Patch 1.05 impressions

[dm 9]

A POSSIBLE reason it may be more apparent in 1.05 is that the LODs are switching earlier, so the issues appear more apparent since they get more pixel space than before (its easier to see the flickering on a helmet when its 30x30 pixels, as against 5x5 for e.g.)

Now, this is ofcourse me just posturing, I have no idea if this is the ACTUAL cause of it, what I do know is that it is inherent in all current graphics hardware (a bit of further research and I remembered that the z and w buffers are part of hardware spec, not directX or other software spec) and wont be going away totally. BI MIGHT be able to do something about it, I wouldn't hold my breath tho.

[Aurvan 0]

I usually play a chopper pilot in multiplayer coop games, and I have noticed some issues with helicopters.

-Re-arming the Cobra is a nightmare. It wont re-arm no matter what I do.

-It's impossible to turn off the engine after you have landed since the chopper will ascend if you don't hold down the key that keeps it on the ground.

-NV goggles (as mentioned) are useless in the Cobra.

-There is a parachute bug where people that jump out of my chopper are dropped from the parachute before they reach the ground, resulting in their deaths.

Anyone else having the same problems, or have a solution?

[killaalf 0]

I usually play a chopper pilot in multiplayer coop games, and I have noticed some issues with helicopters.

-Re-arming the Cobra is a nightmare. It wont re-arm no matter what I do.

-It's impossible to turn off the engine after you have landed since the chopper will ascend if you don't hold down the key that keeps it on the ground.

-NV goggles (as mentioned) are useless in the Cobra.

-There is a parachute bug where people that jump out of my chopper are dropped from the parachute before they reach the ground, resulting in their deaths.

Anyone else having the same problems, or have a solution?

1) Re-arming works fine here. Admittedly it is a bit of a chore to find the right spot and then keep the heli steady there, but it is certainly doable. But I think the bug where you could not reload an empty aircraft is still there, so leave some ordnance aboard before reloading.

2) I have no problem turning the engine off once landed, I have mapped the action menu to my HOTAS and just turn the engine off there.

3) NV goggles in the Cobra are not useless for me, granted, it's easier to see with them when on foot, but I can see just fine nonetheless. Their usefulness diminishes the higher you go, I noticed, but as I like to stay real low it is not a problem for me.

4) Never tried that, so I cannot say anything about it.

[el_muerko 0]

Unplayable after 30 minutes of MP as the textures vanish and the models lower in quality and that's assuming I can get the game to run as most of the time I get securom errors.

When I can play and while the game is running properly its a lot more polished than 1.05 but these issues are ruining the game.

[gavinthecat 0]

Well I installed the 1.04 UK Version and then the euro patch and WOW

I had tried the Czech version before and was horrified at how crappy it ran on my computer.

However the 1.05 is a huge improvement (and its graphic options) seems to make a real difference now.

It does seem like a totally different game and im very pleased. I look forward to the next patch bringing even further enhancements (the gun aiming channge to 1.05 is incredible too).

What i look forward to most is these inconsisntencies evenutally being more and more resolved between different folks versions.

But overall - great job BIS

[Gianteric 0]

Well I installed the 1.04 UK Version and then the euro patch and WOW

I had tried the Czech version before and was horrified at how crappy it ran on my computer.

However the 1.05 is a huge improvement (and its graphic options) seems to make a real difference now.

It does seem like a totally different game and im very pleased. I look forward to the next patch bringing even further enhancements (the gun aiming channge to 1.05 is incredible too).

What i look forward to most is these inconsisntencies evenutally being more and more resolved between different folks versions.

But overall - great job BIS

Finally some postiveness in this topic!

Thanks!

I should be playing the game soon! I'm downloading it, but I keep having to stop the download because my internet will only let my download so much. I'm at about 40%, but I probably won't finish the download for another couple of days.

[h - 169]

I have not had a single problem with ArmA since patching to 1.05..

I haven't got much experience with 1.04 because the game finally arrived to me a day before the 1.05 release so I'm comparing everything to 1.02..

- No weird CTDs anymore (apparently).

- No performance issues, FPS stayed the same if not a couple of FPS higher (no noteable FPS increase from 1.02 -> 1.04 either).

- The new 'iron sights' thing is absolutey brilliant (also the fact the sights were more zoomed in already in 1.04 was a great improvement).

- No waiting after exiting the map view, all good stuff..

- The AI is much much much more intelligent than in 1.02

- the HDR is 50x better than in 1.02, at least I have not experienced any flickering or the weird 'day-when-looking-up-night-when-looking-down' stuff..

- And the list goes on and on..

Only bad things that I can find

- There is still some texture loading problems when you start in a vehicle cargo, it can take a few seconds until your team mates look like people instead of weird sculptures.. And sometimes some vehicles don't get 'LODded' properly and look like boxes for some time (can take very long) until they reach their correct form. But this doesn't really bother me that much..

(And this usually happens when you are in the cargo of some vehicle and switch to 3rd person view and look around at other vehicles and one or two of those look like boxes)..

If it happened to me in RL that would worry me a bit though..

- The vehicle AI And this is actually quite annoying.

I'm not into the flying machines so can't say about that but when it comes to ground vehicles (at least the wheeled ones) and the AI driving them on a road it is just redicilous, at least the formation 'Column (Compact)' seems to be very troubling for the AI, even more so if you add 'live' objects like civilians who just stand on the side of the road a few meters away from the road 'edge'..

Neither one of those negatives ruin the game for me, the latter is just frustrating at times.

I have now bought two copies (morphicon and 505) and absolutely have no regrets at all from buying them.. And never had..

[Frans 0]

-It's impossible to turn off the engine after you have landed since the chopper will ascend if you don't hold down the key that keeps it on the ground.

If you fly with mouse/keyboard but you do have a joystick attached with a throttle, make sure the throttle is in neutral setting, or completely closed. The keyboard overrides the joystick, but as soon as you let go of the keys, the joystick kicks back in.

Or check your key mappings to see if there's anything wrong.

[studiosonic 0]

Well, since going to 1.5 I've had performance issues. I'm getting around 30-40 fps, but now and again it drops to 5ish before going back up again. Seems to be when it's loading new textures, like when I turn in a street to see a new building. Slows down for a second or two and then back to normal. Not good.

Currently on Vista, with Core 2 Due E6300, 1gb PC6400 DDR2 RAM and a Geforce 7600GT. 1.4 was definitely smoother performance-wise. I'm using 1024*768, Normal settings, and no EAX.

.....think I might set up XP again and see if it is better without the Vista-factor!

[EricM 0]

Quote[/b] ]Well, since going to 1.5 I've had performance issues. I'm getting around 30-40 fps, but now and again it drops to 5ish before going back up again. Seems to be when it's loading new textures, like when I turn in a street to see a new building. Slows down for a second or two and then back to normal. Not good.

Try defragmenting your Hard drive and put -maxmem=512 or 1024 to your shortcut to allow Arma to get more RAM (check how much you have left and you can dedicate and adjust accordingly), this may help reduce your problem.

[sugar_wolf 0]

Sorry for that but the look of grass and shadows in 1.05 is rather pathetic assuming the fact that there's no visible improvement in the game's performance, they'd looked really nice before they were changed.

So, Is there any chance they'll be brought back to what we had before 1.05 or at least a possibillity to adjust the level of complexity of grass in 1.06?

[Maddmatt 1]

Sorry for that but the look of grass and shadows in 1.05 is rather pathetic assuming the fact that there's no visible improvement in the game's performance, they'd looked really nice before they were changed.

So, Is there any chance they'll be brought back to what we had before 1.05 or at least a possibillity to adjust the level of complexity of grass in 1.06?

The look of grass and shadows was not changed. You must have turned down settings or something.

[sugar_wolf 0]

It was changed indeed. Now even on very high settings we have got much shorter grass than before which I must admit is pretty useful but looks a bit wird and unnatural. Also the range on which it's rendered was decreased at least twice.

Talking about the shadows there must be some kind of bug which u can see in the pictures I have linked below. As u can see in the first one terrain details was set on very low and in the second one on very high. Level of shadows is set in both pictures on normal. So it seems that increasing terrain details gives us more cubic and bad looking shadows, isn't it?

terrain details - very low; shadows - normal

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/1696/arma2007031713513874nc8.jpg

terrain details - very high; shadows - normal

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4777/arma2007031713530023sh1.jpg

<span style='color:Red'>Hotlinks for images over 100kb removed</span>

[Maddmatt 1]

It was changed indeed. Now even on very high settings we have got much shorter grass than before which I must admit is pretty useful but looks a bit wird and unnatural. Also the range on which it's rendered was decreased at least twice.

Talking about the shadows there must be some kind of bug which u can see in the pictures I have linked below. As u can see in the first one terrain details was set on very low and in the second one on very high. Level of shadows is set in both pictures on normal. So it seems that increasing terrain details gives us more cubic and bad looking shadows, isn't it?

terrain details - very low; shadows - normal

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/1696/arma2007031713513874nc8.jpg

terrain details - very high; shadows - normal

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/4777/arma2007031713530023sh1.jpg

I think that's because of the grasslayer, the distant shadow isn't casting on the ground but on the grasslayer above the ground. That's the same way it casts on objects. The grasslayer was introduced since 1.05 so you can hide in grass at a distance.

You wouldn't see that on high/very high shadow detail settings.

The grass not showing at further distances on higher terrain detail settings might also be due to the grasslayer, it spawns to close and hides some of the grass.

The grasslayer does need some tweaking, it also doesn't look as detailed as the terrain at a distance when you look at it through a scope.

Also, shader detail on normal seems to make the North Sahrani grass appear longer than on high. Object detail on low seems to do that too.