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LOD Discussion

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Honestly, unless you are running a 20 year old GPU, its not going to be 'burning' from arma at max settings. My GTX980ti barely hits 50% with all settings on ultra. Even my old GTX760 could handle ultra settings without much hassle. CPU on the other hand is a different story. Fact is, as a paying end user, you should not be expected to 'enjoy it as it is', that is a ridiculous comment.

I'm afraid that's not the case for me with my 2GB HD6950. OK, it's a bit old but not 20 years old! I generally find even OC'd to 850/1300 (stock 800/1250) it's loaded 99% most of the time, even on the menu screen and with relatively low settings, whereas my OC'd i5-4670k only uses about 50%. Tanoa seems particularly bad at the moment and I get as low as 20fps in certain locations/views with only one rifleman on the map, whereas Stratis gives me about 35-50fps.

 

I uploaded a short video showing the problem and my settings (I normally run higher to try and minimise the LOD issues but turned them down to see if it would make much difference, which it didn't) with MSI Afterburner's OSD for technical stats. I limited it to 30fps whilst recording and although I'd expect recording to cause a bit of a drop in FPS, it was actually 20fps at the worst point even when I wasn't recording. https://youtu.be/W9BZe6YQep0

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I'm afraid that's not the case for me with my 2GB HD6950. OK, it's a bit old but not 20 years old!

 

I think it's about time for an upgrade there bud.  Thinking maybe a Radeon RX 480 since you like the Red Team. (?)

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I think it's about time for an upgrade there bud.  Thinking maybe a Radeon RX 480 since you like the Red Team. (?)

Yeah, I've got an eye on one of those but nonetheless, the Recommended Specs for ArmA3, even on the Apex pre-order page say "Radeon HD 7750" and my HD 6950 is more powerful than that http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=1271&gid2=797&compare=radeon-hd-6950-sapphire-2gb-edition-vs-radeon-hd-7750-1gb-gddr5

 

I'm hoping there's going to be considerable optimisations pre or post release but I can't see how a HD 7750 would cope with Tanoa, especially if we need to run some settings on Ultra to prevent the distracting LOD switching.

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So not many with increased stuttering (also on Altis/Stratis) compared to pre 1.60...shall check up my HW then....

 

/KC
 

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So not many with increased stuttering (also on Altis/Stratis) compared to pre 1.60...shall check up my HW then....

 

/KC

Soz, missed your question... In short, no I personally haven't noticed any (increased) stuttering compared to the 1.58.x build whilst in-game. I'd be checking over your graphic settings.

 

I play A3Wasteland a fair bit and frame stutter for me doesn't seem to be present (at mission spawns I may notice a slight frame stutter from time to time due to script execution). As for all the LOD changes... very noticeable, everywhere.

 

My own graphical settings should you want a reference... (i7 4770K - 32GB RAM - Gigabyte 4096MB AMD Radeon R9 290 OC - SAMSUNG SSD)

onIMOgo.png

 

And my Arma 3 video settings...

http://imgur.com/a/JNXnk

 

-soul.

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Honestly, unless you are running a 20 year old GPU, its not going to be 'burning' from arma at max settings. My GTX980ti barely hits 50% with all settings on ultra. Even my old GTX760 could handle ultra settings without much hassle. CPU on the other hand is a different story. Fact is, as a paying end user, you should not be expected to 'enjoy it as it is', that is a ridiculous comment.

50% usage in Tanoa under heavy foliage? I need to see a evidence to believe on that.
Unless you are playing with low graphics, but then whats the point for a 980ti?

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Thanks for the input. I have a GTX980 and ran it at ultra at ~4000 in VD in 1.58 on Altis/Stratis without any stuttering but not so with 1.60. My CPU is 6700K @ 4.7 GHz and 3000 MHz DDR4 RAM and same HDD as before so I'm scratching my head a bit...

 

FPS are the same as I had in 1.58  but the stuttering are really noticable for me in 1.60. Wonder if it can be related to the LOD issue?

 

/KC

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Some lods seem worse than others. Bushes in particular seem to like to rapidly swap up/down lods for no raisin. But perhaps some lods are just more noticeable than others:

 

Like with quadbikes:

 

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCXN4mu3lKXNZFjnHuJnFCA

 

Check out my youtube, it has quite a few videos of bad LOD's, shadows and the like since the 'visual update' of Arma 3... I don't think I've ever posted so many videos on something so bad, which was suppose to be so good.

 

I mean, really... whoever is in their quality control department needs their eyes checked, as I personally would NOT have let the 'visual update' be released the way it was presented to us. I really can't understand what made them mess it all up so bad... I really can't.

 

Whatever the case, the 'dev's' acknowledged the issue(s) in the latest SITREP... I just hope they follow through and correct everything that's being discussed/shown in this thread, as well as the numerous other 'visual update' (feedback) threads.

 

-soul.

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Some lods seem worse than others. Bushes in particular seem to like to rapidly swap up/down lods for no raisin. But perhaps some lods are just more noticeable than others:

 

Like with quadbikes:

 

I hate when the game can't decide whether to use a LOD or another for a split second. Honestly if they fix the flickering they have already resolved a big part of the issue.

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Thanks for all your feedback and input. I am sure they'll get some of it solved ;)

 

Here's another video, which clearly shows that the LOD switching is incorrectly configured. I won't believe that this helps performance.

 

 

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The LOD switching has nothing to do with power of the GPU I feel maybe a mixture of CPU and GPU, SSD makes no real difference now.

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SSD makes no difference in LOD switching, because the model file with all it's LOD is already saved in the RAM.

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I think it's about time for an upgrade there bud.  Thinking maybe a Radeon RX 480 since you like the Red Team. (?)

Sorry mate, but for Arma 3 you still need a Nvidia.

Is a fact that 2 RX 480 in CrossfireX perfom better than a GTX 1080 (for half of the price), but since Arma 3 is not ready for CrossfireX it will perform like crap and since a single RX 480 is nothing new or anything good, the better choice is still Nvidia.

 

wtEaO1S.jpg

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Sorry mate, but for Arma 3 you still need a Nvidia.

 

I'm on a modest AMD GC (Radeon R7 200), and the game runs just fine with everything on high.

You don't "need" Nvidia to play Arma3... Any more or less recent GC will do.

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What gets me about the LOD swapping (especially the quadbike example) is that the next LOD down isn't even the right colour/shade!  How can this be ?

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What gets me about the LOD swapping (especially the quadbike example) is that the next LOD down isn't even the right colour/shade!  How can this be ?

Yeah, I have noticed that a lot of models are lacking LOD variations too (on Altis at least) : for instance damaged buildings will often look clean from a distance.

If you zoom in the clean LOD will be replaced by the proper damaged textures/model, often resulting in a brutal aspect or color change.

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Sorry mate, but for Arma 3 you still need a Nvidia.

Is a fact that 2 RX 480 in CrossfireX perfom better than a GTX 1080 (for half of the price), but since Arma 3 is not ready for CrossfireX it will perform like crap and since a single RX 480 is nothing new or anything good, the better choice is still Nvidia.

 

 

This again is you speaking as if its fact, when clearly its your own opinion, probably based on your own 'poor' experience with a AMD card. Now there are plenty of AMD users, me included, that have no issues using AMD cards for this and all the other titles in the series. So how do you account for that.

 

So to follow your lead, I'll state its 'fact' that all AMD cards have no issues with A3 and NVidia is a poor choice............ Obviously this is not the case, so pointless pointing things out as 'fact'..

 

There are good and bad in all things. Its your setup that dictates your performance and there are soo many variables in each setup, its almost impossible to predict how something will perform. AMD will run this game as well as NVidia, depends on the card and your setup.

 

I can run A3 on my other old gaming pc with a AMD HD5850 2gb card with no issues at all. The 290 I have now has no issues either. NVidia in the past have been just as good. My concerns for good performance are a clean system with little to nothing running in the background. I ran A2 & A3 on a Athlon 640 with the 5850 and it still played A3 on the highest settings. Its only when it comes to recording at the same time that performance dropped, even then with the drop, it performed very well. I had lots of vids on my channel at the time showing this.

 

AMD or NVidia, both are good, should you choose a good card from them. When you start having issues, look inward at your own system and setup, not at a product range where there are millions of players having no issues..

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What gets me about the LOD swapping (especially the quadbike example) is that the next LOD down isn't even the right colour/shade!  How can this be ?

 

The lower lods will have simplified (or no) texture/material, because — when working correctly — these objects will be too small on your screen for such details to be noticeable. It's an optimisation thing. Unfortunately at the moment it's swapping to these low lods when the objects are still very close. And it's not just an overly aggressive lod change, it's buggy because they jump up and down levels far too often/quickly, and for no good reason.

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What gets me about the LOD swapping (especially the quadbike example) is that the next LOD down isn't even the right colour/shade!  How can this be ?

 

Yes, this bothers me too. Inconsistent colours between LODs makes a bad situation worse.

Feedback tracker ticket: (Apex) Many objects change colour and/or shade between LODs. 

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Noticed today that even the blackfish has a very rough LOD setting, the propellers disappear after ~ 40m, where you should still see them spinning, since they're huge.

Changing the LOD at a further distance, around 150-200m would make more sense.

 

Cheers

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Please stick to the topic, no conversations about Red vs Green or similar. Future off-topic posts will be reported. Thank you.

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Up close you want to be able to see a very detailed texture and count rivets. From 100 m you still want to see a round wheel on a quad bike, but not rivets and so on. So every asset might need 4-5 LODs to be useful.

 

Could it be that for many assets only the high-fidelity LOD and one crap one exists? That would explain the abrupt LOD change. How can we investigate what LODs are actually available ?

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Up close you want to be able to see a very detailed texture and count rivets. From 100 m you still want to see a round wheel on a quad bike, but not rivets and so on. So every asset might need 4-5 LODs to be useful.

 

Could it be that for many assets only the high-fidelity LOD and one crap one exists? That would explain the abrupt LOD change. How can we investigate what LODs are actually available ?

lod changes are automatic, if the engine feels your performance is shit, is gonna try to go down a notch (lods, mipmaps etc)

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Could it be that for many assets only the high-fidelity LOD and one crap one exists? That would explain the abrupt LOD change. How can we investigate what LODs are actually available ?

By using eliteness from mikero. All standard BI models have at least 3-4 lower detailed model versions.

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