Annoying with vanishing particles

[EDcase 87]

Yes very annoying.

Following Feedback Tracker entry

[CyclonicTuna 87]

I'm not sure if I'm being picky but this is beyond frustrating to me. Arma already has laughable particle FX and now they aren't working properly either. At first I thought it was because I'm using the Blatcore mod and it was simply outdated. 

Honestly if BI doesn't do anything to fix this in Arma 3 I don't see any point in playing anymore. I don't think you can expect players to take your game seriously as a military simulator if all your particle FX look like confetti poppers. And I have to say that I hope they get their particle game on with the new Enfusion engine otherwise I'm just going to skip new BI titles altogether. 

[munger 25]

Completely agree. I have stopped playing Arma 3 because of this bug. ruPal's excellent Blastcore Edited mod is severely impacted because of the problem with particles disappearing almost as soon as they appear, and it just makes the visuals look unnatural.

 

It looks like a fix may be possible though since ruPal has discovered that the diag version the 64bit exe displays the particles correctly. Possibly just a small config difference between the two exe's?

[8LacK5naK3 192]

It`s not bad enough to stop me playing, but it is just so ridiculously horrible to look at. It`s not even like you can ignore it, as it`s so blatantly in-your-face. I really hope they can sort this one out sooner rather than later.

 

Roll up, roll up, witness the burning village fill the sky with smoke, maybe, sort of, perhaps, oh, there it is, nope, yep, nope......

[super-truite 54]

For the mod Armageddon I am really handicaped by this particle rendering issue.
Even if there are improvments with 32bits and diag_x64 executables, the particle system
is not completely fixed.
One bug for which there is no improvment when switching from the regular exe to the diag_64 one is the disappearance of large 2D particles when the camera come close to the Billboards.
I am working on a pyroclastic flow and you see clearly this issue in the following videos:
regular (64 bits exe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN3lvudCvoU&feature=youtu.be
diag_x64.exe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_RI-5NlM4M&feature=youtu.be

 

[pierremgi 4905]

Perhaps, there is something to do with NVIDIA and else. We don't know what the relationship between  BI and graphic card designer is. Some drivers are optimized for the best new games. Why not Arma3?

[CyclonicTuna 87]

58 minutes ago, pierremgi said:

Perhaps, there is something to do with NVIDIA and else. We don't know what the relationship between  BI and graphic card designer is. Some drivers are optimized for the best new games. Why not Arma3?

 

This doesn't really seem like a driver related issue to me. Driver issues usually don't impact in game effects that much, more post proces effects such as anit aliasing or anisotropic filtering which are driven directly by graphics drivers  that are impacted by driver issues. But even if it were, I just don't get it you know? I mean, I know for a fact that Bohemia have very competent developers who CAN get shit done if they choose to put their backs into it. 

So why is it that there are so many blatantly dumb issues plaguing Arma, issues that other developers generally adress as soon as they pop up. Are they to stubborn to see these things as real issues or do they just don't care? 

[rossoe 46]

Has anyone spotted the same issue in video's released by Bohemia themselves recently, if not would this suggest they are not experiencing this on their setups, so they then consider it a fringe example? I can't imagine they would tolerate such a flaw on very visible particle effects, which takes a lot away from the realism of the game.

 

It would be great if a BI Dev could at least confirm that it's been recognised and or reproduced their side?

[POLPOX 779]

9 minutes ago, rossoe said:

Has anyone spotted the same issue in video's released by Bohemia themselves recently

They did.

On the official trailer and Community Guide. Ah no, this shame.

 

As I said, razazel claimed this task but nothing is done by now.

[rossoe 46]

All the ones I can find in feedback tracker:

 

Every particles don't show correctly:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T119284

 

Particles do not render properly since 1.62:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120030

 

Strange particles disappearing on 64bit build:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T122152

 

Smoke Grenade Particle Bug:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120160

[CyclonicTuna 87]

1 hour ago, rossoe said:

All the ones I can find in feedback tracker:

 

Every particles don't show correctly:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T119284

 

Particles do not render properly since 1.62:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120030

 

Strange particles disappearing on 64bit build:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T122152

 

Smoke Grenade Particle Bug:
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120160

 

That first ticket was created on July 12 2016. That's over a year ago, a year and 2 months to be exact. So this issue has persisted for over a year and nothing is being done about it. Why Bohemia?

[JasonO99 3]

I come back to ARMA3 and started noticing smoke being patchy. I was being a bit of a mod wh**re so thought I've probably got a conflict. Going back to vanilla and noticed it a bit more.

 

I guess before I didn't pick up on it being too immersed in a situation, but now that I've picked up on it I notice it all the time. I just blew up an enemy AA post and was waiting for a helicopter. A green smoke went down and as I was moving around waiting for the helicopter to arrive, there it was. Particles disappearing, then looking back and the smoke's gone thick again; both from the burning fire and the smoke grenade.

 

It's interesting that it was discovered that there is a difference between the 32bit/64bit application and perhaps this will help BIS locate the issue. I do think just an acknowledgement on the issue would be a good place to start. I trust BIS do fix issues as best as possible but we're all twiddling thumbs here not sure when (or if) anything is going to happen.

[anthariel 165]

I sent a private message to Dwarden on the beginning of this week (since he works on the executables and that apparently diagnostic executable partially corrects the problem), I did not had any response since but he subsequently followed two tickets related to this problem, I assume that this is a start.

[CyclonicTuna 87]

On 16-9-2017 at 10:01 PM, anthariel said:

I sent a private message to Dwarden on the beginning of this week (since he works on the executables and that apparently diagnostic executable partially corrects the problem), I did not had any response since but he subsequently followed two tickets related to this problem, I assume that this is a start.

 

Lets hope so. I wanted to get back into Arma more with new DLC on the horizon, but this bug keeps... well bugging me so much haha 

[rossoe 46]

I really hope Dwarden can help with this one, it would be such a shame to have an issue like this abandoned, i know they have limited resource working on Arma 3 now so I'm crossing everything in the hope it's a viable fix.

 

I made a quick vid of it tonight - the only way to get the smoke to return is to look away and then back again.

 

 

[8LacK5naK3 192]

2 hours ago, rossoe said:

I made a quick vid of it tonight - the only way to get the smoke to return is to look away and then back again.

 

I take it that is blastcore, or something similar... the disappearing effect is the same, but default particles look much worse when it happens, due to being thinner. Very much hoping this gets picked up soon, and isn`t left in the same state as the permenantly buggered eyes in the final A2/OA release.

 

A bug so obvious and in-your-face visible should never be allowed to continue. 64-bit is an actual upgrade, not a trade-off.

[rossoe 46]

your right flyingpig it was with 'Blastcore Edited' mod - see 2 vids below running without Blastcore - clearly big difference between 32bit and 64bit

 

64bit

 

32bit

 

Running Intel G3258

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

8GB Ram

[vandest 11]

In both cases, there is a problem.

In 64 bit, all up column of smoke. (Big issue when you are far enough away)

In 32 bit, down column of smoke. (Small issue when you are far enough away, but very weird when you're close)

This issues are obvious and they're in the game from the beginning (even if it's worse since 64 bit) and BI haven't never do anything to fix it, so I'd be very surprised if one day they do something for that.

I hope I'll be surprised...

[ExA_RaiderSpectre 3]

 i want to say that some of our missions are ruined right now.

 

Actual Mission with sandstorm script bugged: 

 

 

Mission with sandstorm script BEFORE the bug: 

 

[anthariel 165]

Some good news:

 

 

 

 

 

[rossoe 46]

This is very promising feedback, I'm so glad BI have it on their lists. I assume it'll have to wait for the next DLC before it hits main branch.

[Vasily.B 529]

On 22.09.2017 at 2:07 AM, rossoe said:

I really hope Dwarden can help with this one, it would be such a shame to have an issue like this abandoned, i know they have limited resource working on Arma 3 now so I'm crossing everything in the hope it's a viable fix.

 

I made a quick vid of it tonight - the only way to get the smoke to return is to look away and then back again.

 

 

I have exacly same issue - 64 bit of arma, windows 10 (64 bit), GTX 1060, it 6700K. Its like that since around 1.62

[POLPOX 779]

razazel commented on the feedback post...

Quote

Fix is already in progress, unfortunately it did not make it into the latest hotfix, we will do our best to include it as soon as possible.

Well, good news.

[rossoe 46]

On 10/10/2017 at 8:33 AM, POLPOX said:

razazel commented on the feedback post...

Well, good news.

This would be a massive WIN, I have actually been holding off playing through campaigns - waiting for this to be fixed, whilst I work on a terrain project.

 

Does anyone know the maximum number - re columns of smoke that can actually be rendered on a battlefield before it starts clipping any? - is there a video setting which affects that? as I was hoping when 64 bit was introduced there was a lot of talk about the engine being able to handle more assets due to memory improvements.

[super-truite 54]

17 hours ago, rossoe said:

This would be a massive WIN, I have actually been holding off playing through campaigns - waiting for this to be fixed, whilst I work on a terrain project.

 

Does anyone know the maximum number - re columns of smoke that can actually be rendered on a battlefield before it starts clipping any? - is there a video setting which affects that? as I was hoping when 64 bit was introduced there was a lot of talk about the engine being able to handle more assets due to memory improvements.

I don't remember exactly, but I think that with particle settings set to " high",   the limit is somewhere near 15K particles (you can check the particle limit with the arma3 diag.exe in dev branch https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Diagnostics_Exe ).

you can push the limit a bit further by defining your own "Ultra" config option for particles with a mod:

class CfgVideoOptions
{
	class Particles
	{
		class High;
		class Low;
		class Normal;
		class Ultra: High
		{
			particlesHardLimit = 20000;
			particlesSoftLimit = 19000;
			text = "Ultra";
		};

	};
};

 

I did not test if you can go really much further than 20K particles since 64bits exe but I did not see any changelog regarding this, so I guess the limit did not change.