Sorely Unimpressed with Arma 3's Graphics as they exist in the Alpha.

[Failberry 10]

You call me a full-on hypocrite, tell me I have a bad attitude, write numerous posts chiding me as if I'm some petulant idiot

You said it, I only implied it. :rolleyes:

[Logan9773 10]

forget it.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Logan9773

[seamusgod 1]

You said it, I only implied it. :rolleyes:

the end result is the same, you look like a douchebag.

[dnk 13]

Why does hardware usage go up during empty missions and down during intense ones? I anxiously await your definitive answers.

Basically, it seems to be due to AI pathfinding. I've done testing on the AI in missions, and that seems to be it, though it's difficult to be 100% on this. Post is HERE

Feedback ticket HERE

I can't understand why the game's environment will sometimes look so terrible and, on top of that, RUN terrible as well.

I'd say drop your VD down to the 300-500m that's the norm in FPS games, but that's impossible with the settings being low-capped at 600m.

running around on empty maps and the performance goes down due to processing power: looking at forests, objects, towns, and rendering all those things. Damned if I know how it all gets allocated, but these random drops are because something large is being processed.

Is it due to your CPU or GPU? Yeah, the CPU might be going down, but is the GPU staying at 100%? What about the memory controller on the GPU? I've noticed that with my older GPU, that complex scenes cause FPS reduction due to the memory controller being underutilized, not due to the GPU core being underutilized. This may be due to the VRAM needing to stream large amounts of texture/model data from RAM (possibly disk given how much gets streamed from there, including plant/building files throughout gameplay), which causes high latency and reduced FPS despite the core running at 100%. Even if you could occlude large portions of the scene from needing to be rendered with advanced occlusion technologies, the GPU would still need to be streaming in a ton of data in complex scenes, making this a major performance killer. Post HERE

The biggest issue for VR4/A3's engine can be summed up thusly, I think: poor utilization of modern, 64-bit physical RAM resources, both system and graphics. But I'm not a computer/software engineer, so take that with a few pinches of salt.

This limitation can be reduced by increasing your FOV, as the engine dynamically alters LODs/(mipmaps?) based not only on distance but FOV as well. Lower-res models/textures should make the loads faster and allow more to be held long-term in system RAM, requiring fewer disk reads.

Arma 3 should have a ground layer with twigs and sticks, and brown needles and crusted leaves. They dedicated so much time to these details in ARMA 2 why not in this game.

Well, I think "it's an alpha" needs to be included here. These sorts of graphical polishings aren't likely to get implemented before final release.

can I get screens of the 'incorrect' SMAA / FXAA image in-game versus injected SMAA / FXAA ?

(still static scene, same content, so save mission for this)

Quoted so it doesn't get drowned out in the rest of this.

[Sixgears2 1]

@ DNK

Thank you for actually acknowledging the issue and providing theories for why it exists. Interesting stuff. Clearly I'm no software engineer, but it sounds like you're definitely onto something. I'll try modifying the FOV. Hopefully it will alleviate at least some of the nonsensical frame drops.

Glad to see you've reported your findings to BIS so they can (hopefully) get to the fixin'.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Sixgears2

[Failberry 10]

the end result is the same, you look like a douchebag.

If it's only you and him, than I can live with it.

I just don't care to explain anymore, and nobody could possibly be interested in me and this dude's(sixgears) conversation anymore, except for the fact that he always seems like he HAS to have the last word. Didn't you say you were through like three replies ago?

Your original statement was that "That's all these game forums are these days unfortunately. It must be really disheartening as a dev to see someone outright dismiss your product as "garbage" because it has a few kinks that need to be ironed out."

NOBODY EVEN SAID THAT. Nobody in this thread knew where you were coming from with your irreverent generalizations.

Speaking of which, you then again stepped back up on the podium with a lecture on civil discourse. Again completely irrelevant and did not fit into the thread. Then, after some understandably confused posters replied to you, you went and practically attacked the forum, shooting them down, saying that it was perfectly alright to demand answers and that you weren't breaking any rules. I mention that you're in the wrong thread, and go search or create your own topic, with complete modesty mind you. Then later you are in the thread telling everyone that they must not know anything... You turned a complete 180; you became a hypocrite, plain and simple.

BTW, I was never talking down to you, and I was never insulting your intelligence. But fine, just think that; I even bothered to help you by assured that that was what I was doing. Your inferences at this point have become so off-base that I simply no longer care to explain why you aren't finding the answers you are looking for. But basically, "keep on truckin'."

Just don't truck along with any more of that whole lack of modesty and humility though, because it seems whatever hope you had of raising possibly good points has been pretty much obliterated due to your abrasiveness in dealing with others in this thread.

---------- Post added at 06:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:50 AM ----------

@dnk, I don't think it's my graphics card as I'm using a gtx690, but I do wonder if both cores are finally being utilized in the alpha. I believe I heard that currently SLI wasn't functioning in ARMA 3 and that it would only run one core, but that may have changed now with an SLI profile being added for arma 3. Also, I'm only dealing with 2 gigs of vram, if arma 3 has now become a vram hog. I used to think it was mostly disk streaming, though. I've got the 3770k, but I haven't overclocked it and I don't think arma utilizes all those cores anyway, correct? I have the alpha loaded onto an SSD, but could the amount of space left on the SSD affect the read times? Like say the alpha just barely fits on the SSD compared to having plenty of extra space on the SSD. Also, could I assume that more extra space on the SSD would make the performance boost by increasing the FOV more noticeable as well? I hope to god that yeah things get a bunch of polish from now until the release. My main concern was with the multitudes of people simply saying that it's only an alpha and everything will improve. Sure, I believe that. But I don't necessarily believe certain things will change if the developer doesn't receive feedback from the community. The ugly trees, the ugly medium overlay, and the ground textures were all things that I saw as areas that need improvement in terms of the graphical fidelity of the game so far, and that by mentioning them and discussing them, the developers would actually see that these are areas that possibly a large part of the community is concerned with.

[ruhtraeel 1]

I read up until page 4, skipped all the pages and went to the last page knowing that there would be an argument or two at the end.

Back on the topic (at least from what I've seen), I think ARMA 3's lighting is one of it's strongest points, especially as to how dynamic and striking it is (especially at night, too!)

That being said, I agree that vegetation could be improved. I think the grass looks pretty good, but the trees and the bushes do indeed look a bit weird in my opinion.

Another thing (probably the biggest thing in my opinion) is the detail at farther distances. Everything seems to blend into a smooth colour with a couple of specks after a distance that is too close in my opinion. I'm not entirely sure if this is me just having my object draw distance at 1k, but stuff seems to start looking lower quality closer than that (I think)

I believe it is that and the sounds that take away from my immersion in the game.

Edited April 14, 2013 by ruhtraeel

[Sixgears2 1]

@ruhtraeel

I agree that the lighting is spectacular most of the time, but I'd sure like to see the night missions brighten up a little. They are currently so dark that I can't see anything with NVGs even if I crank the brightness all the way up. That's not exactly realistic since one's eyes adjust to low light after about 10 minutes provided there's at least a little moonlight.

On an unrelated note and out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed the strange pop-in behavior of the short, scrubby vegetation towards the southern end of the island? It seems to be tied to specific missions (some display the behavior, some don't) and when it appears no combination of settings affects it. Is it related to the editor?

Any suggestions on how to fix it would be lovely as I'd like to be able to play my buddy's missions without having to watch a seizure-inducing pop fest.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Sixgears2

[Failberry 10]

As far as I know, lod such as the shrubbery is read from the disk. Though maybe now more of it is coming from vram, as others have said they seem to have noticed less pop-in. On a SSD, this pop in even less noticeable but it is still there, and I wonder if it's a bug with sli or something. Dnk, I need to try increasing the FOV to see if that actually stores vegetation longer and it doesn't have to stream from the disk so often, which creates the pop in. Night time looks odd to me, if anyone else could explain whether it really gets that pitch black, I'd like to know. I like the night from OA a lot better. Also, do the tracers seem odd to anyone else? The look much more laser beamy than what I think they looked like in ARMA 2. Too thick? The trails seem a tad too long? The color seems either completely green or completely red. I think in OA and ARMA 2 they looked, more stringy, maybe even had more blending or color difference to them. The stringiness of a tracer round would make sense to me, and I think it's more realistic that way as the ends burn, or however it works. They just seem way too thick and long to be actually bullets. They remind me of Red Orchestra 1. Also, does anyone notice tracer bouncing, I haven't really noticed tracer bouncing or the speed of the tracers getting affected like they were in the past ARMA games.

[dmarkwick 261]

1. Please enlighten me as to what ArmA 3 does that allows it to be measured by a different standard than any other for-profit game on the market. Or am I meant to simply write it a pass because it bears the name ArmA? Go on, tell me what spectacular thing ArmA is doing that makes it so much different than any other game on a technical level. Is it calculating the meaning of life? Simulating the every thought of each soldier? Pondering the nature of existence? Rendering objects down to a molecular level? If so, why does it only use 50% of my hardware? Why does hardware usage go up during empty missions and down during intense ones? I anxiously await your definitive answers.

Well, I guess I can take stab at this. One of the first things to realise about ArmA is that it is not a player-centric game. You as an entity are no more, or less, important than any other entity. So that mean that anything that happens anywhere on the map, happens. If you're wandering around in one corner of the map, but 10km away in an opposite corner two groups of AI encounter each other, their actions and battles are all calculated as though you were there to witness it. Every unit that crouches, hides, dashes or gets hit is all done. You might not see the outcome, and the outcome may not influence what you do, but it's all done. This is the central beauty of the ArmA engine and the thing I like about it the most.

It does mean though that it is necessarily heavier on the hardware than any other (non-sim) game engine. Personally, it's a price I'm happy to pay, it really is doing far more than any other game engine.

As for the rendering - I'm sure there are plenty of major changes that could be made to prevent slowdowns in some areas. But I'm not going to suggest it would be an easy thing to either implement or fully test, I don't know how integrated the rendering is with the game logic & AI processing etc.

2. Yes, I am comparing alpha gameplay to final code. If the engine is flawed there's little chance they'll fix it before release, and ArmA 2 had similar issues that weren't ever fixed. It therefore seems reasonable to me to assume these types of issues will carry over into the full release. Not that I doubt the reliability of blind faith, but would you kindly point me towards any post in which the issue is even acknowledged by a dev?

The devs are not at the beck & call of everyone who demands an acknowledgement. This sort of demand has been made several times before and the demand has always been quietly ignored. Rightfully so IMO, I've seen what happens when devs get involved with arguments/explanations/disillusionments/miscomprehensions on the iNet and it's never pretty. A dignified silence and regular engine enhancements are the norm for BIS. I'm pretty sure that, if such fixes were easy or possible, they are either being done or not depending. I'm pretty sure the devs do not wish to actively put out a deliberately inefficient engine :)

I mean, when you realise what the engine IS doing, I'm astonished it even works as well as it does. In that sense, it already is far more advanced and "optimised" than other game engines. Why not demand that those other game engines do the same things ArmA engine does?

Also however, I'm of the opinion that shortfalls SHOULD be highlighted. The devs cannot see every problem, and sometimes maybe a particular problem will get shunted up the importance hierarchy because if it.

@Myke

If you can't even tell me why or how this game is different than others, then why should I agree to measure it by a different set of standards as you suggest?

I hope I went some way to do that :)

---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ----------

As far as I know, lod such as the shrubbery is read from the disk. Though maybe now more of it is coming from vram, as others have said they seem to have noticed less pop-in. On a SSD, this pop in even less noticeable but it is still there, and I wonder if it's a bug with sli or something. Dnk, I need to try increasing the FOV to see if that actually stores vegetation longer and it doesn't have to stream from the disk so often, which creates the pop in. Night time looks odd to me, if anyone else could explain whether it really gets that pitch black, I'd like to know. I like the night from OA a lot better. Also, do the tracers seem odd to anyone else? The look much more laser beamy than what I think they looked like in ARMA 2. Too thick? The trails seem a tad too long? The color seems either completely green or completely red. I think in OA and ARMA 2 they looked, more stringy, maybe even had more blending or color difference to them. The stringiness of a tracer round would make sense to me, and I think it's more realistic that way as the ends burn, or however it works. They just seem way too thick and long to be actually bullets. They remind me of Red Orchestra 1. Also, does anyone notice tracer bouncing, I haven't really noticed tracer bouncing or the speed of the tracers getting affected like they were in the past ARMA games.

Personally, I believe a big problem is with the LOD models themselves - I think they could be far better at replicating the "next lod up or down" than they currently are. The LOD models themselves need to be more appropriate I think.

As for the tracers, I've seen similar tracer examples in videos so I'm generally OK with it. It can be argued that tracers on videos are artificially smeared because of shutter speeds etc, but really I's still OK with it. I think it's appropriate. I've seen tracer bouncing in the A3 demo, are you not seeing it?

Edited April 14, 2013 by DMarkwick

[[frl]myke 14]

I like to take DMarkwick's post as closing post as he really summed it up quite nicely. The rest started to be a flamewar between some discussion members and i don't onayone of them cool down. Points are made and taken where needed, the rest can be forgotten.

-Thread closed-