General Discussion (dev branch)

[antoineflemming 14]

But don't the dark nights actually add to the gameplay? If it's completely dark, you are forced to either use NVG's, which can be blinded by bright lights, or if those are not available, your weapon mounted flashlight which give you the ability to see but also being seen by the enemy.

Those settings are perfectly fine for a late summer evening with no clouds but it should be only bound to that specific case. Really dark nights should be the norm.

I disagree. It should depend on and be affected by the weather, as opposed to a "all or most nights will be dark" sort of thing. It's not something that should be the norm simply because it forces you to pick a certain gameplay style (in this case, having to use NVGs). If it happens to be a clear night with ample illumination, then that's what happens. If it's overcast and dark, then you use NVGs. If someone really prefers only dark nights, then they can edit that in. But all nights shouldn't be pitch black. In short, all night illumination should be a specific case, specific to the weather settings.

[Wolfstriked 11]

Taking a quad bike for a spin at 2300hours and the headlights work rather well which is not what I recall from previous version.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Your performance numbers don't back up anything, because there have only ever been 2 dynamic shadow casting lights in Arma 3. The sun and the moon.

Who said ANYTHING about shadow casting dynamic lights?

Are you aware that ALL the lights in the game are dynamic? Rendering them takes a humongous chunk of GPU performance, and YES my claim does back that up. Get fraps or MSI afterburner running and swap back and forth between regular alpha and dev branch alpha. Spawn at the airport looking at the buildings at night time and tell me you don't see an FPS loss on the regular alpha builds, the ones with the working dynamic lights

[Lucasmnunesk 2]

How are the nights with some clouds? I do enjoy the moon starting to having more impact, but still the nights should be close to pitch black, atm they are too bright in my opnion. And the artificial lights sure are a problem

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Taking a quad bike for a spin at 2300hours and the headlights work rather well which is not what I recall from previous version.

I was just doing that very same thing the night before this new build came out, and all headlights and local lighting (lamp posts, stadium lights, etc) were working perfectly fine. I can't see them needing improvement at all. But after today's patch all dynamic lights are dimmed heavily for me to the point they're near impossible to see. That's even on a cloudy night.

Addition:

Alright I'm sick and tired of arguing with people who have no facts or evidence to back up their claims. So I dug in and brought back some screenshot proof to show how broken the new lighting changes are, and how imperative it is that they be reverted back to the perfection they were prior.

Regular Build:

http://imageshack.us/a/img442/298/2013041700007.jpg (133 kB)

4/17 Dev Build:

http://imageshack.us/a/img850/92/2013041700005.jpg (105 kB)

Both cases I used a saved mission with the exact same weather settings, I kept all graphics options exactly the same, the only thing I did was opt out of the beta development builds to take the first set of screenshots then I opted back into the developer beta builds to take the second set of screenshots.

Who in their right MIND could say the second set (the dev build 4/17) looks better than the first!?!?!? All dynamic lighting is gone, the vehicle headlights are pathetic my old Maglite running off 5v batteries puts out more light than that, and for it being 100% overcast the ambient lighting in the dev build is WAY too bright.

Please BI, I hope you look at this and revert these night changes. You had perfect Time of Day settings before, whatever you did in the 4/17 build absolutely butchered it.

Edited April 18, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[machineabuse 11]

There is a discrepancy I have noticed that under some night time conditions dynamic lights appear dimmer than others. I was mucking about in the editor and I found that in my instance that at 2100 dynamic lights where barely useful and then fast forward to 0000 those same lights were superbright.

[Koukotsu 2]

Who in their right MIND could say the second set (the dev build 4/17) looks better than the first!?!?!?

I'm happy with the additional "full moon" direct light intensity, it just makes sense, but I don't think anyone will disagree that all other light sources are pretty much broken at the moment.

That's the nature of the dev build of course, they made it fairly clear that there would be the occasional "1 step forward, 2 steps back" situation, and this is clearly one of them.

[chortles 263]

Please remember that this build apparently underwent no internal QA... oh wait, they said just that about the dev builds from the start!

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Please remember that this build apparently underwent no internal QA... oh wait, they said just that about the dev builds from the start!

So instead of pointing out critical errors and distaste, we should be speechless and let it continue along in the dev process without being brought to their attention?

No, it is our job as beta development build users to give responsive feedback on things that are "wrong." It's important that we do so this can be rectified in as short a period of time as possible, so they can focus on more important aspects of the alpha process.

Quite frankly, I have no idea why any changes were made to the time of day code anyway. If they could squeeze out some extra performance at night while maintaining the visual looks that we had prior to 4/17 build, then we'd have perfection AND performance gains. That's called having your cake and eating it too. I just sincerely hope they are listening on this particular issue, as it's a doozy.

[machineabuse 11]

If it's been ticketed, documented and reproduceable chances are it probably can and will be fixed. As far as why they made changes, they just did. I am a designer and artist in the industry and even I find out about code changes after the fact. A lot of the time it's usually a thing that I don't need to know about because it's an optimization that happens to work better than the previous one. Sometimes it doesn't.

But it helps to say it, not spray it :)

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

But it helps to say it, not spray it :)

Eh I'm extra vocal because I'm passionate about seeing Arma 3 in the best possible condition it can be, and it hurts me deeply to see such a drastic step down in what should be an improvement. I can only assume this was totally unintended, but man it does not hurt to confirm these types of things.

[chortles 263]

You can be vocal, just... don't be so surprised, I suppose, when the dev statement basically said "we may well break stuff in the dev builds"? You've got my sympathy in the "it worked until they broke it" sense, except in my case the error was caused in the dev builds but ended up making it into the most recent stable build... only to be fixed in the most recent dev build after that stable build. (I'm talking about the MXM's suppressor compatibility woes.)

[DnA 5143]

The lighting changes are only partially applied so far: changes to materials and particles are yet to be committed for example. There definitely are some changes that can be debated, but yesterday's version is not the end state of this iteration. I hope our lighting specialist will provide details on the forums (changes + ToDo) soon :)

[chortles 263]

Thanks for the quick turnaround on the explanation! I want to emphasize that a number of the complaints and "being vocal" seem to stem from uncertainty over how intentional some of the changes are and how amenable-to-tweaking some of those changes (if intentional and thus "the core concept is here to stay") are, and I imagine that you saw from the "movement speeds tweaking" thread. Thank you for at least clarifying that in this case the lighting changes are WIP and not wholy intentional.

[Tonci87 163]

The lighting changes are only partially applied so far: changes to materials and particles are yet to be committed for example. There definitely are some changes that can be debated, but yesterday's version is not the end state of this iteration. I hope our lighting specialist will provide details on the forums (changes + ToDo) soon :)

I hope he also finds tiome to fix the lighthouse at the harbour entrance of Agia Marina. Currently it´s not working and I find this rather irritating... :rolleyes:

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

Who said ANYTHING about shadow casting dynamic lights?

Are you aware that ALL the lights in the game are dynamic? Rendering them takes a humongous chunk of GPU performance, and YES my claim does back that up. Get fraps or MSI afterburner running and swap back and forth between regular alpha and dev branch alpha. Spawn at the airport looking at the buildings at night time and tell me you don't see an FPS loss on the regular alpha builds, the ones with the working dynamic lights

The problem with this logic, and the screenshots and details in this thread back it up, is that while the lights are indeed weaker, they're all still there. So the intensity is down, not the processing overhead.

Also, you're talking about performance increases and decreases between two different builds. Fog and some other things are updated in the dev build, so it's impossible to attribute your performance gains entirely on lights when we all know for a fact that there were performance increases already, lights or no.

[nikiforos 450]

More intensive lights are more demanding performance wise!!

I hope they can find a solution because FPS at night are too low compared to daylight.

[dna_uk 30]

Couple of bugs in the last two or three dev builds:

[dnk 13]

@DEVS

Was there anything in the 0.54 release that would have drastically cut down on resource use by the AI when in cities? I had a 50% drop with 80AI in such a situation before, but not now...

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

The problem with this logic, and the screenshots and details in this thread back it up, is that while the lights are indeed weaker, they're all still there. So the intensity is down, not the processing overhead.

Also, you're talking about performance increases and decreases between two different builds. Fog and some other things are updated in the dev build, so it's impossible to attribute your performance gains entirely on lights when we all know for a fact that there were performance increases already, lights or no.

I'm telling you right now, my performance numbers are showing that there is no dynamic lighting going on in the new builds. My FPS at day time is the exact same on the regular builds and the development builds, but at night time my fps on regular builds drops from 120 to about 60, and on the dev builds it stays 120, meaning the one thing that used to take a toll on my performance the dynamic lights are now disabled. They simply are not functioning.

Are they still there? Yep. Are they working? Nope. My screenshots and performance numbers make that a fact. I don't see why we're arguing about this right now, as there is nothing to argue about.

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

I'm telling you right now, my performance numbers are showing that there is no dynamic lighting going on in the new builds. My FPS at day time is the exact same on the regular builds and the development builds, but at night time my fps on regular builds drops from 120 to about 60, and on the dev builds it stays 120, meaning the one thing that used to take a toll on my performance the dynamic lights are now disabled. They simply are not functioning.

Are they still there? Yep. Are they working? Nope. My screenshots and performance numbers make that a fact. I don't see why we're arguing about this right now, as there is nothing to argue about.

I'm not arguing with you, I just don't believe a word you say. Specially when you try to tell me you're getting 120 fps on a 5870, lol. And still... they're not dynamic lights. They're not dynamically affected by anything at all, hence the lack of shadows or structure occlusion. I'm back on topic from now on though, I promise.

[Lucasmnunesk 2]

The bright night is alright, just the overcast that should have a stronger effect. And Please make those lights work! Those places should be amazing with the lighting fully working!

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I'm not arguing with you, I just don't believe a word you say. Specially when you try to tell me you're getting 120 fps on a 5870, lol. And still... they're not dynamic lights. They're not dynamically affected by anything at all, hence the lack of shadows or structure occlusion. I'm back on topic from now on though, I promise.

Okay, really. Either you're trolling or you're uninformed.

Normal Build:

http://imageshack.us/a/img197/4269/arma32013041817014432.png <--- airport at day, 129 fps

http://imageshack.us/a/img197/5835/arma32013041817022033.png <--- airport at night, 62 fps - note the dynamic lights in the distance

Dev Build:

http://imageshack.us/a/img40/3078/arma32013041817052540.png <--- airport at day, 134 fps

http://imageshack.us/a/img59/8273/arma32013041817055222.png <--- airport at night, 133 fps - note that fps didn't change and there's no lights in the distance

And my settings which I never touched and were the exact same between both regular build and dev build:

http://imageshack.us/a/img11/3656/arma32013041817023281.png

http://imageshack.us/a/img827/5417/arma32013041817023552.png

http://imageshack.us/a/img841/4226/arma32013041817023803.png

If you honestly have anything to say after these, then you're just trolling me and I'm going to report you.

PS - try using those settings and tell me a 2GB 5870 on an OC'ed i7 can't get 120+ frames per second. Pro tip: it can and does. It's called tweaking your settings by hand and finding a config that yields satisfactory graphics at outstanding performance levels.

Oh and one last thing, I can tell from your last part about what constitutes dynamic lights that you have no experience whatsoever in game development. I've been mapping since Quake 1 and everything inbetween up to today which I use CryEngine 3. Yes, all those lights that turn on at night ARE dynamic lights. They do not cast shadows, but that is a separate parameter that you can attach to dynamic lights. You clearly are not experienced in game development so I can excuse your inaccuracies, but please stop discussing that which you do not understand. It is frustrating to say the least.

Edited April 18, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

Okay, really. Either you're trolling or you're uninformed

You failed to see my point. Likely because you couldn't be bothered to read it before you tried fruitlessly to assert your superior intellect.

PS - try using those settings and tell me a 2GB 5870 on an OC'ed i7 can't get 120+ frames per second. Pro tip: it can and does. It's called tweaking your settings by hand and finding a config that yields satisfactory graphics at outstanding performance levels.

Ah, I will concede on this. I hadn't realized you were running everything so low.

Oh and one last thing, I can tell from your last part about what constitutes dynamic lights that you have no experience whatsoever in game development. I've been mapping since Quake 1 and everything inbetween up to today which I use CryEngine 3. (I'd be interested in seeing your work, btw. Show me yours, and I'll show you mine. ;)

Yes, all those lights that turn on at night ARE dynamic lights. They do not cast shadows, but that is a separate parameter that you can attach to dynamic lights. You clearly are not experienced in game development so I can excuse your inaccuracies, but please stop discussing that which you do not understand. It is frustrating to say the least.

Oh, so you're an artist, not a programmer? And using a prebuilt SDK with prebuilt assets isn't "game development", it's "game modification". But really, you assume quite a bit here, yet show your own ignorance. But I will agree that the difference between my definition of dynamic lights and yours are small semantic details (read; I'm obviously not stating that they're static lights. But the only way they could be reasoned as dynamic is that they interact with 'some' surfaces). But IMO, these details make the difference for the computational overhead involved.

If you honestly have anything to say after these, then you're just trolling me and I'm going to report you.

So anyone who has ideas/opinions differing from you, you'll report? Please do. Seriously.

The fact of the matter is, you're basing your entire idea off of the fact that your FPS is different between different builds that have clearly noted performance differences outside of lighting, which is the wrong way to go about it for reasons you've already failed to see. (And then threatening to report me if I don't agree with you, lol. )

[sqb-sma 66]

Hahaha, what an argument, I'll hop in game and see if the lights are missing on my PC.

DaRkL3AD3R I'm seeing dynamic lights on my PC, latest dev build. Dynamic lights are on ULTRA and on LOW, I see them in both situations.

You may want to verify your build. And I'd reccomend ignoring TheCapulet, he doesn't seem to understand the basis of your argument/is trolling. Either way it's not beneficial.

I only see dynamic lights when I'm running mods, I'll try and figure out which one it is.

Also, when I'm running mods my stars are huge, I'll get some screenshots. Dark, is your nighttime more blue than you expected?

EDIT2: I suspect it is midtex that's to blame, try running that mod.

Edited April 19, 2013 by SQB-SMA