Altis - Info & Discussion

[dezkit 28]

I really liked this video! Except the radio chatter. It's nonsense lol

[dale0404 5]

I really liked this video! Except the radio chatter. It's nonsense lol

Which video buddy? :D

[liquidpinky 11]

That would make sense though, after all you are loading 10k+'s worth of stuff... Just lower it a bit. I doubt much weaponry would be that effective at range (maybe the aircraft DAGRs or something) anyway.

Takes even longer with 36k veiw distance (who needs sliders when there is a lovely cfg to tweak?) and leaves you pondering if the game has crashed initially. ;)

Still couldn't get my Titan over 3GB of memory usage with 5940x1080 resolution and objects on 2.5k though.

Also, only ran at 15 to 20 fps at the very best but I had to test it out for the lolz.

36k view gets rid of the fog corona completly and 12k on objects so there is absolutly no pop in whatsoever those were the magic numbers I foundwhile messing around with Take On.

If only I could run them in A3, bliss.

The difference between 10 and 12k is negligible and 10k saves a good bit of framerate over 12k.

Will be running 10k for air units for now.

BIS need to incorporate veiw settings for different units like TAW into the game menu.

[kavoriken 1]

Regarding the sniper issue, BIS just needs to finaly introduce wind to the vanilla gameplay experience. Mods have been doing it for years now, saying that you should use other game elements to counter these overpowered snipers is a way around the issue, not a solution. But Ill stop going offtopic now (I think there was a dedicated thread for snipers somewhere) :)

Altis is amazing, devs did a very good job on this one. Only on some places (mostly hills) you notice the ugly midrange textures, other then that, IMO best island in the arma series so far.

+1

In PVP Scenarios i dont have that much of a problem with snipers. But the AI is just horrible when it comes to reacting to sniper fire. They usually stand there for a couple of seconds, then they run, maybe to a bush, but as a sniper you just know that you'll get another shot at them as long as they dont "accidently" run behind a building.

Sometimes i get the feeling that vehicles start looking for you, but they dont really seem to care all that much. As long as you lay still in a bush theyll be gone within a minute or so.

So on Altis, Snipers are absolutely lethal against AI. You can take out tons of Enemies without even getting spotted. And its kinda easy to take down enemies 1km+ from your position as well. Wind would definately help with that, would make snipers more interesting to play as well.

[pettka 694]

Gentlelads, could you, please, stay on the topic and leave 12+k view distance bragging to different topics? :icon_twisted:

[ricogs400 1]

I don't post much, but had to say how awesome Altis is, since this is the thread to do it. I just saw yesterday that it was available and grabbed a few scenarios on the workshop to explore.

Congrats BIS on such an awesome island! Flying over in a Mohawk across the whole island was incredible and it runs and looks great on my rig, seems like even better FPS than Arma2. Looking forward to the campaign and the user missions. Keep up the great and detailed work.

[Die neunte Seele 10]

This map is simply awesome! Very good job devs! The correct scaling is worth so much and will help a lot to create realistic atmospheres and combat! The road structure and position of towns, power plants and industrial districts are diversified and great for large scale PVP/Warfare battles as well as civil life simulations! Great!

[Azzur33 1]

Just driving around in Altis on the quadbike (with TrackIR and gamepad.. haven't tried the crappy cheap old wheel/pedals I've got somewhere), in a beautiful morning light and clear sky - after a long day at work and meeting way too many people and too much noise - it's actually rather soothing.

Arma 3 as a relaxing tool.

[wiresnsnakes 1]

Do you even play Arma, bro.

Arma is a realistic simulator so if someone has a sniper rifle and kills you go and have a cry, that's war. If you have a bigger gun you win. That's why you have a huge range of options available to you... heard of cover? flanking? armoured vehicles? CAS? Drone Strikes? Artillery? All of these are used in Arma and in IRL to flush out and kill entrenched sniper positions. The problem in BF3 is the maps are closed in like a tunnel and CAS and Mortars are a joke. In Arma you can cause some serious damage to snipers with these tactics.

Regarding realism:

http://s1.directupload.net/images/130828/apirze88.jpg

Heard of grass and concealment? It isnt futured in this game. See also: shadows and same influence from the sun for humans and the environment.

At least not above 200m's.

Edited August 28, 2013 by wiresnsnakes

[matt_gold 10]

Regarding realism:

http://s1.directupload.net/images/130828/apirze88.jpg

Heard of grass and concealment? It isnt futured in this game. See also: shadows and same influence from the sun for humans and the environment.

At least not above 200m's.

so easy to see who has no experience or knowledge of 3D game graphics or challenges.

---------- Post added at 06:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 PM ----------

The moment you exit villages the dream is over. There's just a bunch of empty hills that are little more detailed than Takistan. And just like Takistan overpowered snipers will be an issue again. Since there is not going to be windage sniper rifles (which themselves have less recoil than assault rifles making them even more unrealistic) will completely rule this deserted terrain.

The island is big, sure. But it consists of... mostly nothing. Empty hills do not provide for interesting scenarios at all. It could've been smaller and it would've actually become more interesting as well as allowed for a better terrain grid providing for more ground detail. Size is not everything when half of it is wasted.

Metalcraze you need to go play Skyrim. Not realistic and not boring. But also not remotely what ARMA3 is meant to be.

I think the island looks FANTASTIC outside and inside of towns. It's a bloody technical marvel and visual/aesthetic achievement, PERIOD.

[zedderzulu 7]

Well, upgraded from 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM today, and, well, the performance difference is vast! Still not getting anything like 60fps but then I don't really mind that. I can now drive/fly around the island without massive stuttering - most of the time.

[wiresnsnakes 1]

You dont need knowledge to see the differences in reality and in games and there ARE examples in other games that handle it better, at least for a few hundred meters.

Then there are different approaches to simulate it with technical tricks, like many here already suggested, Nordkindchen approach for the midrangetextures, distortion effects for the environment or transparecy for units. Instead of shadows you can solve it with shaders.

Overall you can decide which priorities you have. So you can limit the detail near the player, the overall viewdistance and much more to put it in the distant detail.

There ARE solutions to simulate, if you dont have the amount of detail at higher ranges, to simulate the visibility of distant soldiers.

About "challenges". How challenging is it too spot soldiers in this game? Is it a challenge that I cant use concealment which I could do in reality and which works better in some other games?

Why has everything to be realistic, but not the environment? What is realistic that the concealment around me doenst influence the view of an far away enemy?

Regarding other things the game is good or rather great and mostly realistic. But you cant sugarcoat this.

BTW: I dont want to waste time to hate on a game, which I dont like. Its just this little thing that breaks it for me. I hugely enjoy fight in citys for example and every other situation you dont recognize this.

And I dont have anything against dieing fast and take a punishment/aka respawn and long walk (playing dark souls demands it :) ), its just the wish to use concealment and dont be seen so easily, which is just a constant kinda rational thought in my head. And hell: I tried to ignore it and enjoy it overall.

Edited August 28, 2013 by wiresnsnakes

[matt_gold 10]

the challenge I'm talking about is creating grass at a distance. As I am sure you know (hope you know) the grass in-game is basically a couple of polygons with imagery on it, with an alpha for transparency.

If you had this system visible for, say, 400 viewable meters, you'd have....have no idea how many of these low-poly-grass objects. It's simply to much. Hence, we have grass distance sliders. You simply can't have grass similar to near-distance in the far distances, as the number of polygons grow exponentially, because of viewable area and whatnot.

The other solution, which has been suggested somewhere on these forums, is to fade the opacity of the actual characters at a certain distance, so the bottom half of them is transparent, thus simulating being hidden in the grass. Not a bad idea, given some time and resources to develop.

The point I'm making is that we can't apply real-world standards to a video game. This isn't the matrix. It would be nice to be able to blast holes in the rocks with drills and dynamite. It would be nice to have a 40km draw distance if I am high up enough in a plane. It would be great for the rain to create actual puddles which would reflect the sky. Todays' tech has limitations and so does this engine. That doesn't stop the engine from being great and the game from being a technical and aesthetic marvel.

Pardon my attitude, it's not intentional. I'm a 3D animator by profession and I hear a lot of impossible demands from clients. I guess we are all BIS' clients, here.

sorry, I just read your post where you already mention the semi-transparent character solution. Ya, it's a pretty good idea. Also, Nordkitchen's work has RIDICULOUS potential and he should be taken very seriously by BIS.

Again, if I come off as abrasive, do us all a favor and ignore me! ;)

Edited August 28, 2013 by matt_gold

[NeuroFunker 11]

well, tbh. 4gb is really outdated for 2013. I have 12gig since 2011, and never excpecting any stuttering in games, only some physix driver related, like metro last light. Just get at least 8 gigs of ram, thats more then enough!

[J0K3R 5 93]

Windows 7 64bit

AMD 1100T 6 core @4.1ghz

16gb ddr3

Raid 0 SSD Crucial m4's

Crossfire HD6950 2gb cards

V-Sync disabled

-high -cpuCount=6 -exThreads=7 -maxMem=4092 -maxVram=4096 noBenchmark -noLogs -noPause -noSplash -world=empty

Settings

Sampling: 100%

Texture Quality : High

Objects Quality : High

Terrain Quality : Standard

Shadow Quality : High

Particles Quality : Ultra

Cloud Quality : Standard

PIP : DISABLED

HDR : Low

Dynamic Lights : Ultra

VSYNC: DISABLED

Bloom : 0

Radial Blur :0

Rotation Blur : 0

Depth of Field : 0

SSAO : off

Caustics : off

Antialiasing : 4x

AToC : Trees only

PPAA : Ultra

Anisotropic Filtering: Ultra

Load

Cpu varies from 23% to 30%

Gpx varies 20% to 30%

Fps varies from 10 to 60

Suffer from a lot of stuttering and screen freezes for a second or two.

Ive put the settings all to LOW and all to ULTRA and still suffer the same problems

Edited August 28, 2013 by kaysio

[pharoah 65]

Altis running sweet for me except near towns where it slows (i5 3570k ATI 9750 3 gig I think). I reduced my view distance to about 3kms and it improved (with the obvious impact on view distance). Most things at Ultra except for shadows (removed).

[Guest]

Can you list some of the most interesting things you seen on Altis please Papanowel?

recycled buildings from OA and not every building being enterable.

terrible thing, such a let down, i know it would likely destroy my high end PC, but i would love to see something else from 1 model of the same house over and over with no props and big giant hospitals with no interiors (and glitchy rooftop helipads) instead of using OA models (and doors)

[Azzur33 1]

terrible thing, such a let down, i know it would likely destroy my high end PC

Well you just can't have it all. If none of the buildings were enterable, and houses have just one or two models, you could fly around with no stutters and 60+ fps and 12 000 vier distance, but that would be boring on the ground.

Or you could have all the buildings entrable with furnitures and working tv's and coffee machines and toilets and elevators and plants you have to water or they'll die and ...

Oh well. The percentage of enterable buildings on the island is far bigger than in previous games. We don't actually need enterable giant hospitals with empty rooms do we.

[TSAndrey 1]

well, tbh. 4gb is really outdated for 2013. I have 12gig since 2011, and never excpecting any stuttering in games, only some physix driver related, like metro last light. Just get at least 8 gigs of ram, thats more then enough!

12 GB is completely unnecessary. Do you play 3 games at once? No? Then you don't need 12 GB. 6 is as far as I would go.

[zedderzulu 7]

well, tbh. 4gb is really outdated for 2013. I have 12gig since 2011, and never excpecting any stuttering in games, only some physix driver related, like metro last light. Just get at least 8 gigs of ram, thats more then enough!

While that is true, 4GB RAM is the "Recommended" figure as per the Systems Requirements page after all. And while you can go about Altis with 4GB okay, heaven help you if you're running any other programs in the background. I've noticed it since the launch of the Beta actually - prior to this I could load up the Alpha with little problems, but since the Beta, the strain on the RAM has been really severe, and I started getting crashes like never before.

But not anymore.

Anyway, yeah, is 16GB excessive? For games, yes, probably, but I don't just do games on my PC, so it suits me. Otherwise I would actually advise the Systems Requirements be updated to have 4GB the minimum and 8GB the recommended.

[zatoichi 10]

While that is true, 4GB RAM is the "Recommended" figure as per the Systems Requirements page after all. And while you can go about Altis with 4GB okay, heaven help you if you're running any other programs in the background. I've noticed it since the launch of the Beta actually - prior to this I could load up the Alpha with little problems, but since the Beta, the strain on the RAM has been really severe, and I started getting crashes like never before.

But not anymore.

Anyway, yeah, is 16GB excessive? For games, yes, probably, but I don't just do games on my PC, so it suits me. Otherwise I would actually advise the Systems Requirements be updated to have 4GB the minimum and 8GB the recommended.

I thought Arma III was 32-bit, so it will not use more than 4GB of ram regardless. Does it even use all 4GBs?

[ScratcH334 10]

I thought Arma III was 32-bit, so it will not use more than 4GB of ram regardless.

Not ArmA 3 but you have to take all those background applications into account. They all use up RAM too and now imagine having only 4GB of RAM.

[maddogx 13]

I know the 32/64bit and RAM limitation issue is closely related to Altis, but let's not derail this thread into a general discussion about how much RAM your gaming rig has or needs.

[griffz 1]

Congrats for this beautifull island. it 's really an impressive piece of work !

[matt_gold 10]

does anybody have a large image of Altis, preferably with texture, kilometer grid, and buildings?