ARMA III aviation comparison
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEITUGo-AOE
Go to 3:30, think video makes the point.

Arma never has been a hardcore vehicle / aircraft simulation.

Of course but the graphics are still pretty impressive.

IMHO the biggest problem with the ARAM worlds wrt flying is the limited view distances and map size.. You can see an example of this in this video when the plan initally comes out of the clouds.. Note the view at distances is allways foggy/hazy looking, that is to say nothing is being rendered at far distances.. For a WWI sim this would not be a big issue, but with jets as in ARMA it becomes a big issue

That would be a detail setting. In Arma 2 you can render upto 10km visible away which is pretty far. Even today it's very deanding on the CPU. Mine can do it but only just and I prefer it to render only around 3km away for nice fps.

I have not played ARMA it in awhile, but last time I check I had that setting set out about as far as it would go and I still get what I discribed above.. The ARMA world view has a very fish bowl feel to it.. Eye of the storm look to it.. Which is fine when playing FPS, or even a slow helo.. But when flying a plane, the limited view really impacts gameplay.. Long story short, as it currently stand, the ARMA graphics engine would be a no go for CoD IMHO.

10 km is not adequate. The channel is already 20 miles wide at the narrowest point - imagine not being able to see the other side when you are at 10k feet over Hawkinge.

Arma is for me that gmae full of potential, but poorly conceived.

i still cnat play 2, it seems so hard to do anything, i cnat open a door, pick up a rifle or pretty much anything, without going trow 3 menus....

it has the graphics cappacity but very low gameplay.


lets see what no3 brings us

Yes but ARMA 3/2 detail level is far far better then CLOD, things in the distance take far less processing power to render then objects close to the plane due to the LOD in geo, textures etc. Coupled with that you have volumetric clouds and effects etc.
As ARMA is not a flight sim but is still able to acheive what I would say is a level of detail and graphics significantly above what CLOD has and could easily be expanded out its a sad statement since that is a peripheral part of the game experience.

You have to remember that you can make things look prettier if you arent making alot of calculations under the hood for simulating a vehicle to the degree that Clod does. You always have to take that into account. So if Arma isnt really much of a vehicle sim, you have to add that into the equation when comparing the 2, IMHO.