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

[doveman 7]

This is completely unplayable. What do you get in SP?

I'll have to check as I haven't noted down an exact number but I think it's around 45-60 fps. I don't think the settings, other than view distance, make much more than 2-5 fps difference, although PIP did cripple my fps with the beta so I've disabled that but I believe that might have been fixed.

[artisanal 22]

Wargame series are strategy games, total war series is the CoD of strategy games, true garbage since ETW, and performance in wargame series is not really related to CPU usage

Your vision of things is too "binary". It's not because you think that the main FPS killer in shogun 2 or rome 2 is the engine itself (which, you claim, is the same since the first game of the series) that we'd be better off if they had used a new engine. Fyi, 100% new engines are very uncommon, for example, the source engine has some core coding from the Quake engine. Nonetheless, it is necessary that the developers enhance their engine the most they can, in order to take advantage of new API's or new CPU architectures and so forth.

In ArmA's case, we know for a fact that arma 3 runs like a charm on a very large panel of computers, as long as you're alone on a map. Things turn sour very quickly when units are popped, fights begin, units move, buildings explode etc...

Edit : also ArmA has the bad habit to "cap" definitively the fps after the action-part of the online coop session is over.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Artisanal

[Sneakson 1]

I was just reading this post before this, now i would like to say:

Battlefield 4 : Really !! are you serious ?, so basically you like filters, this is a corridor game not open world, big maps but not open world not so many factors to calculate, a game born for consoles

Call of Duty: Ghosts : do you mean the worst of the series, the same old engine, with bad textures and graphics except for new filters that are using dx11 hdr

Crysis series, Far Cry series : cry engine, good engine but sometimes this is a little clunky ain't it ?, games born for consoles

Metro series, Hitman: Absolution : others corridor games with lot of less calculation compared to arma 3, and filters and filters born for consoles

BioShock: Infinite : good graphics ? :confused:

Basically you're just saying all console games ported to PC have better graphics than A3, ArmA 3 will never be able to run on consoles because of memory usage (why this ? ), what you consider good are just a bunch of filters and HDR

People like you are the reason because most of companies are actually making just console games and porting on PC clunky console ports with tons of bugs, and at too high prices considering the overall quality of these games

Strategy games are often very CPU-intensive, see Total War series: i'm a strategy games lover, TW games aren't anymore strategy games and the reason of bad performance in TW games is the fact they're using the same engine since R1TW, if you ask to modders inside shogun 2 and R2 there are still R1 scripts inside, not even a renewed engine

Wargame series are strategy games, total war series is the CoD of strategy games, true garbage since ETW, and performance in wargame series is not really related to CPU usage

You're a dumb fanboy obviously... how is Crysis 1 born for consoles? How are any of the benchmark, most heavy computer games in existence made for consoles?

Have you even played Crysis, Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3/4, Call of Duty, Metro, Hitman: Abs or BioShock: Infinite?

Total War aren't strategy games?

And Total War runs bad only because it is still using parts of the R1TW engine? ARMA3 runs bad only because it is still using parts of the ARMA1 engine I bet!

Way to try to counter everything I say negatively even when that means abandoing all sense.

You seem to have a difficult time accepting that there are games with better graphics and stability than ARMA has...

Battlefield 3/4 has amazing graphics...

[mausAU 10]

Hi again guys!

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING

Great to see and speak to you all again. I always enjoy our little fireside chats ;) Hope you're ready for another one! It starts out tongue-in-cheek but ultimately descends into a rollercoaster ride with an ending one critic called "readable".

Firstly, I do need to apologise - pr0ph3tSWE, you are absolutely correct in regards to ARMA & PhysX. I was under the impression, mistakenly, that BIS had designs towards migrating CPU-related geometry and interaction computations to PhysX to alleviate the workload at some point in the future but I must have dreamt it.

So thank you for correcting me courteously and not giving me a DIAF & GTFO. You are right, I was wrong.

---- ProphetSWE gets a 8/10 for his elegantly simple but effusive correction. Spot on. Your lack of any emoticons was like perfect seasoning on an already perfectly edible meal.

Sterlingarcherz101 - I didn't have time to, because there were so many glaring ignorances on display that by the time I finished writing my post (I call it "I Am Right", text on internet, 2014) the monsoons had come and gone and, as it is wont to do, the rain came so I opted for a passive oriental method of cleaning. But thanks for your concern regardless.

--- SterlingArcherNumber5000 gets a shame-inducing 2/10 for taking the time to read what I wrote, but not comment on the interesting and factually correct anecdotes contained within that I specifically chose to share with him because it was his, or someone that he knows' birthday. Also, 1 point was deducted for sheer unoriginality of name. 2013's Master Chief Baggins Shepard.

HardSiesta, you I am happy with. Crafting a link between consoles and framerates along with satisfaction isn't something I get to see very often. Kudos for the display of sense and mild abstraction. Your point about consoles retaining a vastly lower framerate without a significant reduction in gameplay can actually be answered by the nature of consoles themselves. Take a narrow field of view and a 2.5m distance to the viewing screen and you have a recipe for being able to get away with frame limiting to the degree consoles hilariously suffer at.

It's due to the distance that a Consolee (Consoler? Consoglieri?) finds himself at from the screen that allows him to not notice, or, be able to comfortably ignore the what would at a close distance otherwise be highly unsatisfying frame rate and claustrophobic field of view.

--- HardSiesta gets 7/10 for displaying genuine curiosity and an adept grasp of technological associations.

And I'm getting bored of putting more time and effort into this than anyone else will, so I'm going to attend to one more individual and then leave this post to either ripen into something that someone will actually learn from, or it will rot on the vine due to the plague of screeching ignoranti.

Now onto my last digression of the day:

Sneakson. While I appreciate the venom and histrionics you bring to an internet argument you don't have the salt to stand up in, I think your grasp of the language is too poor for me to really justify spending more time than I have to being skirtingly polite for politeness' sakes. So;

You said: Oh so you're saying it's our computers and not the engine causing multiplayer issues? Die please.

- I did not, nor would anyone with an iota of comprehension, think that I am or have ever said that. I would explain it to you like I would a child but I think you need to spend more time on your reading and comprehension. Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed for you.

You said: Also your argument about BIS developing videogames for the future is bullshit because the game has been released, we have paid for it and expect it to work today.

- Again, you should have actually read every word instead of every third or fourth. I didn't say that. What I said was that while the game runs with some difficulty, it is going to get better with patching, and a side benefit of the game engine being so demanding and scaleable was that BIS have cleverly futureproofed ARMA 3 to fight with new releases for at least a few years.

Futureproofing. It's a well known and widely understood concept, and yet I felt I should say it so as to offer a positive aspect of the whole thing to those who are more cut up about the state of the game than I am.

In other words, you're 0/2.

You said: And video games requiring quicker framerates than movies has nothing to do with movements in movies being slow.

- Dear god. I thought points 1 & 2 were awkward.. You do not understand what was being said. Ask someone more adept at the english language to explain it to you with patience, and take notes.

0/3.

You said:Anyone can tell the difference between 100 and 120 fps.

- Amazing! I can't. I can tell the difference between a screen that is 100hz and 120hz simply because one can process 3D and the other can't... No, your fourth point is totally and utterly incorrect and goes in the face of a century and a half of research, much of it empirical, into the phenomenon of persistence of vision. Prove me wrong :). I suggest starting with questions asked around a University opthalmology department and then working from there towards the neurosurgery & witch doctory area of the grounds. Again, take notes as we both know deep down that you really need to.

0/4.

You said: And fixing multiplayer performance isn't a "simple job"... if it was then they would have fixed it in the last year since Alpha started.

- You are remarkable for all the wrong reasons. How do you not understand what is going on here? If they had time to fix it in the past year since the alpha started then the last year wouldn't have been the one that the alpha ran in, would it? You can't see the forest for the trees. The force of reason is weak within you, and these words I've graced you with are already more than you deserve.

Frankly, Sneakson, you have the charm and wit of a CHUD and the only reason I took the time to score your work was so that even just one person the back of beyond might hopefully read this, understand the level of the playing field, and get a laugh and a chuckle out of the to-and-fro we've provided thus far.

-- Sneakson 0/5, while not worth rating according to the mausAU scale of savvy, civility and nous, gets a recommend. If we didn't have people like him how would we terrify our children with the consequences of entitled ignorance and a near-delusional sense of grandeur? The world needs bad people, what can I say?

*************

Enjoy, reader.

n.b. If the above appears harsh, read some of Sneakson's other posts. What a pr... ;)

Edited March 17, 2014 by mausAU

[hardsiesta 1]

Why not just compare it to anything? Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Crysis series, Far Cry series, Metro series, Hitman: Absolution, BioShock: Infinite...

ARMA3 has the biggest maps in a shooter and allegedly it has some quite complex bullet trajectory calculations but the calculations don't translate into much for the end user.

Strategy games are often very CPU-intensive, see Total War series.

Wow, are you serious? Well, that's pretty much exactly the reply I expected. Thanks for playing. Case closed.

I'm assuming you're unaware of this issue http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?169682-the-houses-and-ruins-are-the-mp-problem/page2 (Linked to page 2 to show screenshots of the problem.)

When buildings are damaged, the undamaged version is moved about 40m underground and a second, damaged version is put in it's place. There are now two buildings instead of one. If this has been fixed, I haven't heard about it.

Ok, thanks for elaborating. That doesn't seem to make much sense. Is there a ticket for this? I would vote it up. Seems useless even if it didn't eat up the resources.

It's not another subject at all. The game doesn't properly utilize multicore CPUs. If BIS wants their game to be super CPU intensive, they should make sure it makes full use of the CPU.

Of course they should be more concerned about CPU utilization more than anyone, considering what the game is compared to the rest, almost completely dependent on it. But I bet they are, too.

Even the devs of very much simpler games have said getting flexible with multiple cores is quite difficult, on top of all the abstraction of the hardware and all that as it is, so I would give BIS some break until I see evidence that BIS don't give a damn about it, or even less than they should with their flagship game that is completely dependent on CPU utilization.

My bet is, it's just pretty damn hard when you have something like this on your hands. I mean, they're pretty much the only dev doing this type of thing since 2001 OFP. No, wait... Since ever.

And that's the other half of optimization, while the other hand A3 runs incredibly playable with lesser hardware. On a side note, I think I heard that having less than 4 cores in BF3 meant you lost AI units ("AI" units, pfft) in the campaign. As of Jan 2014, according to steam survey, very close to half of the users were on 2 cores. Something like that can't be easy for the devs. That said, I would like to see ArmA in it's full potential, no matter what kind of hardware it takes. But, I believe there are good reasons for things being what they are. Can only speculate.

First of all, Call of Duty is also a terrible game for competition. Second of all, it does not have an uncapped rate-of-fire. Weapons hit their maximum fire rate at 60 FPS, anything over that will not increase the fire rate of weapons, although lower frame rates will decrease it. Finally, I'm not sure how any of this challenges my claim that high FPS is good. I've already stated that game mechanics are often affected by frame rate -- you're just providing more evidence of that fact.

Ok, you could be right for that part. I'm sure PS2 did have the problem, tho, so if I expressed it in plural then maybe it should have been singular. The rest about IW engine should still be correct, unless they've been busy about it since like MW3, or something.

It wasn't challenging that, it was about my claim that other games actually screw the mechanics/frames things far worse, IW and SOE being good examples. Anyway, I support the importance of framerate if we're talking about ROF, but don't consider anything past that anyway important in a game like this. Just a nice bonus after everything else, except the really useless shit people are asking for. At least better frames would have actual use, though not important.

1. This guy straight up acknowledges that lower frame rates provide a worse experience, despite the fact that he feels it is okay to sacrifice that in the name of fun selling his game on outdated consoles.

2. This guy is talking about making compromises when developing for consoles, which I have already stated are significantly less powerful than PCs. Battlefield 4 is capable of running well above 30 FPS on PCs.

3. I don't care if this guy thinks 30 FPS is sufficient; he's wrong. I have a whole series of posts in this thread debunking the whole myth that 30 FPS is sufficient. There are numerous links to articles all over the internet. They're very easy to find for yourself: just google "30 FPS eyes."

Take it for what you will, I myself read it as for what I was talking about and intended to back up with it: The frames come with a price as much as the features do. Yep, he acknowledges that more frames = better, sure, just in the context of not as important as actual gameplay elements. Did someone question that? Not me, that's for sure, I said it's one of the least important aspects of the experience, if you put it against the features that compete for the resources with it.

But PC's aren't just bigger and better consoles. Console games are limited by the unarguably low ceiling of horsepower, while PC games have to fight the problems of high variability in the hardware they are supposed to run on. Sure the raw power has ridiculed consoles, but I bet developing games for PC is far more complicated, that possibly even multiplied if you're developing one of the more complicated (and impressive) games on the market. PC is better by far, but not unlimited.

Googled it. On a quick look it seems... Damn, didn't even know 60fps was questioned as the plateau. Doesn't say anything about it's importance, though, or that making games at 30 is wrong.

To be clear about my point: There's a necessary level of FPS (for stuff like RoF), and there's the level of FPS that serves as polish after everything more useful use of resources. Either way the devs probably always try to save as many frames as possible, but it's always a compromise one way or another.

[mausAU 10]

You guys are great. One of you is like a semi-normal faceless internet guy who knows what he's talking about and is expressing his points rationally and with an easily visible working knowledge of the subject, and the other one is a halfwit who lashes out with limp-wristed abuse out of intellectual fear and a good portion of angst. Further investigation shows that the second party can give it, but can't take it, and also fails to realise the bitter irony in mentioning COD when arguing about quality and performance and the causes thereof in a game.

I do believe that MW was built on a heavily modified Quake 4 engine, and as far as I can remember I don't recall any stop-the-press moments in the past 6 years saying otherwise.

In other words, I'm enjoying this thoroughly.

Please continue. Also, Sneakson, I'd like to hear more about how you think CPUs function and the relationship you've vicariously drawn between Rome Total War and ARMA 3. :)

Edit: Fun Fact: Angst means fear in German.

[jgbtl292 0]

ARMA3 runs bad only because it is still using parts of the ARMA1 engine I ähhhhh no using parts of OFP Flashpoint engine ;)

and repeat - the game run fine on SP its only the MP ! and this has nothing to do with cpu or engine. its a terrible >>MP NETCODE[/color] <<<

the name of the topic is >> STABLE MULIPLAYER WITH 50-60 FPS <<

i can flay over altis with :

max setting - only fsaa its on 4X and PIP on Standart

6,5 km sight view / max objects and shadows

21:9 2580x1080

and the biggest tribble monitor setting on a single monitor - was a test, The picture is a bit upset. looks absolute WOW

you look so much the island looks very small then lool .

and my pc ist 4 years old ^^

the game run -the MP not.

the game it not FINAL -the reality is the game comes out than a beta 2 and bis in the middle of the development !

look all the little chances ,tress ,fire,particle - altis final version come after one year from realise start.

an the team is small and the half work on day z - and then he make a contest with over 500 000 euro price money - and 10 mens work on arma 3 ... i cant understand this politic .... they would prefer the money to put new employees- for optimization and engine and multilayer fixes bis understand then the multiplaer is the point for a long life bring new sells. its not a single player sandbox this is absolute wrong ! and when many people say i wait and play a little in the editor because the multiplayer is unplayable.

then i can not say the most people are in the editor and makes something ....we have made a good work - hello bis can you here the people ?? sure - why all this because half does not work! and not one good mp mission for click and play in the vanilla game is !! this is the point and not the editor is soooo great ... its not. bring a town to live with opjekts - makes no fun ^^ 3d editor ;)

this is the point for me - the game is in many corners not a playable final version.

the game itself its not on a final point a point where you can say. "ok its final NOW can we do it to expand the game" the game has no consistent basis.

it is to have a different finish something and expand or to work on a huge construction site, and to the people to say - it's done and we will continue to develop it.

and after one year its time for a reworked netcode - cancel the contest and give good experienced men work and players a game for the MP. its better than a contest. good experienced men maybe better set as inexperienced people from the community - the idea is great the other side is the game very complex

Edited March 18, 2014 by JgBtl292

[roshnak 41]

I'll have to check as I haven't noted down an exact number but I think it's around 45-60 fps.

Yeah, see, this kind of disparity in frame rate is a huge problem.

Of course they should be more concerned about CPU utilization more than anyone, considering what the game is compared to the rest, almost completely dependent on it. But I bet they are, too.

I don't know, maybe they are. There was a post a dev made from 2008 that essentially said they were interested in moving in that direction, but couldn't justify it for Arma 2, since multicore CPUs weren't common enough yet (even though it was pretty clear that was the direction the technology was going). No real progress has been made on this front, and it seems incredibly unlikely that we will see improvements in Arma 3, since it would likely require a huge engine rewrite.

And that's the other half of optimization, while the other hand A3 runs incredibly playable with lesser hardware. On a side note, I think I heard that having less than 4 cores in BF3 meant you lost AI units ("AI" units, pfft) in the campaign. As of Jan 2014, according to steam survey, very close to half of the users were on 2 cores. Something like that can't be easy for the devs. That said, I would like to see ArmA in it's full potential, no matter what kind of hardware it takes. But, I believe there are good reasons for things being what they are. Can only speculate.

Several points here.

First, it's not that Arma 3 runs well on low-end hardware, it's that it doesn't scale to high-end hardware that great.

Second, your complaints about Battlefield 3's scaling are some of the things that I think are good about it. I like that it scales down it's complexity to run well on low-end hardware. That said, I understand that this type of optimization is really up the the mission designer in Arma 3.

Third, I wouldn't bet on there being good reasons for things being the way they are. This series has notoriously been plagued by poor documentation and bloat. They've previously had issues with devs not knowing how certain stuff works and implementing redundant features. This was a big deal with the Arma 3 release as they did a lot of refactoring (still are, according to recent OPREPs) to clean up the engine and remove redundancies. Until that process is complete, I think it's fair to assume that there are areas that aren't as optimized as they can or should be.

As a side note regarding performance, there are still some odd behaviors in Arma 3, such as lowering certain settings like shadows causing increased CPU load and decreased performance. Also, there are still a number of objects casting CPU intensive shadows in the game, as opposed to moving fully to GPU drawn shadows.

Take it for what you will, I myself read it as for what I was talking about and intended to back up with it: The frames come with a price as much as the features do. Yep, he acknowledges that more frames = better, sure, just in the context of not as important as actual gameplay elements.

Here is the real crux of the matter, and the reason this discussion isn't really going anywhere. I don't accept your basic premise that we need to sacrifice game mechanics to gain performance.

Arma 3 isn't significantly more complex in terms of game mechanics than Arma 2 or Arma 1 or even Operation Flashpoint. All of the basic gameplay elements remain the same, while the scale gets a little larger and graphics are improved. If the reason that Arma 3 runs poorly was that it is too complex, then we wouldn't have had OFP a decade ago.

We don't need to do less things, we just need to find ways to do them a little smarter and quicker.

Honestly, you're kind of putting Arma on a pedestal becuase it happens to cater to your specific tastes and no other game does. It's evident in the way you put quotes around AI when referring to BF3. BF3's AI isn't necessarily better or worse than Arma 3's; it's just different. They aren't comparable at all because they are designed to do different things and operate in different game environments. Neither game has true artificial intelligence.

And really, when it comes down to it, none of this whole argument about sacrificing performance for mechanics and features explains why the game runs worse in multiplayer than it does in single player.

[R4IDER 10]

The multiplayer FPS problems should be a addressed with the highest priority. As soon as this final campaign part is out I would like 100% focus shifted onto performance increases because currently its terrible. The latest patch has actually reduced FPS when playing on our server. The server FPS is always at 48 and it only drops down when I spawn in units. If I add 6 groups and 30 fixed placed units then the server FPS will remain at around 48 but the client FPS will drop by around 15-20 FPS. I have no idea why this is and I have tried everything to fix it thinking there was something wrong with my scripts. Its pretty annoying that the same problems carry on from game to game and all we get from BI is reasons why its so hard to implement multiple cores.

I am no games developer but I am a gamer and I see the difference in performance with games that my use of all of my cores compared to those that only use one. The ARMA series is a PC game and it runs like a console port, I would be ashamed of myself for putting out such an unoptimized product. But who am I to pass judgement, I am just a customer right.

[jgbtl292 0]

The multiplayer FPS problems should be a addressed with the highest priority. As soon as this final campaign part is out I would like 100%

because I was not sure. it is always the same ! in Ofp arma 1 arma 2 - after years he go on the mp optimization. even a year is too late ..

i hope they will learn ^^

[Westonsammy 1]

I have recently been playing a lot of the Zeus DLC on dev branch, and on almost every Zeus server I can get a extremely stabe 40-50 FPS, with upwards of 20 players.

FPS starts to take a bit of a drop though when tons of units are spawned in, but otherwise its damn stable, much more so than normal ArmA 3.

[doveman 7]

I'll have to check as I haven't noted down an exact number but I think it's around 45-60 fps. I don't think the settings, other than view distance, make much more than 2-5 fps difference, although PIP did cripple my fps with the beta so I've disabled that but I believe that might have been fixed.

Hmm, seems that was a bit overoptimistic. Playing the Breaking Even campaign mission, I'm getting about 33fps. Most settings don't make much difference, other than terrain on V.High loses about 5fps compared to Low or Normal (no difference between them).

Strangely though, at some point I noticed it had dropped to 15fps. I adjusted some settings in Radeon Pro, removed the -malloc=tbbmalloc switch (was testing the experimental build) and restarted ArmA and loaded my savegame and it starts at 9fps. After 10-15s in the same place, it doesn't change but if I leave the base it eventually goes back up to around 25fps.

So it seems I have problems in SP as well, although it generally stays just about high enough at 25-35fps to be playable whereas MP has been stuck at 15fps or lower on numerous missions I've played. I've just installed a fresh Win8.1, so I'll try A3 on that and see if it's any better.

[Sneakson 1]

You wrote exactly what I said you wrote and now you are trying to defend yourself by being an obvious high horse troll with the most overblown ego I've ever seen.

Besides you're completely avoiding showing any counter-arguments, instead opting to attack me... yeah, very “angst†much wow.

Your trivial bullshit doesn’t impress and if weren’t still in high school you would know your trivial tidbits are the sort that only would impress a 12 year old and your attempted scientific babble is jabbering.

It's due to the distance that a Consolee (Consoler? Consoglieri?) finds himself at from the screen that allows him to not notice, or, be able to comfortably ignore the what would at a close distance otherwise be highly unsatisfying frame rate and claustrophobic field of view.

You are saying that the distance that a console user (yeah, that’s what they’re called!) finds himself from the TV screen affects his ability to see smooth motion on the TV screen. That’s wrong and you can’t claim to have said anything else now.

It may affect what he thinks about the field of view however a chopper game will not appear less choppy if you sit at a TV distance from a TV compared to computer distance from a monitor.

Futureproofing.

Next you show your inexperience in computer hardware and software by saying “futureproofingâ€â€¦ there is no such thing as dependable futureproofing and you should never attempt to futureproof anything instead of making it work well today.

It’s a marketing word made for the fools want to buy 32GB memories today thinking it will come in handy any time soon…

ARMA today > ARMA tomorrow.

Now to show what a bad liar you are let’s go back and scrutinize one of you statements where I allegedly did not "understand what was being said†and see it again:

30 frames per second works for film simply because there's very little rapid movement occuring on screen…

When you delve into the world of games, 60 is the new 30 due to the generally rapid visual pace of video game entertainment…

I don’t think I should have to clarify your own words here and here’ my answer:

And video games requiring quicker framerates than movies has nothing to do with movements in movies being slow.

You said 30 frames per second works for film because there’s little rapid movement occurring on the screen and in case my answer was not clear enough to you (having comprehension difficulties are we?) was that you are wrong, that 30 frames per second works for film not because there is very little rapid movement occurring on the screen (ever seen a car chase?) and that video games need 60 frames per second instead of 30 not because there is more rapid movement occurring on the screen actually.

You are wrong. Both video games and movies have rapid movements occurring on screen which I think anyone that has watched an action movie can testify and as such I have destroyed your argument.

- Amazing! I can't. I can tell the difference between a screen that is 100hz and 120hz simply because one can process 3D and the other can't... No, your fourth point is totally and utterly incorrect and goes in the face of a century and a half of research, much of it empirical, into the phenomenon of persistence of vision. Prove me wrong :). I suggest starting with questions asked around a University opthalmology department and then working from there towards the neurosurgery & witch doctory area of the grounds. Again, take notes as we both know deep down that you really need to.

Next this. I can only tell you to visit a specialist immediately as you may be experiencing the onset of degeneration of your optic nerves.

Go ahead and show me any evidence that it’s impossible to distinguish between a 110 Hz and 120 Hz monitor.

Meanwhile I’m going to destroy your argument once again because I can clearly see that you are dazed by this discussion and I can see the mistake you have made, I think.

You’re probably thinking that the only difference between a 110 Hz and 120 Hz monitor is their marginal difference in flickering frequencies that both are evened out to a constantly lit image because of persistence of vision.

However a 110 Hz monitor can also only display 110 fps while a 120 Hz monitor can display 120 fps! And it is ever so possible to tell the difference between 110 fps and 120 fps… it’s the same difference as between 57 fps and 60 fps actually. It’s a SMALL difference however physiologically I have never heard of anything that would make it a superhuman feat to distinguish between the two.

Your original message also says that no one can tell the difference between a 110 Hz and a 120 Hz monitor which also seems to imply that there is an upper limit somewhere around 110-120 fps or even the 60-100 fps area that you mention in your message. In other words it would be impossible to distinguish between a 120 Hz monitor and a 240 Hz monitor, which is wrong.

The difference between a 120 Hz monitor and a 240 Hz monitor (and subsequently 120 fps vs 240 fps) is the same as between 80 fps and 120 fps, or 48 vs 60 fps.

This is assuming there is no upper limit on how many frames per second a human can see of a moving image on a computer monitor, which there isn’t because eyes are analogue. If there is a neurological or physiological limit I’m still eagerly waiting to hear of it.

Again, if the image on the monitor is completely white with no movement you won’t be able to tell a difference but if there’s a moving image on the screen you will.

[if they had time to fix it in the past year since the alpha started then the last year wouldn't have been the one that the alpha ran in, would it?

This sentence makes no sense to me unfortunately. Does it make any sense to anyone else?

The alpha began last spring… and they did not have the time to fix the performance issues in the alpha before launch last fall. Yes, that exactly it. What’s your point?

If fixing the issues was a “simple job†then they would have done it by now is what I said…

n.b. If the above appears harsh, read some of Sneakson's other posts. What a pr... ;)

Well, I am probably the number one computer hardware advisor on here. If you have a problem with any other of my posts ever you are free to point out which ones you don’t like specifically.

Going through my posts shows how desperately you are grasping for just anything, by the way.

Wow, are you serious? Well, that's pretty much exactly the reply I expected. Thanks for playing. Case closed.

What about it? Stop being such an ARMA elitist that can't accept that other games have better and or more consistent graphics than ARMA does.

Please continue. Also, Sneakson, I'd like to hear more about how you think CPUs function and the relationship you've vicariously drawn between Rome Total War and ARMA 3. :)

Edit: Fun Fact: Angst means fear in German.

The relationship between ARMA3 and Rome: Total War II is that they're both CPU intensive games.

---------- Post added at 13:31 ---------- Previous post was at 13:28 ----------

Here is the real crux of the matter, and the reason this discussion isn't really going anywhere. I don't accept your basic premise that we need to sacrifice game mechanics to gain performance.

Arma 3 isn't significantly more complex in terms of game mechanics than Arma 2 or Arma 1 or even Operation Flashpoint. All of the basic gameplay elements remain the same, while the scale gets a little larger and graphics are improved. If the reason that Arma 3 runs poorly was that it is too complex, then we wouldn't have had OFP a decade ago.

We don't need to do less things, we just need to find ways to do them a little smarter and quicker.

Honestly, you're kind of putting Arma on a pedestal becuase it happens to cater to your specific tastes and no other game does. It's evident in the way you put quotes around AI when referring to BF3. BF3's AI isn't necessarily better or worse than Arma 3's; it's just different. They aren't comparable at all because they are designed to do different things and operate in different game environments. Neither game has true artificial intelligence.

Exactly.

[simon1279 53]

You're a dumb fanboy obviously... how is Crysis 1 born for consoles? How are any of the benchmark, most heavy computer games in existence made for consoles?

Have you even played Crysis, Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3/4, Call of Duty, Metro, Hitman: Abs or BioShock: Infinite?

Total War aren't strategy games?

And Total War runs bad only because it is still using parts of the R1TW engine? ARMA3 runs bad only because it is still using parts of the ARMA1 engine I bet!

Way to try to counter everything I say negatively even when that means abandoing all sense.

You seem to have a difficult time accepting that there are games with better graphics and stability than ARMA has...

Battlefield 3/4 has amazing graphics...

this is your opinion i expected nothing else than this answer, you' ve bought A3 because you didn't knew what you were going to buy, and maybe you've bought it expecting "the next FPS game"

I bet lot of DayZ players around here ehehe :D

my performance on our dedicated server is around 50/60 FPS BTW with up to 25 plyrs i7 4770k @4.2 ghz and nvidia gtx 680 4gb of useless vram, 16gb ram,samsung SSD 120gb, win 8.1

Edited March 18, 2014 by Simon1279
my fps info

[hardsiesta 1]

I don't know, maybe they are. There was a post a dev made from 2008 that essentially said they were interested in moving in that direction, but couldn't justify it for Arma 2, since multicore CPUs weren't common enough yet (even though it was pretty clear that was the direction the technology was going). No real progress has been made on this front, and it seems incredibly unlikely that we will see improvements in Arma 3, since it would likely require a huge engine rewrite.

This is very hard to believe since I've played both A2 and A3 on the same crap computer, and while A3 has many improved aspects it runs at least as well as A2 on that particular machine. So I would argue that progress has been made. If it wasn't, wouldn't we have an improved but proportionately slower A2 in our hands?

Although it's a bad comparison, if something like CE3 or FB2 can squat that machine at least as badly, by only reproducing your average Quake derivative, without the scale or detail that ArmA has, I think either we have something different than OFP here, or they have just as badly optimized Quake on their end.

Also, A3 can make decent activity on 4 threads on that CPU. Might not be universal, and I'm going to have a look to see if A2 does exactly same, though. (Edit: It did.)

Several points here.

First, it's not that Arma 3 runs well on low-end hardware, it's that it doesn't scale to high-end hardware that great.

Second, your complaints about Battlefield 3's scaling are some of the things that I think are good about it. I like that it scales down it's complexity to run well on low-end hardware. That said, I understand that this type of optimization is really up the the mission designer in Arma 3.

Third, I wouldn't bet on there being good reasons for things being the way they are. This series has notoriously been plagued by poor documentation and bloat. They've previously had issues with devs not knowing how certain stuff works and implementing redundant features. This was a big deal with the Arma 3 release as they did a lot of refactoring (still are, according to recent OPREPs) to clean up the engine and remove redundancies. Until that process is complete, I think it's fair to assume that there are areas that aren't as optimized as they can or should be.

As a side note regarding performance, there are still some odd behaviors in Arma 3, such as lowering certain settings like shadows causing increased CPU load and decreased performance. Also, there are still a number of objects casting CPU intensive shadows in the game, as opposed to moving fully to GPU drawn shadows.

Yes, that's why I said it's the other half of the optimization. It was irrelevant, but I wanted to bring it up in the context of variability in PC components. But about the high end scalability... We're still talking about MP here? I'd be interested to see some utilization stats from some decent dedicated servers, too.

I've heard about this documentation and "bis don't know how" thing several times, usually commented by people who didn't seem too credible. Do you have any decent references about this, that I could take a look at, to prove myself wrong? Until that, I doubt they're as lost with their game as the drama queens in the community like to put it. But I welcome any evidence that proves me wrong.

I know that <high shadows are switched onto CPU, but that's not necessarily anything else but a labeling problem. At least we have the option, albeit probably useless one. But haven't any problems with high+ (or disabled), even on crappy hw. I'd like to see more about that too.

Here is the real crux of the matter, and the reason this discussion isn't really going anywhere. I don't accept your basic premise that we need to sacrifice game mechanics to gain performance.

Arma 3 isn't significantly more complex in terms of game mechanics than Arma 2 or Arma 1 or even Operation Flashpoint. All of the basic gameplay elements remain the same, while the scale gets a little larger and graphics are improved. If the reason that Arma 3 runs poorly was that it is too complex, then we wouldn't have had OFP a decade ago.

We don't need to do less things, we just need to find ways to do them a little smarter and quicker.

Honestly, you're kind of putting Arma on a pedestal becuase it happens to cater to your specific tastes and no other game does. It's evident in the way you put quotes around AI when referring to BF3. BF3's AI isn't necessarily better or worse than Arma 3's; it's just different. They aren't comparable at all because they are designed to do different things and operate in different game environments. Neither game has true artificial intelligence.

And really, when it comes down to it, none of this whole argument about sacrificing performance for mechanics and features explains why the game runs worse in multiplayer than it does in single player.

I guess I have to give the original OFP another go since it's been too long to remember, but I'm pretty confident I'm not going to see just A3 with worse graphics and a smaller map. If that's the case, then I will have to change my mind. We'll see, although it's going be hard, since I would have to keep an eye on improvements that aren't visual, hah. Or maybe I'll have to figure out the similarities and differences some other way. You sound like you would know, so I would appreciate any specific details that brought you in to the conclusion that it's all the same.

Of course the main elements are the same. Does it mean the existing elements aren't improved or new ones being added? This is a very good thing, considering that the "standard improvement" in most other series have been the series becoming a console game and rather unilaterally going to shit.

But since we're on that A3 is worse only compared to it's predecessors, as there doesn't seem to be anything else to compare to, what kind of changes would you have expected between A2 and A3? And what series offers a better example, with it's respective genre in mind? I know I'm pretty happy with most of the improvements, that's quite a bit more than I can say about the differences between titles in other series. although some things I wanted to see are still missing. All this bearing in mind that we're comparing the vanilla products.

I mean, can we really forget that A2 didn't have a real sky while A3 has? The new system for rendering trees, perhaps contributing to the fact that the terrain and cities are more detailed than in A2, including enterability, the sound system and physics got reworked, out of which the physics isn't exactly perfectly fit yet, but still... And it's said the ballistics are better, too. And I really liked the battlesighting being in the vanilla. Oh, and the dynamic fog is crazy awesome, haven't seen that in many other games either... Zeus... Yeah, BIS is obviously stalling and milking the old OFP.

I mean, to me that sounds like quite a bit of work compared to other series that don't exactly try to push the limits like ArmA does. New DirectX effects and third party physics strapped on seems to have been on the radical end of improvements in most other series, since the introduction of 3D graphics.

Depends on your definition of AI. For my self it's an AI if it makes autonomous decisions. In bf it seems to me more of a scripted ordeal, so I hold even Q3 bots in higher regard. Needless to say I shat bricks when ArmA AI started going through houses looking for me, hiding in one of them. So yeah, different. Also different requirements. And yes, I do prefer ArmA over simple games, it should be obvious. What does that have to do with anything? I'm just saying we can't have everything like the games you prefer better can't have everything either.

Doesn't it explain something? Are we assuming the server goes under similar or lighter load than the client?

The ARMA series is a PC game and it runs like a console port, I would be ashamed of myself for putting out such an unoptimized product.

Compared to what? More often than not, it's the console ports that run at high FPS, because of the headroom in hosepower that would otherwise go unused. Funny enough, the last famous PC exclusive came with the meme "But can it run Crysis?". Look at what happened to it, too.

Edited March 18, 2014 by HardSiesta

[Sneakson 1]

I mean, to me that sounds like quite a bit of work compared to other series that don't exactly try to push the limits like ArmA does. New DirectX effects and third party physics strapped on seems to have been on the radical end of improvements in most other series, since the introduction of 3D graphics.

Compared to what? More often than not, it's the console ports that run at high FPS, because of the headroom in hosepower that would otherwise go unused. Funny enough, the last famous PC exclusive came with the meme "But can it run Crysis?". Look at what happened to it, too.

Don't say ARMA is the only game to push the limits though... ARMA pushes draw distance, character control, bullet trajectories and modability.

Battlefield pushes for an accessible, quick multiplayer experience with very compatible and consistent engine (not sure if 4 lives up to this yet, heard of some bugs)… Call of Duty is basically Quake nowadays…

Many games push for enjoyable and eventful singleplayer experiences, or storytelling, or graphics detail.

Most shooters nowadays try to do SOMETHING new, such as Day-Z, otherwise they would drown in the sea of shooters since the 90s.

ARMA is very impressive but less so because of the bugs and multiplayer issues.

I can't believe they still haven't fixed what I believe is ground tesselation that makes the ground "crawl" when you crawl on it... it was an Alpha issue. Many other examples.

---------- Post added at 21:24 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------

Compared to what? More often than not, it's the console ports that run at high FPS, because of the headroom in hosepower that would otherwise go unused. Funny enough, the last famous PC exclusive came with the meme "But can it run Crysis?". Look at what happened to it, too.

Compared to what? What what? Try another other shooter that runs at 60 fps while ARMA does 20 in multiplayer.

Only because you completely deny the existence of other games than ARMA doesn’t make it so and stop asking for examples when they’re obvious.

By the way: console ports to PC are often shitty (see Dark Souls, GTA IV, Resident Evil 4) and have terrible performance because of abysmal conversion instead of running better than the console versions.

What last famous PC exclusive are you talking about by the way? Crysis? What happened to Crysis?

[roshnak 41]

I've heard about this documentation and "bis don't know how" thing several times, usually commented by people who didn't seem too credible. Do you have any decent references about this, that I could take a look at, to prove myself wrong?

Early article detailing the start of the problem all the back in OFP: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131427/postmortem_bohemia_interactive_.php?print=1

Refactoring animation system because devs are now faced with a "complicated 'spaghetti' relationship between game code and animation configs" http://dev.arma3.com/oprep-refactoring-animations

Just a couple of examples that I have bookmarks to. There was other stuff posted on these forums that I didn't save the location of. I believe at one point the guy in charge of developing the engine left the company and didn't leave it all that well documented. I'm not saying that Arma is a trainwreck. I'm saying that over a decade of work on a project, stuff tends to get messy -- especially with such a rocky start -- and requires a concentrated effort to clean it up. Don't assume that everything is the way it is for a reason. It's entirely possible that it was completely unintentional and got lost over the course of the development of 3 games and 2 major expansions.

I know that <high shadows are switched onto CPU, but that's not necessarily anything else but a labeling problem. At least we have the option, albeit probably useless one. But haven't any problems with high+ (or disabled), even on crappy hw. I'd like to see more about that too.

Well, you probably don't have any problems with high shadows because you have it backwards. Low shadows are offloaded to the CPU and negatively impact performance in an already CPU bottlenecked game.

I mean, can we really forget that A2 didn't have a real sky while A3 has? The new system for rendering trees, perhaps contributing to the fact that the terrain and cities are more detailed than in A2, including enterability, the sound system and physics got reworked, out of which the physics isn't exactly perfectly fit yet, but still... And it's said the ballistics are better, too. And I really liked the battlesighting being in the vanilla. Oh, and the dynamic fog is crazy awesome, haven't seen that in many other games either... Zeus... Yeah, BIS is obviously stalling and milking the old OFP.

First of all, you are completely misreading my statement. I am not saying that Arma 3 is milking OFP. I am saying that your claims that Arma 3 has to run poorly in order to have all its features do not hold up against the fact that almost all of the features that make Arma 3 unique were present in OFP a decade ago. Computers have only gotten more powerful in that time.

Second, almost all of the features you listed are graphical in nature, which are not the game features you are arguing makes Arma 3 unique among video games.

Doesn't it explain something? Are we assuming the server goes under similar or lighter load than the client?

No. It doesn't explain anything, because once again you are misreading the situation. Clients are getting worse performance in multiplayer, not servers. This is a scenario in which much of the workload (AI) should be offloaded to the server, freeing up CPU cycles on the client end.

And yes, I do prefer ArmA over simple games, it should be obvious.

It's very obvious. It's obvious that you have no ability to objectively comment on this topic, as evidenced by the following absurd statement:

Although it's a bad comparison, if something like CE3 or FB2 can squat that machine at least as badly, by only reproducing your average Quake derivative, without the scale or detail that ArmA has, I think either we have something different than OFP here, or they have just as badly optimized Quake on their end.

I can only assume that when you are referring to CE3 and FB2 you are talking about the flagship games on those engines, Crysis and Battlefield. Those games are not arena shooters. I don't know of any arena shooters on Frostbite 2, while CryEngine has been used for a large variety of different games. Those games have almost nothing in common with Quake, mechanically. Anyone who has played the games in question can tell the difference immediately. Despite my repeated pleas for you to recognize that video games cannot be fairly lumped into the categories of "Arma" and "Everything Else" you continue to refuse to acknowledge the strengths of virtually every other game in existence or recognize the challenges that must go into creating them, all the while denigrating them for perceived weaknesses, which really just boil down to "they're not Arma."

Since you refuse to allow Arma to be examined in comparison to anything but itself, any discussion is pointless. No one can make any argument that you won't shoot down with, "Yeah, but this is Arma, and Arma is special."

Thank God the devs don't think like you do, or this series would have made no progress at all.

I can't believe they still haven't fixed what I believe is ground tesselation that makes the ground "crawl" when you crawl on it... it was an Alpha issue. Many other examples.

The effect is parallax.

Edited March 18, 2014 by roshnak

[doveman 7]

So it seems I have problems in SP as well, although it generally stays just about high enough at 25-35fps to be playable whereas MP has been stuck at 15fps or lower on numerous missions I've played. I've just installed a fresh Win8.1, so I'll try A3 on that and see if it's any better.

Nope, had the same experience after loading my saved campaign mission, running at 9fps or 12fps (depending on exactly where I saved). It goes back up to around 30fps eventually after I leave the compound (may not be leaving but just the time that's passed that fixes it) and that's where it is for most of the time though, whereas with MP I've been stuck at 15fps or 9fps for most of the mission.

[hardsiesta 1]

Early article detailing the start of the problem all the back in OFP: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131427/postmortem_bohemia_interactive_.php?print=1

Refactoring animation system because devs are now faced with a "complicated 'spaghetti' relationship between game code and animation configs" http://dev.arma3.com/oprep-refactoring-animations

Just a couple of examples that I have bookmarks to. There was other stuff posted on these forums that I didn't save the location of. I believe at one point the guy in charge of developing the engine left the company and didn't leave it all that well documented. I'm not saying that Arma is a trainwreck. I'm saying that over a decade of work on a project, stuff tends to get messy -- especially with such a rocky start -- and requires a concentrated effort to clean it up. Don't assume that everything is the way it is for a reason. It's entirely possible that it was completely unintentional and got lost over the course of the development of 3 games and 2 major expansions.

Ok, that clears it up. Generally the drama in threads related to this makes the train wreck vibe, on that camp, easy to assume. If that is not the case here, then good. Sorry if I misunderstood. But tbh, words like "no good reason" give off a pretty strong hint.

Obviously there can be any kind of hindrances in development, but I don't think BIS is the only one to deal with things like that. Words like refactoring isn't exactly a scary word in software development, fortunately. Quite the basic method even.

Well, you probably don't have any problems with high shadows because you have it backwards. Low shadows are offloaded to the CPU and negatively impact performance in an already CPU bottlenecked game.

No, I got what you meant. My point was: The CPU processing along with the low options seems useless, since high shadows don't cause problems on older GPUs, the FPS difference seems negligible compared to disabled. So I don't see a real problem there. Might be for some marginal group that tries to run the game on even worse hardware than I can find in my closet, but not a real problem. I guess I can see the redundancy, mentioned somewhere earlier, instead.

First of all, you are completely misreading my statement. I am not saying that Arma 3 is milking OFP. I am saying that your claims that Arma 3 has to run poorly in order to have all its features do not hold up against the fact that almost all of the features that make Arma 3 unique were present in OFP a decade ago. Computers have only gotten more powerful in that time.

Second, almost all of the features you listed are graphical in nature, which are not the game features you are arguing makes Arma 3 unique among video games.

Ok, that was more of rambling about how the game does improve in relation to the computer power it requires. Better visuals alone gives a hit to the CPU too, as seen in games that are all about visuals.

Just graphical or have graphical representations associated with them? No. Most of those have attributes that make them much more of gameplay features, which may be reprocessed at the server. Something like Kharg island trees are an example of something purely graphical. Most of those are quite unique as combination in a game, if not by themselves. Which they tend to be.

No. It doesn't explain anything, because once again you are misreading the situation. Clients are getting worse performance in multiplayer, not servers. This is a scenario in which much of the workload (AI) should be offloaded to the server, freeing up CPU cycles on the client end.

Ok, maybe I've mistaken then. If the problem is that specific then that's a good start. I've had the impression this is something much more universal, where this would be only one hair of it.

It's very obvious. It's obvious that you have no ability to objectively comment on this topic, as evidenced by the following absurd statement:

I can only assume that when you are referring to CE3 and FB2 you are talking about the flagship games on those engines, Crysis and Battlefield. Those games are not arena shooters. I don't know of any arena shooters on Frostbite 2, while CryEngine has been used for a large variety of different games. Those games have almost nothing in common with Quake, mechanically. Anyone who has played the games in question can tell the difference immediately. Despite my repeated pleas for you to recognize that video games cannot be fairly lumped into the categories of "Arma" and "Everything Else" you continue to refuse to acknowledge the strengths of virtually every other game in existence or recognize the challenges that must go into creating them, all the while denigrating them for perceived weaknesses, which really just boil down to "they're not Arma."

So what? You want to start armwrestling about genres? How those games are too tacticool to be just deathmatch in an arena-like enclosed space, or what? Oh look, my regenerating airplane with two hit boxes and unlimited ammo is such a game developmental feat. Right.

Game industry is like every other: The investors want certainty, and that can be well seen in most of what even remotely reminds ArmA, being 1st person games with guns that is. In this case it's just the engines that get developed, mostly to support better visuals. That's just what sets ArmA apart in it's features, along with hardly anything but crowdfunded games promising niche products like this.

What strengths do you want me to recognize, if we're not talking about something even remotely like ArmA, on engines that are primarily known for their FPS games? Yeah, I know a few cool car games. Much better car games than ArmA is. So, what now?

Since you refuse to allow Arma to be examined in comparison to anything but itself, any discussion is pointless. No one can make any argument that you won't shoot down with, "Yeah, but this is Arma, and Arma is special."

Thank God the devs don't think like you do, or this series would have made no progress at all.

Lol, you're forgetting the 10 times I asked for a decent comparison. You've named what, 0 until Sneakson let the cat out of the bag and you came up with previous ArmA games. And then you attack me over (even the genres of) whatever I represented FOR YOU, that you yourself did not and still have not. Hey, if you don't like my ideas and have something better to go on with, by all means. This is the last time I'm asking for it.

I still stand against what you argued: ArmA isn't your "standard" game. Your record of similar games: 0. You can bunch it up with whatever you want, though, like Sneakson did. I'm still having great games like no other, no problem.

But enough of this. Thanks for elaborating on the problem anyway. I hope they can make it better, along with every other aspect in the game.

Edited March 19, 2014 by HardSiesta

[Rough Knight 9]

An increase in even 5-10 fps would make a massive difference. I am not sure I need 50-60 fps, but solid 40 would be great.

[hardsiesta 1]

An increase in even 5-10 fps would make a massive difference. I am not sure I need 50-60 fps, but solid 40 would be great.

This I agree with. 30 is the bare minimum, but being at that is too close for comfort (and just that). It would be great, as long as nothing important had to be given up... But if that was the case then we'd probably be at that. Here's hoping they find some bug or awesome optimization for that.

[bad benson 1733]

Battlefield pushes for an accessible, quick multiplayer experience with very compatible and consistent engine

more like battlefield pushes...

dynmanic sounds based on environment and overall insane sound quality

destructable environments based on physics (not only scritped "levolution" but the ability to level whole buildings step by step)

particle system and overall particle quality

overall implementation of physics (no arcadey doesn't mean badly implemented)

there's probably more.

people should stop being ignorant. it's annoying (not you sneakson...just in general;)). battlefield is not small arma. it does so many things that arma doesn't which makes its scale eventhoguh smaller all the more impressive. just look at how much happens in a few seconds in a bf4 session and compare it to arma that slows down from a single explosion. and arma runs not amazing ON STRATIS in the editor WITHOUT ANY AI although it should.

it pretty much boils down to this:

I am saying that your claims that Arma 3 has to run poorly in order to have all its features do not hold up against the fact that almost all of the features that make Arma 3 unique were present in OFP a decade ago.

if you can't see that you are just a apologist. end of story.

i'm not a bf fanboy or anything but the way people act like arma does these outstanding things is just silly. it's made by a "small" studio and is based on old archaic structures. it feels still like ofp in so many ways. THESE are its problems. not its scale alone.

[Sneakson 1]

I think backwards compatibility is causing a lot of the issues in ARMA3.

[hardsiesta 1]

if you can't see that you are just a apologist. end of story.

Except I actually know some relatively comparable software to ArmA's features, that I didn't bring up. Different engines, different devs... And guess what? Very much the same problems that ArmA has.

The apologist door opens both ways, too.

You're free to think A3 is the same as OFP, the devs can't read the source code without documentation, or whatever. These types of software have their inherent problems, just as much as your preferred Battlefield has it's own, probably typical to it's respective genre as well. If you think all software, completely disregarding it's actual attributes, should run as well as anything with comparable visuals, because you think ArmA is all the same as OFP, then be my guest. I don't, and I don't even have to apologize anything.

Oh, BF does have a very nice audio system. That's my favorite aspect in the newer titles, pretty much the only thing special to it too. Too bad the sounds are way overproduced, too different, for me to say it's anything compared to ArmA's. Only because, excluding acoustic reverb, ArmA still sounds way more authentic, generally. Even A2 does, with it's relatively unimpressive samples, though that's probably solely thanks to the lack of overproduction that destroys the authenticity in the former example. We can compare ArmA to BF or any other game in sound, because that's what every game does, and I guess it's an aspect only very loosely, if at all, tied to any other aspect of the game, such as scale. Another is graphics.

Both eat their standard amount of processing power. ArmA still processes far more complicated gameplay mechanics, even if it reminds you of OFP, so saying it should compete with "standard" performance while having nonstandard features, no matter what (like it's just OFP, which it's not), isn't reasonable. Deny that if you want, but ArmA isn't alone with it's features and it's problems. You add an aspect and you add it's related problems with it. Doesn't make sense? Too bad, but not really my problem.

I've made my point. Take it any way you want, hope it helps somehow. Peace, out.

[Opticalsnare 12]

I don't even know what you guys are arguing about, i think some people just argue for the sake of arguing cause they are sad who got nothing else better to do. They proberly agree with everything you say but can't admit that they agree to what your saying cause they have a disorder which makes them keep blabbing on.

End of the day, A3 runs rather poor, is pretty unoptimized and does not use modern technology efficiently enough, when you get poop framerates regardless of graphic settings or ingame settings and your hardware is fairly decent and works as intended then its the software which is at fault.

I do not care what other games can't do that A3 can, i want A3 to actually do the things its supposed to be doing properly in the first place. Other games are other games not all games are the same some are racing, some are flightsims, some are for fun others are for simulation.

Theres really no point in saying yes but the features in A3 are what makes performance not a priority. Like serously? listen to yourself. I could tell you i made a car travel underwater and fly about like james bond, but can it actually travel underwater and fly about and be an effective means of transportation or is it just a gimmick showcar? Like it go underwater but you can only go 1mph and have enough O2 for a few minutes. Can it fly well sort of it can fly at a few feet off the ground but thats about it but but but no other car can do these things so that doesnt matter right? I can't believe there are still arguments going on like this every single ArmA game has been the same with the same agruments over and over again for the past decade its like groundhog the forums and game.

Actually i think this sums up the ArmA series for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i54Bg2mj9yA

Im fed up with facing the same damn issues over and over again in every SINGLE damn arma release its been the same SAME SAME SAME and being told yes but the features are what that matter THE features THE features. MY car has features its got AC, electric windows, heated seats, cd mp3 player, computer in the feckcking boot, windows 7 in the dash, wifi, sunvisors, sunroof, doors, mirrors, radio, satnav, bloody heated boiling water making coffee machine the list goes on yea. But is any of that shit actually any good or usefull when you got no pissing ENGINE to start NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.