Bohemia Interactive @ E3 2013 - DISCUSSION

[gonza 8]

Alpha focus was on infantry and beta focus is on vehicle

So what about vehicles in the E3 version ?

I don't speak about new models but engine, fly model, drive model, maniability, physix , collisions...

anyone have tried ?

I am waiting for acceleration improvement of all vehicles, handling improvements and more

for example : Quad acceleration is not really powerful (same for pickup)

in real-life Quad acceleration is that (start at 0:35)

is there any improvement in E3 version ?

Edited June 14, 2013 by gonza

[Gnozo 10]

The dev's said that the BETA content will be deployed on the dev branch right after E3 (13'th of June)

The actual BETA will be lunched for the general public 2-3 weeks after E3.

How about that? I got no update for Arma 3 and it is after the E3.... i think, that we get the BETA in the dev build right after E3 or am i wrong?

[purepassion 22]

I don't think there were any promises to pump out all the beta content right after E3.

It was said that the beta will be staged in the devbranch and content will be added in but it was never said that everything will be available in the devbranch right after E3.

Though either way, it's not long of a wait ;)

[maddogx 13]

How about that? I got no update for Arma 3 and it is after the E3.... i think, that we get the BETA in the dev build right after E3 or am i wrong?

From what I gathered, they hope to stage some of the beta content in the alpha dev some time before the beta is released. ;)

I.e. no promises, not everything and not immediately after E3.

EDIT: argh, damn ninjas!

[DarkDruid 96]

There is some info about beta stuff in the dev branch:

https://twitter.com/Arma3official/status/345038626079510528

[TSAndrey 1]

He is right about DayZ being more of a new engine than Arma3 though. They rewrote significant parts of the core engine for DayZ (authoritative server networking, handling of inventory items as objects etc.), while Arma3 is still pretty much the same at its core.

I don't really agree. The DayZ netcode is completely new, unlike in Arma 3, but Arma 3 has much more graphical changes and engine changes. Dynamic lighting, new textures, fog, clouds, physics...

[R0adki11 3945]

anyone have tried ?

I am waiting for acceleration improvement off all vehicles and maniability and more

Have you logged a ticket regarding this?

[gonza 8]

Yes, not me but someone else

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=325 --> 2013-03-05

it's really strange to see an off-road or an ATV accelerate so slowly (even more to go uphill (really slow))

Same problem with off-road

in real-life Off-road acceleration is that

I like this idea too

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=908

You confirm that beta focus is on vehicle feedback ?

I'm waiting a lot off improvement about vehicle in the beta version.

Anyone saw parachutes in the E3 version ?

I m interesting to see improvement on parachutes since arma 2

Edited June 14, 2013 by gonza

[Smurf 12]

I think rocket said right. ArmA 3 will be possible to support less players and less AIs than A2 due its gigantic map size.

Any way, "LESS" what rocket mention may be referred as: 300 players + 1000 AIs at the sametime -> 200 players + 500 AIs ;)

He said less than Arma 2 and you don't see 100+ players and hundreds of AIs mission\servers running that often in there. Add this to servers admins reporting that the game doesn't goes well with a "large" amount of players and the fact that this probably won't have huge changes, I would be worried.

This shouldn't be shot down that easy, it's a real concern, even more when coming from someone from the inside.

Locking, warning and banning someone that point that out isn't nice either.

[CaptainObvious 95]

Yes, not me but someone else

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=325 --> 2013-03-05

it's really strange to see an off-road or an ATV accelerate so slowly (even more to go uphill (really slow))

Same problem with off-road

in real-life Off-road acceleration is that

That Tacoma is clearly heavily modified, it would be silly for all the pickups in the game to be like that, IRL unmodified pickups accelerate from 0-100km/h in around ~15secs, it takes around 14secs for the civilian offroad to do that in game.

[down8 30]

I don't really agree. The DayZ netcode is completely new, unlike in Arma 3, but Arma 3 has much more graphical changes and engine changes. Dynamic lighting, new textures, fog, clouds, physics...

Obviously he must know more about the subject than us, and maybe there are many deep changes to the DayZ engine. But to this day these changes have not shown gameplay improvements but inventory system and netcode,and everybody must notice far more difference between Arma 2 and Arma 3 that Arma 2 and Dayz, seriously. I mean, like you say: lightning, physics, weather... it's very obvious a lot of changes have been introduced in Arma 3 engine.

In addition that his statements maybe are out of place. I don't know why he has to backbite Arma 3 development to defend his product.

[twistking 204]

That Tacoma is clearly heavily modified, it would be silly for all the pickups in the game to be like that, IRL unmodified pickups accelerate from 0-100km/h in around ~15secs, it takes around 14secs for the civilian offroad to do that in game.

i guess then it is more about the felt acceleration. in arma vehicles don't feel very powerful, because of a bit of a lack of feedback, especially engine and tire sound could be improved to help with the feeling of acceleration and power. the handling would ideally also change when you go full throttle.

but then again, it is not a driving simulator... some more improvements would be welcome nevertheless :)

[Insanatrix 0]

He said less than Arma 2 and you don't see 100+ players and hundreds of AIs mission\servers running that often in there. Add this to servers admins reporting that the game doesn't goes well with a "large" amount of players and the fact that this probably won't have huge changes, I would be worried.

This shouldn't be shot down that easy, it's a real concern, even more when coming from someone from the inside.

Locking, warning and banning someone that point that out isn't nice either.

Kind of agree. If you listen to Jay's interview on the livestream, he remarks about how the engine was built in 2001 and how they didn't expect or plan for multicore processors to become so mainstream so quickly. The problem I have with that is that multi-core processors became mainstream in like 2006 or so. While they might not have foreseen it, there has been ample time since inception to adapt and make use of it considering we are halfway through 2013 and heading into 2014.

The same goes for 64bit architecture. I find it odd that you would adopt Directx 11 as a standard and then allude to the fact that you don't want to embrace or include 64 bit because it would cut off potential customers. I don't think anyone is going to try and run ArmA 3 on an old pre-64bit Sempron or Celeron. Anymore everyone has a 64 bit processor. The only downside would be needing to run a 64 bit OS, but really why would you or who would want to run Windows 7 or Vista 32 if you have a 64 bit processor, and how is that any different from alienating Windows XP users by requiring Directx 11? I could see it happening with a pre built Dell or name brand manufacturer computer, other than that though I honestly don't know anyone who actively chose to run Windows 7 32 over 64 with a 64 bit processor.

Both of those things heavily affect the ability to run large missions with large amounts of entities and large amounts of players.

I don't want it to turn into a performance discussion, just wanted to comment based on those two E3 comments from developers.

[chortles 263]

Kind of agree. If you listen to Jay's interview on the livestream, he remarks about how the engine was built in 2001 and how they didn't expect or plan for multicore processors to become so mainstream so quickly. The problem I have with that is that multi-core processors became mainstream in like 2006 or so. While they might not have foreseen it, there has been ample time since inception to adapt and make use of it considering we are halfway through 2013 and heading into 2014.

Let me say only that when Arma 1 came out in 2006-2007, BI was not in a position to be that "experimental" with RV2. :( Not sure why this wasn't decided on in 2011 for Arma 3 -- that is, the year that it was announced -- other than the possibility that someone in BI at the time made the call that "adapt and make use of it" for both multi-core and 64-bit would have put the game even more into "development hell".

By the way, Rocket said that he brought a dev build instead of a specific E3 showcase because he really didn't want to dedicate resources to E3 (that is, no way was he going to make a "stable" build just for E3).

[gonza 8]

That Tacoma is clearly heavily modified, it would be silly for all the pickups in the game to be like that, IRL unmodified pickups accelerate from 0-100km/h in around ~15secs, it takes around 14secs for the civilian offroad to do that in game.

I thing that in real life a pick up full throttle don't start like that

on flat ground

in a little hill

Edited June 14, 2013 by gonza

[blu3sman 11]

I thing that in real life a pick up full throttle don't start like that

The problem is with automatic transmission. It always starts from idle rpm. Ideally when you hit full throttle, it should let engine gain optimal rpm and only then release clutch.

Option for manual transmission would also be nice.

[Insanatrix 0]

Let me say only that when Arma 1 came out in 2006-2007, BI was not in a position to be that "experimental" with RV2. :( Not sure why this wasn't decided on in 2011 for Arma 3 -- that is, the year that it was announced -- other than the possibility that someone in BI at the time made the call that "adapt and make use of it" for both multi-core and 64-bit would have put the game even more into "development hell".

By the way, Rocket said that he brought a dev build instead of a specific E3 showcase because he really didn't want to dedicate resources to E3 (that is, no way was he going to make a "stable" build just for E3).

It probably would have, and I'm not trying to say it's the wrong decision. It does give you a sign of what to expect though with ArmA 3 in terms of engine performance. I'm hoping that over the years after ArmA 3's release, we will see a lot more functionality tacked on to the engine. You can tell by their statements that they really want to release something that is as bug-less as possible and has the core functionality that they want. I think that they just want to KISS it and release it basically.

One thing BI has done well is supporting their products after release, that fact gives me hope. At the same time though, I didn't buy the game to wait 2-3 years to be able to fully experience it.

[CaptainObvious 95]

i guess then it is more about the felt acceleration. in arma vehicles don't feel very powerful, because of a bit of a lack of feedback, especially engine and tire sound could be improved to help with the feeling of acceleration and power. the handling would ideally also change when you go full throttle.

but then again, it is not a driving simulator... some more improvements would be welcome nevertheless :)

True, as Blu3sman said the automatic transmission and the lack of control on how it manages gears vs. RPM brings a feeling that the car is struggling in tar, especially when accelerating from slow speeds.

Sound overhaul could very well just do the trick.

[bad benson 1733]

i think just requesting general optimization is a bit silly, if you look at all the available information. i mean people can find this outrageous all they want but, if you just look at it objectively it's clear as day. no one at BI is lying or hiding anything. why would they focus on a weakness of their system they can not do much about (PR-wise) while they are in the process of releasing the game? it would be a stupid move. people like white are just looking for provocation. i find it hard to believe that being all upset and trying to "uncover the truth" with such aggressive posts will have any impact on the actual matter. if we would talking multi-million stuff like EA i would get it. but BI? come on!

the biggest missions in arma 2 worked with dynamic spawning. since every unit in arma is as detailed as the player (stuff like number of bones and frames of the anims and everything else...it stacks up), just requesting for the game to run perfectly with lots of them AND new features like physX is just unrealistic. i think what the engine really needs is more sophisticated unit chaching techniques and along with that modules for mission makers that are easy to use and take care of that.

there was already a simulation manager added but there has to be done more. i think just keeping on talking about CPU usage is oversimplifying the problem. the problem is that too much is happening at the same time on a huge scale. this can never work without proper streaming (not even sure that's the term). features like DAC had should be standard in arma. and it should go beyond that. having all that stuff on the engine level would help immensly i think.

it's much like the view distance phenomenon. sure you can put the slider all the way to the right. but the game isn't really able of handling those settings.

[Insanatrix 0]

I think the problem boils down to the fact that if you keep providing excuses for problems instead of fixing them, you will soon run out of excuses to cover the problems.

We can sit here and excuse the performance issue's until we are blue in the face. We can find ways around them like dynamic AI spawning and just using less general entities until even that doesn't work and we're stuck on a map solo with 10 fps. We can optimize code till our fingers hurt.

Until you fix the actual problem instead of trying to work around it and putting band aids on it constantly, you're just gonna be digging yourself into a hole. The fact is that while aspects of this game might be multithreaded, the only system I am aware of being multithreaded is the AI pathfinding and file operations, Everything else is single threaded. This is why CPU usage is atrocious.

Why do you think that this has become a bigger issue with the RV engine as technology has progressed into parallel processing and multicore cpu's instead of 15ghz single core cpu behemoths? Because the engine is literally not written for multicore, even though it's spouted like the gospel that it is. I mean that's basically what Jay Crowe said during the livestream or Gamespot interview. This engine was written at a time where things like multicore cpu's were a thing of the future.

The thing that agitates people is when you have someone say, "oh but the engine can handle up to 32 cores!" or "There's no performance issue's!" and you can look at your 8 core 8350 or your 4 core i7 and see such little usage, except on 1 core, and you can see impartial performance graphs done by independant reviewers that show even a GTX 690 with a 3980x can barely maintain a 40-50 fps average. Seriously, what hope does that even give the rest of us? Or how about during the livestreams everytime Zipper5 or one of the developers fired or any kind of event happened and the drastic slowdown in performance, even from just looking around there were large pauses and stutters and slowdowns that are common occurrences for me and a number of players I know even with beast systems. Then you have developer comments about how it was running great and it must have just been the stream. I'm kinda gullible, but I'm not completely stupid. When I see the same issue's, the same area's of performance problems on a developers system and then have them try to tell me that it's just the stream, ya I feel some dishonesty there.

The fact that the issue feels like it's swept under the rug honestly just really doesn't help. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. At the end of the day, it's the impression that's given. The problem is becoming more severe as time passes and as more things are tacked on to the engine and as technology gets farther away from the mentality of raw cpu speed and more into parallel processing. ArmA 3 feels like ArmA 2 did at launch, the same old problems that can only by fixed by cpu's with more power, It's just not gonna happen though. You're not gonna see cpu's breaking the 5ghz barrier any time soon, not like during ArmA 2's time where we started breaking past the 3ghz and then 4ghz later on. We're reaching a point where the advancements of technology are just not going to cover up the sheer design problems this engine has.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Insanatrix

[chortles 263]

Mind you, after one of the pre-E3 livestreams a dev claimed to be getting as much as 40+ fps with a i7, 8 GB and a GTX 660, and that the stream just didn't reflect that.

[metalcraze 290]

Jay Crowe needs to rethink his/team's decision to leave the medic system as is.

Because right now it's the exact clone of Dragon Rising's

Wounding is inconsequential, you either die or you live and if you are getting wounded you just hit MMB to instaheal, and even if you don't there are really no effects but a bloody screen for 0.5 seconds.

With fatigue system being a little more than two post processing effects (with blur being easy to disable and vignette not affecting the view at all) you can easily run around with 5+ FAKs (also they are very light themselves judging by the weight slider). But you don't need more as you are going to get shot fatally anyway before you can even use those 5.

All this makes medics completely unneeded and a step back from what we had even in OFP back in 2001. And the only difference between this and health regen of PMC is that you need to press a button.

This isn't exactly what I was expecting when BIS promised "improved medic system" in 2011

What is especially disappointing is that a lot more mainstream DayZ has a perfectly balanced and tested medic system that is a lot more advanced than anything that ArmA ever had before bar ACE mod.

Edited June 15, 2013 by metalcraze

[chortles 263]

And the only difference between this and health regen of PMC is that you need to press a button.

Wait wait wait, PMC had regenerating health? Where was this and why was I not informed

This isn't exactly what I was expecting when BIS promised "improved medic system" in 2011

The thing is, I heard a rule of thumb on these boards that anything "promised" from 2011 doesn't count... and considering how much got outright walked back both in 2012 and this year, i.e. TOH flight model, 3D editor, AI-not-seeing-through-grass...

[bad benson 1733]

We're reaching a point where the advancements of technology are just not going to cover up the sheer design problems this engine has.

and that's exactly the point. the difference between you and me is that i accept that fact since it's, let's say, unlikely that they will rework the engine at this point (for arma 3...later....who knows). the whole being upset and all and claiming the devs are "dishonest" just boils down to one this:

you basically want them to either say...

"yea the game architecture sucks, it's really bad. if you like optimized games you better pass on this one"

or

"ok you are right. we won't release arma 3 this year. we will rework the whole engine. it will probably eat up all our resources but fuck it".

both of those are unlikely and it's just nonsense to ask it of them. the first one because it just makes no sense to say that from a business persepctive. simple as that. and although the game has really unstable FPS, statements like "we're stuck on a map solo with 10 fps." are just not true. otherwise everyone would've left already.

and the other one is simply BI's decision based on what they see is best for their business and what they can do with their resources. and that's just a simple fact you'll have to accept. no amount of forum outrage will result in them making everything from scratch and reworking the whole engine for arma 3.

and btw. if you show me one FPS game that has the numbers of AI, that are thrown around here, on the map at the same time without any caching i'll agree that CPU usage is the only problem this engine has. yes i didn't say CPU usage isn't a problem (i hope you get that now).

i'm not finding excuses. i'm using common sense and base my expectations on it. maybe you should try the same. i simply disagree that being annoying towards the devs will change anything and i take arma 3 for what it is. if you can't do that maybe just stop playing it. there are lots of flawed and unoptimized games out there. no one is forcing anyone to play them.

it's the same with the AI. once i saw the first video of it (i think GDC) i immediately knew it will just be a modded version of the same old thing. i still bought the game although i knew, that this part would disappoint me. it was my decision. the whole attitude of "i payed for it now do what i want" is just weird to me. just stop with the wishful thinking. this is the best BI can/want to do right now. if you can't take it then move along. it's just a game.

P.S.: that's the most influence you have. don't buy it. don't give them your money. let the market speak.

[benjamin1 10]

This isn't exactly what I was expecting when BIS promised "improved medic system" in 2011

Don't forget, we're talking alpha material here, improved medic system, doesn't necessarily imply introducing something entirely new, but could rather mean tuning things differently. i think the term first aid kit suggests enough vs a med kit and role of the specialist 'medic', FAKs are to get yourself on your feet(patch yourself up) which is crucial, as in Arma 3, being wounded slows you down, and lags you behind in a squad. I agree that we haven't seen much of the use of FAKs and the medical specialist relation in the alpha, i'm pretty convinced the whole FAK concept will turn into a beautiful butterfly in the beta.