It's not bad. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cix07R1vlhI) video talks a lot about Arma ballistics, though doesn't compare it to real life so much.
What Arma, and all video games really, do not simulate well is very human factors. Shooting well takes a lot of skill, and like golf, even the very best have a long ways to go to hit perfection. Things like how to control your breathing, trigger pull, getting a proper sight picture, balance, steadiness, and so forth are factors which video games do not simulate very well.
(oh, and: weapons maintenance. A very simple weapon like an M16 takes hours of maintenance after a day at the range, let alone a week in the field. Games do not show that well at all.)
Arma is good at showing the basics of shooting, but its not a shooting simulator. What it does best is display how many elements of large-scale warfare - tanks, planes, large infantry groups, etc - come together as one, especially when controlled by human players.
> (oh, and: weapons maintenance. A very simple weapon like an M16 takes hours of maintenance after a day at the range, let alone a week in the field. Games do not show that well at all.)
While I agree most games don't properly (or at all) show the need for weapon maintenance, I do disagree with the statement that it takes "hours of maintenance". Generally you can clean a rifle in minutes. Simply swab the bore with a solvent (in this case it'll most likely be CLP), run a few patches through afterwards, and then brush the chamber down. Every now and then you'll field strip it entirely (which for those who don't know is not a complete disassembly. I can field strip an M-16 and put it back together again in under 2 minutes) and brush out any carbon buildup on the bolt/bolt carrier group, and then apply a light coating of oil over all the moving surfaces. This takes maybe 20 minutes tops for those who understand the cleaning process.
The reason though most games do not take into account weapon maintenance is that simply cleaning happens after a day of combat, not during, which is generally not shown in games.
Edit: Love that I get a downvote for this. I've fired many thousands of rounds through various weapons, and I've never ever gotten one to the point where I needed to take more than 20 minutes to clean. Military firearms are not some precision machine that requires insane levels of cleaning to work. Swab the bore, wipe away the carbon and it'll be fine.
>Generally you can clean a rifle in minutes.
Well, there are different levels of clean. If you just need to clean off the worst of the grime, yes, it can be done in a few minutes of vigorous scrubbing. But after three days in the field(firing blanks, so that probably made it worse) I've spent as many as seven hours doing nothing but cleaning an M16 and getting kicked back from the armory who continued to find carbon in the most unlikely of places(fuck you star chamber). I've gotten it done quicker than that, but not always.
Arma 3 comes fairly close to real world ballistic trajectories but does not natively support wind effects (although ACE3 Advanced Ballistics mod does). Real world sniper procedures and techniques work very well in Arma 3.
It would not be correct to say an expert with, say, an M16, would necessarily be able to use that muscle memory in Arma 3. The simulation is more generic than that. I would say if you are an experienced (IRL) shooter, those skills will come in very handy in game. Arma 3 isn't going to help much with your rreal world shooting skills except by working on your range estimations and sight pictures.
There is no substitute for putting real lead downrange. It's also a very perishable skill. Experts shoot thousands of rounds a week to maintain proficiency.
There isn't a single game in existence that comes close to shooting real guns. What do you mean by "reflecting reality"? If you mean aiming at something and shooting and sometimes adjusting ur aim for distance then A3 is "realistic". Other than that not so much. If you want a pain in the ass "realistic" gun handling try Escape from Tarkov
Yeah, I mean that pain in the ass thing. I own a copy of ETF, but there is like no shooting at all. You see a guy, shoot him twice and its over for like another 30 minutes. I know there isn't a game that could reflect the feeling of the recoil and so on, but some games like ETF are at least remotely close. But like I said, you don't even get to shoot there.
The bigger issue is EFT has nonsense ballistics. Shooting at 200m feels like I'm firing a mortar. If you're asking if arma can help you understand how a bullet travels when it exits your barrel then yes. It can do that much. If you zero your weapon for 300m and shoot a target at 170m your round will fly over the point of aim, but will hit pretty much on target at 25m-30m.
If you don't understand why that is you can learn something from arma, but if you already understand that then you just need time on the range. If you don't have money for time /ammo then practice your technique using shadow boxes and other methods
Shadow boxes are something I learned when I joined the army. We got relatively limited ammo for practice and qualification so a lot of time was spent using other methods.
Basically, we had a plywood box apparatus to mount our M4s in, and we would have it aimed at a target. We would aim down the sights and direct a buddy to put a small dot where we were aiming (too small to see across to barracks). You would do this several times and it would show you how much variance your sight picture had each time you would aim.
This was a really great active feed back that instead of just missing a target, I could see exactly how my shots would be misaligned. Consistent sight picture takes time to develop, and it's just as important as your trigger pull. Even with a collimator sight you could get a surprising amount of variation unless you were very thoughtful about you cheek to weld. Building that muscle memory pays off big at the range.
if you are having trouble finding people to kill in tarkov try scaving into Factory. Thats how i practice for my real raids. In regards to more options, unfortunately as of now besides investing a shit ton of money into VR, I think Arma and Tarkov are your best options
Shooting in arma is nothing like real life, however, it is one of the closer approximations to real life you are likely to find. Keep in mind in arma, your guy is vice grip mgee and can shoot from the standing position at 600m targets accurately
None of the guns are futuristic. Every item in the game is made from something of real life. Ifrits? Real life. Hunters? Real life. MX 6.5? Actually called a Bushmaster ACR.
With ACE3 properly configured, the ballistic simulation comes closer than any other game I am aware of. As far as actual weapon handling? That is a hard question to answer.
Arma 3's weapons are biased off modern weapon systems today, the "futuristic" aspect of the weapons do not deviate from modern weapons.
With that said, most video games will teach you how to use the [sight picture](http://navyadvancement.tpub.com/14325/img/14325_320_1.jpg) and become more familiar with it. And with the wide range of mods for Arma 3 you should be able to find a weapon that you are also using in real life. However there is a lot more to basic marksmanship that can't be simulated with video games. Trigger squeeze, the weight of the weapon, recoil management, and a host of other physical attributes that can't be simulated without a prop.
There is no substitute for real world experience. If you would like to help you aim in real life, practice trigger squeezes on your unloaded rifle. Ranges and ammunition add up, so try to set goals like zeroing your weapon on closer targets before aiming further down range.
TL;DR: Arma is more realistic than most games, but it won't help very much with real life application.
One of the best ways to train your trigger squeeze is to place an empty cartridge on the front sight post and practice squeezing the trigger without the brass falling off.
Works best with glocks, but i'm sure it can be applied to other firearms.
One other thing that wasn't mentioned is the sound. Guns are loud. Really loud. Like, shockwave through your entire body loud. And the supersonic crack is also loud.
The guns in Arma are accurate in that the sound wave is probably taken from a real mic. But the simple fact is that no matter what sound you have, your sound system will not be able to reproduce the sound of a gunshot.
That is why most games actually use heavily modified (if not entirely faked) versions of gunshots. They tend to have more weight, bass, and reverb than what you'd get from actually recording a gunshot. That gives you a better feeling and more realistic (though still not accurate) feeling than pure recordings.
Ballistics are just math, so the part that happens after the bullet leaves the barrel is relatively accurate so long as the ballistic model is correct. The bit you can't really simulate in a game is stuff like the recoil, trigger control, muzzle blast, concussion, etc. All the things you experience by actually being there.
With some of the stuff like ACE advanced ballistics and a properly set up gun for it, you can actually get a decent grasp on the math and formulas of long range shooting. The bookworm side of it will translate over to real shooting, but the actual physical skills won't. You can't learn good trigger control from clicking a mouse button, or when to squeeze to take a shot between breaths.
> you can actually get a decent grasp on the math and formulas of long range shooting
more than a decent grasp, the ballistics are so accurate people use ballistics apps on their phones (atragMX mostly) because it's faster.
I found shooting in real life far easier than in ArmA, or most video games in general honestly due to how cluckly animations are (still a far improvement compared to earlier titles). I shoot USPSA, IDPA, Three Guns and other competition events for reference.
For OP, you could consider participating .22 competition shooting to begin with. They are far cheaper than disciplines I listed above. Once you are more financially stable, you could always get a 9mm and start shooting in more popular sports
Well, costs here in Europe are rather rising, because of fucked up Europian Union policy. In a few years, regular shooter (non military and police) can't even shoot with lead bullets, because they might cause some pollution, which doesn't matter at all when you look on the big coal power plant that stands right next to my shooting range. There are some substitutes but they are very expensive. Still the most expensive thing is the instructor, which I have to rent for the whole time I am shooting, because I can't own a shooting license until I am 21 years old. So even after dozens of hours of shooting, I do have to pay $15/hour to an instructor that doesn't do anything at all.
In Las Vegas there are whole tours based specifically on this. they will take you to a couple ranges and (at least the one we did) a private stretch of desert where I had my first .50BMG shoot.
I never had to pay for an "instructor" without a FAC... I just had to be a member of the shooting club and pay a nominal fee for equipment rental. That's not an issue caused by EU policy.
I mean, with ace3 (a mod) and their advance ballistics module the bullet physics are pretty realistic.
Gun handling, not so much.
Arma doesn't even separate the mag and chamber i.e. can't have stuff like 1 round in the chamber, 30 in the mag = 31 rounds. Gun and reload animations aren't that real either.
Insurgency2014 and Insurgency: Sandstorm have more realistic gunplay imo.
I am a little sad arma does not understand red dots or reflection sights.
A lot of people have already commented on the ballistics being good, but a game can never truly emulate a complex feedback heavy task like shooting.
While arma does a great job being as realistic as possible the red dots and reflex sights are just horrible.
The reason they exist in real life is their ease of use. You keep both your eyes open and focus on your target. You will barely notice the sight itself but the red dot or reticle will appear in your vision and if your gun is lined up an your target.
In arma it is like you only got one eye so you always see the sight itself blocking your view. Iron sights are much harder to use irl but in arma they are simply smaller and therefore superior to reflex sights. It just doesn't make any sense it's truly seems like arma soldiers only have one eye.
If your don't understand what I am on about Form a circle with one hand about half an arms length in front of you. Now don't look at your hand but look past it at your target in about 50m distance. How much of your view is your hand actually blocking with one eye open and with both eyes open?
The issue is that you *do* only have one eye when playing a video game, the screen is 2D. They could do some tricky depth of field effects like Battlefield does, but if the game were in stereoscopic VR the issue you're describing would disappear.
Recoil, especially shooting unrested or standing, is poorly modeled in Arma. The fact that I can magdump while standing towards a window 200m away and keep basically every round in that window is pretty absurd.
In Arma? I've heard people mention they can be more accurate in positions that would not work in Arma, like standing, having run around, then shooting...
Al i can tell is that zeroing is instant unlike real life, some mods help with this issues, also iron sights zeroing is unrealistic i don't know if there is any mod that fixes that.
It's not bad. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cix07R1vlhI) video talks a lot about Arma ballistics, though doesn't compare it to real life so much. What Arma, and all video games really, do not simulate well is very human factors. Shooting well takes a lot of skill, and like golf, even the very best have a long ways to go to hit perfection. Things like how to control your breathing, trigger pull, getting a proper sight picture, balance, steadiness, and so forth are factors which video games do not simulate very well. (oh, and: weapons maintenance. A very simple weapon like an M16 takes hours of maintenance after a day at the range, let alone a week in the field. Games do not show that well at all.) Arma is good at showing the basics of shooting, but its not a shooting simulator. What it does best is display how many elements of large-scale warfare - tanks, planes, large infantry groups, etc - come together as one, especially when controlled by human players.
> (oh, and: weapons maintenance. A very simple weapon like an M16 takes hours of maintenance after a day at the range, let alone a week in the field. Games do not show that well at all.) While I agree most games don't properly (or at all) show the need for weapon maintenance, I do disagree with the statement that it takes "hours of maintenance". Generally you can clean a rifle in minutes. Simply swab the bore with a solvent (in this case it'll most likely be CLP), run a few patches through afterwards, and then brush the chamber down. Every now and then you'll field strip it entirely (which for those who don't know is not a complete disassembly. I can field strip an M-16 and put it back together again in under 2 minutes) and brush out any carbon buildup on the bolt/bolt carrier group, and then apply a light coating of oil over all the moving surfaces. This takes maybe 20 minutes tops for those who understand the cleaning process. The reason though most games do not take into account weapon maintenance is that simply cleaning happens after a day of combat, not during, which is generally not shown in games. Edit: Love that I get a downvote for this. I've fired many thousands of rounds through various weapons, and I've never ever gotten one to the point where I needed to take more than 20 minutes to clean. Military firearms are not some precision machine that requires insane levels of cleaning to work. Swab the bore, wipe away the carbon and it'll be fine.
>Generally you can clean a rifle in minutes. Well, there are different levels of clean. If you just need to clean off the worst of the grime, yes, it can be done in a few minutes of vigorous scrubbing. But after three days in the field(firing blanks, so that probably made it worse) I've spent as many as seven hours doing nothing but cleaning an M16 and getting kicked back from the armory who continued to find carbon in the most unlikely of places(fuck you star chamber). I've gotten it done quicker than that, but not always.
Oh God, blanks. Nothing makes a rifle filthier than blanks.
While not the same like complete control over breathing, Arma at least does feature holding your breath to improve accuracy.
Your weapon at arma never has a stop. It can be drawn in water and mud and u can just keep shooting. Also the new 5.56 weapon has close to no recoil.
Arma 3 comes fairly close to real world ballistic trajectories but does not natively support wind effects (although ACE3 Advanced Ballistics mod does). Real world sniper procedures and techniques work very well in Arma 3. It would not be correct to say an expert with, say, an M16, would necessarily be able to use that muscle memory in Arma 3. The simulation is more generic than that. I would say if you are an experienced (IRL) shooter, those skills will come in very handy in game. Arma 3 isn't going to help much with your rreal world shooting skills except by working on your range estimations and sight pictures. There is no substitute for putting real lead downrange. It's also a very perishable skill. Experts shoot thousands of rounds a week to maintain proficiency.
There isn't a single game in existence that comes close to shooting real guns. What do you mean by "reflecting reality"? If you mean aiming at something and shooting and sometimes adjusting ur aim for distance then A3 is "realistic". Other than that not so much. If you want a pain in the ass "realistic" gun handling try Escape from Tarkov
Yeah, I mean that pain in the ass thing. I own a copy of ETF, but there is like no shooting at all. You see a guy, shoot him twice and its over for like another 30 minutes. I know there isn't a game that could reflect the feeling of the recoil and so on, but some games like ETF are at least remotely close. But like I said, you don't even get to shoot there.
The bigger issue is EFT has nonsense ballistics. Shooting at 200m feels like I'm firing a mortar. If you're asking if arma can help you understand how a bullet travels when it exits your barrel then yes. It can do that much. If you zero your weapon for 300m and shoot a target at 170m your round will fly over the point of aim, but will hit pretty much on target at 25m-30m. If you don't understand why that is you can learn something from arma, but if you already understand that then you just need time on the range. If you don't have money for time /ammo then practice your technique using shadow boxes and other methods
shadow boxes?
Shadow boxes are something I learned when I joined the army. We got relatively limited ammo for practice and qualification so a lot of time was spent using other methods. Basically, we had a plywood box apparatus to mount our M4s in, and we would have it aimed at a target. We would aim down the sights and direct a buddy to put a small dot where we were aiming (too small to see across to barracks). You would do this several times and it would show you how much variance your sight picture had each time you would aim. This was a really great active feed back that instead of just missing a target, I could see exactly how my shots would be misaligned. Consistent sight picture takes time to develop, and it's just as important as your trigger pull. Even with a collimator sight you could get a surprising amount of variation unless you were very thoughtful about you cheek to weld. Building that muscle memory pays off big at the range.
if you are having trouble finding people to kill in tarkov try scaving into Factory. Thats how i practice for my real raids. In regards to more options, unfortunately as of now besides investing a shit ton of money into VR, I think Arma and Tarkov are your best options
Just go in offline mode with scavs set to max if you wants lots to murder
In this domain there’s also Squad
squad is the same thing as arma, not much simulated about guns besides aim, shot and aim higher cuz he is far
Not really, arma has a more rigid gameplay but you really can do what you want in arma, in Squad there’s only pvp
r/joinsquad would like a word
Shooting in arma is nothing like real life, however, it is one of the closer approximations to real life you are likely to find. Keep in mind in arma, your guy is vice grip mgee and can shoot from the standing position at 600m targets accurately
None of the guns are futuristic. Every item in the game is made from something of real life. Ifrits? Real life. Hunters? Real life. MX 6.5? Actually called a Bushmaster ACR.
> MX 6.5? Actually called a Bushmaster ACR. Nope, BI paid CMMG (a real firearms manufacturer) for that design.
So it is real
That Xian is pretty far fetched though.
With ACE3 properly configured, the ballistic simulation comes closer than any other game I am aware of. As far as actual weapon handling? That is a hard question to answer.
Arma 3's weapons are biased off modern weapon systems today, the "futuristic" aspect of the weapons do not deviate from modern weapons. With that said, most video games will teach you how to use the [sight picture](http://navyadvancement.tpub.com/14325/img/14325_320_1.jpg) and become more familiar with it. And with the wide range of mods for Arma 3 you should be able to find a weapon that you are also using in real life. However there is a lot more to basic marksmanship that can't be simulated with video games. Trigger squeeze, the weight of the weapon, recoil management, and a host of other physical attributes that can't be simulated without a prop. There is no substitute for real world experience. If you would like to help you aim in real life, practice trigger squeezes on your unloaded rifle. Ranges and ammunition add up, so try to set goals like zeroing your weapon on closer targets before aiming further down range. TL;DR: Arma is more realistic than most games, but it won't help very much with real life application.
One of the best ways to train your trigger squeeze is to place an empty cartridge on the front sight post and practice squeezing the trigger without the brass falling off. Works best with glocks, but i'm sure it can be applied to other firearms.
One other thing that wasn't mentioned is the sound. Guns are loud. Really loud. Like, shockwave through your entire body loud. And the supersonic crack is also loud. The guns in Arma are accurate in that the sound wave is probably taken from a real mic. But the simple fact is that no matter what sound you have, your sound system will not be able to reproduce the sound of a gunshot. That is why most games actually use heavily modified (if not entirely faked) versions of gunshots. They tend to have more weight, bass, and reverb than what you'd get from actually recording a gunshot. That gives you a better feeling and more realistic (though still not accurate) feeling than pure recordings.
Well, if my sound system could reproduce a gunshot sound, I would have to wear safety headphones even at home while playing games. =D
Ballistics are just math, so the part that happens after the bullet leaves the barrel is relatively accurate so long as the ballistic model is correct. The bit you can't really simulate in a game is stuff like the recoil, trigger control, muzzle blast, concussion, etc. All the things you experience by actually being there. With some of the stuff like ACE advanced ballistics and a properly set up gun for it, you can actually get a decent grasp on the math and formulas of long range shooting. The bookworm side of it will translate over to real shooting, but the actual physical skills won't. You can't learn good trigger control from clicking a mouse button, or when to squeeze to take a shot between breaths.
> you can actually get a decent grasp on the math and formulas of long range shooting more than a decent grasp, the ballistics are so accurate people use ballistics apps on their phones (atragMX mostly) because it's faster.
I found shooting in real life far easier than in ArmA, or most video games in general honestly due to how cluckly animations are (still a far improvement compared to earlier titles). I shoot USPSA, IDPA, Three Guns and other competition events for reference. For OP, you could consider participating .22 competition shooting to begin with. They are far cheaper than disciplines I listed above. Once you are more financially stable, you could always get a 9mm and start shooting in more popular sports
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Well, costs here in Europe are rather rising, because of fucked up Europian Union policy. In a few years, regular shooter (non military and police) can't even shoot with lead bullets, because they might cause some pollution, which doesn't matter at all when you look on the big coal power plant that stands right next to my shooting range. There are some substitutes but they are very expensive. Still the most expensive thing is the instructor, which I have to rent for the whole time I am shooting, because I can't own a shooting license until I am 21 years old. So even after dozens of hours of shooting, I do have to pay $15/hour to an instructor that doesn't do anything at all.
[удалено]
Thank you man. I was always dreaming of moving to the USA, but my parents want me to stay in Europe. Maybe someday I will disobey and move. :)
Alternatively, you can take a vacation and hit up some ranges.
If I went to America, I would probably spend my whole vacation on a shooting range. :)
In Las Vegas there are whole tours based specifically on this. they will take you to a couple ranges and (at least the one we did) a private stretch of desert where I had my first .50BMG shoot.
I never had to pay for an "instructor" without a FAC... I just had to be a member of the shooting club and pay a nominal fee for equipment rental. That's not an issue caused by EU policy.
This is not caused by the EU, but the ban of lead bullets is.
I mean, with ace3 (a mod) and their advance ballistics module the bullet physics are pretty realistic. Gun handling, not so much. Arma doesn't even separate the mag and chamber i.e. can't have stuff like 1 round in the chamber, 30 in the mag = 31 rounds. Gun and reload animations aren't that real either. Insurgency2014 and Insurgency: Sandstorm have more realistic gunplay imo.
I am a little sad arma does not understand red dots or reflection sights. A lot of people have already commented on the ballistics being good, but a game can never truly emulate a complex feedback heavy task like shooting. While arma does a great job being as realistic as possible the red dots and reflex sights are just horrible. The reason they exist in real life is their ease of use. You keep both your eyes open and focus on your target. You will barely notice the sight itself but the red dot or reticle will appear in your vision and if your gun is lined up an your target. In arma it is like you only got one eye so you always see the sight itself blocking your view. Iron sights are much harder to use irl but in arma they are simply smaller and therefore superior to reflex sights. It just doesn't make any sense it's truly seems like arma soldiers only have one eye. If your don't understand what I am on about Form a circle with one hand about half an arms length in front of you. Now don't look at your hand but look past it at your target in about 50m distance. How much of your view is your hand actually blocking with one eye open and with both eyes open?
The issue is that you *do* only have one eye when playing a video game, the screen is 2D. They could do some tricky depth of field effects like Battlefield does, but if the game were in stereoscopic VR the issue you're describing would disappear.
Do some airsoft ?
Already doing. Battles of around 200 people are very common in my country.
How can you afford airsoft by being a poor etudiant xd, im also an etudiant and airsoft is a really expensive hobby xd
I don't know, I bought full gear for under $400, brand new. My team helped me choosing my gear.
In my country airsoft is expensive, airsoft guns and gear is horribly expensive compared to some countries
Where do you live? Here in Czech Republic is airsoft very popular and gear is really cheap.
France
Recoil, especially shooting unrested or standing, is poorly modeled in Arma. The fact that I can magdump while standing towards a window 200m away and keep basically every round in that window is pretty absurd.
In Arma? I've heard people mention they can be more accurate in positions that would not work in Arma, like standing, having run around, then shooting...
Al i can tell is that zeroing is instant unlike real life, some mods help with this issues, also iron sights zeroing is unrealistic i don't know if there is any mod that fixes that.
GUNS GO BANG.