Patch 1.05 impressions

[MidShip 0]

As with OFP, don't forget some fog.

[KorppiX 0]

I love the patch, except for one thing.  You can turn the grass off in singleplayer, but from what I have seen, it is always there in multiplayer.

The same here, I just cannot switch the grass off on our server by changing the terrain detail setting. However, if I include setterraingrid 50 in the missions, there is no grass. But it should work through server config.

My other problem is, that internal voice doesn't seem to be working.

But the game has become totally playable on my not so new computer, and the multiplayer part has been improved since 1.02 a lot.

Oh that's sad news I was so waiting for 1.05 to fix the multiplayer grass issue... I would appreciate if somebody told me how to do the setterraingrid-thing to my server, or there will be no multipleyr playing for me and my friend (we have low-end computers)

[Shadow NX 1]

Been playing a bit on the weekend ( SP only mnostly the campaign ) and had some good fun with it.

Seems like i now get even lower framerates in grass than before which is damn annoying especially in Blackop missiosn with the AimPoint guns.

However playing with the settings and especially the new options helped a lot... Sahrani may look lot less impressive without grass but it runs like a charm so i usually switch between lowest land detail and low depending on the mission, the rest stays at mid or high.

AI seems better but varies quite a lot, like the night attack mission where you should destroy the BMPs and Shilkas, extreme skilled shooters there always laying down and not moving at all waiting till you raise your head ( and they dont wear any NV googles ).

Hate the mission but i noticed with the AK instead of the Aimpoint this mission got lot easier ( thanks to the new AK ironsights with a lot finer pin ).

Then in later missions like when you destroythe convoi they all run across my hiding place and i just lean out and kill one after another with nearly 0 counterfire.

THen again in the mission where you blow up the bridge i was often flanked by single soldiers that suddently where behind me giving me a hard time, i like that.

My own AI also felt a tad better now in the mission where we attack the village at day ( ! ) with the 4 specops i had only one casulty and found the mission pretty playable and good fun... with 1.02 i hated it a lot cause i always had to run ahead trying to kill anyone before they kill my AI.

Other than that i like the new menues ( still bit too simple but meh... ) the faster loading, the lot better reacting choppers, the new ironsights and AI improvements etc etc.

However still a lot to be done but a huge improvement already, now i hope there can also be a fix for the people that still encounter these huge performance drops.

Anyway, me = happy customer again ( not as much as in OFP but still happy )

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

To say something positive: An older version of crCTI tailored for version 1.02 made by Jack Hammersmith was running crash free for 3,5 hours - but then it crashed. But here Jack needs to analyze if it is his fault or BI fault. The path finding of M1A1 is horrible, both tanks out of my squad and from foreign squads constantly crashing into each other like drivers would be totally blind. They push me from the bridge, they turned me upside-down, it is a shame.

There is a hight scripted CTI from LaKing where he made it possible to set the distance between the units between 2 and 200m. I guess a similar feature in ArmA would help a lot.

[Infam0us 10]

1200m here and runs fine on my not-so-uber-elite system.

I gave up long time ago discussing why one needs 3000m+ viewdistance when his weapon has an average range of 600m.

It would make sense in a game that was infantry only, but when you have things like helicopters and SABOT chucking tanks then longer ranges come into play.

2000m seems good for me. You can see the surrounding terrain quite well and it's not much of a drop from 1200m or more.

Slighty off topic, but if you yourself have set a view distance of 2000+ in Singleplayer, does this carry on into Multiplayer, or does the server dictate the view distance for all the players?

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

Server is setting max VD as far as I know. In OFP the human had around 1/3 less VD compared with KI since after 2/3 the details are faded out by a virtual fog or humidity. So if server VD is 2500 you get less then 2000 even if you set 5000 and KI gets 2500.

But dunno if it works in ArmA like this.

[stefan 0]

For those, who has problems with music & sounds in the campaign, try to disable hardware sound acceleration in options menu

[Aurvan 0]

I can't say for sure if this is a 1.05 bug or a 1.04 bug or it's just my game as i never tested the AH1Z before.

When i press "N" i get the nightvision but then after about 4 seconds it fades back to black (04.00hrs in game). I tested all the other US helos and there fine, it's just the A1HZ.

Can anyone else test this out.

Also has the tow missile always flown like it does in 1.05. I'm amazed it actually reaches the target because of the zigzag dance it does. Anyone else noticed the Tow vehicles being crap at fireing when you order them to, they take at least 3 missiles to hit the target., after a long delay from targeting to actually fireing...

Plus the drivers of the M113 and stryker don't turn out properly. I order safe mode and the driver wont turn out unless i go in the rear.I thought this was fixed. This is my first real attempt to test some of the weapons in Arma and if they fixed a shit load of bugs i'd hate to think what it was like in 1.04  

I can confirm that the NV goggles doesn't work properly in the Cobra. Last night on multiplayer I got shot down because I couldn't see anything and got too high up in the air. Damn Shilka...

[EDcase 87]

1.05 is a great improvement in my opinion.

Grass effect for distance (simple but effective)

Improved Chopper handling

AI improvements (there will always be more to do)

Map to game transition faster

plus lot of other stuff

I haven't played online yet and I've heard that chaos noobs are a problem.  Isn't there an autokick for multiple TKs?  If not there should be.

Anyway, there is obviously more fixing to do but thanks BIS for the hard work and its only gona get better

[Blanco 0]

Is the new HUD a feature from 1.05?

I only played Arma 1.04 a few hours so I can't remember.

Anyway, I like the new HUD in 1.05, the yellow target boxes are much smaller & transparant now.

They don't block my view anymore when I look through my ironsight like they did in OFP. Target 12 o clock, 50 meters!

Ok but I can't see shit because that ugly thick yellow targetbox is in the way.

Great job BIS, you were reading my mind.

Can you make that iron crosshair a bit transparant and finer too? Or maybe remove the 2 vertical bars on each side. Actually, I only need the pin to aim.

[BroK3n 0]

The two vertical bars shows the accuracy, stability and status of your player. Say after a long sprint you'd see the bars move further apart and your accuracy declines when shooting from the hip.

If we only had the pin i think some people would complain on why their shots arent going where it should.

[Scrub 0]

I think he's being a bit silly and talking about the ironsight.     I like the difference in weapons.   I got my tank knocked out and had to hump it back to base, tried to move CQB through Corazol and found the M4's sights to be great at distance shooting, but real sucky in close quarters (as the sights cover most the viewable area).  I like it!  Makes me appreciate aimpoints and mission specific gear MUCH more.

[EricM 0]

It seems that patch 1.05 reverted my game to 32bit colours instead of the 16bit colours hack I used to improve performance on my ge6600GT card. Changed it again in Arma.cfg and it seems I got back more or less the same performance as before.

Actually it seems to run smoother in the countryside and a bit more sluggish (7 fps less) in the city (corazol/paraiso) as measured in fraps. The new lod blending is very nice, but you still see shadows popping up in the trees (at least with my shadow/shader settings).

The motorbike is so much fun to drive with a joystick, it banks so smoothly in the curves, it's a bliss. The New Ironsight is a nice improvement too.

[KeyCat 131]

Grass effect for distance (simple but effective)

Yes, having grass working over distance is a good improvement but unfurtunately it degrades the graphic quality quite a bit due to the low res texture used on the new grass layer.

Also seems that the new grass layer introduce a new flickering problem and partly transparent objects (for example head/hair seen thru helmets) on objects at mid/long ranges. This is of course most obvious looking thru scopes and only shows on objects at mid/long ranges but thats exactly what a sniper do . These two problems seems tied togheter since it looks like the new grass layer kinda flickers at same rate but I'm only guessing here...

First I suspected a driver issue on my end but I've tried with nVidia 77.77 WHQL, 84.21 WHQL, 93.71 WHQL and 93.81 Beta on my GF 6600 GT (256 MB) and the problem persists in all drivers tested.

Wonder if this is related to nVidia cards or do you ATI users see this to (see pic below)?

Hopefully BIS can find a way to fix this in future patches.

/KC

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

i'm a bit dissapointed that the GPS system works for all soldiers just by pressing ESC in MP (map centers on ya current position). Was hoping that it would be fixed, cause it really blows some of the coop gameplay away.

[Maddmatt 1]

...

I remember seeing that in 1.04 too, so I don't think it's got anything to do with the grasslayer. In OFP there used to be an option called w-buffer which would prevent similar glitches from happening in OFP, but the the graphics card companies stopped supporting it in newer drivers. Newer hardware might have no support for that whatsoever.

So I think the blame for that glitch goes to ATI(now AMD) and Nvidia.

Maybe there is a way for BIS to fix it though, I'm no programmer so I wouldn't know if there is another solution.

[Dudester 0]

i'm a bit dissapointed that the GPS system works for all soldiers just by pressing ESC in MP (map centers on ya current position). Was hoping that it would be fixed, cause it really blows some of the coop gameplay away.

Well pressing Esc for me only brings up a mini map, that doesn't centre on my player, it just brings up a smaller map.

[mattxr 9]

i'm a bit dissapointed that the GPS system works for all soldiers just by pressing ESC in MP (map centers on ya current position). Was hoping that it would be fixed, cause it really blows some of the coop gameplay away.

Yeah very true, even when you disable the map in the description for MP missions when the player is lost all that they have to do is press ESC and they have found there position .. which IMHO is crap.

[dm 9]

...

I remember seeing that in 1.04 too, so I don't think it's got anything to do with the grasslayer. In OFP there used to be an option called w-buffer which would prevent similar glitches from happening in OFP, but the the graphics card companies stopped supporting it in newer drivers. Newer hardware might have no support for that whatsoever.

So I think the blame for that glitch goes to ATI(now AMD) and Nvidia.

Maybe there is a way for BIS to fix it though, I'm no programmer so I wouldn't know if there is another solution.

That is indeed the cause of the problem.

Older generation graphics cards used to use the w-buffer to prevent corruption of the pixel data during inversion for distant rendering, since the w-buffer is no longer supported in modern graphics chipsets, the raw z-buffer data has to be used, which results in the flickering (as seen in the picture)

There are ways to combat it - such as removing hidden faces which are close to the external model (such as the head in low LOD's) or avoiding overplapping faces alltogether. It is however, a fairly common graphics engine issue, especially when dealing with the draw distances involved in ArmA.

[wolfsatar 0]

it me or Arma look badder?

very high

high

med

low

very low

i notice that foliage FPS was realy improved but not fully fixed

maybie i need to upgrade my GF 6800GT

same problem,

at leadtek gf 6800 gt and amd x2 2500 mhz with 1 gb ram.

textures looks very bright and not so sharpe ... 1.02 was a better texture quality and performance!

[KimTuomi 0]

Is there somekind of problem when commanding a tank with AI gunner? It seems that the gunner is not firing the targets with the main cannon when necessary? For example, you have an armored target and the gunner just seems to use the machine gun against them. Or is there something I do not understand?!

I think that I am not supposed to order the gun change manually. At least this is true with helos, I need to order the weapon.

[killaalf 0]

I think that I am not supposed to order the gun change manually.

Yes, you are. Just use the same key you use for changing between semi/auto/grenades.

[KeyCat 131]

I remember seeing that in 1.04 too, so I don't think it's got anything to do with the grasslayer.

Never tried 1.04 but I'm 100% positive that the problem didn't existed in 1.02 and as you say I saw this in OFP 1.96 too.

Do you have a nVidia or an ATI card?

/KC

[dm 9]

I remember seeing that in 1.04 too, so I don't think it's got anything to do with the grasslayer.

Never tried 1.04 but I'm 100% positive that the problem didn't existed in 1.02 and as you say I saw this in OFP 1.96 too.

Do you have a nVidia or an ATI card?

/KC

It doesnt matter what card you have, neither brand features the w-buffer anymore, so the problem will be "rampant" across the range.

Whilst changes in the graphics engine for v1.05 may have slightly degraded the z-buffer performance, it is not specifically a 1.05 problem. Its a problem seated deeper in the actual graphics engine which will not be able to be solved on this generation of graphics hardware (I'm not sure how DX10 handles it, but since ArmA is a DX9 game, thats irrelevant)

[KeyCat 131]

Its a problem seated deeper in the actual graphics engine which will not be able to be solved on this generation of graphics hardware

DeadMeatXM2, thanks for clarifying and if what you states is true it doesn't sound to good.

I understand that this may fall under "nitpicking" but I hated it in OFP and was happy to see it eliminated (or at least not noticable) in ArmA 1.01/1.02. Maybe not a high priority but still hope BIS can do something in the future to get it back to the 1.01/1.02 level since the "flickering effect" on distant objects when using the scope is really bad now.

/KC