Can someone tell me why you'd make a game of 2013 very CPU heavy?

[scaramoosh 10]

I can play BF3 on giant maps or Crysis 1 - 3 maxed out with DX11 turned on in 2 and 3 maxed out and they look far better than this game. I mean the vegetation cannot be the reason, it looks like shit, in Crysis it clips around your body but in this game it goes right through you like it is 2D... so that isn't it. I don't see it being the view distance, there are games with far better view distances and they run smoothly, but also stuff in the background looks so low resolution. When I look at my CPU and GPU usage, it's not pushing them and SLI makes no difference what so ever.

I know it's alpha and this is when the optimization kicks in, however I've seen no evidence in the past that there will ever be any. Dean Hall said Dayz SA is going to be running much better, looking at the video he released though, it still ran like crap.

I spose that is the trade off though for a small developer making their own engine over buying a license to an engine from a more experience and higher budget developer like Epic, DICE or Crytek.

[metalcraze 290]

What I don't get is people say it's due to the A.I, firstly I have no idea why you'd want to play with A.I in the first place, playing against humans is much better for a variety of reasons. Also though because performance is no better in multiplayer than Single Player, so the whole A.I thing doesn't make sense.

You are wrong. People play with and against AI because that allows them to create the multitude of scenarios impossible in a PvP.

And CPU usage is more than just AI. The engine keeps track of every single object in a game world at all times. This ensures that when you break a window or even destroy a building somewhere, move 100m away then return it won't be there safe and sound like in pretty much every single open world game they make these days (but they do that for a reason - exactly to save CPU cycles)

[NevilleBartos 10]

PhysX and the fact PhysX can run on a graphics card are two slightly different things. You can use the PhysX physics engine without it running on a graphics card. I have played games which refuse to do physics processing on a GPU despite it using PhysX and my card supporting it.

Yep I believe PhysX is processed on the CPU in A3, regardless of your GPU.

[Winfernal 2]

Can you tell me how to make games?

[chomiq 10]

Yep I believe PhysX is processed on the CPU in A3, regardless of your GPU.

At this point it is entirely based on CPU. Later it will depend either on PhysX if available or CPU if not.

[dwaight 17]

the only good game crysis made imo was crysis 1 & warhead. all others are bs.

[Brainbug 10]

The Problem with hardware-acelerated PhysX (i.e. the one that runs on the GPU) is that it is a proprietary tech by Nvidia. It won't run on Radeons for mainly licensing issues (it is a marketing advantage for Nvidia, so they won't give it away except for an enormous sum of money that AMD is not willing to pay), that means for a game developer, if he uses hardware-PhysX and thus makes it necessary for players to have a PhysX-capable card in their rigs (i.e. a Geforce, and not a too old or too slow one!), he is cutting off a lot of potential customers. Not many people will buy a new card just for one game.

So as a game developer that wants to attract as many buyers as possible, you are better off using just the software-only PhysX that runs on the CPU alone. Disadvantages are more stress on the CPU and only a basic level of PhysX calculations, but at least it is enough for ragdoll, colliding stuff etc. Only when a physics engine is available that runs on all GPUs (e.g. functions in DirectCompute or OpenCL), game developers will use it without hesitation.

[zoog 18]

I can play BF3 on giant maps or Crysis 1 - 3 maxed out with DX11 turned on in 2 and 3 maxed out and they look far better than this game.

I spose that is the trade off though for a small developer making their own engine over buying a license to an engine from a more experience and higher budget developer like Epic, DICE or Crytek.

You keep comparing the Arma series to other games which from a technical standpoint cannot be remotely compared with each other. So please stop comparing your experiences in Arma with BF3 or Crysis :) It's kinda like comparing for example the A-10 C Digital Combat Simulator module (flightsim) with Ace Combat. You simply cannot compare these types of games, and expecting the same performance is naive. Arma is a simulation which means almost ANYTHING will be calculated, every bullet originating from everyones weapon including velocity, bullet drop, wind and gusts, autonomous AI which can do almost anything without any commands given by the mission maker, volumetric clouds, dynamic daytime and weather effects, complete wounding system etc. etc. From the outside it might seem that there is not a lot of difference between BF3 and Arma, they both are first person shooters, but under the hood we are talking about completely different type of games. Really, stop comparing it to those games. On top of that the engines you propose would, as far as I know, never be able to do the same things as the current Real Virtuality engine. It's not just simply "oh lets pick this engine because it looks good" there are all kinds of trade offs and some engines can do x very good, and some engines can do y very good. Real Virtuality engine is developed for a game like Arma and all underlying mechanics that are needed to create the world and mechanics needed for the game.

Edited March 7, 2013 by zoog

[metalcraze 290]

BF3 has giant maps? :D

I will not be surprised if you are able to fit all of them incl. DLC ones into Stratis dimensions.

Also yes BIS could've locked view distance at 500m and slapped some beautiful background with flat burning 2D buildings and some crappy lens flares and fat finger prints all over the screen coupled with nearly black and white graphics so you couldn't see anything - but would you be able to play a game where enemies can attack you from beyond 100m?

, he is cutting off a lot of potential customers. Not many people will buy a new card just for one game.

ArmA3 has PhysX, somehow Radeon users don't complain

Hardware PhysX doesn't force anyone or anything into exclusivity.

Edited March 7, 2013 by metalcraze

[antoineflemming 14]

At this point it is entirely based on CPU. Later it will depend either on PhysX if available or CPU if not.

Doesn't matter. It isn't the PhysX that is responsible for the low FPS.

[tortuosit 486]

Is it only me, or Arma is really getting mainstream?

Hell, you could even calculate sales figures from the number of such questions...

Well but I'm sure there was a lot of benefit in terms of money and developer resources from DayZ hype. We shouldn't complain.

[white 1]

i have no problem with the game having the cpu as its bottleneck instead of the videocard, the issue many people have is that it doesnt utilize the whole cpu!

you will see people showing 4 cores utilization but they are at 50%, know why? because its only using 2 cores properly. and you are damned if you use a 6 or 8 core cpu. (amd mostly)

all we want is the engine to support modern cpus properly (100% in 8 cores), but the optimizations apparently died 10 years ago when there were only dual cores, i really didnt expect this on arma 3. and btw, this was never ever fixed on arma 2.

[SpinNaker 10]

You keep comparing the Arma series to other games which from a technical standpoint cannot be remotely compared with each other. So please stop comparing your experiences in Arma with BF3 or Crysis :) It's kinda like comparing for example the A-10 C Digital Combat Simulator module (flightsim) with Ace Combat. You simply cannot compare these types of games, and expecting the same performance is naive. Arma is a simulation which means almost ANYTHING will be calculated, every bullet originating from everyones weapon including velocity, bullet drop, wind and gusts, autonomous AI which can do almost anything without any commands given by the mission maker, volumetric clouds, dynamic daytime and weather effects, complete wounding system etc. etc. From the outside it might seem that there is not a lot of difference between BF3 and Arma, they both are first person shooters, but under the hood we are talking about completely different type of games. Really, stop comparing it to those games. On top of that the engines you propose would, as far as I know, never be able to do the same things as the current Real Virtuality engine. It's not just simply "oh lets pick this engine because it looks good" there are all kinds of trade offs and some engines can do x very good, and some engines can do y very good. Real Virtuality engine is developed for a game like Arma and all underlying mechanics that are needed to create the world and mechanics needed for the game.

^Very well said! :)

[RadicalAtHeart 11]

I was actually thinking if AI processing would be more efficient using CUDA or something like that.

They should release ArmA 2 source code for free when they can. So the community can maybe help optimizing the old game. And those optimizations could end up in ArmA 3 eventually

[Threedog1421 1]

I was actually thinking if AI processing would be more efficient using CUDA or something like that.

They should release ArmA 2 source code for free when they can. So the community can maybe help optimizing the old game. And those optimizations could end up in ArmA 3 eventually

That should never happen.....While I'm new to the series that is corporate suicide. They want people to play 3 not sit on 2 for 3 more years. Like BF3, DICE dosen't want players going back to BF2. Looking to the future ;)

[ephant 10]

You keep comparing the Arma series to other games which from a technical standpoint cannot be remotely compared with each other. So please stop comparing your experiences in Arma with BF3 or Crysis :) It's kinda like comparing for example the A-10 C Digital Combat Simulator module (flightsim) with Ace Combat. You simply cannot compare these types of games, and expecting the same performance is naive. Arma is a simulation which means almost ANYTHING will be calculated, every bullet originating from everyones weapon including velocity, bullet drop, wind and gusts, autonomous AI which can do almost anything without any commands given by the mission maker, volumetric clouds, dynamic daytime and weather effects, complete wounding system etc. etc. From the outside it might seem that there is not a lot of difference between BF3 and Arma, they both are first person shooters, but under the hood we are talking about completely different type of games. Really, stop comparing it to those games. On top of that the engines you propose would, as far as I know, never be able to do the same things as the current Real Virtuality engine. It's not just simply "oh lets pick this engine because it looks good" there are all kinds of trade offs and some engines can do x very good, and some engines can do y very good. Real Virtuality engine is developed for a game like Arma and all underlying mechanics that are needed to create the world and mechanics needed for the game.

Sorry but even with every simulation aspect disable BF3 still would run much better than Arma 3. Even with maps as big as in the Arma series.

edit: I removed the link of the screenshot because it was too big.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Ephant

[Desrat 0]

Sorry but even with every simulation aspect disable BF3 still would run much better than Arma 3. Even with maps as big as in the Arma series.

Not exactly a fair comparison considering the amount of playable area in these BF3 maps is small in comparison to any ArmA map (even Stratis), also EA has a much bigger development budget to facilitate the time spent on polish.

[tonygrunt 10]

Sorry but even with every simulation aspect disable BF3 still would run much better than Arma 3. Even with maps as big as in the Arma series.

And you know about that how?

Do you have access to the ArmA 3 source and you compiled a version with those aspects disabled?

[ephant 10]

Not exactly a fair comparison considering the amount of playable area in these BF3 maps is small in comparison to any ArmA map (even Stratis), also EA has a much bigger development budget to facilitate the time spent on polish.

1/4 Stratis should run well then because that's the size of the bigger (and more detailed) BF3 maps. Also budget isn't everything and every version RV was meh in terms of performance (not sure about OPF because I had a shitty PC back then).

[gizm0 1]

1/4 Stratis should run well then because that's the size of the bigger (and more detailed) BF3 maps. Also budget isn't everything and every version RV was meh in terms of performance (not sure about OPF because I had a shitty PC back then).

so you have turned down your settings to only show <1/4 of stratis? Also i would like to point out, i get better fps in arma 3 alpha than i do on bf3. i'm not gonna argue about better optimizing the game but it is pretty optimized for an alpha.

[calin_banc 19]

The problem with the ArmA's engine, it's that it doesn't utilize very well the CPU. To see that you're limited by the processor due to poor scaling on multiple cores it's quite annoying. At least Cryengine 3 and Forstbyte can use up a CPU a whole lot better.

We'll see how things will set in with the final version, but I don't believe in miracles at this point.

[dwringer 45]

i have no problem with the game having the cpu as its bottleneck instead of the videocard, the issue many people have is that it doesnt utilize the whole cpu!

you will see people showing 4 cores utilization but they are at 50%, know why? because its only using 2 cores properly. and you are damned if you use a 6 or 8 core cpu. (amd mostly)

all we want is the engine to support modern cpus properly (100% in 8 cores), but the optimizations apparently died 10 years ago when there were only dual cores, i really didnt expect this on arma 3. and btw, this was never ever fixed on arma 2.

That's nonsense; I get 6 core utilization, and most of them stay around 50% but are by no means capped at 50%. How does seeing 4 cores in use imply only 2 cores being used properly? It implies 4 cores are being used, no more and no less. As I said, mine uses six with no issues. The OS also reports additional CPU's to represent the hyperthreading - essentially, an extra set of registers for the cores - being used to a limited extent.

Also, the game does not operate well when it is using a CPU to 100%. Your goal should never be to use 100% of a CPU if you're simulating a system as dynamic as this one. There is ALWAYS more calculating that the engine could be doing. But here's a fun example. Load up an Arma game on a pc with an insufficient CPU. Get a machine gun. Try to scientifically determine the rate-of-fire for your weapon. If your cpu is being stressed, it's going to be highly variable because the engine has to make so many compromises in what it decides to compute when that it can't keep up.

[accapella 1]

ARMA 3 is well optimized, atleast for me it looks way better with no fps drop from arma 2.

I'm pretty sure how well the game works is related to the model of your gpu and cpu though, some just work and others dont, this will probably be one of the things in the engine that will be fixed during the alpha.

[doveman 7]

i have no problem with the game having the cpu as its bottleneck instead of the videocard, the issue many people have is that it doesnt utilize the whole cpu!

you will see people showing 4 cores utilization but they are at 50%, know why? because its only using 2 cores properly. and you are damned if you use a 6 or 8 core cpu. (amd mostly)

all we want is the engine to support modern cpus properly (100% in 8 cores), but the optimizations apparently died 10 years ago when there were only dual cores, i really didnt expect this on arma 3. and btw, this was never ever fixed on arma 2.

Indeed, I still get fps as low as 17 on A2OA with AI/scripted missions. On MP PvP I can get around 50fps. The reports I've seen so far don't look promising as far as optimisation/multi-core usage are concerned (on both AMD and Intel) and whilst this is an Alpha and no doubt optimisations will be made, it's rather worrying that the basic engine isn't already able to use multi-core fully and I can imagine in several years it still won't be fixed, as with A2. I'll be happy to be proved wrong though ;)

[zoog 18]

Sorry but even with every simulation aspect disable BF3 still would run much better than Arma 3. Even with maps as big as in the Arma series.

edit: I removed the link of the screenshot because it was too big.

Right, so BF3 now has maps of over 225 square KM with the same level of detail as Arma 2? Did I miss something?

And like others stated before me, you have absolutely no prove or any evidence to support such random statements :) Did you ever play BF3 with a 225+ square KM map and a viewdistance of 10000, 200 autonomous AI, triggers, scripts, and all other stuff the game needs to calculate etc? ;)

1/4 Stratis should run well then because that's the size of the bigger (and more detailed) BF3 maps.

It's funny, you're talking about 25% of the smallest island that will be featured in Arma 3, an island which is 20 square KM. The other one (Altis) will be 270 square KM, at least 13 times bigger (don;t know if you can multiply KM^2, but at least it should be a lot either way). So BF3 will be able to do the same thing, with 2% the map size of Altis? Great job BF3! Will definitely be the same experience eh :D

You sir, are comparing apples with oranges

:dancehead:

Edited March 8, 2013 by zoog