Bohemia Interactive's ambitions are always set too high.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

[/color]However the actual reasons for RVs scaling as a general precedent has probably changed over the decade of development of the RV engine. As BIS cant necessarily predict future hardware with absolute certainty. But as a 'fan' the OP should at least be aware of the precedent..

Hey guys re read what I said.

I was being speculative as is pretty much everything in this thread, and I don't feel guilty about it. I don't know why the series has always scaled the way it does.

My point being that for whatever reason the precedent still stands. The nitpicking has me thinking my name sake belongs to someone else in this thread

No one has disputed my other arguments, being:

The argument in the original post and its titled are flawed. And his post is completely unproductive without settings.

There was no reason to continue this thread, mimic the original post and churn it into a morass of unproductive whaaa

And I don't see many of the issues that folk flippantly mention. I see A3 progressively utilise 6 cores as it requires it. I see SLI working well. I get playable frames on a triple head setup. And I like that I don't see A3 trying to over heat my system and burn out my hardware doing nothing. Like some other games do on so called 'optimised' engines (looking at you MWO).

I do have fps issues with MP. But I don't see anything in the topic or original post, and very little since that points to MP at all.

If you have issue with how A3 performs look for a thread that posts useful shit like specs and settings.

And I'm sorry I got dragged into it. I'm going back to my sewing.

[bad benson 1733]

...

yup...i know it's hard to admit you're wrong but saying "everything" in this thread is as speculative as what you said just because your feelings are hurt about being corrected is a but much, no?

i don't really see why one wouldn't be allowed to bring MP into this. maybe because it doesn't help your argument? how is MP not part of the game and how it performs? i really hate to go after you like that but "unproductive whaaa" describes pretty well what you say too. yea i get it everyone is so tired of the complaining. no reason to talk nonsense though...

glad the game performs well for you though. i know MP is not "the game" for you but yea...

sorry for "nitpicking" but it's really a matter of perspective. one could also call it "really reading and responding to what you actually write there". no need to repeat it. i fully understand what you are saying. diluting it doesn't really change the meaning.

If you have issue with how A3 performs look for a thread that posts useful shit like specs and settings.

well since you seem to like me repeating this. here it goes. MP is barely playable on ALL LOW settings on my specs that are "recommended". and again. it's a matter of perspective. if you have a problem with this thread don't try to end the discussion. trying to do that in that kind of sloppy manner is just like light flamebaiting since it screams for a response. look for a thread that doesn't deal with flaws of the game instead. there are many of those.

don't take this the wrong way. it's nothing personal but i'm tired of people telling me that "it's fine". as i said. i will shut up as soon as i can actually play the game properly in MP.

Edited February 5, 2014 by Bad Benson

[Matt International 10]

I shouldn't be surprised at how this discussion has turned into another generic performance row...

This is all you need to know...

...the fact of the matter is that arma simply demands a lot of CPU. raw CPU. always has. that has nothing to do with "tech" it simply means the game calculates a lot of things per frame in an expensive way...

Anyway, we all know this, yet these arguments appear time and time again. GHz is king for this engine, it's just not where technology is headed for many reasons. Heat dissipation and electromigration probably the biggest players.

[GReeves 10]

MP is barely playable on ALL LOW settings on my specs that are "recommended".

Yes, I have the same problem. I can run any game with Medium or High graphics and I'm running ARMA on Very Low settings for everything and I still get 15fps all the time. It's ridiculous and I'm sick of it -- I can't even play the game I paid $60 for.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

glad the game performs well for you though. i know MP is not "the game" for you but yea....

Like WTF? Are you really are gona just keep reading stuff into what people write till you see some something that justifies some derision?

[bad benson 1733]

yes i formulated it a bit provocative but you know damn well what i'm refering to so don't be so sensitive :p please show some evidence of how i "keep reading stuff into what people write" before you just generally accuse me of doing so.

you are taking this way too personal mate. if you come to a heated discussion you should not be so vague.

just to avoid further confusion

I do have fps issues with MP. But I don't see anything in the topic or original post, and very little since that points to MP at all.

so? are we going to separate things from the discussion now because we don't like how they influence it?

sorry if i'm coming off too derisive but the general attempts at explaining to people why they got it all wrong and that it's perfectly normal how the game performs is a little infuriating and i'm already trying really hard to stay civil. i'll be gone now though since this degenerated long ago. there were some good moments though.

[calin_banc 19]

Hey guys re read what I said.

I was being speculative as is pretty much everything in this thread, and I don't feel guilty about it. I don't know why the series has always scaled the way it does.

My point being that for whatever reason the precedent still stands. The nitpicking has me thinking my name sake belongs to someone else in this thread

No one has disputed my other arguments, being:

The argument in the original post and its titled are flawed. And his post is completely unproductive without settings.

There was no reason to continue this thread, mimic the original post and churn it into a morass of unproductive whaaa

And I don't see many of the issues that folk flippantly mention. I see A3 progressively utilise 6 cores as it requires it. I see SLI working well. I get playable frames on a triple head setup. And I like that I don't see A3 trying to over heat my system and burn out my hardware doing nothing. Like some other games do on so called 'optimised' engines (looking at you MWO).

I do have fps issues with MP. But I don't see anything in the topic or original post, and very little since that points to MP at all.

If you have issue with how A3 performs look for a thread that posts useful shit like specs and settings.

And I'm sorry I got dragged into it. I'm going back to my sewing.

Sir you are wrong and it was explained many times: the game does not use the available resources! That's it, pure and simple. That's the complain, not bad performance by itself. When you have a fast cpu and gpu that's doing nothing due to improper coding, it doesn't really matter how much power you throw at it. Even one of the devs was avoiding the problem, using a straw man argument: concurrency isn't the goal, performance is; when the lack of concurrency was/is the exact reason for the lack of performance.

So, when you can only deliver a gimped like experience, then yes, you could say you were over ambitious with your project - more so when the history shows you are doing the same thing over and over again.

Edited February 6, 2014 by calin_banc

[windies 11]

I shouldn't be surprised at how this discussion has turned into another generic performance row...

This is all you need to know...

Anyway, we all know this, yet these arguments appear time and time again. GHz is king for this engine, it's just not where technology is headed for many reasons. Heat dissipation and electromigration probably the biggest players.

But we do know where technology is heading and we have known it for a very long time. What most are criticizing is BI's lack of foresight into adopting technology constraints into the basis of their engine. Since they require such high processing requirements, they should by all accounts be focused much harder on multithreading and parallel processing than most other game makers, but it's quite the opposite in reality it seems. This is why people complain and criticize, it's not to belittle or badger the developers but to try and make them see that they are making an error by ignoring this and to show how many people this affects and how serious it is.

I can't even play ArmA 3 in multiplayer half the time and It's not about needing 60 fps although that is generally considered to be "smooth" by the industry, but sadly it's about needing a smooth and stutter free experience to be able to simply enjoy it which currently ArmA 3 cannot provide. Hell even in Single Player, some missions will drop me into 1 digit frame rates, especially if there is any combat going on. This is not enjoyable, and that's what I spent my money on, something to enjoy so I'm definitely entitled to complain and criticize as a customer and consumer. Especially considering my specs meet the recommended specs.

What I'm tired of are the excuses, "BI can't do X, they're a small company or they lack resources". So fine then, why release a product that you know won't work because you lack the proper resources to do it right? Just like the AI, just like Soldier Protection, just like pretty much everything else. There's always an excuse as to why they can't do something right, but they definitely want to try to do it anyways no matter how silly or unneeded it is unless it's done properly. Excuses are like assholes, everyone's got one. What matters are the solutions, and so far no solutions have been handed down about very severe issue's plaguing the game. Give us a solution, put some work into the engine, then what do we have to bitch about huh? Instead though since Alpha it's been nothing but smoke and mirrors, trying to hide things under their hat as long as they can.

After this, I'm done, I'm tired of blowing money on this and spending time frustrated trying to find ways to make things work, trying to find ways to make it enjoyable and ultimately at the end of the day simply feeling frustrated by it instead of getting my moneys worth out of it. I've got 275 hours played and only about 20-25 hours of that is from actual playing. The rest has been from trying to make missions, trying to write scripts and test them, trying to tweak settings and test every known "fix" until I just finally gave up. All I've ever heard is how BI supports their games so well, and truthfully I think it's a blind illusion because while they do patch their games quite a bit, as far as actually supporting them and fixing what really needs to be fixed, I would say they're no better than anyone else in that regard.

[Matt International 10]

...snip...

I'm not here to argue my good man. I'm not here to tell BI how to code their product either.

I feel many peoples frustration over various performance issues but these discussions just get drawn out into personal attacks and the whole debate becomes futile.

[bad benson 1733]

All I've ever heard is how BI supports their games so well, and truthfully I think it's a blind illusion because while they do patch their games quite a bit, as far as actually supporting them and fixing what really needs to be fixed, I would say they're no better than anyone else in that regard.

this makes not much sense though, since them not being supposedly any better at it than others doesn't really make it a blind illusion. my personal beef with the game right now is that i can't just hop on a server with my buddies and have some fun like i was able in arma 2. BUT only at the later states of the game due to BI finally fixing the bigger bugs with patches and making it run somewhat playable (if you haven't played arma 2 before the big warping fix you don't even know half of it ;)).

so on the one hand compared to others the support is very long term and extensive but on the other it is caused by the game needing that much support. so i'd say it's good and bad and it seems like it will never change. and looking at dayZ it seems to even have turned into a fully fleshed business model.

arma 3 is a better release (if you ignore the actual game content and just take the engine :p) than arma 2. that's why i find the overpraising of arma 2 by some people to put down arma 3 a bit weird. the release was way worse than arma 3 when it comes to crashes and other total game breakers.

i'm mostly frustrated though since my focus, throughout ofp and arma 1 being mainly AI test scenarios in the editor, shifted towards MP in arma 2. so it's very frustrating when you really want to make the transition to arma 3 but you just can't because it doesn't work. and i can't go back to arma 2's clunky mannequin freakshow either (i just can't). so i'm left with nothing.

and there is the part that makes people wonder about ambition. Altis runs a lot worse than stratis overall and esp. in MP. so was it wise to go that big just to be able to brag about statistics or would the ambition have been needed elsewhere before going bigger than chernarus?

[katipo66 94]

Fs, this thread is embarrassing, you all completely lost me once you started personal attacks on BI and especially Dwarden.. From the few years I've been here he and other developers have been very active in the forums, these are the actual game developers not hired pr consultants who specialize in spinning bs on behalf of, so it's very understandable that from time to time he and others may give a "very human" response to accusations and assumptions from all the "experts" on the RV engine.

Why not do something constructive to help your cause, if you do indeed have one, like the guys who wrote the open letter to BI regarding the direction of the game and BI responded, I had huge respect for that. But not for this.

If that somehow comes across as a fanboy or what ever then so be it, I'm too old and ugly to give a shit.. for all the flaws I discovered in the game I keep seeing more awesomeness and I hope that they keep those ambitions high.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

yes i formulated it a bit provocative but you know damn well what i'm refering to so don't be so sensitive :p please show some evidence of how i "keep reading stuff into what people write" before you just generally accuse me of doing so.

you are taking this way too personal mate. if you come to a heated discussion you should not be so vague.

just to avoid further confusion

so? are we going to separate things from the discussion now because we don't like how they influence it?

sorry if i'm coming off too derisive but the general attempts at explaining to people why they got it all wrong and that it's perfectly normal how the game performs is a little infuriating and i'm already trying really hard to stay civil. i'll be gone now though since this degenerated long ago. there were some good moments though.

Me sensitive, not at all but, I was trying air some thoughts and see what comes back. But if your going to level accusations at me for being vague. Maybe we should also look at the tone of this entire thread . Consider how throwing provocative remarks about, deliberately not accepting peoples explanations, and not addressing specs and settings only muddies the waters and makes this whole thread a mess of finger pointing and disconnected ideas. There is no search in this discussion, just a belief that there is a right a wrong. So its not a discussion, and hasn't been since the first post. It just aimless argument.

My mention of MP was coming from standpoint of someone who does see A3 utilising all hardware as it should (not as some techno rev head who wants all his lights on) and pinpointing MP as the ONLY issue from my stand point. In my view that should be BISs priority.

And all this 'i know MP is not "the game" for you but yea....' is reading too much into it because you don't know shit about my game play habits.

This 'you know what I mean' is reading too much into it because I don't

This about telling me what I wrote means ,in a different way is pointless because the translation isn't what I wrote. And that's reading too much into it.

Maybe what ever you do in your life will give you plenty of time to chew that bone and pull it apart. But I've got other things to do and this is one day I'm not getting back.

Maybe your reply will help buoy whoever still considers thread relevant.

But now I really am going back to my sewing

Chao

[windies 11]

this makes not much sense though, since them not being supposedly any better at it than others doesn't really make it a blind illusion. my personal beef with the game right now is that i can't just hop on a server with my buddies and have some fun like i was able in arma 2. BUT only at the later states of the game due to BI finally fixing the bigger bugs with patches and making it run somewhat playable (if you haven't played arma 2 before the big warping fix you don't even know half of it ;)).

so on the one hand compared to others the support is very long term and extensive but on the other it is caused by the game needing that much support. so i'd say it's good and bad and it seems like it will never change. and looking at dayZ it seems to even have turned into a fully fleshed business model.

arma 3 is a better release (if you ignore the actual game content and just take the engine :p) than arma 2. that's why i find the overpraising of arma 2 by some people to put down arma 3 a bit weird. the release was way worse than arma 3 when it comes to crashes and other total game breakers.

i'm mostly frustrated though since my focus, throughout ofp and arma 1 being mainly AI test scenarios in the editor, shifted towards MP in arma 2. so it's very frustrating when you really want to make the transition to arma 3 but you just can't because it doesn't work. and i can't go back to arma 2's clunky mannequin freakshow either (i just can't). so i'm left with nothing.

and there is the part that makes people wonder about ambition. Altis runs a lot worse than stratis overall and esp. in MP. so was it wise to go that big just to be able to brag about statistics or would the ambition have been needed elsewhere before going bigger than chernarus?

Goes against what I said about being done, but in the sense of it being a blind illusion I meant that the community creates this blind illusion that BI supports their games so well, just as they created the illusion that ArmA is built for future hardware. In actuality BI does put out a lot of patches but in retrospect, what do they really "support" in their engine? Patches generally revolve around content, scripting functionality, the very occasional feature. You see very minor tweaks and optimizations but never anything big to actually support the foundation of the engine, which is why we're having problems in the first place. I'm not in a position to tell BI how to code, but I am in a position to tell BI that their result isn't satisfactory and that it's much more frustrating than fun. I trust that they are a development company and that they have the ability to fix their problems and if they're not then I'm sorry but the reality is maybe they shouldn't be biting off more than they can chew and start focusing on actual problems instead of creating more.

If you take my post as a personal attack against BI then I'm sorry but that's a personal reflection of your own inference and not my post itself and I'm not addressing this to you BB.

[roshnak 41]

I get playable frames on a triple head setup.

Please define "playable framerates."

That term alone isn't very helpful, since people have different definitions for "playable." I think you mentioned 25-30 earlier in the thread, and that is not what I would consider to be playable. Personally, I don't like my framerate to dip below 40.

It's just not very helpful if I'm arguing that the game runs awful and you're arguing that the game is perfectly playable, but in the end it turns out we are both getting 30 FPS.

I'm also not sure that the OP posting his settings would do much for the argument, unless he has his view distance maxed or something. It's been pretty well established that as long as you have a moderately powerful video card, adjusting savings is only going to go so far as far as improving performance, and it only really changes your experience before AI are put into a mission. A lot of people can get 60+ FPS on an empty map. It's only when stuff starts going down that framerate becomes an issue, at which point no amount of lowering graphics settings is going to make the game demand less CPU for AI calculations.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

Please define "playable framerates."

That term alone isn't very helpful, since people have different definitions for "playable." I think you mentioned 25-30 earlier in the thread, and that is not what I would consider to be playable. Personally, I don't like my framerate to dip below 40.

It's just not very helpful if I'm arguing that the game runs awful and you're arguing that the game is perfectly playable, but in the end it turns out we are both getting 30 FPS.

I'm also not sure that the OP posting his settings would do much for the argument, unless he has his view distance maxed or something. It's been pretty well established that as long as you have a moderately powerful video card, adjusting savings is only going to go so far as far as improving performance, and it only really changes your experience before AI are put into a mission. A lot of people can get 60+ FPS on an empty map. It's only when stuff starts going down that framerate becomes an issue, at which point no amount of lowering graphics settings is going to make the game demand less CPU for AI calculations.

Good question and good points. Though my initial target your thinking of was 40-50fps

Give me a moment and I'll post up some specs, and settings etc.

Edit.

BTW I’ve never said anything about the game running perfectly. I’ve said that I’ve seen A3 utilize some of the resources others state it doesn’t. And that I can get playable frames but I have issues with MP. I’ve never passed any quality comment or judgement. Mostly because I felt the thread was too far gone to bother, not to mention the poor opener.

In terms of my personal preference for frame rates I think 40-50 frames is quite acceptable and would be my preference, more is always good but 60 is probably a bit ambitious. In all honesty I only notice a bit of graininess when I pivot quickly @ 25-30 frames. @ 20-25 frames there’s a sharpness to the run and things start becoming unbearable. So to a point, and this applies to A3 only, if I had no fps counter to watch I’d probably be OK with dips to 30fps. Others have commented on this before. Anecdotally, I think other games can still be prone to spikes even when at reasonably high frames that get worse as they go down while A3 is still a pretty smooth and consistent delivery at lower frames.

In terms of seeing it utilise multi core CPUs and SLI. I can see why there may be some confusion here. If I was to throw a few units down in editor or stick to stock Dom/Evo multiplayer then I would probably only see ArmA leaning on the first core while my remaining 5 cores bubbled along @10-15%. If I start getting around 100 AI down in editor then I I’ll notice A3 leaning on at least 3 cores. Interestingly it s in the SP campaign that I see the most consistent use of the resources. It still fluctuates as the engine sees fit but there is more regular use of at least 3 cores and I notice my GPU’s hitting 90% plus during cut scenes or night operations utilising dynamic lights. It seems the point isn’t so much that the engine doesn’t use them, but how and when. Its seems to me that BIS may have left a bit of head room on those resources for particular tasks. Tasks that maybe the general multiplayer and mission designer don’t address.

My specs

Asus Sabretooth P77, I7- 3930k, Win7, GTX690, OS and game running on separate SSDs , 3x 27 inch monitors and a 24 inch accessory screen

My settings

My frames

SP campaign. In the early stages of the second episode I noticed 32-50 frames but mostly sitting comfortable in the low to mid 40 most of the time. A satisfactory result

MP, a standard Dom, tonight ping around 32 I was seeing 35-22 frames. A problem, definately. But I find the worst moments are generally short lived so I’ll still play MP if I don’t have a fps counter to watch.

Editor 1 – Opfor and Blufor with 2 infantry squads each totalling 32 AI set to search and destroy in the centre of the large town Neochori. Me as a civ trying to stay as close to action as possible but alive. 30-40 frames. Not great but like I said if wasn’t watching the counter I’d probably be happily playing, none the wiser.

Editor 2 – Opfor and Blufor with 2 inf squads, 1 mech team , and 1 Armour section each . Set to search and destroy in the centre of the large town Neochori. Me as a civ trying to stay as close to action as possible but alive. 21-30 frames. Yeh, bit on the nose , the same group of units on the salt flats yielded 35 -45 frames.

Editor 3 – Opfor and Blufor with 4 inf squads, 2 mech teams , and 2 Armour sections each . Set to search and destroy in the centre of the large town Neochori. Me as a civ trying to stay as close to action as possible but alive. 19-27 frames.

Not much to say about that final one really. But it kind of brought home to me the thread title and the OP. And made me wonder if BIS wasn’t so ambitious would I have a sandbox made by any other where I could slap down hundreds of units just to see what would happen.

I don’t really know if the OPs condition is particularly common and I’d be interested to know if people with this kind of issue are in some heightened state of anxiety. Decades of martial arts and and fencing have taught me a few things about myself and my vision. Under stress the mind is capable of prioritising vision to the point that it overrides the processing delay, people will report that they saw a person’s mouth move before they heard the speech, being able to process visual nuances they wouldn’t normally notice and the like. Fascinating stuff. But is his condition really enough to warrant an accusation of excessive ambition by BIS, and what followed in the rest of this thread. I don’t think so.

As for A3 performing poorly or not I’m still inclined to look at each side with a degree of scepticism. Because its such a large ambitious sand box it truly is a case by degrees and circumstance, for example, just how many AI should be considered enough. Though there’s no doubt that MP still has way to come.

Edited February 6, 2014 by Pathetic_Berserker

[hardsiesta 1]

Perhaps ArmA's scaling may be off at the higher end of the scale, I wouldn't know since I play on quite minimal hardware for now. I do know this 60fps minimum thing is typical with PC gaming enthusiasts, but ArmA doesn't do 'standard' in PC gaming.

What can we expect from it? What can we compare it with? I have a slight idea of what your typical game has to do, and what's done with it to make it run to your standard expectations. On the other hand, I haven't got a slightest idea of everything ArmA has to do, but it's obvious it has to do a lot more in pretty much everything that's not nice visual effects, in which your typical games usually compete in. I know a couple other relatively recent ambitious and massive games, both had and have their "strange" performance issues and tradeoffs, like ArmA has, compared to a standard game. But they are still in completely different league in their simplicity, compared to ArmA.

I've found that in a typical twitch shooter, dipping <30fps starts to harm my aim. I've also heard that 30fps is a standard for console peasants, coincidently. So I guess that's my "minimum", if anything. Considering what ArmA does and still runs about as "playable" as console games and the other massibitious games I mentioned (some MP modes excluded) on my "hilariously bad" (=sufficient) hardware, I'm quite happy myself. Besides, fps isn't the only thing that would keep me off ArmA if 'smoothness' was what I was looking for. But A3 was definitely a big step towards 'smooth', even if it's performance was still capped.

Although, it would be nice to know what the problem with scaling seems to be, really. I will be getting better hw in near future, and I too would find it frustrating if there was no improvement to my current setup, and I didn't know why. Still, I find all those "bis can't do, old engine limitations, make new engine" etc. quite silly, while most of the people who say that don't seem to have any ideas of what the actual hindrance is. It's their own engine they can rewrite as much as they want, and they've already proven themselves with ArmA, so I believe there just has to be some aspect which processing speed scaling is limited with how CPU's work, or something like that. But again, standard 60fps+ minimum games don't have those aspects, and games that try seem to start coughing in similar ways.

Also I don't understand how some people manage to even record decent fps gameplay videos from ArmA 2 and 3, if it was so bad. They seriously should label low and standard shadows with cpu and high+ with gpu, though.

[jiltedjock 10]

Perhaps ArmA's scaling may be off at the higher end of the scale, I wouldn't know since I play on quite minimal hardware for now. I do know this 60fps minimum thing is typical with PC gaming enthusiasts, but ArmA doesn't do 'standard' in PC gaming.

What can we expect from it? What can we compare it with? I have a slight idea of what your typical game has to do, and what's done with it to make it run to your standard expectations. On the other hand, I haven't got a slightest idea of everything ArmA has to do, but it's obvious it has to do a lot more in pretty much everything that's not nice visual effects, in which your typical games usually compete in. I know a couple other relatively recent ambitious and massive games, both had and have their "strange" performance issues and tradeoffs, like ArmA has, compared to a standard game. But they are still in completely different league in their simplicity, compared to ArmA.

I've found that in a typical twitch shooter, dipping <30fps starts to harm my aim. I've also heard that 30fps is a standard for console peasants, coincidently. So I guess that's my "minimum", if anything. Considering what ArmA does and still runs about as "playable" as console games and the other massibitious games I mentioned (some MP modes excluded) on my "hilariously bad" (=sufficient) hardware, I'm quite happy myself. Besides, fps isn't the only thing that would keep me off ArmA if 'smoothness' was what I was looking for. But A3 was definitely a big step towards 'smooth', even if it's performance was still capped.

Although, it would be nice to know what the problem with scaling seems to be, really. I will be getting better hw in near future, and I too would find it frustrating if there was no improvement to my current setup, and I didn't know why. Still, I find all those "bis can't do, old engine limitations, make new engine" etc. quite silly, while most of the people who say that don't seem to have any ideas of what the actual hindrance is. It's their own engine they can rewrite as much as they want, and they've already proven themselves with ArmA, so I believe there just has to be some aspect which processing speed scaling is limited with how CPU's work, or something like that. But again, standard 60fps+ minimum games don't have those aspects, and games that try seem to start coughing in similar ways.

Also I don't understand how some people manage to even record decent fps gameplay videos from ArmA 2 and 3, if it was so bad. They seriously should label low and standard shadows with cpu and high+ with gpu, though.

The performance does scale with faster CPUs, that is not the point. The point is that on the fastest CPUs available now and likely for the next few years, performance has hit a bottleneck because the architecture of the software is that most of the processing of all the stuff you say you know nothing about is done on one core. Which means choppy and often low (under 35FPS in my book) frame rates.

If you think BIS can or will rewrite the engine to deal with this I suggest reading any of the thousands of posts in Arma 2 or 3 forums about this subject. It won't happen.

The best you can do is do it for them and run your missions on the dedicated server exe to utilize your other cores.

[hardsiesta 1]

Alright, thanks for elaborating it a bit. It's the thousands of not so accurate posts that have made it so confusing. I assumed it was about scaling upwards, because it doesn't make sense that it's "playable" with crappy cpu and "unplayable" with the best shit on the market, while the biggest difference between CPUs in gaming is the single core performance.

But if the technical problem is clear, then why isn't it going to happen? How come just the server exe is better in this regard, especially if it's about ability and/or will? I've seen the same 'too few cores' complaint on other games, and seen a transition for the better in time. Didn't seem that big of a deal there, although it took it's time. So what's the real exact problem here then?

Another reason I assumed it was about scaling upwards is because I play somewhat fine on a pretty terrible CPU, and last time I checked my core utilization was quite even under the game. Not really a sample worth mentioning, but still.

[bad benson 1733]

Me sensitive, not at all but, I was trying air some thoughts and see what comes back.

oh yes you are/were. most of your posts were just you being butthurt because the whole future hardware joke/argument wasn't received like you wished. hence you repeating it over and over in variations.

deliberately not accepting peoples explanations

in a discussion/debate acceptance comes only from plausibility not simply because you wish for it. although i'm not sure what part you are refering to most of the time. hence vague.

Maybe we should also look at the tone of this entire thread.

maybe you should read the entire thread before making remarks on its overall tone. it's kinda obvious that you are focusing too much on the OP and not the discussions way back buried in the pages. typical coming late to the party poster. if you focus only on bullshit of course you will think there was never any discussion.

Consider how throwing provocative remarks about, deliberately not accepting peoples explanations, and not addressing specs and settings only muddies the waters and makes this whole thread a mess of finger pointing and disconnected ideas. There is no search in this discussion, just a belief that there is a right a wrong. So its not a discussion, and hasn't been since the first post. It just aimless argument.

that's a lot of vagueness right there. again. you missed the actual discussion. and again you take my remarks about yours and just equate them with "the thread". this has been tried before and it's as stupid as ever. i 100% agree on parts of the thread when it comes to tone and that here is quite some stupidity aka "just port to cryengine" but if you complain about a lack of discussion you might want to focus on when it's actually happening and not bring up the most extreme view to argument against my counter arguments against your attempts to justify how the game runs with old old phrases. i mean what?! "There is no search in this discussion, just a belief that there is a right a wrong. So its not a discussion"...

And all this 'i know MP is not "the game" for you but yea....' is reading too much into it because you don't know shit about my game play habits.

This 'you know what I mean' is reading too much into it because I don't

This about telling me what I wrote means ,in a different way is pointless because the translation isn't what I wrote. And that's reading too much into it.

i know what you wrote and i was making fun of your sneaky attempt to try to make MP something separated from the discussion that's all. i thought i explained that. so who's ignoring explainations here? i couldn't care less about your gaming habbits and actually you are reading too much into it here. again. y u so butthurt?! you seem to focus a lot on that part although my main beef is with you coming into this thread bringing this shitty phrase that in the past was only used with a winking smiley at the end, for obvious reasons. don't you ever ask yourself why no one else jumped on me with walls of text explaining how reasonable it is that it's simply BI's method to make games that don't run good on "recent hardware" when they are released because they anticipate the future?

Maybe what ever you do in your life will give you plenty of time to chew that bone and pull it apart. But I've got other things to do and this is one day I'm not getting back.

Maybe your reply will help buoy whoever still considers thread relevant.

But now I really am going back to my sewing

Chao

oh really? not only is that the first time in our exchange it's ACTUALLY getting personal but it's only a pretty weak attempt. especially considering that you keep on posting here. obviously your amazing life is not entertaining enough :p. you are the one that is taking this personal from the start because you can't take it when something you say is called out as being, let's say, not plausible. so don't complain about this exchange. it's your own fault.

now we get to the topic:

Editor 2 – Opfor and Blufor with 2 inf squads, 1 mech team , and 1 Armour section each . Set to search and destroy in the centre of the large town Neochori. Me as a civ trying to stay as close to action as possible but alive. 21-30 frames. Yeh, bit on the nose , the same group of units on the salt flats yielded 35 -45 frames.

THIS is the whole point of this.

look what you wrote there at "Editor 2". these numbers are the sole reason this topic exists. your little lecture about what a well balanced person you are to be able to cope with low FPS unlike "those complainers struggling with anxiety" is not only out of place but also another of those weird attempts to look for the problem elsewhere instead of where it actually is.people were talking about hundreds of units and other things that arma is supposedly capable of earlier in the thread.

"2 inf squads, 1 mech team , and 1 Armour section each" at 21-30 FPS (i will just ignore the salt lake scenario for obvious reasons ;)). you ask what is enough and say it's all a matter of situation? not really. there you have your real empirical data. that's right on the edge of playable too when it comes to FPS. so you want to give SP as a milestone to BI and now they only need to fix MP? there you go. ofc FPS dips down like that. the numbers of AI are mind blowingly ambitious...(btw sarcasm)...and that even ignores MP performance. so the overall picture is worse.

to conclude: arma is supposed to run like this because it's such a huge sandbox? not really. you want to talk about precedents? arma 2 took a long time to be playable (i know the term is subjective but if you were there you know what i mean). hell we don't even have the campaign yet. so before people start making up general explainations why the game performs like this we should maybe wait until it's actually done. because it's not by any stretch of the imagination.

take that and throw it at the unreasonable complainers. at least it's based in reality. "just wait. it's only beta...oh wait!" just kidding ;)

[CrazyBaron 10]

My settings

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/835/6fv6.jpg

why use SSAO when HDAO is way better in quality and performance?

BI need to make it default setting and ditch SSAO...

[calin_banc 19]

Although, it would be nice to know what the problem with scaling seems to be, really. I will be getting better hw in near future, and I too would find it frustrating if there was no improvement to my current setup

http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/arma-iii-test-gpu.html

Intel

Amd

[/img]

http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/arma-3-pc-performance-analysis/

we used an overclocked Q9650 (4Ghz) with 4GB RAM, an Nvidia GTX690

As we can see from the CPU graph, ArmA 3 scales well on quad-cores. Still, we did not witness any performance hit when we disabled one of our CPU cores – in order to simulate a tri-core system. This means that ArmA 3 did not take advantage of our additional CPU core, something that is really ironic considering this is a PC exclusive title that relies heavily on the CPU. When we disabled two of our CPU cores, we witnessed a 10-18fps hit.

Basically, you'll need an Intel chip, unlocked and overlocked as high as possible. Don't go super expensive i7, won't matter for this game only. It doesn't matter that you see some nice load spread across the cpu cores, it's no real use for the app itself. Sure, this could change, but a fast quad core should be enough.

In my testing on my rig*, Helicopter showcase, after the helicopters are gone and the fps stabilizes, I got around 46-47fps, one screen 1680x1050, about 50% GPU load (except terrain and object complexity which were on high), all else on ultra, no FSAA, only SMAA, 4k view distance and about 2k+ for objects (what game sets default when you set that 4k view distance). Reverting to stock settings for the video card (900/1250), fps remained the same, gpu load went to about 60%. Applying overclock again (1135/1600) and going on 3 screens (5040x1050), I've lost about 3fps and gpu load went to 85%.

Of course, if I would add another gpu for a CF setup, I could get about 4xMSAA enabled, AA for foliage, probably above 100% res.scalling and I would keep the same fps with both cards at above 90% usage, HOWEVER, if I want 60 fps+ or 100-120fps, that would be impossible, because the CPU cannot feed both cards in order to pump that fps value. Probably the GPUs on the first settings would stay at around 40-50% usage ~ same fps on a triple screen setup.

On a side note, a few weeks back I've got some terrible usage in editor only and multi screen (like ~60% with 24-25fps), while now I get about 95-99% and 50fps+ on the same situation. Is not perfect, usage will still drop bellow 90% just by looking to some area without much going on, but it's still way better. Not sure what was the motive for this big improvement: I've reinstalled the game fresh (probably for the 2nd or 3rd time only since alpha and some perf. could have been lost initially due to updates instead of fresh reinstall), new driver from AMD, some new update from BIS or all from above. Not ideal, but an improvement nevertheless.

Also, saying ArmA isn't a corridor, fast reflex shooter is wrong on so many levels. You DO get into CQC battles, you DO need to aim further down the range carefully and precise in a short amount of time and you DO need good fps to do that. It didn't bother me that much (although annoying) that my fps went from ~40 to 25 just by blowing up 2 small vehicles and the soldiers inside/near them with the chopper, but if I was in a fire fight with them, that would have been some serious rage on my part. Yes, your brain can focus on doing stuff even on low fps, but it's still an encumbrance that you don't want and that eventually would take you away from the game.

Some of the limitations can be addressed through careful scripting (like a campaign or mission) that would balance the data in order to keep a stable fps, but if you wanna go full war, full arma experience and not some cod/bf style, you gonna have a bad time in the current state of the game. Playable perhaps for some, still not ideal.

*2500k@4,5GHz, 8GB 1600MHz RAM, 7950@1135/1600.

[bad benson 1733]

Also, saying ArmA isn't a corridor, fast reflex shooter is wrong on so many levels. You DO get into CQC battles, you DO need to aim further down the range carefully and precise in a short amount of time and you DO need good fps to do that. It didn't bother me that much (although annoying) that my fps went from ~40 to 25 just by blowing up 2 small vehicles and the soldiers inside/near them with the chopper, but if I was in a fire fight with them, that would have been some serious rage on my part. Yes, your brain can focus on doing stuff even on low fps, but it's still an encumbrance that you don't want and that eventually would take you away from the game.

Some of the limitations can be addressed through careful scripting (like a campaign or mission) that would balance the data in order to keep a stable fps, but if you wanna go full war, full arma experience and not some cod/bf style, you gonna have a bad time in the current state of the game. Playable perhaps for some, still not ideal.

well said. totally agree.

[jiltedjock 10]

How come just the server exe is better in this regard, especially if it's about ability and/or will? I've seen the same 'too few cores' complaint on other games, and seen a transition for the better in time. Didn't seem that big of a deal there, although it took it's time. So what's the real exact problem here then?

Because if you run your mission as a multiplayer mission on your quad+ core, the server process will have its own thread on a different core to the one that normally has to do all the work on your client. And that server process will be doing all the AI computations. So suddenly the AI has a whole core all to itself, and your client doesn't chop and change its frame rate while mission scripts are running and AI is being spawned or processed. It's not perfect but it is a lot better than playing the same mission in the single player client. I run quite large missions like this where the AI are knocking hell out of each other with negligible effect on my client's frame rates.

[bad benson 1733]

Because if you run your mission as a multiplayer mission on your quad+ core, the server process will have its own thread on a different core to the one that normally has to do all the work on your client. And that server process will be doing all the AI computations. So suddenly the AI has a whole core all to itself, and your client doesn't chop and change its frame rate while mission scripts are running and AI is being spawned or processed. It's not perfect but it is a lot better than playing the same mission in the single player client. I run quite large missions like this where the AI are knocking hell out of each other with negligible effect on my client's frame rates.

that interests me a lot. i only have it seen mentioned briefly before and was wondering what it is about. do i need a special set up for this like HC or something or do you mean simply hosting the mission from my PC and picking a slot?

[hardsiesta 1]

snip

Yes, thanks for the advice. That's what I've gathered about i5's and i7's. I am not getting a new cpu for A3 specifically, because according to this topic the gains would be minimal, but I would be very interested in seeing better performance in A3. Hence what I said and assumed about the scaling upwards being off.

The second article, I don't get it. What do they mean the terrain setting put their cpu on its knees? For myself there's hardly a few frame difference between disabled and ultra.

Saying Arma isn't a fast corridor shooter is actually wrong only in case it's used as an excuse for poor performance as if it was a design feature, and even then only in the "fast" part. Anyone would use it only to point out that simple shooters fake everything while ArmA tries to calculate everything. I do agree that ArmA needs smooth frames for aiming at least, but if there's a problem processing all the calculations needed for the authenticity at same performance as the prop-games, then it's a valid argument.

Oh well, I hope they get the optimization or scaling, upwards or sideways or whatever, sorted out. But I'm not expecting ArmA with all it's meat to run like games that take almost as much resources just for displaying props. At least it's still an enjoyable game in any case.

Because if you run your mission as a multiplayer mission on your quad+ core, the server process will have its own thread on a different core to the one that normally has to do all the work on your client. And that server process will be doing all the AI computations. So suddenly the AI has a whole core all to itself, and your client doesn't chop and change its frame rate while mission scripts are running and AI is being spawned or processed. It's not perfect but it is a lot better than playing the same mission in the single player client. I run quite large missions like this where the AI are knocking hell out of each other with negligible effect on my client's frame rates.

Interesting. Then that should play the ability part out, at least. Then what's keeping BIS from fixing this on the client? There must be some reason holding out an improvement like that, when it already exists.