Thursday

Can the AI in ArmA2 see through grass? Revisited.

Filed under PC

In the comments of my recent “Can the AI in ArmA2 see through grass?” post someone said that the AI would behave exactly the same way on tarmac, and that the grass had nothing to do with visibility as far as the AI code is concerned. Someone else asked whether the ghillie suit would actually make a difference, which was a good question so I tested both.

What I did was set up the exact same test again, but this time on a runway instead of in the grass. The up close results were to be expected and the same as in the grass test. The soldiers turned, saw me and killed me. Farther out however things were different on the tarmac. In the grass they’d react to the grenade then come looking for me, shooting in my general direction etc. On the tarmac at medium range they turned, spotted me and shot me just like that. At long range they turned, spotted me and shot at until I was dead which only took about 10 seconds. Totally different results than in the grass test, and results which are again very encouraging as the grass really does appear to have an impact on how well the AI can see you.

For my next test I repeated it on the tarmac, but this time as a sniper with a ghillie suit on. Exact same results, I would fire a shot (sniper has no grenades) and they would turn, see me then shoot until I was dead. I then moved all of use backwards a bit so the soldiers were still on the runway but I was in the grass off the end of the runway. This time I fired a shot one of them, and the rest all went down looking for me. I shot another. Then another. I was actually able to shoot all of them (from the longer range of all these tests). The soldiers went prone and looked around for me, and sent one or two running off in various directions but they clearly had no idea where I was. I repeated the test and this time after killing half of them I stood up, then went prone again. Having spotted me, they opened fire until I was dead.

What all this tells me is that yes,  the grass actually does  impact how well the AI can spot you. I’m going to do more testing with the ghillie suit however as I’m not sure how much effect that had. I was certainly able to shoot a lot more without them having the slightest clue where I was, but I’ll devise a new test to sort that out for sure.