7.1 Surround Sound and other features

[2coolforu]

With immersion being one of the most important features of a game I think its important to add the little details that really increase the believability of a game.

5.1/7.1 Surround Sound

Using surround sound can really build a great gaming experience, having directional sounds allows you to pinpoint enemies with more accuracy, if you link it to a voice broadcast system (e.g. if your buddy is to your right and is giving orders the sounds actually come into your right ear) then it can become extremely easy to immerse yourself in a game.

Head movement independent of body
There is a feature that isn't present in many games - the ability to turn your head independently of your body or vehicle; In OFP/ArmA/Arma2/OA you can hold down the LALT key and turn your head without turning your body, you can also use a system like natural point (TrackIR) to do this without keybindings. It's extremely useful in a game as it allows you to survey and area while keeping your gun pointed in the place you are needing to cover, it also means you are talking to people you can turn your head to them rather than spin your whole body and point your gun in their face, it feels a lot more natural. Obviously this is quite a big feature to implement and I can't see it being worth the effort it takes unless the game is a milsim or realism game but it's a nice little feature. It would be INSANELY useful in aircraft, it was in Battlefield 2 as you could spin your head around in the helo's to spot targets. Being able to look around in a jet massively improves situational awareness and it's incredibly useful in these vehicles (especially if 3rd person is getting the boot)

Dual GPU/4 Core compatibility

I'm sure multi-GPU setups and quad core processors will be supported by Planetside (And I am aware that crossfire/SLI support is more dependent on Nvidia/ATI putting effort in but Sony can press them to get the drivers out) but given how many games out there release without proper system compatibility you can never be too careful. Even games like Bad Company 2 had horrible system resource utilization when they were released however they were console ports.

Local voice chat

I know how resource/bandwidth hungry a local VOIP would be but it is still pretty cool. It would just be a proximity voice chat that would operate as if your ingame avatar was speaking out loud, the enemy team could hear it (Possibly, this could make door camps and bit 'chaotic' as I'm sure all you would be able to hear is attackers screaming "Leeeroooy" or "CAMPING N00BS" ). The only reason I'm suggesting it is because some of the coolest moments in Arma 2 have been times when I've ninja'd enemies and got close enough to hear them giving each other orders during multiplayer or simply chatting.

Perhaps a local voice chat would be too open for abuse to be implemented, it would be nice to have some form of directional voice chat though.