Arma 3 Dx11 & 64 bits

[Gazspain 10]

Should Arma 3 be built in Directx 11 and optimized for 64 bits OS? (Like Battlefield 3).

With DirectX® 11’s DirectCompute feature, application developers can harness the massive parallel processing power of the AMD Radeon HD™ GPU to provide stutter-free playback of Internet and Blu-ray videos, improve video quality or upscale DVDs. In games, Compute Shaders can dramatically improve visual detail:

â– Optimized post-processing effects: apply advanced lighting techniques to enhance the mood of any scene.

â– High-quality shadow filtering: see shadows fade at their edges just as you would in real life.

■Depth of field: enables more realistic focal points by blurring objects that aren’t in focus—imagine looking down the sight of a rifle.

â– Ambient occlusion: generates ultra-realistic lighting and shadow combinations.

A common misconception is that 64-bit architectures are no better than 32-bit architectures unless the computer has more than 4 GB of main memory.[citation needed] This is not entirely true:

Some operating systems and certain hardware configurations limit the physical memory space to 3 GB on IA-32 systems, due to much of the 3–4 GB region being reserved for hardware addressing; see 3 GB barrier. This is not present in 64-bit architectures, which can use 4 GB of memory and more. However, IA-32 processors from the Pentium II onwards allow for a 36-bit physical memory address space, using Physical Address Extension (PAE), which gives a 64 GB physical address range, of which up to 62 GB may be used by main memory; operating systems that support PAE may not be limited to 4GB of physical memory, even on IA-32 processors.

Some operating systems reserve portions of process address space for OS use, effectively reducing the total address space available for mapping memory for user programs. For instance, Windows XP DLLs and other user mode OS components are mapped into each process's address space, leaving only 2 to 3 GB (depending on the settings) address space available. This limit is currently much higher on 64-bit operating systems and does not realistically restrict memory usage.

Memory-mapped files are becoming more difficult to implement in 32-bit architectures.[citation needed] A 4 GB file is no longer uncommon, and such large files cannot be memory mapped easily to 32-bit architectures; only a region of the file can be mapped into the address space, and to access such a file by memory mapping, those regions will have to be mapped into and out of the address space as needed. This is a problem, as memory mapping remains one of the most efficient disk-to-memory methods, when properly implemented by the OS.

Some programs such as encoders, decoders and encryption software can benefit greatly from 64-bit registers (if the software is 64-bit compiled), while the performance of other programs, such as 3D graphics-oriented ones, remains unaffected when switching from a 32-bit environment to a 64-bit one. It is unusual for a 64-bit program to perform worse than its 32-bit equivalent and usually only happens due to a bug.[19]

Some 64-bit architectures, such as x86-64, allow for more general purpose registers than their 32-bit counterparts. This is a significant speed increase for tight loops since the processor doesn't have to fetch data from the cache or main memory if the data can fit in the available registers.

[dissaifer 10]

This has been addressed in multiple threads...

Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but please use the search feature. I'll summarize: The devs have come out and stated there is no advantage at this point to do to 64 bit. The pointers are twice the size and instructions are bigger. Since Arma 3 is probably more than half way getting developed and they'd have to basically start over making engine for the game, which would take a great deal of time.

I'm sure they will go to 64, just not yet.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Dissaifer

[Inkompetent 0]

Too late to change their mind anyway. The poll is pointless, other than showing that people want the newest fanciest stuff, which is already obvious without the poll.

I wouldn't be surprised if the game is made for 64-bit. If it isn't I don't think it's any big loss. It's proper utilization of multiple cores that's important for performance.

As for DX11 I've understood it's a quite big step from DX10 to DX11. It ultimately boils down to if they thought it's worth using both, or sticking with DX10/10.1. With the increased performance from DX11 comes increased development time, after all.

The game will get what it gets. We can't change that. Not this kind of stuff at least, that can't be changed half-way through production.

[W0lle 1047]

We have a dedicated ArmA3 forum and in there is at least one DX11 and 64bit thread to discuss this.