That's a good idea, but first they have to add rain.
/upvoted

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Woohooohooo!!! Realistic surface simulation wold be awesome!
Grass, mud, ground, snow, sand, water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jjqJHa0k1Tk

Arma = simulation = best of the best games

@Khan, please look at Assassins Creed 3, he have vertex deformation for snow layer simulated by physX, here is nothing difficult to realise this feature ;)

Who wouldn't like mud in game. As a part of gameplay, not only visual candy-eye - tracked vehicles would gain real advantages against wheeled ones.

As soon as I played that Spintires demo, I instantly wanted it for ArmA. It'd be awesome to have any level of this kind of depth in ArmA 3. Makes going offroad much more sensible than "oh god this tank goes so slow on hard pack earth."
I know it won't be as sexy or in depth as Spintires, but even just from a gameplay perspective it'd be an awesome feature.

It would easily turn rainy mission into hell when carrying all of this equipment, you would fatigue much quicker, walk/run slower. Wheeled vehicles would stuck in the mud so if HQ did wrong choice of forces being used that would turn against these forces preety quickly. Honestly, if the mud would be pretty nasty even tanks would stuck in place - but i don't believe it would happen that much on Altis, much often on some modded Central/Eastern Europe map probably ;)

For that one who disliked, and for those who are interested. Wheeled vs Tracked:

Wheeled
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_E25Yyv0ZE

Tracked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCXwgPZXScM - none of the wheeled vehicles would be able to get out of that s**t :)

Getting meyered in mud whilst in a tracked or wheeled vehicle would be awesome. You'd have to avoid thick forests or swamps and plan your route carefully, or even use main roads at times which leaves you susceptible to ambushes.

also remember that wheeled vehicles should avoid beaches to not stuck in sand. Wet and soft sand, mud should make drivers to think twice before making some mistake. Btw that exhaust smoke looks beautiful for kamaz in spintires - any possibility to add that effect for A3?

No more riding mindlessly through the plowed fields with trucks. It would make controlling the roads and crossroads vital part of the gameplay. Stuck in sand and you will need another vehicle to tow you out.
It would also add more depth into tank combat.

I believe that devs in 2011 said in PCGAMER interview it will be possible - but how it looks ATM we don't know.

Here is some insight into SpinTires:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PavelZagrebelnyy/20130613/194247/Rendering_and_simulation_in_offroad_driving_game.php

This game even have running water. Hope that it would be possible to implement both with JAVA at least!

Even if ArmA couldn't handle the probable amount of extra polys Spintires has, I think it could easily handle Parallax mapping (Which, if made correctly, would look just like actual mud).

280000 faces and 420DIPs for usual scene its not Extra.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PavelZagrebelnyy/20130613/194247/Rendering_and_simulation_in_offroad_driving_game.php

While I would love this, it’s easy the see the problems with 270km2 island with >20 people in a MP server with plenty of vehicles and all the extra data that would need to be transferred so everyone gets wheel ruts etc from everyone else and ALL the extra faces that would have to be placed into a scene AND remembered AND altered when you may be nowhere near them.

Perhaps when spin-tyres gets as big a land mass size as Arma and has MP and a long list of etc’s then it may be time to talk

well in fact devs started talking about this feature long time ago in some interview before update to physx 3.0 so i consider it as possible. havoc engine isn't physx engine and we still dont know what devs can pull out of it. It could have completely different approach than in spintires.

fragmachine:

But developers talk and surmise about all sorts of things beforehand and early on, its not until things get well under way that things have to be dropped or changed etc even from things like “technology” (GPUs, CPUs) not progressing as fast as you thought it would, as not everyone’s crystal ball is correct on everything when you have to guess ahead a couple of years.

Shure the havoc engine isn't physx, but there are only so many ways to display stuff on screens and to transfer pertinent info across a network so it works properly rather than as a 2nd rate resource hungry compromise that has to work across a broad range of PC’s with different capabilities, take something as simple as making a map twice as long and twice as wide, that 4 times the amount of everything, when you get up to Arma 3 sizes that an exponential resource growth vs. e.g. spin tyres.

Would be cool, but totally too difficult, performance-eating, and unfeasable in this stage of development. Maybe ARMA 4 or 5.

Ivan Buchta said that he hopes there won't be the next ArmA game :) Mud could be just tires penetrating through the surface without any graphical candy eye + parameter that would slow down or immobilise the vehicle. That would be really low on CPU and none GPU impact. Maybe only wet-ground overlay texture and for me that would be sufficient.

@fragmachine has a point, it could simply just be a new texture overlay added to roads or the general map when it rains to make it look more muddy and the tires could just sink into the floor and then driving on different surfaces would mean that you would just loose more fuel or stamina if the other idea cannot be done. As long as we can roughly simulate it then it is fine but yes I would love to see a SpinTires kind of mud.

here need Vertex Deformation!
You can see this feature in Assassins Creed with snow layer

Each step deform polygonal plate layer

Company of Heroes 2 snow and mud deformation

Just TurnOn your brains! thats eazy

Actually, we dont need this new layer of bug and issues with questionable necessity. Collisions is enough.

Well, actually BI Studio made vertex snow layer for VBS II so mud is possible in A3 engine.
Myself I would prefer that "new layer of bug" than none of both honestly.

Questionable neccesity? You mean an argument - that it has to be infantry-centric game with elements of simulation - so proper vehicle simulation isn't needed? Sure, it would balance vehicles in the game and would make advantages and disadvantages for both - wheeled and tracked vehicles...

Vehicle simulation always was poorly executed in ArmA games. Even simple slickness of the road on rainy weather - would be welcomed.

@fragmachine adding the feature without proper visuals is just what the devs are trying not to do - they don't want another ARMA 2 where there's no reload animations on any of the guns.