playable life of the island when it comes to MP games like EVO and Warfare. There are far more areas to learn and conquer.

Chernarus is bordered on two sides by the now infamous "infinite terrain". And while I was (and still am) a bit disappointed with how it appears I am happy to wait and see what BIS do with it in future patches. I've never had cause to stray out into these areas, apart from in the editor, so it really does have no affect on the SP game at all. BIS have said they are going to rework how it appears so its best to reserve judgment until they patch these areas before making any sort of comments.

So thats it for today. Over the next few days I'm going to try and post a more detailed lookinto the new features and the modding aspects of the new engine.  If you have specific questions PM me off the Armaholic, BIS or RKSL Studios websites and I'll answer your questions in the upcoming blogs if i can.

Rock