Huge drop of FPS

[Maddmatt 1]

If it´s true what you´re saying it is enabling cheating.

As with viewdistance this should be a serverside override option.

Serverside settings should be mandatory or at least server should be able to read out user settings and display. Along with the server config a message should pop up and either disconnect the player or give the others a warning.

Can one of the Dev´s comment ?

well i tryed in mp games and i can change my vegetation during the game. If im not glad with my FPS i change the settings in order to have the game how i like and playable.

I understand what you mean, but if a person cant handle high vegetations why is he forced to use it and not be able to change it. (Hope BIS made this intencionally so people have the option to choose, same thing happens to those o like to play with very high vegetation. If the server is set to very low vegetation and if he wants to play very high, why not let him choose freely)

Can one of the Dev´s comment ?

i would like to hear also. i wait for an answer.

cheers

edit: typo

What do you mean by "low vegetation"? There is no "vegetation" setting. The amount of grass shown is affected by the terrain detail setting, terrain detail and viewdistance are set by the server in MP. The other settings are client side.

Object detail and shader detail can also make the grass thinner - and they are client side - but they wont turn grass off.

[wamingo 1]

So basically there's no point in Arma having settings above high, even when it's installed on very powerfull PCs. It's like BIS is always one step behind when there games released because it's not playable on very high settings.

Right now, perhaps you're right, but in the future, it'll be nice to have the higher settings available, and I think you'll agree. Moaning about not being able to run on highest setting, if you can run decently on other settings, is simply shortsighted.

There's nothing about this game that is built exclusively for the "now" - the editor and modability is further proof of that. This game is built for the future in many respects.

Bugs aside, again.

[NeMeSiS 11]

So basically there's no point in Arma having settings above high, even when it's installed on very powerfull PCs. It's like BIS is always one step behind when there games released because it's not playable on very high settings.

Right now, perhaps you're right, but in the future, it'll be nice to have the higher settings available, and I think you'll agree. Moaning about not being able to run on highest setting, if you can run decently on other settings, is simply shortsighted.

There's nothing about this game that is built exclusively for the "now" - the editor and modability is further proof of that. This game is built for the future in many respects.

Yup, in that case you might as well yell at other games for not having such high settings as in the future you will still be stuck with the same old graphics

(although ive seen people running the game fine at very high settings)

EDIT: Fine being 25fps+

[Maddmatt 1]

Yup, in that case you might as well yell at other games for not having such high settings as in the future you will still be stuck with the same old graphics

But those are usually the games that you play with for a week and then forget about. ArmA isn't suppose to be one of those games .

[whisper 0]

What do you mean if they can solve it...

It means it's possible that there are only two ways to solve it. You render less polygons, ie less vegetation or you get/wait for more powerful computers.

If you look back on ofp, the solution became the latter. It's not unthinkable that it will be so again.

Edit. Though I will add, it sounds like there are some performance hogging bugs as well which could probably smoothe the problems on at least the more powerful computers. ie I don't get 7fps looking at grass and my computer is only mediocre at this point.

So basically there's no point in Arma having settings above high, even when it's installed on very powerfull PCs. It's like BIS is always one step behind when there games released because it's not playable on very high settings.

How comes it is "unacceptable" to have to wait for better computer to set on "very high" settings? You have this urgent urgent need to show (to yourself) how uber your rig is and justificate the money you spent on it by setting every possible game to the max? How weird is that...

I personnaly don't care if I clicked on something written "High" instead of "Very High" on a game menu I barely see anyway.

I care about what I see in game. Is it nice? Immersive? Believable? And playable?

If we follow your line of thinking, then the solution for BI is easily found : just remove the very high setting.

"My game looks ugly", "I have ugly textures too often", etc... yes, ofc, THAT is not normal.

But complaining about "I can't select Very High" is not really helping.

so the real question is : can't you find graphical settings that give you playable FPS and immersive/believable environment? And comparing it to today's "standards", bearing in mind that said standards are a bit out of order, seeing the scale ArmA brings that is currently unmatched. I mean, I can accept ArmA being less beautifull than other games released the same period, because said games are far from rendering up to 2500m around me on my computer (though I need to check for Oblivion, but comparatively, I've more FPS on ArmA than Oblivion).

My question to BI : are you confident you will find a solution? :P

If not, then it may be worth trying to separate object between the GPU intensive ones (the ones having transparency if I understood well), and the others, and give a setting that could set separately the quality of both category. This way, we could have decent quality for non-transparent object and decent performance with transparent ones

OR, perhaps only giving transparency to the highest quality LoD (or the 2 highest)? (perhaps stupid suggestion, I've no clue :P )

[celery 8]

bear in mind that fraps is not an accurate indicator of FPS, by no extent of the imagination.

An interesting point of view. Where have you learned this and what is a better method to find out your fps?

[whisper 0]

bear in mind that fraps is not an accurate indicator of FPS, by no extent of the imagination.

An interesting point of view. Where have you learned this and what is a better method to find out your fps?

count on your fingers

[HeinBloed 0]

There is no simple solution, better performance will be with low shading detail settings (simplified pixel shader), but overdraw is still there.

For me the worst FPS killer in a forest is the Texture detail in combination with the Shading detail.

Im running an AMD 3700+ 2200MHz @ 2860MHz.

With my old grafic card (7800gt) with Shading detail "Normal" and Texture detail "very low" i had 34 FPS on a testmission (fixed position, fixed direction of view) in the forest.

Changing the Shading detail to "low" or "very low" does not increased the FPS very mutch. It was in proportion to the different grafic result.

Changing the Texture detail from "very low" to "low" reduced the FPS to 16 FPS.

After upgrading to a 8800gts (500MHz/800MHz @ 600MHz/900MHz) i got 44 FPS on this testmission with Texture detail: Normal, Shading detail: Normal.

Sometimes i still have massive FPS drops. Mostly at the north part of the island.

Using scopes on weapons like the M24, during looking on trees/bushes, can also result in a massive FPS drop. The vield of view is at its minimum, i can only see a bush or tree, but the FPS are reducing from 60 FPS to 20 FPS.

[baddo 0]

Hi,

just a comment on should you be able to keep your ArmA settings at the highest level or not.

There is an article Postmortem: Bohemia Interactive Studios' Operation Flashpoint at gamasutra.com written by the Spanel brothers. It is a thriller story about the development of Operation Flashpoint. If you want to read the full article just create an account and login, it's free. Some quotes from the article:

Quote[/b] ]First of all, some technologies in the game were a bit outdated after more than four years. We didn't know at the outset that the game would be still in development after so long, and we hadn't left time at the end to rework parts of the engine. Some of the criticism of Operation Flashpoint addresses the amount of detail in the textures and some models — and we have to admit that these could have been better.

Quote[/b] ]The main problem wasn't that the development cycle was too long per se, but that the development was so much longer than we'd expected. Next time, we will work much more diligently to better estimate our development time — and we will probably try to aim higher with the detail of our artwork, even if it seems insanely detailed for present and predicted hardware capabilities.

As you now think of it, it really makes sense to target current and future hardware, if your plan is to have a long life for your game. In my opinion ArmA can be sufficiently run on current hardware as I can run it sufficiently enough for me on very low-spec hardware mostly dating back to year 2001; Athlon 1.4 GHz, GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB VRAM AGP 4x, 768 MB 133 MHz SDRAM, old and slow hard disk drive, need I say more? ArmA also has potential to be even much better on upcoming hardware as many people here have acknowledged that they can't run the game in the highest settings. Which is of course perfectly fine if the game is not meant to be used for just a couple of months but for many years instead. A real problem with ArmA is the lack of multithreading in the game engine, that has to be acknowledged. That takes a lot of the growth potential away.

Best Regards,

Baddo.

[Possessed 0]

ArmA also has potential to be even much better on upcoming hardware as many people here have acknowledged that they can't run the game in the highest settings. Which is of course perfectly fine if the game is not meant to be used for just a couple of months but for many years instead. A real problem with ArmA is the lack of multithreading in the game engine, that has to be acknowledged. That takes a lot of the growth potential away.

Ok, I lived in the future with 1.04 version and 8800GTX with full video settings. Maybe patch 1.05 made my system outdated

[Radnik 18]

@ohara

]We are still woring on some research in this area.

Is there any info on improving performaces caused by overdraw you have mentioned earlier?.

[SHWiiNG 0]

its funny, Far cry has some of the most detailed Grass, shrubs, bushes and trees and also shadoes, yet i gte very high FPS on all settings on high.

[Maddmatt 1]

its funny, Far cry has some of the most detailed Grass, shrubs, bushes and trees and also shadoes, yet i gte very high FPS on all settings on high.

Most detailed? Get your eyes checked man, they look cartooney to me

[jasono 0]

its funny, Far cry has some of the most detailed Grass, shrubs, bushes and trees and also shadoes, yet i gte very high FPS on all settings on high.

Most detailed? Get your eyes checked man, they look cartooney to me

Yeh they have some good detail, but don't look real. Maddmatt's right, they do look like cartooney.

[berghoff 11]

Also farcry uses smaller textures and less polygons for the trees... can't really be compared.

[Kevlar2007 1]

I would be happy to have the vegetation similar to farcrys but with no lag and FPS drops than the ARMA vegetation that causes lag. For sim game I don't need uber cool mega vegetation I need only good simulation of vegetation that permits me to play fluently. FarCrys vegetation was done very good from that point of view.

I think only way to solve this problem is to reduce the number of polys for the trees and reduce usage of alpha textures in trees, like use more 3d modeling for making the trees and not only vertices with many alpha textures.

[bravo 6 0]

Also farcry uses smaller textures and less polygons for the trees... can't really be compared.

yeah, i guess, and i must agree on the above comment.

Linda is the program used for all trees in Armed Assault, it's incredible.

Every tree in ARMA is not iqual to any other in entire map. Each tree have their own "personality". Thats what also make it so unique.

ohara, are you able to update about this subject? It would be very appreciated

[NeMeSiS 11]

What i find strange is that only certain bushes seem to kill your FPS, while others are fine. If we could just get rid of the higher LODS of those bushes then everything would be fine aswell..

[fasad 1]

Linda is the program used for all trees in Armed Assault, it's incredible.

Every tree in ARMA is not iqual to any other in entire map. Each tree have their own "personality". Thats what also make it so unique.

ohara, are you able to update about this subject? It would be very appreciated

ArmA uses repeating tree models, just like OFP. game2 is the one with individually unique trees.

[shataan 1]

" they do look like cartooney"

The terrain only looks cartoonish depending on the render mode you use. I used the Cold render mode, and the terrain looked amazing. Ya use the defailt render mode and the colors are way too cartoonish. But.... FCs terrain detail is yet to be equaled imho.

Well, Crysis will better FC. Having said this, I am really happy with ArmAs engine. Runs amazing for me at 1024x768x32 all settings maxed, accept for no AA/AF, low shadows.

[bravo 6 0]

Linda is the program used for all trees in Armed Assault, it's incredible.

Every tree in ARMA is not iqual to any other in entire map. Each tree have their own "personality". Thats what also make it so unique.

ohara, are you able to update about this subject? It would be very appreciated

ArmA uses repeating tree models, just like OFP. game2 is the one with individually unique trees.

Armed Assault uses Linda. Am I wrong?!

edit: i have 99,5% that armed assault uses linda.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Quote[/b] ]ArmA uses repeating tree models, just like OFP

I'm 99% sure that's incorrect

[Mehmehmeh 0]

Don't know how old or new this topic is now, or how far the thread starter has come with his problem, but...

Yesterday I did notice that nvidia driver now include arma.exe and armademo.exe in their profiles.

It did quite a big diff for me and the whole game play is now much more stable plus that according to Fraps, I do never go below 60fps compared to earlier minimum 30ish.

Also, for those who can, arma.exe or armademo.exe now can be forced to run SLI mode without changing the arma.exe name to some other name in order to run SLI.

Don't know how new or old my "news"can be, but someone might have some use of it.

[fasad 1]

Armed Assault uses Linda. Am I wrong?!

edit: i have 99,5% that armed assault uses linda.

BI may have used the "Linda" procedural method to create the models, but yes, in ArmA each type of tree/plant has only a few different models, repeated many times.

[MehMan 0]

That's how most if not all games do it.