Post Processing - What setting to really use?

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Update 2013/6/18

Awesome news guys! BI confirmed on today's SITREP (http://alpha.arma3.com/sitrep-00015):

User Interface guru Vladimír Hynek shares with us two great new things slated for Beta. In his wise words:

"A long time anticipated feature - tweaking of post-processes separately, was added. The layout of the whole video options dialogue was redesigned, so it is easier to find which options are placed under which tab. A couple of smaller tweaks like a FPS indicator, EditBoxes connected to sliders, and permanent highlighting of tabs were added. While still Work-In-Progress, the dialogue works better already."

This pretty much invalidates the info below as we will be transitioning to controlled post processing settings! No more sacrificing for Depth of Field and Bloom by having to deal with motion-blur! This is incredibly great news and I can't wait to try it out when the Beta goes live a week from now!

=============================================

Old data that is invalid once the Beta goes live:

I decided to look at the Post Processing setting and try to quantify what setting is really worth using when priced against the heavy toll it takes on your graphics card. As someone with a relatively high end GPU I can afford to run it on the very highest setting all the time and still never be GPU bound, but is it worth it? Let's take a look at some screenshots and see.

Disabled

-Nothing much to say here, it's completely off and taking up 0% GPU usage:

http://imageshack.us/a/img507/4210/postprocessingdisabled.png

Very Low

-I see no distinguishable difference between this setting and Disabled. GPU usage supports this idea:

http://imageshack.us/a/img153/8093/postprocessingverylow.png

Low

-Now we see a difference. There's a haze on the horizon where the sky meets the terrain. There is an insignificant impact on GPU usage, approximately 2% at 719Mhz Core clock:

http://imageshack.us/a/img526/7007/postprocessinglow.png

Normal

-Another noticeable visual difference. This time we experience Depth of Field rendering, when looking down sights. This has a considerable impact on the graphics card, Core clock was raised to 862Mhz which is a 20% increase in clock speed just to maintain the same level of GPU usage:

http://imageshack.us/a/img37/1889/postprocessingnormal.png

High

-Absolutely no visual difference from Normal. GPU usage raises 10% while remaining at the same clock speed:

http://imageshack.us/a/img819/188/postprocessinghigh.png

Very High

-Once again no discernible difference from Normal. We see yet another bump in GPU usage of 6% increase. Total 17% over Normal for absolutely no visual gain.:

http://imageshack.us/a/img109/2093/postprocessingveryhigh.png

So what do we take from this? In it's current state, Post Processing is a very GPU intensive feature to render in Arma 3. There are currently only 3 states of which the player base should be concerned with and use. They are: Disabled, Low, and Normal. For maximum performance, always prefer Disabled. This is good for people with very weak or older architecture graphics cards. Anyone with a mid-tier GPU from the last 2 years however should run Low, assuming their tastes align with the haze it adds. And for those who prefer Depth of Field along with the haze, Normal is the setting for you. This will have a sizable impact on your graphics card so if you are in a situation where you're GPU bound before applying Post Processing, consider sticking to Low for now until you get a better GPU. Using anything above Normal is a nice way to make your graphics card consume more power and run hotter for absolutely no return visually to you the player. Setting Very Low is the same as setting it to Disabled.

Hope this helps those looking at this setting and not feeling too sure what to do. Personally I am not sure how I feel about the Depth of Field effects, so I will stick with Low for now. Good luck and post up any feedback you have.

Edited June 18, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[kklownboy 43]

well you need to test PP settings at night, scopes, driving, diving etc... Not all settings will show there stuff at one Time period, or just the same view. I prefer VL. Waiting on a blur slider.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Night time removes the haze, adds nothing noticeable at all.

Driving is just a form of motion blur which is triggered at Low I believe. Possibly Very Low.

Diving I couldn't tell any difference.

Scopes does the same thing that the Holographic sight does, adds a blur around the scope.

The reason I stuck with the one period of time is because this is what you the player will see most of the time. And with the other periods of time having an even less significant impact on Post Processing, this was the most dynamic time to demonstrate it. If you're seeing almost 25% GPU usage increase with minimal change here, aiming down sights during daytime, why would I want that same 25% GPU usage increase at night when Dynamic Lights are at play sucking away even more GPU usage? It's wasted processing power. That's what I tried to point out with this thread.

Edited June 6, 2013 by DaRkL3AD3R

[EDcase 87]

Yes, NORMAL is the highest you want to go really.

I use NORMAL. I like the Depth of Field effect when you go to optics mode.

Going higher has VERY minimal visual difference (Ambient Occlusion a bit sharper) But it has quite a big impact on fps.

This could change as development contiues of course.

Thoes with weaker GPU can also try HDR Quality on LOW and change brightness to minimum. Looks almost the same as STANDARD but a bit smoother fps.

Edited June 8, 2013 by EDcase

[chrisb 196]

Never use PP, don’t like the blur. It hits a little fps wise, but not game breaking by any means..

I just like sharp, but its personal pref..:)

[Gera_CCT 12]

Use Low Here. Higher gives me headache after some time playing

[liquidpinky 11]

Low, anything above looks overdone and isn't worth the waste in GPU usage.

If they gave is separate different sliders for PP effects it would be a different story.

[sultanofswing 10]

Same here, either low or disabled. I do not like the blur personally.

[ginger mcale 11]

Nice comparison man. One thing you didnt notice is the ambient oclusion which starts from normal and goes stronger to the highest setting. If you compare one more time, but this time not in iron sights and you also have some shadows in the scene close by, you will see the difference between low and normal and a smaller difference going to every higher setting.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Nice comparison man. One thing you didnt notice is the ambient oclusion which starts from normal and goes stronger to the highest setting. If you compare one more time, but this time not in iron sights and you also have some shadows in the scene close by, you will see the difference between low and normal and a smaller difference going to every higher setting.

Very good call. I did notice it testing it later on. For me, the ambient occlusion just doesn't look that good. It's hardly noticeable, even on the highest setting, and it isn't worth the performance hit. At least I now have an explanation for why we see such a massive hit on GPU usage going up to Normal and above. Thanks for posting.

[bangtail 0]

Honestly, makes the game look like Fable (which is fine if you're playing Fable).

As luck would have, I'm not - so I leave it off ;)

SSAO is nice but it seems to me that it is very game dependent.

In some games it seems to have a slight to moderate performance hit (which I can live with because it is a nice effect) but in others it basically halves (or more) your FPS, at which point it is not worth it afaiac.

As someone else said, I would prefer the PP effects had their own sliders per effect, not just one PP slider for everything.

[Predator.v2 10]

Low + NoBlur addon.

[Stamitos 10]

well you need to test PP settings at night, scopes, driving, diving etc... Not all settings will show there stuff at one Time period, or just the same view. I prefer VL. Waiting on a blur slider.

dat blur. Same here also only thing holding me back from high fps.

[roguetrooper 2]

I usually disable all kinds of blur effect in games. I also don't like it in cinema movies (fancy "cool" 3D stuff). It makes me get a head ache when the part of the screen that my eyes focus directly remain unsharp (your eyes wander across the screen, so blurring the borders and keeping the center sharp is quite stupid). The parts of the screen that you are not focussing at the moment are "unsharpened" by your eyes automatically anyway.

[TSAndrey 1]

Disabled. PP makes it harder to spot enemies and drains too much FPS

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

Awesome news guys! BI confirmed on today's SITREP:

User Interface guru Vladimír Hynek shares with us two great new things slated for Beta. In his wise words:

"A long time anticipated feature - tweaking of post-processes separately, was added. The layout of the whole video options dialogue was redesigned, so it is easier to find which options are placed under which tab. A couple of smaller tweaks like a FPS indicator, EditBoxes connected to sliders, and permanent highlighting of tabs were added. While still Work-In-Progress, the dialogue works better already."

No more annoying blur!!! :D Hooray BI!

[rory_pamphilon 16]

I think the ambient occlusion in arma 2 and 3 is very week and never worth turning on. It makes such a little difference whilst being such a drain on resources. Other games use it fantastically e.g. crysis series, battlefield, planetside 2 etc and really makes a difference.

Why is it so weak in arma?

[Dwarden 1124]

there are many variants of AO ... also the one in A2/A3 had at least 2 levels of quality) ... anyway I suggest you wait for new options to be revealed and then we can move on the feedback ;)

[metalcraze 290]

Ambient occlusion in ArmA2 was at least nice looking but in ArmA3 it seems to be broken. Like it looks as if it is misplaced in relation to objects and is barely visible. I assumed it was WIP

[NeuroFunker 11]

i loved ambient occlusion combo of arma 2's with via nvidia control panel. Looked fantastic, now its being removed in arma 3. :(