Hbao+

[Minoza 11]

Nvidia recently added HBAO+ support through their drivers. They claim it provides better performance and more accurate ambient occlusion compared to the other popular algorithms. Currently you can see it in action in Splinter Cell Blacklist where it's natively supported and few other games where you need to force it through NVInspector (like DCS). Any chance we might be able to use it in Arma 3 in near future? Current ambient occlusion technique in Arma 3 seems to be very taxing yet subtle, maybe this would help?

Edited October 5, 2013 by Minoza

[iceman77 18]

Yeah SSAO is very subtle but it hits the fps pretty good. Atleast for me it's not worth having this feature enabled atm.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Yeah SSAO is very subtle but it hits the fps pretty good. Atleast for me it's not worth having this feature enabled atm.

Same here, it also often produces shading anomalies on the edges of the screen.

[NeuroFunker 11]

well, i did request HBAO and other AO modes, back in alpha. I do really dislike curernt SSAO, on one hand it's not overused like in most games, on other it's barely noticeable.

[metalcraze 290]

Current AO technique in ArmA is not subtle. It's just broken and doesn't work as it should. It just makes darker stuff darker and there are some visual artifacts when you are close to something. And it never produces any shadows which is what AO should do.

It's as if the engine was updated but the code for AO never was.

[Dwarden 1125]

Minoza we will look into it, but no promises ...

[Fushko 59]

Minoza we will look into it, but no promises ...

Good news. SSAO eats 20-30 FPS when I enable it. The fact is that it's barely noticeable, I struggle to see any effect. So I'd say it's problem to deal with.

[iceman77 18]

Minoza we will look into it, but no promises ...

Also please check into the 'standard' shadow map filters. Take a look here at what standard shadows do to textures. Unsuspecting individuals will not know that it's their 'standard' shadow setting (filters) that is ruining their 'ultra' textures. Best to just get rid of the 'standard' shadows option if this can't be fixed! As it took me ages to realize what my problem was. Never suspected shadow setting...

[mr_centipede 31]

@Iceman

Care to explain what am I suppose to be seeing?

[Alabatross 1]

I hope so, but what good is nice AO when the game runs terribly? The SSAO ingame does nothing when its enabled, yet it still eats frames. Lol.

[NeuroFunker 11]

Good news. SSAO eats 20-30 FPS when I enable it. The fact is that it's barely noticeable, I struggle to see any effect. So I'd say it's problem to deal with.

not with my 670gtx, about 5-10, depends on the scene.

[maddogx 13]

not with my 670gtx, about 5-10, depends on the scene.

Yup, the more powerful GPUs seem to handle it just fine. On my old 560Ti, my experience was the same as FrankHH's with SSAO eating around half my framerate.

On the new GTX 770, I don't see SSAO cause any framerate drop at all. Not even a single frame, on ultra. :confused:

[calin_banc 19]

Probably because you are in CPU limited scenario? The drop in performance from standard to ultra is quite big, but the quality increase is none or almost none. Anyway, that was in 3x1050p, on a single display I can max out all the details without much trouble on a single clocked 7950.

[Minoza 11]

Minoza we will look into it, but no promises ...

Thank you for taking your time to look into this!

not with my 670gtx, about 5-10, depends on the scene.

GTX670 here as well and yeah getting about the same hit. I didn't want to jump to conclusions hence why I used word subtle, but indeed, as metalcraze pointed out, it doesn't look right and that's what troubles me most.

[fareast 20]

arma 3 hbao+ official flag not working for me..it works in dayz but not arma 3..anyone got it working on their system?

[kklownboy 43]

AMD card, and HBAO is working.

[miketim 20]

Why was Far East reported for that post?

Edit:

Nvm he necroposted, someone should lock this.

[fareast 20]

why was i reported? am i supposed to make another thread lol..im not talking about HDAO its the nvidia HBAO+ which u can enable in NV control panel

[KoalaDSK 122]

Hi guys,

even if this thread seems to be dead since nearly two years, I want to bring it back to life.

Since the Eden update 1.56 the developers of ARMA 3 included the Nvidia HBAO+ technology.

I really like this visual enhancement but I've noticed some issues with this technlogy at least in ARMA 3.

I've made some screenshots some weeks ago where you can see what is I mean. The description is below the link of the pictures.

http://imgur.com/a/bHpW0

-On the first picture you can see inner building corners. All corners are darkened with HBAO+
-On the second picture I moved my view to the right. Please pay attention to the left wall-to-wall-corner: The shadowing has disappeared.
-On the third picture I moved my view upwards. You should notice that the shadowing of the wall-to-floor-corner has disappeared (please compare it with the second picture)
-From the third to the fourth picture you can see that the shadowing of the gable (corner to the roof) appears.

For now it seems that the HBAO+ technology is not rendered in the full field of view. This results in obvious disappearing of the shadowings.

There is another issue with the HBAO+ technology.

If the scenery is a little bit darker (inside of buildings; overcasted weather and/or morning or evening hours) you are able to notice some kind of aura (disappearing shadowing).

For the best result to reproduce that aura you have to take out your binoculars and watch the area around the hands and the binocular itself. It seems that the HBAO+ shadowing is not rendered near objects closer to the player. Even near the hands and the weapon of the player you can barely notice that aura in darker sceneries.

Maybe this is a limitation of the HBAO+ technology and that visual issue occurs in other games too?

[2nd ranger 282]

I've noticed these issues since the visual upgrade, notably the 'aura' around things which can also manifest itself as a perceived brightening or darkening of surfaces as you move toward them. If you walk toward a wall or any other object, it literally looks like you have a flashlight that brightens the object when you get closer. It does look pretty weird in buildings.

[heavygunner 179]

Maybe it's a limitation that has too do with HBAO+ still being a kind of Screen Space Ambient Oclussion? Then the only solution would be another kind of AO like Nvidias new Voxel based AO, which has other problems.

[daytrader 33]

So is it best to just stick to HDAO then, as that is meant to be better anyway as its high definition aint it ?