There seems to be new juicy information about ARMA 3 coming out of the woodwork in abundance recently. Not surprising, as Bohemia and all its fans are getting ready for the launch of the public alpha this Tuesday. Well, "public" in the sense that you can freely get it, so long as you pre-order the game.

Last Friday, the Bohemia released the cover art for the game, which they say reflects their vision for the game; "true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox!". One would think most PC gamers can figure that out without the image, just so long as the word "ARMA" is mentioned, but oh well, it's some explosive cover art indeed.

The gents over at PC Gamer seem to be more than excited for ARMA 3 and its upcoming public alpha. They've done a number of articles about the game recently, including one on the complex weapons and ballistics systems found in the game. It concludes with saying that though there are a slew of different checks and processes happening between the moment a player holds down the left mouse button to the enemy hitting the ground, Bohemia aim to make this seemingly complicated action as simple as possible, without sacrificing authenticity.

They did an interview yesterday as well, with some of the big boys of Bohemia Interactive; Project lead Joris-Jan Van 't Land and one of the creative directors, Jay Crowe. Although there's an embargo in effect until the public alpha officially launches on Tuesday, there's still some interesting details to lift from the interview.

In it, Van 't Land and Crowe talk about upcoming features for ARMA 3, their optimism towards Steamworks and the challenge of having to work on such a massive game that needs to work on a multitude of different hardware combinations. On the topic of optimization, they both agree that giving the player more choices to adjust the graphical fidelity of the game in order to compensate for a possible bottleneck in their own system, is as important in such a game, as it is to actually optimize it well. Crowe says they're not "complacent about improving performance" though, and makes it clear that they still have a long way to go, based on what we will get in current alpha build.

ARMA 3 is far from finished, currently scheduled to be released sometime during the fall as a Steam exclusive. The game is already looking like it's in great shape though, and with the Beta set to launch in the spring, and the alpha already now on Tuesday 5th, pre-ordering fans will already get their hands on (a work-in-progress version of) the latest iteration in the world's most realistic military simulator. If you want to get in on the alpha-action, you'll have to pre-order the game, as mentioned already. There are different tiers though, so you don't necessarily have to dish out for the most expensive edition of ARMA 3 just to get into the alpha and beta. More about that here.

So are you excited for the game? Or more importantly, are you excited for the upcoming alpha test? Have you pre-ordered the game already, or are you waiting for the embargo to lift before you put your fancy kevlar helmet on?