ArmA3 Alpha Video Setting Auto Downgrade!

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Alright here's some screenshots. Using the settings I listed above, here's what we get:

http://imageshack.us/a/img89/4363/arma320130529203843938.png

5 minutes later standing in the exact spot having not touched anything:

http://imageshack.us/a/img33/5194/arma320130529204325968.png

And now just for reference, I went ahead and changed Texture settings from Ultra to Low, then back to Ultra again and this is what it is after a full purge:

http://imageshack.us/a/img211/5334/arma320130529204555269.png

So what I gather from this is that you only need around 800MB (at my game settings) to render a particular scene in Arma 3 on Stratis. This is what I find the average to be all over random places on the map. Yet when I run from this point, down into say Agia Marina, the game just keeps building up a pile of texture data in the VRAM, and it never purges old data. It continues to build up and up until you reach a point where you run out of VRAM and the game has to downgrade your texture setting in order to stay functional. This is all fine and dandy, so long as the game doesn't continue to bloat up your VRAM to the point where your card is filled. So for people with 4GB+ VRAM cards, yeah you'll be fine, for a long while. But eventually running around enough different places, I bet even those cards will be filled. This will lead to the inevitable downgrade in quality and why? Because my GPU has textures for objects and terrain over 5KM away? That's ridiculous. It should prioritize storing data for content in close proximity and that is being rendered right now. This way we don't see it filled to the brim and downgrading our texture quality needlessly.

[EDcase 87]

That spot doesn't have many textures so maybe not the best area to see the difference.

You can also purge the VRam by: hold 'shift' & press '-' on numpad then type 'flush'

I also had the texture detail limit to VERY HIGH but I think it was only when I was testing res 1920x1200 [GTX580 1.5Gb]

(I play at 1440x900 now)

Never had the texture downgrade while playing

Edited May 30, 2013 by EDcase

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

That 850MB is about what I see when I pop a playable soldier down at various points all over the map. So long as the memory is clean before going in, it's always around that mark.

And wow I was just playing for about 15 minutes when I saw something wild happen... GPU memory was surging upwards of 2.5GB when suddenly I noticed some objects flickering/strobing. Then BAM my GPU memory flushed and went back down to 700MB where it began crawling back up to 1.1GB. That seems like totally odd behavior. It flushed all texture data on the spot including what I was looking at in the scene, then had to reload all of it. This caused noticeable lag for a brief second or two, and that wierd strobing effect. This seems all wrong. Somethings definitely not quite right right now. I'll go test previous Arma's to see if they have similar things going on (never-ending memory build up, forced purge at peak memory usage, etc)

Either way though, this needs looking at. OP you should make a ticket so we can work with BI on this.

[chrisb 196]

Going to try this, how long do you think I will need to see the mem progress upwards ?

Its never threatened to fill anywhere near the 2gb I have, well certainly not seen that, not noticed a downgrade either. I have texture on ultra, as is all the last tab other than terrain at standard..

Where would be the worse area for vram to fill ?

[Insanatrix 0]

Going to try this, how long do you think I will need to see the mem progress upwards ?

Its never threatened to fill anywhere near the 2gb I have, well certainly not seen that, not noticed a downgrade either. I have texture on ultra, as is all the last tab other than terrain at standard..

Where would be the worse area for vram to fill ?

Agia Marina and the Airbase I would think.

I generally have texture's set to Ultra as there's almost no performance difference between the settings.

*edit* Just tried switching between low and ultra and ultra disappeared and I was left with Very High. For once I was also hitting 1.3gb of GPU Memory used.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Insanatrix

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Yep Agia Marina and the Airport are two hotspots where running around you should see the number escalating quickly towards 2GB+.

I also just got back from doing some rounds in Arma 2: OA and GPU memory usage is perfect. It hovers around 900MB at max texture and object/terrain quality settings. After playing for like 10 minutes, doing various missions and messing around, I just had to call it because I couldn't get the GPU memory to break 1GB. Meanwhile, in Arma 3... 30 seconds of running around and looking at things and my GPU memory can spike up like crazy... the game never purges old data ever. If you play say the Infantry Showcase all the way through, then go to play the Scuba showcase, you'll see that your GPU memory used up for data from the Infantry showcase is STILL loaded and wasting space. Hell 5 minutes before I did the Infantry Showcase I was running around in the editor as a civilian, and even THAT data was still taking up space after 2 mission showcases. Crazy.

[chrisb 196]

O.k. started in Agia Marina middle of town, mem was straight to 1250, ran around town a couple of times and the mem was going up gradually. Ran out of town up into the hills, mem stabilised at around 1800, so I ran back down into town, it began to rise when it hit around 1900 it flicked straight down to 1050.

Changed my vd from 1200 to 3500 to replicate your vd and it took longer to make a difference, would have to be in game a while to see it progress upwards. Of course the gpu is having a rest with the vd higher, for me anyway. Anyhow went back into the middle of town at 3500vd, ran around, went into a couple of buildings down to the sea and along that little jetty just out of the centre there and it had stayed at around 1600, not showing signs of going back up again at that view distance..

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

O.k. started in Agia Marina middle of town, mem was straight to 1250, ran around town a couple of times and the mem was going up gradually. Ran out of town up into the hills, mem stabilised at around 1800, so I ran back down into town, it began to rise when it hit around 1900 it flicked straight down to 1050.

Changed my vd from 1200 to 3500 to replicate your vd and it took longer to make a difference, would have to be in game a while to see it progress upwards. Of course the gpu is having a rest with the vd higher, for me anyway. Anyhow went back into the middle of town at 3500vd, ran around, went into a couple of buildings down to the sea and along that little jetty just out of the centre there and it had stayed at around 1600, not showing signs of going back up again at that view distance..

Memory usage in a single area is not the problem. The problem is that it never seems to purge old data from the memory. At least not until the blow up it did on me a little while ago where it went from 2.5GB down to 700MB randomly.

[dnk 13]

Any way to refresh video memory in this game? I know in other games there are command line functions to reset the video like that.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Any way to refresh video memory in this game? I know in other games there are command line functions to reset the video like that.

I tried pressing Shift + - and typing flush and it says it's doing something, but memory never changed. The most effective thing I've done to purge memory is change texture quality to Low then back to Ultra. It works perfectly.

[Droikka 1]

I tried pressing Shift + - and typing flush and it says it's doing something, but memory never changed. The most effective thing I've done to purge memory is change texture quality to Low then back to Ultra. It works perfectly.

Ultra? I have only Very High which downgrades to High in five minutes. 1024MB VRAM.

[wxlyf 10]

I would rather choose lag than get a low texture automaticly. BIS should stop this now.

[bigpickle 0]

Are you all sure this is not a bug rather than by design?

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Are you all sure this is not a bug rather than by design?

Well seeing as how Arma 2 and every single other game I play doesn't have this issue, I'm assuming it is a bug. Even games that stream in texture content as you run around, such as Skyrim, don't do what Arma 3 is doing. In the other games your VRAM hovers around a certain usage amount. I am a pretty technical guy and I've been working with game engines for awhile, but this right here is speculation as I am no programmer. Now, if roaming from one side of the map to the other in Skyrim my GPU VRAM stays almost exactly the same, then one would assume that either no new textures were being loaded as I crossed the map or the game is purging old texture data to make room for new. One of the two right? It has to be. Well I highly doubt they could manage to squeeze in all the games texture data into 1GB or less, so that only leaves the purging option left. Which makes sense right? We can't see high quality textures 5 kilometers away, so why waste storage space on them? The game could free up that old space to make room for higher quality textures in close proximity to the player.

I don't know, maybe my mind is in the Twilight Zone but this all makes sense to me.

[kklownboy 43]

I measure the VRAM all the time. I can change the amount of VRAM by just moving the VD, or change Texture, AA etc. I can see this real time with Overlays.

Can get it up to 2.9+ or keep it at 1.8. The resolution and the use of Double buffer/Vysnc i can change the VRAM. What it does do is stay up until i use the Map or alt-tab out.

You only waste storage space if your NOT using it. If it uses too much it will crash your frames, and then your settings are too high. SkyRim is a completely different engine. cant ever use another games engine to compare.

Nobody I play with has this issue. You can only Vote up a ticket and try to find commonality with others afflicted. Your not running any "noblur"?

Edited May 30, 2013 by kklownboy

[chrisb 196]

So what is the game using, mem wise ?

For me, I don’t think the game uses much more than 1gb, as said some cards seem to store up the old before purging. Watching my card it seems to refresh/purge, when it needs to around the 1.9gb mark, but doesn’t get up there unless in town.

Drops back to 1gb or thereabouts, so I would think maybe its dumping old data for the present being used, which would be around 1gb.

Do players with 1gb cards have a better refresh/purge, does the game just use and store what it doesn’t need to, just because the space is there to do so i.e. cards above 1gb..

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I measure the VRAM all the time. I can change the amount of VRAM by just moving the VD, or change Texture, AA etc. I can see this real time with Overlays.

Can get it up to 2.9+ or keep it at 1.8. The resolution and the use of Double buffer/Vysnc i can change the VRAM. What it does do is stay up until i use the Map or alt-tab out.

You only waste storage space if your NOT using it. If it uses too much it will crash your frames, and then your settings are too high. SkyRim is a completely different engine. cant ever use another games engine to compare.

Nobody I play with has this issue. You can only Vote up a ticket and try to find commonality with others afflicted. Your not running any "noblur"?

Not sure what you mean by noblur, if you mean Post Processing then no I don't use that.

This can't be a hardware issue as I was seeing the exact same thing across not only two different GPU manufacturers, but two different generations completely and with two different VRAM pool sizes. It's obviously the game here.

And yes filled up storage is a waste if it means filling up to the point where it collapses and texture quality has to be taken down because the engine is too dumb to purge useless data.

[wxlyf 10]

The problem still exists in beta version!

Edited July 22, 2013 by wxlyf

[Tyl3r99 41]

my resolution keeps changing off 1920 x 1080 :( boooo and the 3d res keeps going to 75%

[sqb-sma 66]

The problem still exists in beta version!

I had the same issue, solved it with -vram=2048 or higher through the steam launcher.

Edited July 19, 2013 by PurePassion

[Sneakson 1]

I'm pretty sure texture quality doesn't change -- higher options simply disappear from the options menu.

It's been a nearly 100% occuring bug since Alpha when changing settings a bit but I've never thought about reporting it.

[Harzach 2507]

The problem still exists in beta version!

Using oversized and bolded text isn't going to help. Submit a ticket and link to it here.

[wxlyf 10]

I had the same issue, solved it with -vram=2048 or higher through the steam launcher.

I've tried this, however it dosen't works.