Question about low MP FPS

[blackpixxel 53]

Hi all,

as everyone knows you get a low framerate in MP even if you can run SP missions at stable 50-70 FPS on higher setting.

If i change the video settings in SP i see a direct impact on my framerate, but if i change them during a multiplayer session absolutely nothing will change. I always get 15-25 FPS there, it was the same in Arma 2.

That means that the multiplayer performance is affected by something else. The other performance-killer in this game is the AI-calculation. Many AI troops in the SP will have a heavy FPS hit. There are many AI's on MP, but they should be all calculated by the server.

Here is my question: Could it be true that my CPU is calculating the AI on MP without that this calculation will be used for anything? The CPU would have to do this work for the 20-40 AI's, depending on the mission. In SP such a number of artificial enemys would also result in such a low framerate, because the CPU would bottleneck the GFX.

This would also explain why we get good FPS on MP scenarios without AI.

I know that i am propably wrong, i just got the idea some minuits ago.

Sorry for my bad english ;)

[sorophx 25]

a lot of things can affect your FPS, and unfortunately they usually all do when you play in MP.

first, the game has to synchronize every minor thing that's happening on any part of the map for every single player. second, if you have a lot of AI on the map the server will have to calculate their simulation as well, and low server FPS will most definitely mean low FPS for all players. and then there's Altis, which is huge and has hundreds of objects that need to be rendered when they're in your field of view. and that's not all of it, that's just things that can be seen as they happen, but I'm sure there's a lot more in the engine that can cause significant drops in FPS.

so on big game modes like Domination with dozens of players on the server your FPS gets hit by everything at once. there's no way around it. it would take optimizing the graphics and the network code, I'd imagine.

[Cathrynn 10]

I read somewhere (can't remember where) about some servers using a headless client (hc) for the AI processing on MP and would imagine that would help with FPS. The thing is I'm not sure if there are many public servers that use a hc for Arma 3 at the moment.

[icewindo 29]

so on big game modes like Domination with dozens of players on the server your FPS gets hit by everything at once. there's no way around it. it would take optimizing the graphics and the network code, I'd imagine.

The "network bubble" technology which DayZ gets would help with that. It makes clients only receive data updates around their location. Not a priority for ArmA3 though. Atleast for BIS.

btw: Does anybody know ANY good server that results in FPS +30? I have tried out many now, even the ones described with "good fps" or "high perf" but I've yet to see my FPS rise above 30.

Most times this is followed by me ALT-F4-ing because I'm so annoyed by it.