arma - 1st impression

[e5kimo 0]

just have tell you that ...

this is probably the worst experience i had with any straight out of the box game i have bought to date (even lomac only comes second).

well out of the box is not really correct, i purchased via sprocketidea.com and already patched v1.05. a great concept to buy software, sadly it is poorly executed. but this is about the game.

i am well aware that my rig is not the most up to date hardware wise but it is doing fine with any thing else i have played lately.

amd 64 3200 2gig ram 6600gt 256mb (please feel free to offer the solution to spend $2000 to play a $40 game.)

i was really looking forward to a graphically updated OFP. an all time favourite of mine.

but sofar i havent made it past the training mission. mainly due to this http://img338.imageshack.us/my.php?image=arma01pa3.jpg

and the fact that the campaign gets stuck on the cutscenes.

so what does the normal gamer do ? he heads to the forum to find solutions.

i looked around for a while updated drivers, tweaked the settings, tried different settings (yes very low settings too) and have found nothing conclusive.

i am also suprised that there is a bugtracker for this game.

i mean it is obvious that there are some very serious texture caching issues in this game but that it is so bad that there is an official bug tracker for an already gold game?

not very impressed sofar.

what i have found to help a little bit and maybe it will help others... after changing your video settings you MUST restart the game. that will acctually let you play semi decent for about 15 minutes, until the texture weirdness comes back.

i can see the beauty of the graphics for a moment but man is it a turn off to suddenly be in blob and planar land.

there is some serious work that needs to be done on this one.

for now i m back to OFP i think. (unless there is a way to patch back to previous version which sounds more stable, at least from reading forum posts)

[dmarkwick 261]

Sorry you seem to be having these problems, the image certainly looks like crap. The only thing i can say in it's defence is that it's not a common problem.

[walker 0]

Hi e5kimo

Reduce everything to low on that level of card. View distance should be 1200m. It looks to me like mine does when I turn everything to max, the buffers get full and clog up.

And I can see some of your settings are at max. You machine is not capable of that until your upgrade your graphic card. Everything else on your system looks fine for running ArmA.

Buy an ATI X1950 Pro 256mb for about 200 US Dollars your view distance can then be 3500 with everything on high.

OR.

For about 600 US dolars ATI X1950 XTX with 512mb and upgrade view distance and raise everything to very high.

Both options considerably less than the 2000 US dollars you are quoting so do not worry too much and in the meen time run it at low like I do on my laptop. It runs fine and I play a lot of MP on those settings. They are the default for most MP games anyway.

The post is either about the need to alter your settiings and be more realistic in which case the post should probably be in TROUBLESHOOTING OR if you are wanting a complain in which add it to the official complaint thread where it will add to the weight of you argument. The official complaint thread exists if you search allthough there are less complaints since 1.05 so it has started to disapear. You are also trying to write a review and a 1.05 review thread exists why not use it instead of cluttering up the community forum. Finaly you seem upset about the download method of distribution but your message gets lost in trying to do all these things at once.

Trying to make you point in four different directions as you have is just waisting your time. It is better to be focussed or people wont be able to help you.

Please be aware your graphic card is minimum spec for ArmA so run it accordingly. That is what those graphic option settings are for.

Kind Regards walker

[Gunney 0]

ArmA is not at fault for your terrible graphics card . Either play everthing on low or buy another graphics card. ArmA gave me a little kick in the rear to go ahead and by a midrange graphics card(i went w/ the $150 xfx7600GT xxx edition) but in many cases you are not only buying the card for ArmA(could be different w/ u) but it benifits other games i play like FSX, WoW, Quake 4, etc.

[JimLad 0]

Welcome to the club. I have an 8800 GTS and ArmA runs like a dog

[MehMan 0]

JimLad: Don't blame BIS that nvidia gave you shitty drivers, as you can see many 8800 users are having various problems. New architecture of the card, new drivers and all, released a bit too late for BIS to fix it. They are trying, but it's not their fault.

I also have a 6600gt, with a weaker CPU and less RAM. I used to have those problems, but I put my settings on low-normal, with forced vsync off and a few other tweaks and the game runs nicely. I get a nice FPS in cities and even better in deserts. Forests, however, kill me, as they are pixel shader intensive, and that kinda sucks. Really sucks. But perhaps BIS will work that out somehow :P.

[l mandrake 9]

sigh, another confused person blaming the game instead of his semi-obsolescent hardware

[walker 0]

Hi All

JimLad the 8800 are early adopter cards for windows vista Nvidia are not that keen on putting out the XP drivers and Vista is at least 6 to 9 months from stability if my experience of alll versions from windows 3.11 is anything to go by.

I feel sorry for you as an early adopter of Direct X 10 technology and possibly windows Vista it is the price you pay for being in the vanguard. I have seen all the other threads in other games like Fear where people are complaing about the Fog their being at only 50 m view distance. I suggest like many others you pressure Nvidia to bring out new drivers particlarly for XP if that is what you have.

But I do not wish to stray to far from this threads topic all though i feel e5kimo should be able to get ArmA running serviceably if he takes a little friendy advice.

I have lesser spec laptop and it runs fine once set everything to low and it still looks better than most other games.

I still think payment for a mid range graphic card would improve his experience but I do not know what his budget is.

Kind regards walker

[shadow 6]

If you need assistance, post in the troubleshooting forum.

If you want to rant on how bad Arma is, use this thread.

We dont need another thread combining both.

Closing.