Amazing photo examples! This would be excellent!

Persistent bullet holes would be neat, but depending on the some low-level engine details something like this would be non-trivial to implement technologically, and could possibly take significant art asset creation.

That being said, more battlefield persistence is always better in my book, and anything that could be done to improve that (even if it's just increasing the number of possible visible bullet holes and the duration of the applied effect) would be welcome.

I think most PCs struggle with ARMA already without asking them to keep track of every single bullet decal from every bullet fired. Its a nice thought but it would cause far too much lag .I prefer good FPS over persistent bullet holes.

im aware that it has a impact on performance. but i hope bis might find a way to implement this lighter than it seems, since its arma3 and 2013 ;)

added a alternative with hopefully less performance impact and easier development.

I don't know why this would be so hard on performance actually...
Wouldn't just a little method be sufficient, were a little texture is spawned at the impact point. Doesn't have to be High quality with large size, also doesnt modern Graphics Interfaces cache multiple equal textures, etc??

I mean, i know that over 10 years ago, with Duke Nukem games or Half-life, bullet-hole decals were an issue, but i doubt they are in 2013.

Such little things would all help for immersion and believable battlefields.
Imagine you have an Online MP game and you visit with your squad a town that has tons of bulletholes all over the houses, fences etc... you know instantly what happened there and you know the enemy you are looking for might be not far away...

meh this kinda is already done in a way, when vehicles take up some damage, the model texture changes to a bullet riddled texture, see screenshot i attached with comparison where I did it with AH9.

Now I tried the same with the Hunter and noticed no damage texture before it explodes, i ended up dying finding this out. But I am sure that the damage texture will still be implimented in the near future for all vehicles, as it was in A2.

The only thing I can say that needs working on is for example, I shoot only a few rounds in the AH9 and already the entire chopper was riddled. I would suggest having different layers, the more damage the vehicle picks up, the texture changes to reflect that, going from light damage, to moderate damage to heavy damage to scrap metal. this it would also be somewhat easy to tell the damage by looking at it. and then also even after repairing the vehicle, the texture should not reset to brand new to retain the battle tested look. I actually logged a seperate ticket for similar to this, but just being able to give a worn look over time.

Lastly, it would also be nice to have to have this not only on vehicles, but buildings and characters as well. Buildings will have textures change per face of the wall to accomodate this, and also characters, already they do show blood decals when injured, well it doesnt look like decals, just texture shifting as i do notice the popping of textures, but I would like the blood stains to remain instead of disapear, maybe just turn dark maroon red after healing to indicated dried blood, likewise dirt and mud from rolling around in the grass and dirt, this will gradually build up adding to the immersion of the character.

Now this isn't perfect like decals would be, but it is a work around is not performance intensive as decals would be that fade later anyway... and honestly, it works for me.

Also, bullet marks on objects are just black dots, whereas bullet marks on the ground are detailed textures. See attached screenshot

I don't think the object bullet holes are that important, but they are sure very ugly. The ones i think are important are the ones on vehicles because they should act as damage indicators, many vehicles in arma 3 currently have no visible bulletholes and stuff like that even before exploding, the visible damage of vehicles haven't changed since Arma armed assualt

1. I've always wondered if the coders are drunk or testing on 8 bit CRT's. Clearly the decals are pathetic.

2. I think they have sacrificed detail for performance.

3. Unless just retarded.

Answer: Needs tweaked no matter which of the 3 methods they choose above.

Still not assigned, i wonder if they will ever replace their placeholders in this game.

The tree hit decals are even worse, its just a bright manila dot. The ground hit decals are nice though. But I concur that the object hit decals are an immersion killer.

I would like to suggest improving this for the upcoming tanks DLC.

I'd like to see a nice bump-map texture hole from armor piercing ammunition so that the hole appears to have depth to it.

The current impact on vehicles looks nothing like a bullet hole, it looks like a soft brush tool from a graphics software.

I hope changes to the engine can make the decals check if the projectile has penetrated or not, and spawn a decal depending on that.

1. If it does not penetrate, it leaves a scorch or chipped paint/bent metal effect.
2. If it penetrates, it leaves a hole.

This is important for gameplay reasons too, to see if your shots are effective against armor or not.

Other areas that could use improvement : Hits on brick walls, buildings etc.