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

[dmarkwick 261]

Someone is moaning that an alpha is not working fully optimised? Well well well :)

[Gunter Severloh 4063]

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.

I've done this, but not determine the rate of fire, but I have a single core cpu, but my cpu isn't maxed, its at like 60-to 75% when I play sometimes up to 85% but it

depends on how many AI, and whats going on in a mission, so i think that other hardware plays a role in how well the game runs.

I have a OS winxp 32 bit nvidia geforce 285, 2gb ram, and 750watt psu, yes the specs are old, but I normally run the game (Arma2CO) with all low settings

except for the shadow, thats at normal, I have maxed the game out but I cant have alot of units and

explosions going on, but i can play the game maxed, so again it depends on a number of things.

And no I doubt Arma3 Alpha will run, so not sure if i should try but I think i may upgrade before i do try which will be a while. What you guys think?

[calin_banc 19]

Does ArmA 3 even starts on single core CPU? The low specs are: Processor:Intel Dual-Core 2.4 GHz or AMD Dual-Core Athlon 2.5 GHz

[CodeOverflow 1]

Because those games don't have AI, massive open worlds, freedom or complexity of any kind.

Next.

No AI? Seriously?

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done.

Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

So now explain to me, why in single player showcases the AI doesn't stall the computer, and on multiplayer it does? When on MultiPlayer it should even be the damn server to do those calculations, not the cpu.

[calin_banc 19]

It's not only about the quality (or how much calculations is doing every unit), but also about quantity, numbers. You don't actually have tens or hundreds of units at the same time, on the same map in Crysis. The difference between SP and MP, might be explained through render distance/object distance (you have them lower in SP). If you increase them, you'll need a rather much faster CPU than a faster GPU. Perhaps it's the draw calls or something like that 'cause the GPU usage drops like a stone when those two (draw/object render distance) go above a certain value.

[zoog 18]

So now explain to me, why in single player showcases the AI doesn't stall the computer, and on multiplayer it does? When on MultiPlayer it should even be the damn server to do those calculations, not the cpu.

Server FPS influences user FPS. If the server has to do all the calculations your problem we get even bigger. Recently we had an insane mission, due to an error the load on the server was immense. The server FPS plummeted to about 1 or 2 FPS. this affected all users, for about 30% of the players it became impossible to play. I had 5 FPS, this was on Utes (small map!), while usually I get about 20 to 28 FPS. So it also really depends on the server hardware, the mission and the way it is scripted, how the AI is spawned, etc, and the client machine. If the mission is well optimized and server FPS is normal you should get good results. Really,there are a lot of different factors in the equation which influence these kind of things.

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done. Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

Exactly, its about the way its done. And arma has a sandbox ai, it's about how autonomous the ai is on itself. With arma the ai will do everyhing autonomously in a sandbox world. One of the reasons why sp missions in arma campaigns can go in the shitter because for example an important person died because the ai can wage a war by themselves. Everything can be done dynamically, they can decide to take a car, will give higher priority to different targets, can call in reinforcements, can patrol an area completely autonomously without any pre defined waypoints, they can retreat, ambush, give up etc. etc. etc. Other games usually set a certain behavior for specific spawned ai with predefined way point, actions or triggers dictating the ai what to do. If every ai on the map is autonomous and has to constantly decide how to operate given changing circumstances etc., yes this costs a lot of CPU but you get an experience that no other game manages to deliver :)

Edited March 8, 2013 by zoog

[maturin 12]

No AI? Seriously?

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done.

Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

Exactly, the way it's done.

As in, an AI that plays Go Fish vs an AI that plays chess. Suri from your Iphone vs Cortana in Halo. Guess which takes more resources.

[nodunit 397]

No AI? Seriously?

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done.

Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

So now explain to me, why in single player showcases the AI doesn't stall the computer, and on multiplayer it does? When on MultiPlayer it should even be the damn server to do those calculations, not the cpu.

Cry engines AI are confined to a pre-determined location, they do not communicate or pass on information. Cover is pre-determined by entity's as well as walking path, they cannot move outside of a bound area and bullets in crysis are hit scan with a cone, with no or little bullet drop.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

[Rythmn 2]

you're comparing apples to oranges.

omg, i thought they were the same all this time..

[QuiteFranklyMyMaN 1]

Arma 3 is 10% graphics, and 90% calculations.

[Gedis 0]

oh, this dates back ages ago, correct me if i'm wrong, but arma1 v.1.14 or arma2 at early stages, when the same question was lit up by the our outstanding community and answered by BI. The BI answer ment, this will be like that, until CPU and GPU companies(specially GPU) will allocate HUGE resources reinventing the wheel, where CPU & GPU would work together, like 50/50(50% calculations done by gpu and 50% done by GPU for graphics & physics and such).

Now lets think logically, would GPU companies make more money allocating those resources=more money for a single game, or would rather enjoy money flow from simple-stupid games like BF3, COD, etc. (where the mass players are)?

Oh, and don't even dare to drag me into explaining why they are simple-stupid... Because it's not even worth for explaining, if people are brainwashed*.

*brainwashed - by the global media = news, documentaries, videos, video games! and THE PEOPLE. for example:

russian-georgian war for south ossethia,

'arab spring' which is still going on(lately in syria) and will move on on other country untill it will reach one particular one.

these are the best examples...

P.S. who still believes cold war is over? answer is 99% of you... so think with your OWN HEAD.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Gedis

[calin_banc 19]

AMD did showed a demo for the 5xxx with AI being accelerated through DX 11 -

and I think that it can be done using open CL/direct compute (that Demo had around 5000 AI i believe). In the end, the code needs to be written by Bohemia just as much as the hardware may support tessellation and other DX11 goodies, but the programs must still be written for those features to come to life.

With the new hardware and consoles coming out, perhaps we shall begin to see AI using more of the GPU instead of the CPU.

[johncage 30]

I don't understand as I'm not a game developer, why we have these massive powerful cards which apparently are way ahead of CPUs in terms of power and yet they go unused. Most games I've played use like 40% of the 670 and 670SLI is just useless, it often makes games worse. Yet we have these CPU heavy games and it usually results in low performance because the CPUs of today just don't seem to be able to cope. I mean I have an I7 980 only OC'd to 4ghrz but it's a 6 core and CPU heavy games still never seem to run all that well.

Yet DICE and Crytek do some amazing work as they tend to push the GPU and especially BF3 I see is really GPU heavy and not so much CPU and the game is an amazing performer. I mean I've played that game with my older dual core CPU, using a GPU I have on my current PC and while it didn't perform as well, it was still really smooth and fine.

Obviously I'm talking out of my arse here as I have no clue about game development, however just from observing, I don't understand why you'd push the CPU over the GPU which seems to be far better.

anything above an i7 920 can run all games today very well, it's just game developers don't bother implementing proper multi core support. so you see these games using 2 cores only, wasting the 2 other cores. the reason a lot of games run well is because they don't need that many cores either. arma 3 is one of those games that needs to utilize all the cores to run smoothly, but sadly the developers either have not implemented it yet or once again, as in the case of arma 2, didn't bother.

[lugiahua 26]

No AI? Seriously?

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done.

Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

So now explain to me, why in single player showcases the AI doesn't stall the computer, and on multiplayer it does? When on MultiPlayer it should even be the damn server to do those calculations, not the cpu.

I don't know about new Crysis3, but I remember that older Crysis requires manual input of cover information for AI.

[Hornet 1]

AMD did showed a demo for the 5xxx with AI being accelerated through DX 11 and I think that it can be done using open CL/direct compute (that Demo had around 5000 AI i believe). In the end, the code needs to be written by Bohemia just as much as the hardware may support tessellation and other DX11 goodies, but the programs must still be written for those features to come to life.

With the new hardware and consoles coming out, perhaps we shall begin to see AI using more of the GPU instead of the CPU.

Why would anyone want to use GPU's cycle to do AI and game mechanics when it already has its hands full with graphics rendering.:confused:

I wish I could afford a card faster than my GTX 680 to render the graphics even better, it's already struggling with the advance graphics in this game. Last thing I need is to take away its resources to do other stuff that can be done on a general purpose processor.

There's no magic in this. There's a finite processing capabilities in a GPU, if you use them for other stuff, then who's going to do the graphics rendering.

[quiet_man 8]

No AI? Seriously?

The issue is not the AI, the issue is the way it's done.

Cry engine has a pretty good AI, and it runs smooth.

So now explain to me, why in single player showcases the AI doesn't stall the computer, and on multiplayer it does? When on MultiPlayer it should even be the damn server to do those calculations, not the cpu.

I don't really know the answer but I would guess it is the new multiplayer code. BI want's Arma to scale to large amount of players. With large distances player often reported issues with targeting (target jumping), which is caused simply by the physical time information travels in the internet and the capacity of the server. (with multiple players firing automatic weapons, the network load must be incredible). In the past BI had implemented bullet "grouping", so multiple bullets where calculated as one with higher damage. Later they dropped this and now they implemented a "prediction" code. So your pc is following any player, vehicle and bullet and while he is waiting for an update of all positions from the server, he is "predicting" the movement. Giving you a much smoother view of movements and reducing the requirements for server data. For the cost of higher CPU load on your side. I assume this code might need more CPU load than calculating the AI directly.

As I said, it is a guess.

[calin_banc 19]

Why would anyone want to use GPU's cycle to do AI and game mechanics when it already has its hands full with graphics rendering.:confused:

I wish I could afford a card faster than my GTX 680 to render the graphics even better, it's already struggling with the advance graphics in this game. Last thing I need is to take away its resources to do other stuff that can be done on a general purpose processor.

There's no magic in this. There's a finite processing capabilities in a GPU, if you use them for other stuff, then who's going to do the graphics rendering.

When you start adding more and more units, your CPU is going to slow down to a crawl. If you add physics on top of that and the situation is not any good.

Of course you have a point, If someone wants to run the game with all it's settings turn all the way up, he's gonna need some serious GPU power just for that. The thing is, if the CPU can't handle all the other aspects of the game, then the frame rate will still be low 'cause all those video cards will just lay around at half their power or even lower. What there needs to be done? Well, perhaps a system that splits the work load across CPU and GPU alike, in a manner that everything is as balanced as possible. Maybe some OpenCL code will do this at a point in the future, who knows? I for one, would prefer to play on medium to high settings and with lots of units and physics going on, rather than playing probably at the same FPS, with less units and physics because the CPU alone can't handle it and the video card is barely used. I even see a place where a strong video card will do the 3D rendering and another will coupe with AI and physics on it's one - something like a multi GPU solution today where a card handles GPU hardware PhysiX from the green camp, and another does the rendering part. :)

[sanyigz 1]

Because BIS never liked to optimize. Operation Flashpoint had huge REAL requirements (what is written as requirements in official documents is always a joke). Also arma 1 and 2 had huge requirements, greater than any other games at that time, and the releases become more frequent. So when i bought a PC that runs these games nicely, the next part came out, with even bigger requirements... so arount Arma 2 i give up with this sequel.

I'm not gonna play on low FPS, nor i want to spend money on a new pc just because this game(while every other games run nicely).

BIS programmers are just lazy. They said at the release of arma2, when people asked why don't they use directx 10.1 (which has a lot of good features for an open world game like this), but they said "we don't see enough improvements in it". They rather say, "the user will buy a better PC so we shouldn't need to optimize"

By the way, if arma 3 still uses directx 9, that eats the most of the cpu! Every open world game that uses old 3d techniques is limited by the single core performance of the CPU, as directx9 can use a single core to generate the draw calls (every object in game, needs a draw call to be sent to gpu in every frame).

the usage of nvidia Physix will make it worse. it's a pile of junk, with a lots of restrictions. It's usually used by game developers for money (nvidia pays for developers to use their **** so people will buy nvidia video cards too... while in reality 98% of the physix effects are run on CPU and not on GPU. The only difference is, when it detects nvidia gpu, the physics using all of the CPU cores, if it isn't detects nvidia gpu, physics is restricted to 1 cpu core).

Edited March 9, 2013 by sanyigz

[Tyrsero 10]

Actually the way how ArmA 2 uses the CPU is fatal. Of course the developers managed to make an AI that doesn't use "cheats" like wall-hack and other, but AI is not that good after all. Sometimes it takes the AI to look at you for 10 seconds before firing, and before that it will still miss, best exampel is ArmA 1 AI. Like I said, it's not perfect, it uses alot of resources for something it cannot do 100% right.

Still, even if AI is eating up CPU like mad, the devs made a great job making OFP and ArmA's, the gameplay is amazing and I think that it's one of that kind.

[rekrul 7]

[...]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.[...]

I don't get it. You're saying that A3 has tons more calculations, which the GPU is superb at, than Crysis and because of that, A3 uses the CPU instead...

I think metalcraze is more correct in his assumptions than most people's guesswork that they presents as facts - mainly keeping track of it all. I think a lot of the calculations are done in the CPU because sending it to the GPU and getting the results back will take longer and cause too much overhead and maybe even saturating the bus(es?) with minuscule tasks, making it less efficient. Remember that for every calculation or task you offload to the GPU has to be kept track of by the CPU who has to assign timeslots based on priorities and builds the big picture (not literally, the GPU does that ;)).

Also there will a wide variance in the GPU players has which prevents static resource offloading and making this dynamic will probably cost more than it benefits.

[Leon86 13]

Because BIS never liked to optimize. Operation Flashpoint had huge REAL requirements (what is written as requirements in official documents is always a joke). Also arma 1 and 2 had huge requirements, greater than any other games at that time, and the releases become more frequent. So when i bought a PC that runs these games nicely, the next part came out, with even bigger requirements... so arount Arma 2 i give up with this sequel.

I'm not gonna play on low FPS, nor i want to spend money on a new pc just because this game(while every other games run nicely).

BIS programmers are just lazy. They said at the release of arma2, when people asked why don't they use directx 10.1 (which has a lot of good features for an open world game like this), but they said "we don't see enough improvements in it". They rather say, "the user will buy a better PC so we shouldn't need to optimize"

By the way, if arma 3 still uses directx 9, that eats the most of the cpu! Every open world game that uses old 3d techniques is limited by the single core performance of the CPU, as directx9 can use a single core to generate the draw calls (every object in game, needs a draw call to be sent to gpu in every frame).

the usage of nvidia Physix will make it worse. it's a pile of junk, with a lots of restrictions. It's usually used by game developers for money (nvidia pays for developers to use their **** so people will buy nvidia video cards too... while in reality 98% of the physix effects are run on CPU and not on GPU. The only difference is, when it detects nvidia gpu, the physics using all of the CPU cores, if it isn't detects nvidia gpu, physics is restricted to 1 cpu core).

you forgot to add /rant

seriously, posts like yours almost give devs an excuse to ignore valid performance complaints.

[jiltedjock 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.

when you increase the viewdistance in Arma each AI object increases its viewdistance. think about that. in the single player missions that i have built for myself, that might be 500 objects on a 50km square map. think about that. then consider whether comparing what goes on on Arma to Crysis or BF3 is sensible.

[calin_banc 19]

It's also those draw call perhaps, because the FPS and GPU usage drops without any AI on the map. In MP, no or low AI also means low FPS if there are many players on the server. A lot of variables to be taken into account, not just the artificial intelligence.

[sanyigz 1]

you forgot to add /rantseriously, posts like yours almost give devs an excuse to ignore valid performance complaints.

tell me, which is not valid on my opinion? :)

BTW they ignore performance complaints, they did since BIS have founded...

[Leon86 13]

tell me, which is not valid on my opinion? :)

BTW they ignore performance complaints, they did since BIS have founded...

well, for one you say bis programmers are just lazy, that counts as a rant. then you go on about dx9, which isnt even in arma3, and physx, which has virtually no part in the performance of arma3 since it's not used for much.