Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[white 1]

some people experience performance issues

most people.

and it's also quite obvious that the expectations of some of those people will never be fulfilled due to the nature of a game like ARMA.

and its developers.

It's not possible to compare optimizing of a game like ARMA, and a game like BF3. However, the game has potential to be better optimized, but it doesn't help the Developers to resolve this issue when the people who are experiencing such issues are raging rather than contributing.

same problems from arma 2, vague optimizations and leaving the main problems untouched. its been years and people got frustrated to the point of raging, most, like me, expected more from Arma 3 performancewise, we ask for fundamental engine changes and we get "optimizations" "but dont expect major changes", meaning we wont promise anything, will try to gain some fps, but its too much work to address the engine flaws, and that is what we interpret from it. that makes sense considering a couple fo years ago when Soma said "its too much work and we are not willing". those evasive answers from BIS let this topic become what it did, they could be posting this right now being engaged on the discussion, answering people with proper information and leading it. the biggest discussion i saw a developer participating, about the performance, was on steam when dwarden was talking to a guy named homer simpson, the guy made good arguments about why the engine performed poorly like it did, posted some screenshots showing how the games threads worked and how they bottlenecked, and what happened? that thread ended up closed and moved to the steam discussion garbage.

a few days ago i saw a discussion on steam regarding gamespy serverbrowser, and dwarden said something like "its still an alpha, we might use gamespy or not, we might use both gamespy and steam, who knows". my reaction was "dafuq, you developers should know by now what the hell you are going to do with the game". the lack of prior design choices regarding this and those other mentioned issues paint a bad picture overall imho. the games concept is indeed great, but if it launches with the same issues arma 2 has (not using even half the hardware avaiable to run the game better) ill just consider it half-assery all around.

and you talk about properly reporting performance issues on this topic. theres nothing else to report about the performance issues, its been covered over and over, dwarden said "of course we are aware" like 50 pages ago, theres like 1200 votes on the bug report. but since they do not engage on the discussion about what causes it and how it could be fixed, we are left to think that either they cant figure out, they dont want to fix it or for some reason they will use it as a big surprise for launch and leave people raging on the forum for the lulz till then.

they could close this thread, because its now mainly people trying to figure out whats wrong with the engine, and if BIS wanted, they could simply answer it to end the discussion.

Edited April 6, 2013 by white

[almanzo 144]

A long post

Ok, let me ask you this. I did adress exactly what you are talking about in both my prior posts. And again, as I stated, what other developers engages as much with their community as BI does? That is what annoys me most, people claiming that the devs don't care. I understand where you are going, and that they haven't replied that much to this thread, but what they have said is that they are aware of the problem and that they are working on it. The ticket have been issued, and it has only been days. No matter what the problem is, it's quite obvious it will take time to fix. No the question is, what reassures me most? A dev that spends his time in this thread, or a dev that makes a statement and actually having a serviced public tracker, but doesn't dwindle the forums all the time? I'd say the latter. I do not know anything about your credentials, and from what I've read of you, you are no game designer. People who have disagreed with you are also not game designers, but have provided simular arguments based on their assuptions and technical know how, as have you.

Now, I trust those who actually makes games for a living. And you say most people have problems, I happen to be a part of a community made up of people from all ages, with over 60 members. We all run ARMA III quite fine. I've participated in coop sessions with 60+ and over 150 AI. No other game can do that.

And that is leading me to my next point. I honestly believe that the limitations we see in ARMA III, even though they CAN be optimized, are to be expected in a game with a scale such as this one. We are runnning a simulator tailored for a game marked. Sims are more complex than games, and need to account for more than games. So, the question is, is it possible at all to have a game this scale be as optimized as other games with a much smaller scale? I don't think so.

So, in order for having a better optimized game, what can we accept or live with? Hard coded AI limits, draw distance and number of objects pr scene? AI and other objects or units off screen not being spawned in at launch, but rather when in proximity to a player? Limited maps? Less detail? Poor physics? No ragdoll?

One suggestion I've put forward, was to have AI more commander oriented, and subordinates being more generic. In other words, less individual thinking pr AI unit. Equals less CPU time reserved for AI, leaving more for other stuff.

There is stuff to be done, sure. But I honestly think that no matter how much they try to optimize, the nature of a game with this scale limits what can be done. Simply because it has to account for so much. And as I said, members of my community doesn't have super computers, me myself have a 4 year old OC'd one, with a CPU that was pretty good back then, but who is pretty outdated now. I'm running quad core i7 920 oc too 3,8 ghz and have no problems.

And again, dedi servers will fix alot. So will server admins who doesn't force long draw distances fix a lot. anything above 3000 draw distance will kill any now living computer do to the insane amount of objects drawn.

[Insanatrix 0]

Have to agree with White. If they wanted to answer the issue and close the thread they could. Instead it makes it seem like they don't know what the problem is, which may or may not be true.

While I don't think people need to be rude or nasty to the developers, I still expect the software I purchased to fully utilize hardware that has been around for 3+ years. Especially when it has been an issue for past iterations of the software. I think what most people in this thread would like is simply a little accountability and interaction. The lack of it just makes it seem like it's low priority, which makes it seem like it's a large engine flaw that they are unwilling to fix.

[Dwarden 1125]

actually I closed the thread full of hate and whine / flame on STEAM discussions ... it's opened here to avoid dozens of new threads opened on the same case ...

[Insanatrix 0]

actually I closed the thread full of hate and whine / flame on STEAM discussions ... it's opened here to avoid dozens of new threads opened on the same case ...

What I mean is, had they not wanted people to discuss it, they would just answer and close the thread. Obviously they want people to discuss it, which kind of nullifies the point that we should shut up and just be thankful.

Still, having some sort of developer interaction with the thread as to what could possibly be going on or what they think is going on and why it's persisted through multiple iterations of the engine, would go a long way to soothing some doubts that it can be fixed.

[almanzo 144]

What I mean is, had they not wanted people to discuss it, they would just answer and close the thread. Obviously they want people to discuss it, which kind of nullifies the point that we should shut up and just be thankful.

Still, having some sort of developer interaction with the thread as to what could possibly be going on or what they think is going on and why it's persisted through multiple iterations of the engine, would go a long way to soothing some doubts that it can be fixed.

You realize the fact that you just replied to one of the developers, right? And I never said anyone should shut up, I urged people to be more constructive.

[Dwarden 1125]

What I mean is, had they not wanted people to discuss it, they would just answer and close the thread. Obviously they want people to discuss it, which kind of nullifies the point that we should shut up and just be thankful.

Still, having some sort of developer interaction with the thread as to what could possibly be going on or what they think is going on and why it's persisted through multiple iterations of the engine, would go a long way to soothing some doubts that it can be fixed.

if you look back thru the thread then you find the answers already ... there is no point to post anything else until there is reason, it was also mentioned in the sitrep and spotrep

[Insanatrix 0]

You realize the fact that you just replied to one of the developers, right? And I never said anyone should shut up, I urged people to be more constructive.

I mean interaction on the topic at hand, like what's being done to address it and what the problem or problems are.

if you look back thru the thread then you find the answers already ... there is no point to post anything else until there is reason, it was also mentioned in the sitrep and spotrep

Like I said, just a bit more transparency and interaction on the topic wouldn't hurt. Blanket "We're on it" statements are a dime a dozen and really don't answer anything.

[dnk 13]

One suggestion I've put forward, was to have AI more commander oriented, and subordinates being more generic. In other words, less individual thinking pr AI unit. Equals less CPU time reserved for AI, leaving more for other stuff.

And again, dedi servers will fix alot. So will server admins who doesn't force long draw distances fix a lot. anything above 3000 draw distance will kill any now living computer do to the insane amount of objects drawn.

1) Who forces 3000+ VD? I've played on fairly client-determined VD servers, but even on my PvP servers it's usually set pretty low (sub 2000).

2) From my own research (posted a few posts above), it seems like pathfinding is the biggest issue. Having all the AI "think less" doesn't fix the problem that all the AI have to figure out where their asses are moving to specifically with every command.

My own suggestion on that is to have them be less responsive to formation commands in complex terrain (like cities - this could be determined simply by the engine keeping track of mean pathfinding times for a unit per virtual meter, and when this gets too high, this optimization kicks in), which would cause them to adjust their position (and hence require pathfinding) less. If there is a way to get them to "follow" the path of another squad member also, all the best. So, for example, when the distance to move is more than like 4:1 the distance between them and the squadmate (in complex terrain), they let the squadmate do the pathfinding, then they just pathfind to the squadmate's current location and then follow his original pathfinding from there, then at the end of the trip doing a quick pathfind to a different piece of cover, etc. In many casts, the distance between squadmates is probably a lot easier to pathfind than the longer one, requiring far less resources overall.

most people.

Stats?

a few days ago i saw a discussion on steam regarding gamespy serverbrowser, and dwarden said something like "its still an alpha, we might use gamespy or not, we might use both gamespy and steam, who knows". my reaction was "dafuq, you developers should know by now what the hell you are going to do with the game". the lack of prior design choices regarding this and those other mentioned issues paint a bad picture overall imho.

Alphas are the part in the process where they decide what they're going to do with the game? This isn't that complicated.

theres nothing else to report about the performance issues, its been covered over and over

Dunno, seems like I've been making some progress in finding a culprit, but quitting and whining works too I suppose.

[white 1]

Stats?

what about 1191 vs 13, is that a good stats sample?

Alphas are the part in the process where they decide what they're going to do with the game? This isn't that complicated.

I thought thats what game design in pre production was for, along with making a schedule and alocating resources to take care of what will be accomplished, shouldve been easy taking the experience and feedback from years of others games like arma 2 and knowing what they would keep or scrap. after launchers became so widespread that shouldve been a hint that the gamespy serverbrowser they use is complete shit compared to todays alternatives. i would even understand an answer like "gamespy is here to stay" or "we wont waste resources on using another one". but hinting that they simply dont know when beta is in a few months? i guess im alone in thinking thats wierd for a development company no matter what the project is.

Dunno, seems like I've been making some progress in finding a culprit, but quitting and whining works too I suppose.

im sorry didnt know that reporting the bug wasnt enough, so we have to find (without access to the code) and maybe i guess solve the bug aswell. thats a new approach. all while theres people peing paid that should be doing that. (maybe they are? who knows)

Edited April 7, 2013 by white

[dnk 13]

what about 1191 vs 13, is that a good stats sample?

This is your idea of constructive contribution to the thread - numbers without links or context or explanation? What about 23434 to 435454545.4? Stop trolling and try to participate, if you can.

RE Gamespy: k, it sucks. They should fix it. They're kicking that decision down the road to focus on other things, obviously. Given how popular external launchers are, it's not really that important, is it.

im sorry didnt know that reporting the bug wasnt enough, so we have to find (without access to the code) and maybe i guess solve the bug aswell. thats a new approach. all while theres people peing paid that should be doing that. (maybe they are? who knows)

It's called "being proactive". What you're doing is called "pointless whining". See a distinction? One is useful. One benefits others potentially. The other wastes everyone's time and attention.

[white 1]

This is your idea of constructive contribution to the thread - numbers without links or context or explanation? What about 23434 to 435454545.4? Stop trolling and try to participate, if you can.

so you are unaware of the very popular (most voted) voting on the bug report, mentioned a few times on this topic, i really didnt expect that since you are so very knowledgeable about the issue on this topic.

RE Gamespy: k, it sucks. They should fix it. They're kicking that decision down the road to focus on other things, obviously. Given how popular external launchers are, it's not really that important, is it.

you logic makes no sense, given how popular launcher are, thats exactly why it is important. if it werent popular then would be uninportant. how many games out there require a launcher for basic server browser functions. "its an alpha". arma 2 isnt, and as stated who knows if they will do anything about it or not. only "whiners" draw attention to the problem so it becomes a priority or not, not the useless fanboys.

It's called "being proactive". What you're doing is called "pointless whining". See a distinction? One is useful. One benefits others potentially. The other wastes everyone's time and attention.

its called doing someone elses job for free, and thus making them money while at it. but you are free to do so as much as you want, doesnt bother me. and i even ignore the fact that all you are doing might be completely redundant considering you dont have a clue about what the development team are doing about it, since theyre not very forthcoming.

Edited April 7, 2013 by white

[daze23 1]

Alphas are the part in the process where they decide what they're going to do with the game? This isn't that complicated.

yeah, but with the release a few months away, and the nature of business, contracts, etc, I would think things like that would already be decided on

[SneakyDuck 1]

This is your idea of constructive contribution to the thread - numbers without links or context or explanation? What about 23434 to 435454545.4? Stop trolling and try to participate, if you can.

You mean this? http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=716

1200 vote(s) 98,93% VS 13 vote(s) 1,07%

[WalkerDown 1]

You mean this? http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=716

Be gently.. DKN probably started playing Arma only yesterday. :D

[Jimieus 1]

Jumped on yesterday hoping this problem would be fixed. But alas, it has not.

This is the one thing stopping me, and everyone else I know who bought the game, from playing. It is such a joykill.

Fix it-Fix it-Fix it-Fix it.

[dnk 13]

so you are unaware of the very popular (most voted) voting on the bug report, mentioned a few times on this topic, i really didnt expect that since you are so very knowledgeable about the issue on this topic.

There you go, citing your sources finally. Sorry I don't keep regular tabs on the votecounts for issues I've already voted on. I do have a life outside the alpha, after all.

I think I've already responded to this (and upvoted that issue despite not having serious issues myself (imo for my rig)): just because X number of people complain about a problem, doesn't mean that 50x people don't experience it - especially for such a vote, for which people with no experience of it are either going to A) ignore the vote, or (as I did) B) vote anyway to support others with the issue.

Really, even if you didn't have this issue, why would you downvote it? Apparently 13 people just have issues with other people having issues... There's always those types.

you logic makes no sense, given how popular launcher are, thats exactly why it is important. if it werent popular then would be uninportant. how many games out there require a launcher for basic server browser functions. "its an alpha". arma 2 isnt, and as stated who knows if they will do anything about it or not. only "whiners" draw attention to the problem so it becomes a priority or not, not the useless fanboys.

I can remember using launchers for other games. GR1 was one. I used ASE for that. DF1/2/LW all used an external browser (IE2 or whatever it was then). I know these are dated examples, but this is hardly the first game I've needed an external launcher for. And they're nice here because they give more options than the devs would put in an internal one anyway. Plus they allow for auto-updating mods, etc. DayZCommander and Six are quite effective, community-developed solutions, so why bother when there are other, more serious issues (like this performance one)?

its called doing someone elses job for free, and thus making them money while at it..

Yeah, just one of those suckers who support businesses they like. You have a charming attitude towards life, don't you! I even donate money to organizations that I like, expecting nothing of personal gain in return. Same for individuals. Crazy guy I am!

[white 1]

There you go, citing your sources finally. Sorry I don't keep regular tabs on the votecounts for issues I've already voted on. I do have a life outside the alpha, after all.

I´m sorry, i thought that was obvious. and yeah i would be mistaken if asked if you had a life, after all you do work for free for a company made to make money, one would need a lot of spare time for that imho.

I think I've already responded to this (and upvoted that issue despite not having serious issues myself (imo for my rig)): just because X number of people complain about a problem, doesn't mean that 50x people don't experience it - especially for such a vote, for which people with no experience of it are either going to A) ignore the vote, or (as I did) B) vote anyway to support others with the issue.

Really, even if you didn't have this issue, why would you downvote it? Apparently 13 people just have issues with other people having issues... There's always those types.

I´m sorry i didnt know you had telepathy and knew what ppl think and do all around. you wanted an stabilished stats sample and i gave you one, the fact is you dont like the outcome thats all (and i guess if you would take the time to separate all the posts on this topic you would get a similar ratio, but you can do that yourself if you want to). And if you voted that way, against you own experience, you just voted wrong on a very simples matter, and that says a lot considering how you post.

I can remember using launchers for other games. GR1 was one. I used ASE for that. DF1/2/LW all used an external browser (IE2 or whatever it was then). I know these are dated examples, but this is hardly the first game I've needed an external launcher for. And they're nice here because they give more options than the devs would put in an internal one anyway. Plus they allow for auto-updating mods, etc. DayZCommander and Six are quite effective, community-developed solutions, so why bother when there are other, more serious issues (like this performance one)?

so you agree that the game only needs those when they lack basic funcions that should be on the game to begin with.

Yeah, just one of those suckers who support businesses they like. You have a charming attitude towards life, don't you! I even donate money to organizations that I like, expecting nothing of personal gain in return. Same for individuals. Crazy guy I am!

Do you also donate money to mcdonalds and from time to time go inside one to wipe their floors? but like i said, you doing it doesnt bother me at all, just dont try to make it sound rational, because you will fail.

one thing is helping a company to make a better product by making them aware of its flaws, which you perceive by using its products, another one is going as far as doing their job for them, big difference. and if you want do donate to really importante issues im all for it, but i doubt anyone at bohemia is starving.

Edited April 10, 2013 by white

[Insanatrix 0]

Can you both stop the petty bickering back and forth and actually focus on making points on the topic rather than trying to make points to discredit or invalidate each others viewpoints?

The latest Dev build seems to have increased performance for me around buildings, and there seem to be less of an impact between shadows off and shadows on ultra or very high. I haven't ran any logging tools to see usage or anything, but it's the first time I've come out of ArmA 3 and Speedfan has shown a peak core temp of 49c and Tcase temp of 46c. That's generally what I get with close to 90% usage across all cores. For reference Prime95 after an hour usually hits 52c core temp.

[white 1]

Can you both stop the petty bickering back and forth and actually focus on making points on the topic rather than trying to make points to discredit or invalidate each others viewpoints?

The latest Dev build seems to have increased performance for me around buildings, and there seem to be less of an impact between shadows off and shadows on ultra or very high. I haven't ran any logging tools to see usage or anything, but it's the first time I've come out of ArmA 3 and Speedfan has shown a peak core temp of 49c and Tcase temp of 46c. That's generally what I get with close to 90% usage across all cores. For reference Prime95 after an hour usually hits 52c core temp.

last couple of days i entered the game to try to play but couldnt find any DEV servers with people on them. seems that for some reason there are a lot less servers (some servers i havent seen anymore) and the ones left seem to have higher ping than before. so i gave up till some proper DEV servers appear.

there are also a few servers that i already know by name that only appear on the list after pressing refresh 3-6 times (random actually) but their ping doubled for some reason. locally my ping is fine (12ms to cities close by, 133ms to east-usa), even tried changing my dns servers using namebench, but to no avail.

Edited April 11, 2013 by white

[Insanatrix 0]

last couple of days i entered the game to try to play but couldnt find any DEV servers with people on them. seems that for some reason there are a lot less servers (some servers i havent seen anymore) and the ones left seem to have higher ping than before. so i gave up till some proper DEV servers appear.

there are also a few servers that i already know by name that only appear on the list after pressing refresh 3-6 times (random actually) but their ping doubled for some reason. locally my ping is fine (12ms to cities close by, 133ms to east-usa), even tried changing my dns servers using namebench, but to no avail.

I've stopped playing multiplayer until they fix the issue's that are bogging it down.

The smoothness of the game is what really seems to have improved in this last dev build.

[white 1]

I've stopped playing multiplayer until they fix the issue's that are bogging it down.

The smoothness of the game is what really seems to have improved in this last dev build.

yeah i was tired of entering the heli showcase and the benchmark mission that guy did, so lately ive been playing different missions with around 10ppl or less on low ping servers, some missions are unbearable and some i can withstand the low fps to try to enjoy the game. on the heli showcase i barely saw any difference in the last few dev updates, i saw some improvement (around 20%) but i did change my cpu from 3,0ghz to 3,75ghz and guess what was the % in clock increase.

Edited April 11, 2013 by white

[Sixgears2 1]

I don't tend to see any CPU-related frame drops unless I'm in an area with a lot of structures. I'm convinced that there's something inherently flawed with the code surrounding the engine's building rendering. Not a huge problem, ArmA is all about the great outdoors for me!

I have noticed that my CPU usage is quite low at all times while playing, but the game runs silky smooth on ultra as long as I avoid the airport and towns. Even then my frames rarely drop below the 40s, so I'm inclined to forgive the game. Maybe one day we'll have truly multi-threaded ArmA games that can blast your CPU to bits, but for now it's more than acceptable.

As others have said, VSynch and postprocessing seem to be major drags on ArmA 3's performance, and I don't think either of them have a noticeable enough effect to be worth the frame cost.

I'm not allowed to have a signature yet due to being new on the forums, but for reference I'm running an AMD FX 6300, Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870, and 8 gigs of Corsair Vengeance DDR3. I'll post my full specs when I'm allowed to make a sig.

[joschaap 1]

the only issue im having performancewise, is the GFX cards falling 'asleep' during gameplay when running crossfire. (Litterally just go to idle and freeze the screen at 1-3 fps for 25 seconds)

I have reduced this behaviour by turning this off with MSI Afterburner but im also missing alot of performance (running with a single card gives the same fps)

lets hope AMD finds an interest in this game soon and come up with Appllication profiles for ArmA3 :)

for those interested, 3dmark score (Firestrike): http://www.3dmark.com/fs/358830

[Sixgears2 1]

GPUs falling asleep during gameplay? Can't say I've ever heard of that before. Seems like a rather large problem...