Arma Reforger 1.8: Far Hide, specialist roles, Xbox Play Anywhere

Arma Reforger's 1.8 Major Update is live, and the game is now available on the Microsoft Store with Xbox Play Anywhere support—one digital purchase covers Xbox consoles and Windows PC. The update also introduces the first pass at the Far Hide concealment system, specialist role perks, new smoke and gesture options, and more punishing deaths.

The biggest gameplay addition in 1.8 is the first iteration of Far Hide. It's designed to fix a long-standing spotting problem: when grass stops rendering at long distances or on lower graphics settings, a prone player in a field becomes an easy target for snipers. With Far Hide, distant characters are better concealed against grass-covered areas, so lying still at 750 meters no longer makes you stand out.

Concealment matters against AI too. Grass and camo nets can now obstruct AI vision, making vegetation and camouflage more useful for breaking line of sight and shaking off AI tracking.

Your squad role now affects job-related tasks:

• Medics can inspect and treat wounded soldiers faster and load casualties into vehicles.
• Logistics personnel load and unload supplies faster.
• Vehicle crews repair, rearm, and refuel vehicles faster.
• Engineers construct structures and deployables faster.

Building also gets a quality-of-life improvement: you no longer need to drop a whole pile of sandbags before constructing something. One available sandbag is enough to start deployment, with the remaining items taken from your inventory. Players can also deploy razor wire themselves, and the PKMN can be set up on the 6T5 tripod with or without the 1P29 optic.

New tactical gesture and loiter animations—sitting, pushups, smoking—give you more ways to communicate without voice. The US Army adds underbarrel smoke grenades in several colors, and smoke mortar rounds have been adjusted to stay effective longer.

Other notable changes:

• Running without boots can now damage your feet, with a small chance of stumbling and falling.
• Dying costs 30 rank progression points. Friendly-fire deaths don't penalize the victim's rank, and dying won't turn you into a Renegade.
• Admins can teleport their camera directly to players and promote or demote players through the Player List.
• MOB construction is no longer blocked simply by nearby enemies.

The update also includes crash fixes, memory and pathfinding improvements, VoN updates, and other optimizations. See the full 1.8 Update changelog, and submit feedback through the Feedback Tracker.