I think we can all agree... optimization

[zaira 10]

The BIS devs have made posts suggesting that a move to 64 bit operation won't make any significant improvements to performance.

They could use alot more RAM (now it is cheap), and in a year it will be even cheaper. Now people are using RAMdrive to eliminite hdd stuttering (everything goes soupper smooth and your fps drops becouse some of the textures/other data are loaded from HDD to RAM).

[dale0404 5]

They could use alot more RAM (now it is cheap), and in a year it will be even cheaper. Now people are using RAMdrive to eliminite hdd stuttering (everything goes soupper smooth and your fps drops becouse some of the textures/other data are loaded from HDD to RAM).

Its been said many times before.

Arma only used ~2GB of RAM and for Arma3 this will not change so no reason to goto 64bit OS. Also it would need a complete rewrite (from the bottom up) of the engine, aint going to happen this side of the end of the world;)

[dmarkwick 261]

They could use alot more RAM (now it is cheap), and in a year it will be even cheaper. Now people are using RAMdrive to eliminite hdd stuttering (everything goes soupper smooth and your fps drops becouse some of the textures/other data are loaded from HDD to RAM).

It's an interesting idea that they might develop an in-house RAMdisk solution, I'm only repeating what I read recently :) in that they've got no immediate plans.

[Primarch 10]

Its been said many times before.

Arma only used ~2GB of RAM and for Arma3 this will not change so no reason to goto 64bit OS. Also it would need a complete rewrite (from the bottom up) of the engine, aint going to happen this side of the end of the world;)

Perhaps the game uses more HDD space than just those 2gb? The excess RAM could be used automatically as a ramdrive, loading everything large in ram.

[zaira 10]

Its been said many times before.

Arma only used ~2GB of RAM and for Arma3 this will not change so no reason to goto 64bit OS. Also it would need a complete rewrite (from the bottom up) of the engine, aint going to happen this side of the end of the world;)

You can say that million times, but it is wrong, and it is a lie!

Arma 2 on my machine never used more than 1GB. And i played it and monitored ot thousand of hours, arma 2 co, mods, dlcs, and never it used more ram!

Firefox now uses more than 1GB of ram (many tabs), crome has dedicated proceses... cmon we are talking about 2012.

They should rewrite RAM menagement totaly, and

RAMDrive is good, but you cant fit all game files in ram, and it is basucaly wsting ram space, becouse not all the files are neaded all the time ( internal allocation code should do that). My arma folder is 24+ GB ...

I guess they just want more money... i wouldnt realy care if they waited for 2 more years and make it properly this time. I dont realy want better graphics, or anything as much i want to play the game without hdd stuttering (totaly ruins expirience).

[Defunkt 431]

Perhaps the game uses more HDD space than just those 2gb? The excess RAM could be used automatically as a ramdrive, loading everything large in ram.

It's called a drive cache and Windows already provides a very sophisticated one, caching something twice is a total waste. A RAM drive should prevent small stutters the first time a file is loaded but after that really shouldn't have any effect postive or negative.

You can say that million times, but it is wrong, and it is a lie!

Arma 2 on my machine never used more than 1GB. And i played it and monitored ot thousand of hours, arma 2 co, mods, dlcs, and never it used more ram!

Current versions of ArmA will use as much RAM as needed, if it isn't using it, it doesn't need it, more RAM isn't a magic cure-all for anything. See the last few posts of THIS thread for a recent experiment that did cause ArmA to use upwards of 4GB.

---------- Post added at 07:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:06 PM ----------

Might be worth trialling for an ArmA PC: Increase the FileSystem Memory Cache Size (Win7/Vista)

[zaira 10]

It's called a drive cache and Windows already provides a very sophisticated one, caching something twice is a total waste. A RAM drive should prevent small stutters the first time a file is loaded but after that really shouldn't have any effect postive or negative.

Current versions of ArmA will use as much RAM as needed, if it isn't using it, it doesn't need it, more RAM isn't a magic cure-all for anything. See the last few posts of THIS thread for a recent experiment that did cause ArmA to use upwards of 4GB.

---------- Post added at 07:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:06 PM ----------

Might be worth trialling for an ArmA PC: Increase the FileSystem Memory Cache Size (Win7/Vista)

If iz used as much ram as needed you would not seen HD LE diode blink while playing the game, and cousing your perfectly playable fps go down to 0 for short amount of time, and that is only happening when objects are not in RAM, thus implying that they should have been and that ram menagement in arma 2 is not working as it should.

Cmon, go monitor hdd usage in arma2 process, and see yourself reads. And i read the topic, and didnt found anything worth mentioning.

Islands and objects are hughe in arma, and while you travell it is normal to stream it for disk, it would be better if they put it in ram at loading, as much as they can fit. But that is not the case!

Edited June 1, 2011 by zaira

[TheMrPatrick 10]

I come by to support this. Get a good performance now, please! Was a real game breaker for Arma 2. Leave the bad optimized game to the companies who think making bad console ports is good. Not to a very good pc only game.

[*LK1* 10]

I think we can all agree that this thread should be deleted and its starter should be warned for creating a non-descriptive thread name. READ THE RULES!

God, some of you guys are such assholes. If you wanted me to change the name you could have politely asked...

i see red names...:(:p

[jonneymendoza 10]

Its been said many times before.

Arma only used ~2GB of RAM and for Arma3 this will not change so no reason to goto 64bit OS. Also it would need a complete rewrite (from the bottom up) of the engine, aint going to happen this side of the end of the world;)

They might be using a new engine though? they have to someday right? cant use same engine for arma 4? 5? 6 ;)

[ProfTournesol 956]

They might be using a new engine though? they have to someday right? cant use same engine for arma 4? 5? 6 ;)

This isn't the "same" engine, it has been revamped several times since OFP. Unless you think that Windows 3.1 is the same OS as Windows Seven.

[jonneymendoza 10]

im certain vista or even xp was completely redone from the ground up compared to windows 3.1

[Flash Thunder 10]

Arma 3 is using Real Virtuality 4.0 its been revamp with radical changes.

For Arma 3 i would hope that BIS think more carefully about the amount of objects they place on the islands, the amount of vegetation and so on.

Quick way to optimize arma 3 is to lower overall quality of trees and bushes or find a way to keep their detail now and render them more efficiently with more Levels of detail.

with DX10 being the API, BIS must of have done a ton of rewiring to the renderer, so while doing that maybe they were able to achieve alot more render efficiency.

But yes, less foilage sucking up GPU resources I would rather have more detailed textures and better shadows.

[ziiip 1]

I enjoy richly deatiled environments.

[Steakslim 1]

Same. I have more harddrive streaming and CPU related issues with foliage than I do with detail impacting my GPU performance.

[Defunkt 431]

If iz used as much ram as needed you would not seen HD LE diode blink while playing the game, and cousing your perfectly playable fps go down to 0 for short amount of time, and that is only happening when objects are not in RAM, thus implying that they should have been and that ram menagement in arma 2 is not working as it should.

Cmon, go monitor hdd usage in arma2 process, and see yourself reads. And i read the topic, and didnt found anything worth mentioning.

Islands and objects are hughe in arma, and while you travell it is normal to stream it for disk, it would be better if they put it in ram at loading, as much as they can fit. But that is not the case!

No application in a multi-tasking environment should grab all available memory to load content 'just in case' it needs it. That would exactly duplicate the function of a disk cache or ramdisk which are options available to you if you feel this represents an 'efficiency', I do not (quite the opposite in fact). It would be at best a waste (and in many cases the cause of system instability) in machines with limited RAM (which ArmA still needs to be able to run on), or in my case because I suffer no delays caused by streaming directly from disk or in the case of any machine which loads ArmA from an SSD.

[lethal 0]

there is no such thing as a new engine (generally speaking). modern software development is modular. certain elements within a product get overhauled/replaced/refactored but to scrap the whole thing would be an enormous waste of resources.

guess why you see that havoc/scaleform/speedtree etc. logo on so many products? right because they've already build a working module that can be easily implemented in other products without having to do everything from scratch. no need to reinvent the wheel generally speaking. there are exceptions of course when such a product doesn't meet the specifications you set for it but as we're talking about BI internal code i'd expect it more or less already meets specifications set.

only thing left to do is see which parts can be improved. maybe redo the render path to take advantage of new DX features, see if you can improve on the cost of an expensive pathfinding solution, fix issues that you have not anticipated (because you can't anticipate everything), cut too expensive stuff that doesn't meet your cost/benefit specs and so on.

you get the idea.

Edited June 1, 2011 by lethal