ArmA3 Alpha Video Setting Auto Downgrade!

[wxlyf 10]

There's a problem, that ArmA3 will automatically Downgrade the texture detail after a few miniutes I play the game. When this downgrading happens, you can find a drop in the Video Options - texture detail.

I set the texture detail veryhigh, and when this downgrading happens, "veryhigh" diaspears, only leave me "high" and above available.

look at this:

before downgrading

after downgrading

view images at here, if the pictures above are unavailable:

http://hi.baidu.com/vcsa_info/item/8ff220e862140d87c10d75df

Anyone knows how to stop this kind of Downgrade?

The problem still exists in 1.02 version!

My system:

i7 940XM unlock 65W TDP

HD5870M OC 840/1100 with 13.4 CCC WHQL

8GB DDR3 1333Mhz

Win7 x64

Edited September 27, 2013 by wxlyf

[[frl]myke 15]

Links don't work. :(

[wxlyf 10]

Myke;2382391']Links don't work. :(

thanks for reply and you can view images at:

http://vcsaow.blog.163.com/blog/static/2009901772013326491778/

after downgrading , the texture detail seems to be very low.

Edited April 26, 2013 by [FRL]Myke

[wxlyf 10]

anyone know this ?

[frostwyrm333 1]

maybe you don't have enough GPU ram available so the game doesn't bother to load more

[Tonci87 163]

Interesting. Did you do anything like changing something in the options, or opening the Map?

[wxlyf 10]

Interesting. Did you do anything like changing something in the options, or opening the Map?

No, I didn't. Just playing.

[nodunit 397]

I generally keep my textures on Very High though for some reason it will randomly drop to High and Very High will no longer appear (can't be ram, I have 8 gigs) the odd thing is that the textures themselves don't actually change, they remain on the highest setting despite the video option saying otherwise...resetting the video settings generally cures this oddity though I'm still not sure what causes it...rendering distance, frame rate..

[wxlyf 10]

I generally keep my textures on Very High though for some reason it will randomly drop to High and Very High will no longer appear (can't be ram, I have 8 gigs) the odd thing is that the textures themselves don't actually change, they remain on the highest setting despite the video option saying otherwise...resetting the video settings generally cures this oddity though I'm still not sure what causes it...rendering distance, frame rate..

I have the same problem as you too. And I'm sure the "Very High will no longer appear" is related to the texture downgrade.

[Zorg_DK 10]

I see that too sometimes, is it because I only have 1gb of video ram I wonder?

[Tonci87 163]

I see that too sometimes, is it because I only have 1gb of video ram I wonder?

That could be it.

[Mirudes 1]

I found a problem, that ArmA3 Alpha will automatically Downgrade the texture detail after a few miniutes I play the game. This downgrading on texture detail is hidden,you can't find any different in the Video Options after it happens.

Arma2:Startup Parameters

-benchmark

Intended for automated benchmarking, but was never finished and is not working.

If the software has set down the settings automatically with "-benchmark", so maybe it could be forced by removing the parameter.

The startup parameter "-nobenchmark" seems also to work in arma3.

[wxlyf 10]

Arma2:Startup Parameters

If the software has set down the settings automatically with "-benchmark", so maybe it could be forced by removing the parameter.

The startup parameter "-nobenchmark" seems also to work in arma3.

it dosen't works.

[wxlyf 10]

Anyone knows about this?

[wxlyf 10]

how to fix this?

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I have the same problem too wxlyf. The option doesn't change, it stays Ultra, but I see a difference in graphics. Resetting by changing to Low then back to Ultra fixes it temporarily.

[sqb-sma 66]

I have the same problem too wxlyf. The option doesn't change, it stays Ultra, but I see a difference in graphics. Resetting by changing to Low then back to Ultra fixes it temporarily.

I recall something similar in Arma 2, make sure CCC/Nvidia is not overriding the game's AA.

[wxlyf 10]

Well, it seems that this won't happen in Arma 2 on my laptop.

---------- Post added at 14:28 ---------- Previous post was at 14:27 ----------

I have the same problem too wxlyf. The option doesn't change, it stays Ultra, but I see a difference in graphics. Resetting by changing to Low then back to Ultra fixes it temporarily.

So, it's a common problem, and BIS should fix it.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I'm not sure whether to label this as a memory leak or a memory hog not giving up it's food.

My old card was a 2GB Radeon 5870. With it I could run Ultra quality textures, for awhile only, before the game would downgrade me. Now that I have a 3GB GTX 780, I see exactly why that is.

When you first spawn into the game at Ultra textures, the game is using around 700-800MB of GPU RAM. After running/driving/flying around for a little, you'll see this number continue to rise more and more and more with no end in sight. The highest I've seen it hit so far is around 2.2GB before I get kind of disgusted at it and reset my textures by going into video options and toggling between Low then back to Ultra texture quality. Then it goes back to the 800MB or so for a good while before steadily rising back up to insanely high levels.

I know how RAM works. I know that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to fill it up. What I am scared of is a game that continues to use up more and more RAM with no end in sight, until it either forces itself to downgrade texture quality OR crashes/lags out because it's using more RAM than my card has available. The fact that when I reset the textures down to Low and back to Ultra again, that it sits at 800MB for a good long while before filling up, tells me that the game never purges data from the RAM that it is no longer using. And that it however just leaves it sitting in the RAM as it fills up with more and more data.

Imho this is poor design. I see no reason for the game to eat up all my GPU RAM neverendingly like it does as it doesn't gain me anything but it will cost me something if it hits my peak. And with many high end GPU's still only having 2GB of VRAM, this is really not acceptable. The game should be purging that old data to make room for new, if it really does need to load more data into the RAM. There's no sense in having data for content thats kilometers away from the player. That's just a waste of space that could go towards high quality textures right within close proximity of the player.

[kklownboy 43]

.... Well after all my useless babel, can you tell me if your on the DEV or the "stable" branch.

Edited May 29, 2013 by kklownboy

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

.... Well after all my useless babel, can you tell me if your on the DEV or the "stable" branch.

It happens on both (the memory "leak" that is.)

[kklownboy 43]

Ok. But that is not a leak. In my now deleted usless babel, I talked about the usage of VRAM... Still can I have your settings, Rez etc.

I cant make it happen. So far I see 5870s and 780s posting, or maybe i missed one?

I screw around with the settings allot and log all of the logable info I can. Steam is on your SSD? OS too?

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Resolution: 1920x1200

Texture Quality: Ultra

Object Quality: High

Terrain Quality: High

Cloud Quality: Ultra

Shadow Quality: Very High

Particle Quality: Very High

Anisotropic Filtering, Anti-aliasing, ATOC, Post Processing: Disabled

FXAA: Ultra

HDR: Standard

Dynamic Lights: Ultra

View Distance: 3500m

Object Distance: 1600m

Shadow Distance: 200m

I am going to label it as a leak because leaks are defined as things that just keep on going. So far I see no stop in the GPU RAM usage, it just keeps going on and on.

If I can run around in an area and only see 800MB-1GB of GPU RAM usage, then why is it necessary for it to continue filling up my memory all the way up to 3GB? It's wasted space. No other game that I play continuously builds up like that, most of them load what's necessary and then when scenes change it purges the old data to make room for the new, so GPU memory floats around the same mark. Not Arma 3. It just keeps building up. This is why we're seeing our Texture quality downgrading behind the scenes because the game never optimizes it's GPU memory footprint.

[bigpickle 0]

seen too it happens everytime i play

[Insanatrix 0]

I've seen this happen with my GTX 480 1.5gb. I will start out around 880mb of GPU RAM usage and it will climb up to 1.1-1.2gb where it will just hover.