Do things seem a little dead?

[343guiltyspark 10]

And how do you know that ? Wishful thinking ?

its not a secret they have been rehashing the same engine for decades

[ProfTournesol 956]

its not a secret they have been rehashing the same engine for decades

I'm playing OFP and ArmA3 a lot, and obviously the engines are very different, as much as Windows 8 is different from Windows 3.1

[343guiltyspark 10]

I'm playing OFP and ArmA3 a lot, and obviously the engines are very different, as much as Windows 8 is different from Windows 3.1

they are all the same exact thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Virtuality_%28game_engine%29

[ProfTournesol 956]

they are all the same exact thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Virtuality_%28game_engine%29

You don't even read your own quote :rolleyes:

[343guiltyspark 10]

You don't even read your own quote :rolleyes:

you cannot identify differences in code by playing different games.

Im sorry you dont understand what im talking about.

[enex 11]

Wait, they are rehashing exact same code with shortcuts and additions because is not a secret?How is that a fact?I don't get it.

[ProfTournesol 956]

you cannot identify differences in code by playing different games.

Im sorry you dont understand what im talking about.

RV1 and RV4 aren't the "exact same thing", as much as you want them to be the same.

[343guiltyspark 10]

RV1 and RV4 aren't the "exact same thing", as much as you want them to be the same.

I was not being literal in my description , this was clearly evident in the first post i made. The core of the engine remains the same as it was in 2000 with modifications to make it work on newer pc's

[brightcandle 114]

This game engine is the reason for performance issues. Dont lower standards for the game because the devs are incompetent in realizing they are still driving around a model T with fuel injection and satellite radio.

It was written in its entirety before the concept of multiple core CPUs were around. Remember operation flashpoint? we are still playing on the exact same code with shortcuts and "additions" to make it work on newer computers.

What bohemia needs to do is stop their content creation in entirety, and start work on a new engine from the ground up with future technology in mind. An engine that allows maximum performance and flexibility regarding adding content.

There is no reason our modern rigs cannot be running a game like arma 3 at screaming FPS with hundreds of units. The problem is the skeletal framework on which the game is built is rotting from old age.

Bohemia will keep dragging out the dead corpse of this engine until people stop buying their games. And arma 3's success to active player ratio is proof that the next game will NOT do well unless they 1up themselves with PR like they did with arma3.

Start begging for a new engine. Not a 3rd party engine , not cryengine , not unreal. Bohemia needs to make a new engine from the ground up. No copy/pasting from VBS. Everything needs to go.

We are right about the game world being the issue. Just today someone posted AI performance tests in the VR world showing 1000 fps. The engine is capable of very high FPS. If you play the game on Cherno you can get 30-60, on altis 20-60 and on some of the other object dense maps (like Bornholm) you can be down in the teens or below. Simply put its object count or its technical equivalent of draw calls that is dominating the performance from the rendering front. DirectX is intrinsically single threaded and there is just a limit on how much you can do, which Arma 3 exceeds or puts a lot of overhead around. The other big time sink per frame is the simulation and here you are right there needs to be a great deal of multi threading as its both quite a lot of the frame time (I have seen 25ms) and its single threaded, but its also the bit that is divorced from the rendering engine. I think people think that Arma 3 ought to run better for how it looks but I think its the simulation and complexity of the worlds dominating here and it underutilises the GPUs as a result, if you play on the Arma 2 ported maps the experience is a lot better because its +10-15 fps and that is just low complexity all around. If you play on the smaller less complicated maps it runs a lot lot better.

I agree that the game needs engine upgrades, the rendering needs world as does the scripting and the core underlying simulation all needs to be panellised at the very least. But a new engine isn't something you can just stick into Arma 4 and expect results, because the game has so many unique engine elements. Its just more complicated than getting Cry engine 3 and ramming it in there in a patch and going. Arma has its own unique engine for a reason, because no other games do it remotely like they do. They don't need to start again they need to focus on fixing the very real client side issues.

(Recommend people look at my profile capture https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3638175/Capture%20Palagia.png to understand why I say these are the issues).

[enex 11]

I agree that they are aspects of VR engines that haven't been improved.One thing for example is switching weapon on the move.Then midrange textures haven't seen

lots of improvement.But VR engine sure change.PhyX intergration, improved inventory system.

Regarding performance I don't think they can make big change like mentioned draw calls.Mainly because it would break the entire game.

[343guiltyspark 10]

We are right about the game world being the issue. Just today someone posted AI performance tests in the VR world showing 1000 fps. The engine is capable of very high FPS. If you play the game on Cherno you can get 30-60, on altis 20-60 and on some of the other object dense maps (like Bornholm) you can be down in the teens or below. Simply put its object count or its technical equivalent of draw calls that is dominating the performance from the rendering front. DirectX is intrinsically single threaded and there is just a limit on how much you can do, which Arma 3 exceeds or puts a lot of overhead around. The other big time sink per frame is the simulation and here you are right there needs to be a great deal of multi threading as its both quite a lot of the frame time (I have seen 25ms) and its single threaded, but its also the bit that is divorced from the rendering engine. I think people think that Arma 3 ought to run better for how it looks but I think its the simulation and complexity of the worlds dominating here and it underutilises the GPUs as a result, if you play on the Arma 2 ported maps the experience is a lot better because its +10-15 fps and that is just low complexity all around. If you play on the smaller less complicated maps it runs a lot lot better.

I agree that the game needs engine upgrades, the rendering needs world as does the scripting and the core underlying simulation all needs to be panellised at the very least. But a new engine isn't something you can just stick into Arma 4 and expect results, because the game has so many unique engine elements. Its just more complicated than getting Cry engine 3 and ramming it in there in a patch and going. Arma has its own unique engine for a reason, because no other games do it remotely like they do. They don't need to start again they need to focus on fixing the very real client side issues.

(Recommend people look at my profile capture https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3638175/Capture%20Palagia.png to understand why I say these are the issues).

this is why im saying they need to re-write it completely from the ground up.

there are tons of bottlenecks and that can only be fixed by designing the engine to take advantage of newer computer hardware.

The AI stuff has to be done by BI , you cant just put arma on a different engine. You need to create a new one from the ground up specifically aiming for superb performance with massive object counts and view distances.

[brightcandle 114]

this is why im saying they need to re-write it completely from the ground up.

there are tons of bottlenecks and that can only be fixed by designing the engine to take advantage of newer computer hardware.

The AI stuff has to be done by BI , you cant just put arma on a different engine. You need to create a new one from the ground up specifically aiming for superb performance with massive object counts and view distances.

Yes but in software its always faster to take the battle hardened software you have and evolve it into what you need. As much as adding concurrency to the existing engine will be hard, rewriting an engine and game that took over a decade to build will be harder.

[343guiltyspark 10]

Yes but in software its always faster to take the battle hardened software you have and evolve it into what you need. As much as adding concurrency to the existing engine will be hard, rewriting an engine and game that took over a decade to build will be harder.

would it though?

All the things they have learned from adapting the engine will be simple for them to implement into a new engine if they know what they need.

[vran. 13]

If they were to make a fully new engine from scratch they should also abandon the ArmA franchise and make something completely, possibly revolutionary, new. But I don't think this is a viable option also including breaking with the ArmA tradition and abandoning the formed community. Take a look at TitanIM for that.

[zukov 483]

Bi has only to make a playable maps, without 500 km2 for 24 players

[fareast 20]

i hope they're working on dx12/mantle..that would solve the draw call problem

[clawhammer 10]

i hope they're working on dx12/mantle..that would solve the draw call problem

Until that is finished, there is no AMD CPU left that can handle this game and benefit from that. My secoundary pc has the fx-8350. In SP this CPU works good, but you CAN NOT PLAY MULTIPLAYER with that cpu.

[brightcandle 114]

i hope they're working on dx12/mantle..that would solve the draw call problem

Maybe, it depends on the reason why the rendering process is taking a long time. It might be because of the API but it could also be BIS code setting up the calls and actually the game isn't really running up against DX limits, from the information we have and the cryptic names of the calls its hard to tell. The simulation presumably is entirely their code and model but that could also at the bottom of things turn out not to be the case. I can't for example tell if its the scripting engine that takes the time or something else, its obscured to an extent to make such analysis hard.

[big_t 1]

I must be the only person that would prefer a series of smaller maps rather than a big one. The bigger it is the slower it will run and Arma 3 already has severe performance problems. Most AOs don't need to be more than a few kilometres so maps designed around a few specific interesting locations are more useful as they run better verses a massive map with lots of areas but where when you only operate in a small part of the map you seem to pay in frames for all the rest you aren't using. I don't want them too small but really big maps aren't sensible considering how poorly Arma 3 runs with them.

These are my thoughts Exactly. I would rather a few smaller diverse maps (maybe a 1/5 or 1/6 of altis). Like you said when the AO is only on a portion of the map anyway the size is just bringing down the frame rate. Make sense?

[KeyCat 131]

These are my thoughts Exactly. I would rather a few smaller diverse maps (maybe a 1/5 or 1/6 of altis). Like you said when the AO is only on a portion of the map anyway the size is just bringing down the frame rate. Make sense?

First of all I'm not a 3D software engineer so I could be wrong but since ArmA has streaming terrain (was introduced in A1) my guess is that the actual map size in km2 have little to do with performance, more likely it is number of objects within VD the detail of the objects (houses seems to be specially taxing) and total number of objects.

Personally I like big maps of course even more so if their performnce is good.

/KC

Edited January 21, 2015 by KeyCat