I'd like to add that, on random occasion, there is a period of lag, 5-15 seconds, before a dropped item appears on the ground... and sometimes it appears almost 10 meters away in a random direction.
It seems to happen most often with nested items, such as a pair of pants with items inside or a medkit.

This is a known ARMA issue that has yet to be addressed in any of the BI titles. CPU and GPU are poorly utilized. See ArmA 3 bug tracker and search cpu usage, or look around the arma2/dayz forums.

The Buzzard in ArmA3:

http://youtu.be/uYfaqdHmb_U
http://youtu.be/JYmWmhMxsbY
http://youtu.be/gWqGYZ8m5fg

Presented here:
"Turbo" key does not accelerate, instead it lowers the nose.
You have to continue holding Q (increase thrust) to get the afterburner.
The jet can get stuck in the ground sometimes, unable to move (currently being worked on).
Flaps provide a very small amount of lift, just enough for certain short field takeoffs around Altis.

The first at 210-73 is possible, see this:
http://youtu.be/JYmWmhMxsbY

The second, 91-214, is tricky. I haven't been able to take off in the jet there, but I'll keep trying. I have a feeling the drone might be able to take off on it tho.

Arma presents this challenge and I must succeed!
Here it is, the infamous 91-214 takeoff, 1st and 3rd person.
http://youtu.be/gWqGYZ8m5fg
I had to put the jet on top of another object to get it moving, there's another bug floating around where it can get stuck in the ground.

Are you holding turbo (default E)? That was the issue I was having: 0013930.
Holding turbo/fast forward currently tilts the nose down and makes takeoff nearly impossible. And it has no effect on speed -- only continuing to hold increase thrust (Q) will kick in the 'afterburner', which makes short field takeoff just as easy as it used to be.

Yes, it's possible to take off from any of the fields.
Here's a terribly rendered video for you:
http://youtu.be/uYfaqdHmb_U

for the purposes of the game, it seems to have an afterburn effect. Example, when you held turbo or fast forward in arma 2 jets, it would kick in the afterburner and play the token afterburner sound as long as you held down the key.
In arma 3, if you continue holding down "increase thrust" (Q), the same sound effect plays and you speed up. If you reach "top speed" and release Q, the sound effect will stop, and your speed will average out and not increase further (if you're flying level). If you press Q again, you speed up. Release Q again, slow back down to that average speed. This indicates that the afterburn effect was added on to the thrust control, when any afterburn/turbo/fast forward effect should have been on the separate keybind (E).
The problem presented here is that pressing the turbo key (E) does NOT increase speed or play the afterburn animation/sound. All it does is lower the nose.

Just curious if this issue has been revisited lately. I see the last few notes are about performance and fps, but that's not the issue here.
The issue is poor cpu/gpu utilization. Here's what I've found:
I use windows 7 64bit, and a gtx Titan.
Regardless of map or server, LOWERING the view distance INCREASES gpu utilization, all the way up to an average of 99%, while INCREASING the view distance DECREASES gpu utilization, all the way down to averaging 30% or less, even in complex scenes where the gpu should be screaming in pain at 100%.
This happens in the editor to a lesser extent and on multiplayer servers, especially Altis, to a much greater extent.
This is one major reason Altis performance is poor, regardless of capable hardware... the engine is not using it properly.

To reproduce, play in the editor on both maps and on multiplayer both maps. In each play test, lower then raise the view distance, observe the performance and gpu utilization at several increments.