nVidia 8800 LOD/Texture bug

[Warpy 0]

So these symptoms... are they caused by the patch 1.08 or hardware? From the look's of things the Arma crew aren't in a hurry to fix it, so I'm guessing it's been written of as "deal with it" till the next patch?

[largepiece 0]

ARghhhhhhhh! I wish they were fixing it!

Tried turning post processing effects on again, seeing as I thought this new maxmem=256 line was fixing my problems. ArmA BSOD'd and restarted my computer again!!!!!!!

Hate it when you think a fix is working but it only works for a wee while...

Arghhh! I so wish they'd fix this game! I just spent all day making a custom face and a squad patch, logged onto a multiplayer server and it only lasted 5 minutes!

[WarProphet 0]

I had problems too.

The "cannot find surface texture" was the worst.

Anyway, I downloaded the latest nvidia BETA drivers and I the prob went away. I HAVE NOT CRASHED YET.

Asus Extreme mb

Intel Quad

2x evga 8800gtx/sli

Creative Xfi

Vista Ult.64

[quiet_man 8]

Tried turning post processing effects on again, seeing as I thought this new maxmem=256 line was fixing my problems. ArmA BSOD'd and restarted my computer again!!!!!!!

Maybe your searching at the wrong end?

Have you tried to disable your soundcard and see what happens when you run Arma?

QuietMan

EDIT:

Quote[/b] ]Having the same problem, but with vista and BSOD (thought this was meant to be a thing of the past with vista, what gives?!?) - Ha10kx2k.sys problem which when traced down is the creative drivers.

from another thread here

[TheVoodoo 0]

one more thing you could try is to start Arma with following parameter:

arma.exe -wthamistillplayingarma=dontknow

sorry could not resist. arma pissed me off like no game did before!

[quiet_man 8]

arma.exe -wthamistillplayingarma=dontknow

yea, while I'm absolutely against "this should BIS have included from beginning" people, real bugs are a different thing.

But as I'm playing only very few other games, I don't know if others are better. And for sure there is no other game like Arma out there than OPF. Might be the reason why you still play it?

Also you should not forget that Arma revealed some bugs in hardware drivers. I think some improvements during the last months were not only from Arma itself.

QuietMan

[largepiece 0]

Hmmm no I haven't tried disabling sound quiet_man. I've got a budget creative labs card in there too. Disabled my onboard sound seeing I have nothing but trouble with it. Hmmmmm might give that a shot, cheers mate!

[binkster 0]

Ive been posting this any a few threads but I have 8800gtx and I play with settings on high and texture on Normal. Usually my text gets blurry or its gets a little choppy so I type SHIFT plus MINUS (numpad) then type FLUSH. This flushes video ram and I can continue to play without CTD. I have to do this every 10min or so. Do it if you spawn far away or when u enter new towns because of all the textures being loaded. Also Im using rivatuner to display Video ram in game so I watch that. Seems when it goes over 400mb the FPS starts going down. I flush it and gets back to around 250mb. Then gradually goes up.

[heliosjet 0]

great however I don't understand why BIS is not doing the VRAM flush automatically.

They could detect if your character is idle, check the VRAM usage and flush.

Doing it manually is not very good programming.

[largepiece 0]

Well the sound thing didn't work. Thanks anyway quiet. I tried another sound card and still got CTDs.

I've just had three CTD's in the last 30 minutes playing online and didn't have any in three hours last night. Weird.

Thanks for that tip about manual flushing blinkster. I'll try that. I might try to setup riva tuner to keep track of my VRAM too... Is there in option in the hardware monitoring somewhere?

[binkster 0]

Check the forums for rivatuner, there are some links to some good tutorials on how to set up overhead display of FPS, Gpu Temps, FAN speeds, vram, ram and tons of stuff.  I just have video temps and ram and fps running.  Another thing is I just downloaded and installed the new beta drivers for xp.  Seems to work better.  I still have to flush the vram, but it seems not as often.  But for you guys that keep crashing you can just flush, I know its difficult, like me you get used to it and you can do it in seconds its the only way to get a good game in.  

Ive also noticed if you put textures on low and very low it makes it worse.  Just do normal.  If you flush durring low or very low you will go to a black screen while it flushes and may take up to 15 seconds.  But this doesnt happen with normal textures.  Most people are playing evolution so just get used to flushing everytime u respawn and everytime u are in a town.

Edit: @largepiece I dont think bis will do it automatically. There is something else going on. This shouldnt happen in the first place. Imagine being in a firefight and all of a sudden your screen goes black and then back to normal. This is what happens sometimes but most of the time its a click flicker of the screen.

[the.d 0]

Hey Everyone!

I think I just found a (temporary?) solution to the problem(s) for Vista64 users.

Still need confirmation on whether this works for everybody - here's the story:

There were some similarities to glitches/performance problems encountered in "STALKER - Shadow of Chernobyl".

The following procedure is pretty much the same as in STALKER and hence will probably only work properly with 64-bit operating systems (sorry).

Try this:

0) First of all, create a backup of your original "arma.exe"

1) Download "Explorer Suite" found here.

2) Run "CFF Explorer.exe" and open your Arma.exe with it.

3) Open up "NT Headers/File Header" in the left column. Check the right column now. You will find a "Click here" button. Click it. (..)

4) Check "App can handle >2gb addresstest"

5) Save the whole thing.

6) Run Arma.exe with your preferred parameters* (I'm using ' "...\Armed Assault\arma.exe" -nosplash h -maxmem=256 -mod=@ModWarSound', for instance)

*Note that -maxmem=xxx is still used and apparently required here. I DO hope a real patch will be released to address this issue. ("Sniperdoc" is 100% right. It's intolerable and rather embarrassing for BIS. But frankly, I also blame myself for ever having bought Vista.. I fell for DX10.)

By doing all this, I was finally able to play the game in "Very high" Detail with 8xFSAA enabled and "default Textures", not encountering any CTDs or even LOD/texture load problems for the time I played.

I can give you the detailed system specs if needed.

This will still require some confirmation by others especially for longer periods of playing time, as I just can't do that myself at the moment (Uni's a bitch).

Good luck, guys - hope it works!

[largepiece 0]

Nice post there blinkster. That's clarified a few things for me. I'm not sure I know enough about programming to put the blame in the Nividia camp or BI camp, although my brother (head dev for a large freight company here in NZ) reckons it should go more with BI. At any rate, your manual flush method has certainly made it more playable for me. I'm getting used to doing it pretty quick too. Lol, usually just before the chopper I'm in lands at a FARP near the present obj.

I think I'm using the 1.60 something beta drivers for XP. Is there a newer version that that out?

Evolution is a pretty wicked mission aye. I did some scripting in OpFlash and I have some appreciation for the huge amount of time the guy who designed that mission must have put into it.

Ah well, guess I'll keeping waiting to see if Nividia and BI can come up with a solution for us.

I've just started reading about this bug too:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....9;st=30

and realised I get that one as well! Lol!

ArmA is still a flippin awesome game in my opinion, despite these issues.

[Barry the baldy 0]

The original poster, while a bit over the top, has a valid point with gamers accepting cruddy first versions of retail games as "The Norm" BUT.... It's part of the industry now, with cable in almost every gamers home the 'patch culture' is easier for developers to deal with.

Better get used to it mate, its here to stay. Just do what I do and don't buy the game until you've spent some time on the games forums, read the issues people are having and the devs have released 2 or 3 patches.

[ArmaVidz 0]

The original poster, while a bit over the top, has a valid point with gamers accepting cruddy first versions of retail games as "The Norm" BUT.... It's part of the industry now, with cable in almost every gamers home the 'patch culture' is easier for developers to deal with.

Better get used to it mate, its here to stay.

I agree. I would like to point out this is why piracy is also here to stay.