Arma 3 is good at many things. Bohemia Interactive s military sim is a huge, open-world playground where action dramas unfold, but its greatest strengths show when it dwarfs you with scale. Being a lone sniper in three miles of sprawling mountain wilderness or driving with a vanguard of advancing tanks will strike awe into the heart of the most jaded gamer. Whatever it s doing, Arma paints these experiences in broad strokes you can t find anywhere else in gaming.

On the other hand, Take On Helicopters, Bohemia s 2011 helicopter simulator, was great at a single, specific thing: modeling helicopter flight physics. Beyond the high-definition cockpit, its world was a blocky and lifeless version of Seattle. Seattle wasn t the point, though: the inside of that cockpit was the point. All the love in that game went straight into those dials.

It s kind of wonderful, then, that Arma s next update will be a free DLC focused on bringing the high-definition flight controls of Take On Helicopters to Arma s vast, rolling landscape. It s a long overdue chocolate-and-peanut-butter proposal, one that will change the way pilots interact with their vehicles. Plus, ground troops will get new ways to fight alongside their airborne taxis. To nail down the details, I tried to relearn my helicopter piloting chops with the new, more advanced flight model in Arma 3. Here s what happened.

Ah, jeez. You ok, guys? Guys? You'll be ok.

The Rookie

Let s get this out of the way first: the new flight mechanics have a steep learning curve. Anyone who takes passengers on board with the advanced flight model engaged had better have done their homework, or they ll end up with a dozen corpses and a lot of angry friends. The new model replicates wind, weight, momentum, acceleration, and G-forces. Arma s standard helicopter controls could hardly be accused of being arcadey, but now the helicopters feel like they re punching the air to keep you from falling.

Engaging the advanced flight model, which can be turned on or off at any time through the settings menu, adds five dial readouts to the pilot s HUD. They are, from left to right, speed, altitude, horizon, vertical speed, and wind direction. Alarm lights for torque and engine RPMs are there to flash yellow and red as you gracefully spiral through the sky toward an imminent, fiery death. Though overwhelming at first, with practice these inputs create an interactive map of every force acting on your vehicle.

With our approach to DLC, we had an opportunity to focus in upon a particular aspect of the sandbox and find ways to bring about more gameplay, Bohemia creative director Jay Crowe told me when I asked him about why these options were being introduced to the Arma 3 ecosystem. Of course, for the helicopter enthusiasts out there, the advanced offers a more authentic experience than our 'basic' stock one more precise control and a greater variety of simulation inputs which has been talked about on our forums and feedback tracker for some time.

No matter how fancy the physics get, sometimes you still feel like a giant taxi.

In Take On Helicopters, slamming too hard on the accelerator would cause undue stress on the engine and lead to a bumpy, choppy ride as the machine deteriorated. Failing to heed engine light warnings would cause the troubled components to groan, complain, and then fall right off. Though the advanced flight model replicates these warning lights, the parts can t fall off. To test this I flew like a demon, throttle wide open and collective swinging around, and never had a rotor come spinning off. Small mercies, I guess.

Just because the parts won t be falling off, though, doesn t mean you can fly recklessly. The new flight model includes a more realistic take on stalling and losing lift, so making a hard turn at high speeds will always end in a ball of fire.

elicopters are a big part of everyone's experience on the combined-arms battlefield, not just pilots, Crowe said. Expanding gameplay for a variety of players is definitely a big goal. Crowe also hopes that the advanced model will give dedicated pilots a deeper way to dive into the simulation. We hope flying helicopters will become more fun to master for our players, he says. Strangely, Crowe thinks that the new advanced model might actually be easier for pilots to grok. n some ways and as long as you have assists like Auto-Trim switched on handling the helicopter becomes less difficult and more logical/intuitive. It moves a bit more like you'd expect in real life, so we hope it might open things up to a few new pilots, too.

It s on this final point that I just don t agree. For all my hours in Arma s helicopters, though, I still fly like a baby polar bear learning to walk. For a second opinion, I sought out another authority on flying in Arma.

It's dials within dials. It's dials all the way down.

The Veteran

Dslyecxi, aka Andrew Gluck, is one of the biggest names in the online Arma community. The group he founded, Shack Tactical, is known as one of the best-organized gaming groups in Arma which is saying something for a community that prides itself on military simulation. He narrated a series of tutorial videos for Arma 3, but he first came to my attention when I was new to the game and trying desperately to suck less at flying helicopters.

Frankly: the guy s a wizard. After he made a video on his first impressions with the new flight model, I tracked him down to get his feelings. Right now, he says, they re pretty mixed.

As an advanced flight model, I think it needs some tweaking and some additional functionality for it to really live up to the expectations one has when hearing advanced flight model. Once you dip into the more intricate aspects of helo flight, there are a lot of aspects that all mix together to represent what it takes to control a helicopter. He also doesn t agree that the flight model will be a good way for new pilots to earn their wings.



What he was hoping for and honestly, what I thought I was getting my hands on Dslyecxi pointed out all the things that were missing is a true simulation experience. Notable details are missing from the Arma 3 flight model, including localized rotor damage and the horrifyingly named vortex ring state. VRS is a sickening quirk of physics where a helicopter descends into its own downwash, causing a loss of lift. (For context, one of the helicopters on the Osama bin Laden raid crashed due to VRS.) Pilots in Arma, though, can t enter VRS, and it alters the ways in which helicopters can safely fly.

With these omissions, the new advanced flight model isn t realistic enough to be considered a sim, but the new bells and whistles make it too finicky to be accessible to new players. For this reason, Dslyecxi says, he won t be enabling the advanced flight model in ShackTac s main game sessions. One of the best parts of Arma's native flight model is the accessibility of it it gets the basic themes of helicopter flight correct, but anyone can have a decent chance to fly with it even with just a mouse and keyboard. It's easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

Dslyecxi isn t entirely down on the DLC, though. For one thing, the new flight physics are completely optional, and adding in more native systems for players (and modders) to tinker with is always a good thing. For another, everyone at Bohemia has been open about the update being a work in progress. Just in the past week, changes have been made to improve control responsiveness.

Helicopters in Arma will eventually be able to carry sling loads, which will allow heavy choppers to, say, deliver tanks and jeeps to the battlefield rather than simply ferry infantry back and forth. Even better for the infantry troops relying on helicopters for battlefield transport, troops will soon be able to shoot their personal weapons from the passenger seats or running boards. Anyone who has ever dropped into a hot LZ will recognize how important this would be for virtual soldiers.

Bohemia isn t talking about a release date for the Helicopters DLC yet, but they do hope to get both sling loading and firing from vehicles into beta testing during the next month. Taken together with the recent updates that added a training mode, a single-player campaign, and a player-directed Zeus multiplayer mode, Bohemia is continuing to add content and depth to satisfy their niche audience of simulator die-hards. And when you re dealing with die-hards like Dslyecxi (who says he has about $1,000 worth of flight sticks, rudder pedals, and headset gear on his desk for flight sims), the best solution is always going to be: more. More content, more depth, more variables to tweak and play with.

Ultimately it comes down to what any given person is looking for in the experience, Dslyecxi says, and whether having a more complex flight model helps or hinders that. Some people will benefit from it and enjoy it, others will find it to get in the way or unnecessarily complicate things.

Note: I took all of the screenshots for this article while flying in Wibbler's Helicopter Training scenario. If you need practice landing in hot LZs, in the advanced flight model or not, I recommend you download it.

Nearly three years after it was first announced, Bohemia Interactive is shutting down the Arma 2 Free servers, the free-to-play version of the military simulation game. If you were one of its dedicated players, there's good news: Bohemia is trying to soften the blow with a sale on the Arma 2 franchise.
All editions of Arma 2 and its expansion are currently discounted by 75 percent. You can buy them on Bohemia s official website, but all games are also conveniently supported by Steam. The sale will last until May 4.
Sadly, even if you do buy Arma 2, its online functionality will be limited due to the impending shutdown of online matchmaking service GameSpy on May 31. Bohemia said that Arma 3 and Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead will eventually use an alternative solution, but Take On Helicopters, Arma, Arma 2, and other games will lose the server browser and other features. You can find Bohemia s full statement here.
When May 31 comes, a large amount of games that still rely on GameSpy could go down with it. In case you missed it yesterday, Reddit has compiled a list of possible victims.

A new Arma 3 community guide has landed in a hot LZ: this time, the subject is air assaults. Shack Tactical founder Dslyexci returns to narrate the first episode of season 3 of Arma s community guides. The video gives an overview of the coordination and planning required to bring infantry into a mission zone in the best military sim around.



Helicopters fly fast, low, and can land pretty much anywhere you can fit the rotors into, Dslyexci says. With sufficient helicopters or multiple flights, you can transport a large number of infantry practically anywhere you need to in a short period of time It s a welcome option, considering the massive terrain sizes of the Altis and Stratis islands.

Ferrying infantry to missions might sound like gruntwork to you, but it s one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of the Arma universe. Anyone who volunteers to pilot in Arma is a few bad seconds away from killing all of their friends, so prospective pilots should listen up before putting on a flight suit. Learning from Dslyexci is a valuable opportunity, because he s a master of the air taxi.



Check out more Arma videos at Bohemia Interactive s official Youtube channel. We named Arma 3 our 2013 Sim of the Year.

Under its leafy canopy, the wooded clearing has an earthy glow and a still, oppressive quiet. It s a scene fit for motivational posters and pre-packaged Windows wallpapers, and it would be picturesque if it wasn t for the dirty, angry man with the broadsword. He stands up, hefts the weapon, and charges straight at me, looking for blood. My sword is already out, and my steel rises to meet his.



I m watching a demo of Kingdom Come: Deliverance as played by developer Daniel V vra, and the game already looks impressive. The open-world, medieval RPG is ambitious, creating a live slice of medieval Europe full of sprawling cities, harried townspeople, and refugees fleeing civil unrest. Quests will be open-ended with multiple paths to completion, including non-violence, and Kingdom will be the rare medieval setting without even a hint of dragons, magic, or elves.

Books and movies have changed, V vra says, showing me slides of '60s-era Adam West Batman against the gritty Christian Bale incarnation. "People have grown up, and their heroes have evolved with them." He flips to a nameless, generic fantasy setting featuring two busty women in strategically unwise armor, then to an image of Sean Bean from Game of Thrones.



This realism-first attitude produces a gorgeous countryside rooted in history and split into three acts, each with around 30 hours of gameplay. The map in act one is nine square kilometers, generated by satellite-modeled terrain in the same way that Arma 3 s maps are derived from scans of real-world Greek islands. Development studio Warhorse, based in Prague, is so dedicated to a hard-reality version of events that they were, as V vra tells it, spending too much time on research. Now they have an in-house historian.

The team's dedication to an immersive simulation extends to the array of side-quests and activities it is an open-world game, after all, and you can ignore the orders of your liege lord and bolt off to the hills if you re not feeling particularly duty-bound. In rapid succession, a short trailer shows gameplay clips of hunting, purse-cutting, spelunking, weapon crafting, horse riding, layered and customizable clothing and armor, open-field battles, and siege assaults. Each NPC will have a daily routine that can be altered: if you kill a local barkeeper, his regular patrons will go elsewhere and talk about the sad fate of their friend. All of these variables are running in CryEngine, and V vra says the game will lend itself to mods, and the team is hopeful that they ll support modders with at least some basic tools.



But in a lot of ways, the fortunes of Kingdom hang on the moment after swords slam together. It s fine to talk about the game s huge world and the political intrigue surrounding a kidnapped king, but all that work will be blunted if the first-person melee combat fails to shine. First-person swordfights are very hard to get right, a struggle so notorious in games design that author Neal Stephenson famously funded a Kickstarter just to fix it (and failed), resulting in the now-defunct Clang. Even first-person mainstays like Skyrim and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare succeed in spite of their melee combat, rather than because of it.

Kingdom s melee combat is ambitiously deep. Enemies have five regions to target the head, arms, and legs and each area can be attacked with an up-, down-, left-, or right-side strike. The most impressive moment comes when V vra points out that each strike and block begins as an animation, but becomes a procedurally generated, physics-based reaction as the sword hits something. Blades flex and bend, skittering against each other and bouncing away after a successful parry. When it works, it looks more like watching a renaissance fair duel than the insubstantial pre-rendered attack animations seen elsewhere.



Warhorse is working to self-publish the first act of Kingdom in late 2015. Warhorse is launching a Kickstarter campaign today looking for $500,000. In the next few months, they ll be releasing a test build featuring a small village to backers who pitch in $48 or more. This test village will be constantly updated and will include combat when they ve smashed enough bugs to make the melee presentable.

The game has a long way to go before it s finished and some big technical hurdles to clear, but what I ve seen already has me cautiously optimistic bordering on stupidly excited. Check out Warhorse s Kickstarter campaign, and strap in for a long two years of eager anticipation.

The Humble Weekly Sale's latest pay-what-you-want package is shining a light on Bohemia Interactive's catalog of war games, sci-fi, and zombie mayhem. With its inclusion of the first two entries in the Arma series, the Humble sale puts you in the hot seat for some of the most amazingly complex military simulations of recent years.

Any contribution over $1 gets you Steam keys for the following games from Bohemia's library:


Arma II
Arma: Gold Edition
Arma Tactics
UFO: Afterlight
Alpha Prime
Take On Helicopters


If you pay $6 or more you'll also get your hands on two more titles:


ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission


Although free on Steam already, Humble is also throwing in a game key for the Arma II: DayZ Mod, the forerunner to the white-hot, post-apocalyptic survival sim DayZ: Standalone. Creator Dean Hall's original DayZ Mod requires both Arma II and the Arma II: Operation Arrowhead expansion in order to play, so this discounted package could be a good way to get a look at the game's frightening landscape. If you've been on the fence about whether or not to invest in the DayZ: Standalone alpha testing phase that began last month, some time with the original mod should tell you a lot about what to expect.

The sale runs for the next five days or so with charity contributions going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Red Cross.

All summer, we enjoyed the community guides published in the run-up to Arma 3's fall release. They were not only informative, but they offered a nice look at the systems and graphics that the open-world military sim offer. Now that Arma 3 is out, community guide narrator Andrew Gluck (aka Dslyecxi) has compiled a wealth of information in his official guide. And while the full guide is bundled with the deluxe edition of Arma 3, a ton of it is now available for free.

Gluck is the founder of Shack Tactical, the most devoted bunch of military sim roleplayers on the internet. In addition to diving into Arma 3's various systems, the guide explores how to function within Shack Tactical by roleplaying a set of near-military rules and procedures.

"In our eyes, hardcore milsim is chock-full of 'tactical fluff' that is irrelevant to the games at hand," Gluck writes. "This hardcore milsim typically presents itself though excessive rules, regulations, attempted recreations of full military rank structures far beyond what is relevant in the scope of your average Arma mission, doing things 'because the real military does them' regardless of their actual application to the game at hand, and other things that we believe do not have a place in these games. This guide reflects that mindset as well.

Even if you're not interested in enlisting with the most hardcore of tactical simmers, the information and tips on offer will be useful to anyone who plays Arma 3. There are over 130,000 words of it in the free, online version, so you've got no shortage of briefing materials to sort through before your next mission. Better get to it!

One of our most hotly anticipated games of this year, Arma 3, will be showing off in a big way this weekend with a livestreaming event straight from Prague. Though the newest version of everyone’s favorite military sim franchise is still in alpha, the beta build of the game will be on full display on Saturday, June 1, and again next Saturday, June 8.
Gearing up for E3, Bohemia Interactive will stream two sessions through the Arma 3 channel on Twitch. The first session will feature mission designer Thomas Ryan giving a basic tutorial in scenario editing. The second stream will show a playthrough of the new Combined Arms missions that will also be released in the beta update.

Both streams should last around an hour and begin at 17:00 UTC (or 12:00 EDT). Check out the world time server for a further breakdown of time zones. During the stream, you’ll be able to ask the team questions via the Twitch chat interface or Arma 3’s Twitter account.

If you’re a green recruit to this Arma business, check out Craig’s hands-on account or Arma veteran Evan’s rundown on how super-duper serious Arma is (hint: really serious).

What we've learned from Arma 3's development so far is that Greek islands with a heavy military presence and snap-happy tourists are not a happy combination. Luckily for budding travel photographers, Bohemia Interactive's developers have suffered so you don't have to, and you can still turn the Aegean into picture postcard memories thanks to their sterling efforts to recreate the landscape of Stratis in Arma 3.

The 20km slice of Mediterranean that Bohemia created to show off their mil-sim is a gorgeous place. The rolling sun-scorched hills, lapping waves, and hidden delights might easily be lost amid the cordite smog and tracer fire if you simply treat this as the backdrop to a war game. Don't. Take the time to enjoy the world. Grab the editor, place a character, take a stroll and capture the sights for posterity. Here are a few tricks to make the most of your snaps and coordinate locations of cool places to visit.

There are two ways to take screenshots of Stratis. An easy way and a slightly harder way - the latter, detailed on the next page, enables a floating camera. The easy way involves spawning a civilian in the game's editor. Load the editor, but before you do anything, click the layout button on the taskbar and change the editor to 'Traditional' and restart. It gives you easier access to the time of day and weather settings. Arma 3's sunrise and sunset hours start at about 3.45am and 19.45 respectively. And it's better to add some clouds to give the sky some texture, but don't make it overcast.

Now double click where you want to take your screenshot and select a civilian from the 'Side' menu. Why a civilian? He has no HUD or gun model, so you have the full frame to work with. You're still stuck with the obnoxious 'Arma Alpha' watermark, alas, but not thankfully with the default FOV: the plus and minus keys on the numpad will give you some interesting effects.

Now hit 'preview' to set the game rolling. These were all taken at the same spot on the map, altered with the numpad's FOV.







These are not good shots, but they are demonstrative of the power of FOV twiddling. Experiment and have fun with it. And remember you can crouch and tippy-toe if you need to subtly alter things.

Then there's the hard way - which allows you create a floating camera. Just like Arma itself, its fiddliness conceals much reward... Read on!



Here's how to get yourself access to a floating camera.

Press F3 in the editor. It'll bring up a Trigger menu. You're going to use the in-game radio to trigger an effect. Select 'Radio Alpha' from the 'Activation' drop-down menu. That'll bind the effect to the in-game radio. In the 'On Act' box cut and paste the text below:

player exec "camera.sqs"

Make sure you make it a repeatable action in the same menu. Now drop a character into the editor and start the game. As normal you'll be in the character's body. Press 'backspace' and then type: 0 0 1. What that does is spawn a floating camera wherever you placed the player or object. It'll spawn the character (or object), but you're not in control of them. If you don't want them in shot, just hide them behind something in the editor. In fact, it doesn't matter where you place them in the world, as the camera can go anywhere. If you press 'right-mouse' and end up back in the character, just type the commands again.

Now you're in the Machinima camera! Woo! It has a lot of functionality, but you won't need most of it you're just taking screenshots of pretty places. Right away the controls are odd: the camera swooshes on the horizontal plane using either the mouse or WASD. There's a crosshair in the middle of the screen, so press 'L' to get rid of it.

The plus and minus keys on the keypad work the same here, so from the same position, these are the zooms.








Frankly, I stopped zooming in to give the shot some perspective, otherwise it would have kept going until it was a mess. The zoom is incredible. Additional keys to worry about: 'Q' and 'Z' move the camera vertically, and the arrow keys on the numpad change the camera's inclination. Here's what you can achieve messing about.





The scroll wheel will select the focus depth, and there are a few filters bound to the number keys. If you're only taking screenshots you don't need to worry about performance. I tilted the camera forwards and zoomed up to take the next shot. The visibility setting in the Options > Video was set to 20km, and all the settings are at 'Ultra'. Though make sure you disable 'post-process' effects in the video settings.



Again, these photos above are illustrative of the process - not the artistic potential. Over on the next page, I'll suggest a few things that you might want to point your lens towards - with handy grid references too.



Now you know what to do, where should you go? Here are a few suggestions for scenic spots.

Twin Suns
Time: 4.15am
Map Grid: 065051




This is all about timing. Capturing the flare from the lighthouse just before the daylight stops it from beaming and lining it up with the rising sun was a pretty delicate operation.

A New Reef
Time: 12.00
Map Grid: 014047


At the end of the airport's runway is a crashed Osprey. It's very easy to spot, as the left prop is sticking up out of the water. I set the time to midday to give as much below surface light as possible.

Chilling
Time: 4.15am
Map Grid: 045088


One of the better places to enjoy the sunset is the 'Kill Farm'. I hope that's Mr and Mrs Kill's farm. The fun thing about having civilian character is they look like tourists. This guy is just having a chill.

Up In The Sky
Time: 19.53pm
Map Grid: 043038


Spawn a character anywhere on the map and cut and paste this into the initialisation field: player setPos ; player setDir 302.92; 0 setOvercast 0.3; setDate ;

Then cut and paste this as a 'Radio Alpha' trigger and activate it as soon as the level loads: player exec "camera.sqs"; setAccTime 0.01

That will launch the camera and slow time down enough to take a screenshot.

Metal Canyon
Time: 12.00
Map Grid: 016028


There are a number shipwrecks around the coast, but this is the most photogenic. It's split in two, so you can play with the angles.

The Spartan
Time: 19.45
Map Grid: 026005


The southern most point on the island. If you want to be truly impressed with the engine, stand here and whack the view distance up to maximum. You'll be able to see the lighthouse in the distance.

T.U.R.T.L.E
Time: Unknown
Map Grid: Unknown


Just to remind you that you can take interesting screens without worrying about all this. It's a dynamic game world, so there's always going to be something worth hitting the screenshot key for.

I'm sure you can do much, much better. Be sure to drop your best pics in our forum's screenshot thread.

Still hard at work on the standalone version of DayZ, Bohemia's collaborated with the DayZ community to release an update for the mod version of the game today. Patch 1.7.3 doesn't add new features ("While dogs are "in" there are some mechanics missing so they cannot currently be used," Rocket says on the DayZ forums), but the patch does address the vehicle repair system, zombie death animations, and removes Alt + F4 as an method of escaping from death. Politely: die, cowards.

Patch notes below.

Client:

* Tents can no longer be placed on concrete.
* Building checks for tent placement (No longer place tents in buildings).
* Tents now are one click place.
* Fixed function for checking if in buildings.
* Vehicle repair menus now all replaced.
* Vehicle menus now list all damaged parts no matter if you have the item or not.
* Vehicle repair menus will now let you know the exact item you need to repair on failed repair attempts.
* Vehicle Damage is now fully working.
* Vehicle Killed is now in effect fully destroyed vehicles will now set correct in db.
* Tents Now add and remove from db.
* Food can no longer be consumed if the player does not have in inventory.
* water can no longer be consumed if the player does not have in inventory.
* Updated UI control bug.
* Toolbox is now needed for all repairs.
* Alt-f4 is now locked and will only open your status menu.
* No longer possible to drink/eat/pitch a tent/put on clothes/build sand bags/cat wire/hedgehogs/consume medical supplies/free filled water without consuming the item.
* No longer possible to create axes out of thin air if you already have one
* Switching skins no longer repairs pain shakes/broken legs/resets/dupes/screws/resets ammo
* Duping no longer possible through zombie corpses/etc
* It should now be impossible for a new players spawns to spawn unconscious.
* You can no longer cook infinite free meat from camp fires
* Survivors should no longer pickup a single item at the same time and both receive it.
* You can no longer generate multiple tents while packing up a deployed tent.
* You can no longer change clothes/eat/drink/etc. while in a vehicle
* ItemWire reduced from 0.06 to 0.01
* PartEngine updated from 0.01 to 0.06
* Version info is now displayed correct
* New Combat System If you fire a weapon, then you go into combat. During combat, "ABORT" is disabled. (Need to look at the effects with high player counts)
* Combat 30 sec timer on all combat actions.
* Zombie death animation is delayed (now it plays instantly)

Server:

* HiveEXT.dll now replaced with our new version.
* Official Hive login is now hard coded into the .dll
* New Hive can now set ingame time to custom, local(local server time), static
* Object Gear syncs happen based on radius not just on menu.
* Vehicle Position is now updated with client position.
* Vehicles save fuel properly

Greek news sites are reporting that two Czechs have been arrested on Lemnos, after taking photographs and video of military installations. The two claim to be developers working for Bohemia Interactive, out gathering reference material for Arma 3, which takes place on the Greek island. This hasn't yet washed with the Greek authorities who've slapped them with espionage charges.

The story has been confirmed by Marek Spanel, CEO and co-founder of Bohemia Interactive, who elected not to discuss the matter any further on the official Bohemia Interactive forums, "at least until we know more specific details about the case."

This isn't the first time the Greek authorities have been a bit over-enthusiastic in their counter-espionage policy. In 2001, 12 British plane spotters were held on spying charges for taking photographs at an air-show near Kalamata, in southern Greece. Though they were confident of being cleared at the time, eight received three-year sentences for espionage, and the rest were convicted of aiding and abetting.

We'll bring you more details as they come in.

Hat tip to Edge for bringing this to our attention.