Arma 3 beta update adds gigantic island of Altis

Arma 3 beta

That’s a lot of space right there.

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Get ready for even more ridiculous amounts of Arma 3 space to run around in, because Bohemia Interactive has added the game’s main island of Altis to the beta build today. To give you a numerical idea of how large it is, the previous island (Stratis) is 20 square kilometers in size. Altis is 270 square kilometers in size.

Designer Karel Moricky has put that into some sort of visual context by comparing the surface area to other ‘open world’ games like Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim on his blog. The upshot is, Arma 3 beta players now have a massive new surface area to construct scenarios and multiplayer missions for. There don’t seem to be any ‘official’ Bohemia ones to dip into just yet, so if you want to trek around on Altis you need to go through the game’s editor or grab something someone else has made in the Steam Workshop.

It’s a fairly hefty 2.1gb update, which should download automatically if you’re in the ‘dev branch’ of the Arma 3 beta. I think you can opt in to that through right-clicking on your beta in Steam, going to properties and then looking in the beta tab for a drop-down menu. If it just starts updating with a huge patch, then you’re already in.

If that sounded confusing, these handy instructions should help.

Here’s a full list of changes and additions in this update:

  • Added: 270 square kilometers of hot sun-baked Mediterranean Altis terrain
  • Added: Supporting assets such as static objects (some of which usable in editor)
  • AI rotation behaviour refined
  • AI accuracy calculations refined
  • Fixed: Helicopter engine sound played after damage
  • Fixed: Editor insert unit pictures, colors settings do not require restart anymore to take effect
  • Changed thrust and brake for tracked vehicle damaged tracks
  • Sound: Default volume now 100%
  • UI sounds volume driven by radio slider (instead of music previously)
  • Updated static table for network strings (MP optimization)
  • Known issue: pop-up errors selecting some units in editor
Arma 3 beta

That’s even more space.


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