Will we ever see a stable multiplayer running at 50-60 fps?

[NordKindchen 12]

BIS definately hasnt got future hardware on their mind when creating the VR-Engine.

If they had, theyd developed an engine that is accessing multiple cores.

The fact that Arma runs better with newer hardware is simply because even one core of current cpus runs faster than old cpus.

The fact that you can get better performance on multi core pcs when you are running your own server on one iteration of the game and play the game on another one still on the same pc is proof enough that the game is very very poorly optimisted.

A long time ago I read that improving the engine is particulary hard for BIS because the people creating the engine left the company a long time ago and didnt leave enough documentation behind to make the code understandable.

That could very much be the reason why the engine is lacking so much.

Still its no excuse.

[HorbeySpector 164]

A long time ago I read that improving the engine is particulary hard for BIS because the people creating the engine left the company a long time ago and didnt leave enough documentation behind to make the code understandable.

That could very much be the reason why the engine is lacking so much.

I see that as yet another reason to start making a new one.

[Opticalsnare 12]

I wonder what OFP will run like now, i bet it still runs like sludge..

[SnowSky 12]

So, you think future hardware is going to have CPUs with fewer cores, but the cores will be very fast? Because by your logic, that is the "future hardware" that Arma has been written for.

Thankfully, BIS have very cleverly copied re-developed Arma 3 to use the same number of threads as Arma 2, most of them on one core . So if you were fortunate and bought one of those "future hardware" CPUs for Arma 2, you have got the right kit for Arma 3. Nice one.

Alternatively, you have zero worthwhile insight into this.

I know which one my money is on.

Stop twisting my words, I didn't say anything detailed or specific about hardware or cores.

I will try to become more clearly - I think BI doesn't use actual systems as the limit for their game. They simply let the limit open.

[Gera_CCT 12]

I wonder what OFP will run like now, i bet it still runs like sludge..

Yep, if you put all the settings, i mean ALL OFP settings available to the maximum, it will not run so well. Still better than ArmA 3 LOL. That´s why i don´t believe so much in optimizations of ArmA 3, Bis will and can only improve stability with the current engine.

[jiltedjock 10]

Stop twisting my words, I didn't say anything detailed or specific about hardware or cores.

I will try to become more clearly - I think BI doesn't use actual systems as the limit for their game. They simply let the limit open.

Arma 2 or 3 will largely only heavily use 1 core of a multi core CPU. The entire experience hinges on how fast that 1 core is.

Modern CPUs have 4 or more cores.

In what way, specifically, have they written this for "future hardware" ?

[sultanofswing 10]

I am honestly more disappointed with Arma 3 than I am with Arma 2. Arma 3 should have never been released.

BIS knew the FPS issues that ARMA 2 had but yet they still decided to make ARMA 3 on the same engine, and I was the dumb sucker that paid money for it.

Putting the game on Steam to me was also a bad Idea. For the older generation atleast. It made BIS more money but now we have more kids playing the game than adults. I don't want to hear a 10 year old cursing at me and other players on the Mic.

The Maps are garbage IMHO. It's just all desert crap. Need more variety.

The whole future game is garbage too.

The sounds are garbage

Vehicle driving is garbage.

Shit this game is garbage!

[nuxil 2]

i totaly agree with, well, everything you said!

now, this thread has just turned into yet another bad performance/game thread.

maybe time for a mod to lock it :p

Edited January 28, 2014 by nuxil

[carlostex 38]

Yes when 100GHz transistors are possible.

[nuxil 2]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/07/ibm-demonstrates-100ghz-graphene-transistor/

[carlostex 38]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/07/ibm-demonstrates-100ghz-graphene-transistor/

That is all fine and dandy, but it's gonna take some time until we have a proper silicon replacement. While graphene is awesome and it can help reach incredible speeds there is still the struggle to make switch a graphene transistor on and off, you know, 0 and 1.

Edited January 28, 2014 by CarlosTex

[KING5TON 10]

I've been running in the 50 to 60+ fps range on Multiplayer on our A3 Wasteland Chernarus server (see sig for details on the server and the hardware I'm running).

Maybe the smaller map compared to Altis makes the difference or the fact that our server is running on a dedicated machine.

My game settings are heavily tweaked too and I made some amendments to my config file (reduced the max frames ahead from 10000 to 1, no idea why it was on 10000, my GPU usage was low so I lowered it to 1 and now I get near enough full usage).

If you need help with settings and config editing please message me (or jump on ts.uk-gaming-zone.co.uk) and I'll try and help.

P.s. I notice a few people have jumped on and then off teamspeak. I'm generally on teamspeak between 6pm GMT and 12am GMT during the week and can be on anytime at the weekend.

p.p.s Here's some screenshots showing what settings I have.

To edit the config file go to your Documents folder, open ARMA 3 folder.

Look for and open (in notepad) the Arma3.cfg file

Look for these two lines

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;

Make a note of their values in case you want to switch them back.

Change them so they look like the above.

Save, Exit, restart the game and check your FPS.

If you're still having FPS issue you need to check your CPU and GPU usage

To do this read through this

Once you can see the usage this is what you are seeing means

High GPU and CPU usage - Your system is running at it's maximum, no bottlenecks, not a lot you can do except maybe upgrading if your hardware isn't tip top.

High GPU usage but low CPU usage - Your CPU is aok but your GPU isn't, either there's something causing a bottleneck (like the max frames ahead thing above) or your GPU isn't up to snuff

Low GPU usage but High CPU usage - Your GPU is OK but for some reason your CPU isn't feeding your GPU quick enough. You can try raising the max frames ahead value slight, overclocking your CPU or upgrading your CPU.

Edited January 28, 2014 by KING5TON

[kendoka15 10]

Unless BIS make some huge optimizations with the engine, the AI is going to continue destroying our cpus for quite a while. Graphically, this game is easy to run (780 Ti here). Cpu wise though, not so much

EDIT:

To the guy above (King5ton), the thing crushing the fps in high AI count situations is the cpu, not the frames rendered ahead. That would imply the bottleneck is on the gpu

Edited January 31, 2014 by kendoka15

[KING5TON 10]

To the guy above (King5ton), the thing crushing the fps in high AI count situations is the cpu, not the frames rendered ahead. That would imply the bottleneck is on the gpu

Would the AI not be server based?

Is so then would it be up to the CPU on the server or separate server if running a headless client?

I dunno if it is or not.

Even so if anyone is having FPS issues isn't it worth just checking settings, looking what their GPU_MaxFramesAhead is set at (no idea why mine was 10000) and checking where a bottleneck may lay?

Aren't there servers that don't have AI that people still suffer from low fps?

[bad benson 1733]

I've been running in the 50 to 60+ fps range on Multiplayer on our A3 Wasteland Chernarus server (see sig for details on the server and the hardware I'm running).

Maybe the smaller map compared to Altis makes the difference or the fact that our server is running on a dedicated machine.

yea something is not well optimized on Altis. i know it's big but it's also something with the placed objects. i remember some patches in beta where my game ran almsot smooth. but that was like 2 random patches out of many. right now (for the most time) i'm back to stutter and even crashes after setpos. it's quite sad.

[m0nkey 111]

Been a gamer a long time, mostly fps.

Very tired of how most fps titles are now console ports.

Arma has never been attractive to me. However Arma 3 has made me a convert lol.

I've noticed that it suffers from whatever you want to call it, lack of optimization etc. But if we are being honest, a game like BF4 is taxing on something like a 570gtx (I had one) but not for a 780gtx (I have one) because its not a sandbox. I agree with what SnowSky is trying to explain - that other games are a smaller environment and optimized or not, there simply is not as much to process.

But I also agree with the seemingly majority opinion that it can be very resource heavy, and cause issues because of this.

In learning the underlying architecture I've been able to create missions that give me 60+fps in MP with a dozen players at a lan party. The fps of the server can go to perhaps 40 in my test missions, but even lower end machines (think c2d 6600 with 4gb ram and 8800gtx) maintain 30fps and mid-tier machines (think alienware sli ati3870, c2d quad @ 2.66ghz and 4gb ram) easily maintain 40+fps while higher tier machines push 60fps most of the time.

Dedicated server with 3.8ghz pentium and 4gb ram using ram drive makes a diff. But this is even a p4 lol. But it does make a difference.

Downloading maps/missions and playing them on dedi or hosting them, its a different story. Server hits 20fps, clients start dipping, maybe into the teens for fps.

Doesn't matter to me really why you have to make missions certain ways to achieve good mp fps. I cannot fix it but I do want to play the game, as I think its visually and immersively the best fps I've played. All that matters is that if you want to go to the extreme of making things work well, it can be done. Maybe a person shouldn't have to, but that does not matter. It is the way it is. Get the right mission and you can get good fps in mp. Get a mission made with the editor by someone who hasn't looked into why things get laggy, and you will get lag.

At least from my brief foray into arma 3, thats what I have found.

And the #1 performance boost I have seen is to use a ram drive for most of the .pbo files in the addons directory. Doesn't matter if visual quality settings are high or low, getting rid of that I/O stutter is a great thing.

EDIT: forgot to add, bf4 does not utilize all cores the same, but isn't too bad in running parallel. As for A3, I turned off hyperthreading on my i7 and prior to the last patch was experiencing core0 with about 70% use, with cores 1/2/3 at about 45-60%. With hyperthreading on, and trying the startup parameters, core0 did most of the work. Setting cpucount to 2 and then using affinity helped, then using cpucount to 4 and affinity really helped, which is why I turned of HT. Since the last patch (1.10? ) I've noticed core0 at pretty much 100% use with cores1/2/3 in the 35-55% range. So not really an improvement in my eyes there.

Edited February 6, 2014 by m0nkey

[brightcandle 114]

If Arma 3 actually split its world render up across 4 cores it would knock about 16ms of main thread time down to about 4ms. That would take the FPS from hovering around 30 to 60. On a 6 core it would go even higher. The game is purely CPU limited, and about half and half between interaction with DirectX (draw call overhead perhaps?) and the world updates.

I don't think we'll ever see BIS fix it, they never managed to with A2 so I have no expectations it will ever be fixed with A3. This time however hardware isn't going to save them, we aren't getting more single threaded performance from additional CPUs, so it will just always be slow.

[nomisum 129]

... if they dont implement mantle.

Sent from mobile

[henri 10]

... if they dont implement mantle.

Sent from mobile

seeing how singleplayer runs fine it would seem that the issue is with the server.exe

[calin_banc 19]

"Fine" is relative.

[nomisum 129]

seeing how singleplayer runs fine it would seem that the issue is with the server.exe

yes, better multicore support is without a doubt a must and the workaround to put the ai on a specific core is quite ridiculous. i doubt they are able to pull it off though, when seeing franchise history.

nevertheless better performance on every client should lead to less lagging too i guess, plus great viewdistance for everyone would be awesome!

[bravo93 37]

Yeah I think the problem lies in the MP code. Like single player I get say 50-60 frames with mission. Same mission in multiplayer with say 4-5 friends I get 20-30 FPS. Really don't see why that can't be fixed. Would having a headless client improve MP FPS much?

I have GTX 780 and 3.4Ghz i7 btw.

[DieTU 10]

Multiplayer running at 50 fps?maybe a really optimized games?yeah,wet dreams of every Arma player since OFP....still a dream....please stop asking impossible things :D

[bravo93 37]

I think if they could notch it up a tiny bit it would make a huge difference. For example getting 20-25 FPS in CQB isn't great and to be honest it kind of ruins the experience and it's not enjoyable. Getting say 30-35 in those situations would improve the experience a lot. I can't understand how people can play with say 10-15 FPS, I don't know if my eyes are genetically superior but once I go below about 25 FPS the gameplay really suffers and it's not that enjoyable. I couldn't complain with 30-40 FPS though. An extra 10 FPS would make the game a million times better.

I don't think it's a problem with hardware because I get more or less the same FPS in multiplayer nomatter what graphics settings I've got on.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Bravo93

[jgbtl292 0]

have you not sleep ? have you take drugs ? no i have played 3 houres arma 3 ;) my eyes looks terrible after 3 houers arma 3 multiplayer ^^ its a pain.

only this weekend i have 35-45 fps on the eutw warfare server . the first day in arma 3 with this fps in MP wonderfull. and now ? today the same 17-25 on the same server , same misson , same number of players today. whats up with this game ?