Battlefield 3 announced

Did you watch Repi's FB2 presentation at the GeForce LAN? Their HBAO is improved quite a bit from BFBC2 and looks a lot better than SSAO.

LINK TO THE WHOLE THING


The AO stuff starts in earnest about a minute in.
 
My shortlist of suggestions:

  • Include the commands "Need Ammo" and "Need Health" on the commo rose. I know you can request ammo and health by spotting a friendly medic or assault guy, but sometimes there isn't one in the immediate vicinity and I'd still like my teammates to know I'm in trouble
  • Reduce the size of the chatbox. It is way too big and distracting.
  • Fix the shadow glitching on NVIDIA DX10 hardware in single player. I'm not gonna play the campaign until this is worked out.
  • Fix the lag! Seriously about 50% of the Conquest Large servers are unplayable due to lag. And these are servers that report <70ms ping. I been mooching off of neliz to find good servers and that works great, but in the rare case that he's not online it takes a couple of tries to find a playable server.

Otherwise obviously I hope they continue to improve performance with driver and game updates.

Hoorah!
 
In the end the controller support is very poor for SP mode on PC

Ahh, well color me embarassed :( I just spent 20 minutes trying to get past the first qte where it displays the left mouse button. It always shows keyboard/mouse equivalents on screen even if you are playing with gamepad (unlike most other games that show gamepad buttons if that's what you are using) so when it showed left mouse button I figured it meant right trigger on the game pad since that's the equivalent. I tried every combination I could, pressing it slow, fast, many times, you name it then gave up after 20 minutes. Then I came here and read your post, went back to the game and now see that you actually have to press left mouse button there, apprently gamepad equivalents are ignored on the qte's so you have to keep the keyboard and mouse around for qte's. Is this only something that only affects single player mode I presume? Can online be played entirely with gamepad?
 
After few hours with 64 players conquest maps i must say i am disappointed. I think the only two maps suited for 64p conq is caspian and operation firestorm (if they will redesign that map!). Caspian is really good and now i understand why did they pick this map for beta. Firestorm is too big (objectives are too far apart) so im mostly spending my time running around. And it gets really irritating if you get killed by a lone camper who is not even remotely interested in capturing flags. Also flag areas need to be decreased!
Op Metro in 64 conquest is a disaster. few choke points constantly camped with medics reviving everyone all the time. It is just simply retarded that way. I get ton of kills without a reason and that's it. Camping on upper floors of building when you can not destroy the building is a let-down. Damawand peak is just a tiny bit better than metro because you can actually use a vehicle to try to take the middle.
I always thought that medic reviving everyone within few seconds is retarded (it also was in BC2). IMO is should take some time to revive and there should be a cooldown of some sort.
I will try 32 players action and maybe some rush maps.
 
Stupid question : Is there a way to launch the game without the battlelog/origin web page ?
It is not intended to be launched without it, but I am pretty sure there is a way. I don't know about it and DICE probably won't tell. Purely speculation on my part.
 
I'm pretty sure the web launcher just launches the executable with a pile of command-line stuff, although it might also communicate briefly with the process to do stuff like synchronize the "loading", "connection", etc. text. Just capture the command line that it launches (try single player first I'd say) and try and run it yourself outside of the browser and see what happens :)

I haven't tried 64 player yet and have no real inclination to. I've yet to find a game where it's a significantly better experience than 32 (or less). Glad to have the option though.
 
The AO stuff starts in earnest about a minute in.

Yeah, I though AO was a downer for performance but SSAO isn't that bad, though it's not on the same level of quality of course.

In the spawn screen, you can actually see the different effects of SSAO and HBAO.

I'm pretty sure the web launcher just launches the executable with a pile of command-line stuff, although it might also communicate briefly with the process to do stuff like synchronize the "loading", "connection", etc. text. Just capture the command line that it launches (try single player first I'd say) and try and run it yourself outside of the browser and see what happens :)

I haven't tried 64 player yet and have no real inclination to. I've yet to find a game where it's a significantly better experience than 32 (or less). Glad to have the option though.

Actually, running the BF3.EXE starts Origin, from Origin it starts the browser and from battlelog it starts the executable again. vicious circle?
 
What a waste of bandwidth that was. He complains of the hit detection when he's shooting a foot above and to the right of a guys head and misses.
 
Actually, running the BF3.EXE starts Origin, from Origin it starts the browser and from battlelog it starts the executable again. vicious circle?

Ugh, more reasons for me not to buy this game or touch it with a 10 foot pole. Shame as the game sounds really good. And more reasons not to ever buy anything hosted on Origins.

Ah well, at least there's a ton of other good games coming out.

Regards,
SB
 
The small annoyances are more than made up for by the awesome game. BF3 is the best BF yet, and that's saying a lot.
 
It's not an annoyance really. I bought a boxed copy and after registering it on Origin I can lose the disc and still download it any time I want.
 
Yeah I must agree... even minor bugs/annoyances do very little to detract from the fact that this is head and shoulders above any other FPS that I've played on any system. There's really no comparison.
 
I love being in a helo, and listening to a teammate is locking on to an enemy. Same with being on the ground next to someone locking on with a stinger. Just puts a smile on my face every time, it sounds so bloody good.

What's more prestigious than a BAFTA that they could win this time around? Whatever it is they deserve that as well.
 
I really like that infantry AA (stinger, etc) are actually useful in this game. I think I've shot down more aircraft in the last few days than I ever have in any previous BF game. Hope they don't nerf that.
 
I hope so too, and they shouldn't. In a jet once you know what you're doing it's not too hard to get away from one or two individual stinger operators, but if there are dedicated squads then jets should be in for a hard time thanks to other aspects being less attributed to, like anti-tank.

As afficianados know, that's the great ebb and flow of a battlefield game. Get a good jet or helo team raping everyone, all of a sudden people take notice and you get air hunters popping up behind every rock. It's basically the best game of team rock paper scissors you'll ever play until the next one comes out.

Anyone here playing BF3 as their first BF experience? How is it for you?
 
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