General Discussion (dev branch)

[nikiforos 450]

Well at least they admit the limitations with their engine. Most of us already knew the reality but now it's confirmed :(

[kuIoodporny 45]

Other Slammer variants - means arty and MLRS.

But who knows what future brings.

Edited January 22, 2014 by zGuba
ninjas!

[Phantom 11]

signed !!

[windies 11]

Reality check due here, since there seems to be some bandwagoning with mediocrity happening.

No mission needs to spawn 96 AI at once. At once, key words. It is very easy to work around what is, for now, a bug. Not something to base an ill-conceived rant on.

Domination (which was the last resort of desperate of public MP and never made anything popular besides teamkilling with stolen choppers) doesn't spawn like that anyways. Warfare will start with even fewer units on the map because of the group leader system.

Even still, it's 96 AI, it's not some god awful amount like 400 or 600. How long does path planning take, is it simply that they spawn simultaneously or is it the fact they are RUNNING simultaneously? If this basically means that we can't have 96 AI concurrently running, well I'm sorry but that's pitiful and I fully agree with the guy.

Seriously, lets get off the defender bandwagon around here and actually stand up for better limitations and a better experience overall rather than settling for what's just thrown at us no matter how pitiful or sad.

[CaptainObvious 95]

Even still, it's 96 AI, it's not some god awful amount like 400 or 600. How long does path planning take, is it simply that they spawn simultaneously or is it the fact they are RUNNING simultaneously? If this basically means that we can't have 96 AI concurrently running, well I'm sorry but that's pitiful and I fully agree with the guy.

Seriously, lets get off the defender bandwagon around here and actually stand up for better limitations and a better experience overall rather than settling for what's just thrown at us no matter how pitiful or sad.

A hundred AIs spawning simultaneously is a god awful amount when they need to do their not-very-simple stuff in an environment as complex as Arma's.

[NeMeSiS 11]

So what? The current enigne is not able to handle 96 AI's spwaning at once? In words "ninety-six"? Since when 96 Ai's are "rather specific"? What about multiplayer coop missions like Domination or Warfare that made ArmA popular? So why did you release Atlis? Should we play 8 vs.8 pvp on Altis?

Please bear in mind that the single player campaign is just a "nice to have", 'cause once your customers finished it they will see the muliplayer button and find an epic fail. We are close to one year after alpha release, but the content is still poor, lots of bugs, no DLC's, and we obvioulsy play with an engine that is not able to handle 96 Ai's spwaning at once.

Dream on ;)

In regular missions you do not have to calculate 96 long paths at the same time. Even with a couple of hundred AI, there wont be that many calculating paths at the same time, hence real world performance is higher. Add a short (random) sleep between the spawning of each AI for a better real world comparison.

So yes, there is a performance hit in the benchmark, no, we did not lose a third of our FPS in actual missions.

Edited January 22, 2014 by NeMeSiS

[froggyluv 2136]

We're aware of a loss of performance in test scenarios with lots of AI spawning simultaneously (e.g. 48 vs 48 and higher). Ironically, this was caused by fixing broken AI path planning. The AI soldiers weren't planning their paths when they should which resulted in higher FPS. Our programmers are investigating ways of optimizing this and AI in general.

Whats the problem? They found that pathfinding wasn't being fully processed properly giving us an inflated FPS, have fixed the pathfinding problem and now are on the job of optimizing....Fixing AI pathfinding is a worthwhile endeavour so stop crying about the ebb and flow of performance along the way.

[Tankbuster 1746]

Add a short (random) sleep between the spawning of each AI for a better real world comparison.

In this context, what's the definition of 'short'?

[NeMeSiS 11]

In this context, what's the definition of 'short'?

Since i am not a dev i cant accurately measure this, but it is probably at most several tens of milliseconds, depending on the difficulty of the terrain and length.

EDIT: Actually, plotting a path to the other side of Altis seems to take over 15 seconds (before he starts running away), while a guy plotting his path for a few hundred meters is too fast to measure by eye. Could possible be measured better by timing animation changes or something, but there may be some other overhead involved.

EDIT2: The amount of pathfinding calculations per second seems to be limited. When i placed down 10 groups of 10 guys each with a waypoint to the other side of the island my FPS was still fine (measured by eye, do it yourself if you want to find out actual FPS) but it took them so long to start moving that i cancelled the test. Even 1 group with 5 units took more then a minute.

Edited January 22, 2014 by NeMeSiS

[teilx 4]

2hours:butbut:

[maturin 12]

Even still, it's 96 AI, it's not some god awful amount like 400 or 600. How long does path planning take, is it simply that they spawn simultaneously or is it the fact they are RUNNING simultaneously? If this basically means that we can't have 96 AI concurrently running, well I'm sorry but that's pitiful and I fully agree with the guy.

Seriously, lets get off the defender bandwagon around here and actually stand up for better limitations and a better experience overall rather than settling for what's just thrown at us no matter how pitiful or sad.

Read more carefully; the devs explained everything before their post was trollishly 'interpreted' with added commentary.

You can absolutely have more than 96 AI running, and easily.

When they all plan their pathing simultaneously (at spawn), things can get screwed up. Only in that case.

The only bandwagon is excitable ignoramuses. And then me.

[windies 11]

Read more carefully; the devs explained everything before their post was trollishly 'interpreted' with added commentary.

You can absolutely have more than 96 AI running, and easily.

When they all plan their pathing simultaneously (at spawn), things can get screwed up. Only in that case.

The only bandwagon is excitable ignoramuses. And then me.

Path planning happens all the time outside of editor set or predetermined set waypoints. So basically, combat between up to 96 AI units is considered "too high"? There's plenty of area's I can see this so called path planning/collision detection limitation causing problems, not just on spawn but even in normal missions with normal AI counts.

Also who's to say it's not an issue with 10 AI units or 20 AI units and so on. Hell set 3 choppers to fly into each other and watch your performance drop like a stone as they try to path plan and collision avoidance around one another. That's just 3 AI units.

[heruon 1]

Fixed: Tracks for Panther-based vehicles

What does this mean? I was hoping this had been fixed, but it hadn't: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=12056

I like the animated skirts though :)

[antoineflemming 14]

no DLC's? Forgot about AAF additions? Or you would preffer to pay for it? Damn BI, you just lost a chance to cash us 15$ for this!

And yeah, you should reread what he said perhaps one more time.

AAF Reinforcements was considered a DLC? What, like the Campaign is considered a DLC? I thought it was just a fancy name for an update. It's not a DLC like BAF, PMC, or ACR (among other things, fancy logos, separate campaigns, new characters, vehicles, aircraft, etc). Maybe that's what he means by DLC.

[NeuroFunker 11]

AAF Reinforcements was considered a DLC? What, like the Campaign is considered a DLC? I thought it was just a fancy name for an update. It's not a DLC like BAF, PMC, or ACR (among other things, fancy logos, separate campaigns, new characters, vehicles, aircraft, etc). Maybe that's what he means by DLC.

you can name it "freelc", since you had not pay for it anything. But you are paying for "updates" with DLC.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Path planning happens all the time outside of editor set or predetermined set waypoints. So basically, combat between up to 96 AI units is considered "too high"? There's plenty of area's I can see this so called path planning/collision detection limitation causing problems, not just on spawn but even in normal missions with normal AI counts.

Also who's to say it's not an issue with 10 AI units or 20 AI units and so on. Hell set 3 choppers to fly into each other and watch your performance drop like a stone as they try to path plan and collision avoidance around one another. That's just 3 AI units.

Just to prove that that benchmark was bullshit, here is a screenshot of me playing in a town with a firefight of 57 against 50 units (grouped in default squads), with 42FPS on a slower CPU. (i5 3750@default)

This also includes scripts running on all groups making them look for good places in buildings to fire at the enemy, which is quite heavy on the CPU.

Groups are spawned every few seconds if the unitcount drops below 50 per side. Pausing the game increases my FPS by about 10FPS.

EDIT: Some TPW mods running in the background, though they are relatively efficient. Also, i was not running Kerbal Space Program at the same time, i just suck at saving screenshots. :)

Edited January 22, 2014 by NeMeSiS

[daze23 1]

how does a completely different benchmark "prove" another benchmark is "bullshit"? and what good is a 180x102 screenshot?

[NeMeSiS 11]

how does a completely different benchmark "prove" another benchmark is "bullshit"? and what good is a 180x102 screenshot?

You can click it. And mine is not a benchmark, just a normal mission with more normal mission conditions, thus giving a better view of actual performance instead of a fringe case which never happens except in 1 particular benchmark.

You can also download the mission(It spawns all the AI and gets them moving within a minute, but you can give it about 5-10 minutes to normalize if you want, it keeps on spawning AI if a side has less then 50 units): http://www.sendspace.com/file/bffkwk

Beware that it is not a real, finished mission, i just use it to shoot at things. :)

Edited January 22, 2014 by NeMeSiS

[maturin 12]

Path planning happens all the time outside of editor set or predetermined set waypoints. So basically, combat between up to 96 AI units is considered "too high"? There's plenty of area's I can see this so called path planning/collision detection limitation causing problems, not just on spawn but even in normal missions with normal AI counts.

Read the post again.

It is a physical impossibility for 96 units to simultaneously receive waypoints, except at mission start. Because the universe has entropy in it.

[Tyl3r99 41]

i just tested 80 vs 80 Ai..

i noticed that the AI took around 10 seconds to physically move anywhere

my FPS went from 50-55 to 35fps till a few dozen AI died...

however, 80% of the AI took the same route as another regardless of the waypoint location (in and around a town)

[Alwarren 2767]

I tried again to play the campaign but it is simply impossible to play. The game slows down to a crawl, getting at most 3-7 FPS when firefights break out. When I press ESC, it goes up to 35.

At this point. the game is broken. This has to be fixed soon. It's just disturbing that the slowdowns are apparently caused by AI actually doing what it is supposed to do.

[Varanon 892]

At this point. the game is broken. This has to be fixed soon. It's just disturbing that the slowdowns are apparently caused by AI actually doing what it is supposed to do.

Yeah, I wonder if a multi-threaded AI would help. AI computations is something that can be easily made in parallel and that would benefit Arma 3 greatly. I honestly wonder what the hold up is in regards to multithreading ? Maybe a dev can clarify ?

[old_painless 182]

I have a highend rig and runs Arma3 from a SSD. Has almost everything on Ultra and has been getting good performance. Except now after latest dev patch.

Noticed severe stuttering in a SP mission that used to run really fine and smooth. Me and about 10 AI in the vicinity. With settings unchanged from when it was running fine.

Please fix,

OP

[goldenfiver 11]

Something that bothered me- does the game have no AT practice target? was it removed/part of the dev build updates? (A2 had a tank made of wood)

[windies 11]

I tried again to play the campaign but it is simply impossible to play. The game slows down to a crawl, getting at most 3-7 FPS when firefights break out. When I press ESC, it goes up to 35.

At this point. the game is broken. This has to be fixed soon. It's just disturbing that the slowdowns are apparently caused by AI actually doing what it is supposed to do.

Yeah, I wonder if a multi-threaded AI would help. AI computations is something that can be easily made in parallel and that would benefit Arma 3 greatly. I honestly wonder what the hold up is in regards to multithreading ? Maybe a dev can clarify ?

Pretty much echo's how I feel and the major question I have which is why the AI can't be multithreaded if they are this big of a performance drain.