General Discussion (dev branch)

[SimonSays 1]

Another question regarding headsets. I recently bought the G35 logitech headset with 7.1 and i got problems in the Alpha with it. you can switch on 7.1 or on stereo. if i play on 7.1 and there´s a bigger firefight with many gunsounds the headset is oversteering extremly, everything else works fine. on stereo i only hear over 1 speaker!? anyone else got a g35 or the same problems?

[nimrod123 11]

Another question regarding headsets. I recently bought the G35 logitech headset with 7.1 and i got problems in the Alpha with it. you can switch on 7.1 or on stereo. if i play on 7.1 and there´s a bigger firefight with many gunsounds the headset is oversteering extremly, everything else works fine. on stereo i only hear over 1 speaker!? anyone else got a g35 or the same problems?

yep, its the newer drivers for the headset, you need dolby (the little switch) on to get the headsets to be worth their cost, so you need to find the older version of the G35 drivers, that arn't part of the logitech game suite (or whatever it is)

i rolled back to the 2009 ones and its so much better, as the newest ones have a horrible volume and equalizer mix

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Can this thread get back on the topic, which is Arma 3 Development Branch discussion? Not which headset is your baby and why? lol

PS - on topic question that I'm a little concerned about. I have Arma 3 Alpha on my SSD, which I am very lean about installing and transferring data to. I understand that the Beta is scheduled for the 25th of June however it was suggested numerous times by BI devs that the intent is for the content to be streamed into the development branch small chunks at a time. My question is, let's say us dev branch users by the night of the 24th, have all the beta content and then the 25th comes and all of a sudden the Alpha changes to Beta for all the stable users. Will we have to re-download the entire "client" because Steam changed it? I guess there's just a lot of hazy fog in this regard of how it's going to exactly execute and my biggest concern is keeping file transfers to my SSD at a minimum. If I can have the beta content supplement my Alpha install versus deleting my Alpha and redownloading the full thing, I'd be really happy (and so would my SSD!)

Any devs able to give some insight on my best course of action for this cause?

Edited June 15, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[mr_centipede 31]

I think it's just the same with Alpha stable build release and the Alpha dev branch as always, if you're in dev branch, and the stable build was released, you don't suddenly redownload everything... That's what I think how it will goes...

[chortles 263]

Yep, delta patching are (supposed to) keep the redownloads to a minimum. :) As far as my SSD goes though, what I do is leave only the game folder on the SSD and put the My Documents folder (using Windows 8's location-moving) onto the HDD, so that way all mods are stored on the HDD (activate/disable using the Expansions option).

[comc 1]

PS - on topic question that I'm a little concerned about. I have Arma 3 Alpha on my SSD, which I am very lean about installing and transferring data to. I understand that the Beta is scheduled for the 25th of June however it was suggested numerous times by BI devs that the intent is for the content to be streamed into the development branch small chunks at a time. My question is, let's say us dev branch users by the night of the 24th, have all the beta content and then the 25th comes and all of a sudden the Alpha changes to Beta for all the stable users. Will we have to re-download the entire "client" because Steam changed it? I guess there's just a lot of hazy fog in this regard of how it's going to exactly execute and my biggest concern is keeping file transfers to my SSD at a minimum. If I can have the beta content supplement my Alpha install versus deleting my Alpha and redownloading the full thing, I'd be really happy (and so would my SSD!)

Please don't fall for that alarmist nonsense. If you have a 128 GB drive, and write about 20GB/day, your SSD should last 5 years. The lifespan of an SSD based on data transfer is NOT a consumer-level concern.

[Tyl3r99 41]

i have a 212gb SSD and steam installed on that, i did hear that data transfers decrease life span of SSD :( im thinking of removing the steam off SSD and reinstalling on HDD

[chortles 263]

No, leave it on the SSD; historically performance difference is that high as to be worthwhile to use the SSD.

[Tyl3r99 41]

No, leave it on the SSD; historically performance difference is that high as to be worthwhile to use the SSD.

do SSD last very long with data constantly changing off it etc?

[chortles 263]

It's not that constant (even less so if you're on stable build) and what comc said was "write about 20GB/day"...

[Tyl3r99 41]

so on 20GB a day on a SSD it can survive 5 years?

bloody hell not too bad considering some days my transfer rate is 0GB lol

[chortles 263]

Here is one look at lifespan on a Samsung 840: "During our test, the SSD managed to achieve the number of read and write operations promised by Samsung, and did so with considerable ease. It actually did three times that, and still carried on after that." They deemed it dead at "the first major error" (defined as "one data block of 512 kB can no longer be read" since "A dead sector from which it is impossible to read data anymore is an insurmountable problem for an SSD. Data is lost.") after 3187 cycles, but:

Even though we consider the SSD to have ‘died’ after 3187 cycles, the first broken sectors were reported after 2945 cycles, as mentioned above. At that moment, we had written over 726000 GiB (or over 779538 GB) to the SSD. Given a normal use of 10 GB of written data per day, this means that the SSD would last for more than 198 years. Note, however, that we wrote the data virtually linearly to the SSD, which means that the so-called Write Amplification Factor (WAF) is very low. Write Amplification, writing more data than is actually sent to the SSD, is more common in daily practice than in our test; removing data happens in blocks of 512 kB, whereas writing is done in segments of 4 kB or 8 kB. In order to control this adequately, the controller moves data around, something which also occurs with wear levelling, the process by which the SSD ensures that the writes, re-writes and erasures are distributed evenly across the segments.

In short, the WAF in our test is 1, whereas it probably will be three times that in the real world. This means that we have to divide the lifespan of the SSD by three. 198 years becomes ‘only’ 66 years. Still quite good in our book.

[Tyl3r99 41]

bleeping hell (censorship)

[Insanatrix 0]

bleeping hell (censorship)

Most of the issue's were with early SSD designs and just generally lower quality NAND flash memory. Nowadays SSD's last as long if not longer than mechanical drives during normal use. File servers that handle constant I/O 24/7 are the only types of systems that really need to worry.

[pettka 694]

Can this thread get back on the topic, which is Arma 3 Development Branch discussion? Not which headset is your baby and why? lol

PS - on topic question that I'm a little concerned about. I have Arma 3 Alpha on my SSD, which I am very lean about installing and transferring data to. I understand that the Beta is scheduled for the 25th of June however it was suggested numerous times by BI devs that the intent is for the content to be streamed into the development branch small chunks at a time. My question is, let's say us dev branch users by the night of the 24th, have all the beta content and then the 25th comes and all of a sudden the Alpha changes to Beta for all the stable users. Will we have to re-download the entire "client" because Steam changed it? I guess there's just a lot of hazy fog in this regard of how it's going to exactly execute and my biggest concern is keeping file transfers to my SSD at a minimum. If I can have the beta content supplement my Alpha install versus deleting my Alpha and redownloading the full thing, I'd be really happy (and so would my SSD!)

Any devs able to give some insight on my best course of action for this cause?

The most probable way of updating is that we update dev branch with Beta a while before 25th and just switch it to Arma 3 Beta branch on the date. There should be no need of downloading the whole data, just the new one if you don't use dev branch. Nothing is set in stone, but this is the way how you should expect it to be :icon_twisted:

[Ezcoo 47]

No-one can have their SSD to have a burn out because of Arma. Really. If it happened, the SSD was faulty and would have died anyway soon. Thanks to Chortles of the quote, have read those tests but couldn't find the links.

However, it's still important to keep at least 10 % of the SSD space free, so that the SSD controller has the ability to strain the data blocks evenhandedly. I believe that in the the newer SSD models the manufacturers have reserved a "partition" of the disk for that purpose, I'm not absolutely sure though.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

The most probable way of updating is that we update dev branch with Beta a while before 25th and just switch it to Arma 3 Beta branch on the date. There should be no need of downloading the whole data, just the new one if you don't use dev branch. Nothing is set in stone, but this is the way how you should expect it to be :icon_twisted:

Extremely grateful for the reassurance Pettka :D

-----------------

I know that in "common" use the SSD should last a long time, I'm just trying to avoid needless writes that waste cycles. I look at Steam and see it saying "Arma 3 Alpha" and in my mind, it can't still say Alpha when the 25th comes around and we fully transition to the Beta, so I'd view the Alpha install as completely invalidated and there would be a need for a re-download for the "Arma 3 Beta" but as Pettka assured us it should be supplemental to the Alpha install. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a nice and smooth transition! :D

[chortles 263]

From SITREP #00011:

The Arma 3 Beta will be using the exact same application on Steam as the Arma 3 Alpha (Lite will be discontinued as previously announced). There will not be a need to re-install or install a different game (but the update is going to be hefty in size). In the weeks leading up to the actual release on default branch, we will likely be staging Beta content on the Development branch. Such staging will of course be announced with details, but there is to be a transition period during which you see Beta content in a game branded as "Alpha". We hope you'll be able to suffer through this confusion and enjoy the glimpse at the future.

LOGISTICS

Caution: when we do transition to Beta, we will intentionally change the user profile paths. Mainly we want to do this to provide one more proper default detection of options (reset). We do not plan this for the transition from Beta to full release. It should not be too much of a hassle, since if desired you could copy (with some renaming) existing profile files.

[heruon 1]

Is the audio overhaul still going on?

[Tyl3r99 41]

im not totally sure i dont think so to an extent?

[afp 1]

Is the audio overhaul still going on?

I guess so, still a lot of sound tickets open. Anyway, with the latest dev versions I noticed that the "distance" parameter of the footsteps sound is not considered. So you only hear other footsteps when they are very close, like 3-4 meters. Maybe it helps.

[Tyl3r99 41]

i wonder when the dev branch starts getting the new features :)

[nimrod123 11]

i wonder when the dev branch starts getting the new features :)

once the team is back together after e3 maybe

[chortles 263]

The ETA was this week!

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Well look at it this way. We have a confirmed date for the Beta to go live on stable builds. That's June 25th. Pulling up your calendar... that's just over a week from now. Given that they intend on releasing beta content in small chunks before it fully goes live, that would mean this very week. I would expect possibly even later today we will have some small bits of beta going live on the dev branch :D