ArmA feedback thread - based on Beta Patch 1.15

[Maddmatt 1]

Is you hard drive light flashing like crazy? Seems maybe the HD is taking too long to load things. What is your page file set to? Reduce it to 2GB if it's more than that.

I have ARMA installed on a seperate HDD (a game one) to the Windows HDD. Would that cause a problem? Should I be changing the page file of one of them or both? Also, unlike older games again, Armed assault doesn't recognise its in a x64 bit environment. Usually games that are meant for 32bit install to program files (x86) - Armed assault doesn't.

I only have one hard drive myself so maybe someone else could give better advice there..

Disabling the pagefile on the drive with ArmA and having a pagefile of about 2GB one the other drive might help.

So the game can load ArmA from one drive while another drive handles the pagefile, at least that's how I think it would work.

There are several areas that could bottleneck the texture loading such as video card, RAM and the hard drive. But since your PC is pretty powerful the hard drive seems likely.

[xxbbcc 6]

I can't get UNAFOV to work with arma 1.15 everything is still zoomed in. Pure horror driving a truck or flying a helicopter.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Can you try it with only UNAFOV? Perhaps some other addons interfere with it? I have a bunch of addons, but I have no FOV issues in SP and I also have no map issues in widescreen mode. (Using WinXP 32 bit.)

[cross 1]

Is you hard drive light flashing like crazy? Seems maybe the HD is taking too long to load things. What is your page file set to? Reduce it to 2GB if it's more than that.

I have ARMA installed on a seperate HDD (a game one) to the Windows HDD. Would that cause a problem? Should I be changing the page file of one of them or both? Also, unlike older games again, Armed assault doesn't recognise its in a x64 bit environment. Usually games that are meant for 32bit install to program files (x86) - Armed assault doesn't.

And at the end of each install I get an error that there isn't enough space to install the game (apparently 960GB isn't enough) but it installs anyway.

try disabling one of your GFX cards...maybe due to SLI/Crossfire issue.

[hamis 0]

Quote[/b] ]Patch 1.15 should include new save system that saves addon status also.Now then we continue(load saved game/resume mission)addon scripts don't load(vehicles don't have markings/random numbers,gdtmodhdr etc).This is very important,because very many of us really hate hdr lighting and missing stuff!I remember there was no such issue in OFP,so why it appears in arma?

I'm dissapointed 'cause this wasn't included in patch.I think it's quite small job to do by scripts.I still have about 30 sp missions/campaigns to play,so please do something.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Can you try it with only UNAFOV? Perhaps some other addons interfere with it? I have a bunch of addons, but I have no FOV issues in SP and I also have no map issues in widescreen mode. (Using WinXP 32 bit.)

It's like mehman said, I messed around with the FOV setting in my profile.

I set it now to 16:9 in the video options and the map problems are gone. (BIS should nevertheless take a look at it)

But for me everything is still too much zoomed in.

I'm playing on a 37" lcd tv and driving/flying is still pure horror.

Don't bite in the steering wheel!

MfG Lee

[boomboomer 0]

I have ARMA installed on a seperate HDD (a game one) to the Windows HDD. Would that cause a problem? Should I be changing the page file of one of them or both? Also, unlike older games again, Armed assault doesn't recognise its in a x64 bit environment. Usually games that are meant for 32bit install to program files (x86) - Armed assault doesn't.

And at the end of each install I get an error that there isn't enough space to install the game (apparently 960GB isn't enough) but it installs anyway.

Why not install 32 bit XP on your second HD then boot into XP just to play ArmA?

It was never coded to run on Vista or x64.

[MehMan 0]

Runs just fine on XP 64bit.

My specs are:

Q6600

Asus Pq5 pro

HD4870 "Golden Sample"(what a noisy bugger!

4gigs of RAM

750gig sata2 disk

and arma runs flawlessly nearly maxed out(I leave the shadows at normal because IIRC it lets the GPU calculate them and thus it creates better looking shadows instead of the jagged horror some people seem to have) and with a rather large view distance.

[Yoma 0]

I have ARMA installed on a seperate HDD (a game one) to the Windows HDD. Would that cause a problem? Should I be changing the page file of one of them or both? Also, unlike older games again, Armed assault doesn't recognise its in a x64 bit environment. Usually games that are meant for 32bit install to program files (x86) - Armed assault doesn't.

And at the end of each install I get an error that there isn't enough space to install the game (apparently 960GB isn't enough) but it installs anyway.

Mine is not installed in the windows partition either. So no, that's not your problem i think.

After seeing the movie i think it's either the dual VGA thing or some abnormal slow performing HD in certain read operations.

Also i noticed you fastforwarded all the way to the action, does the same thing occur when you don't do that?

-Disable one of the 2 GPU cores. (If this is the solution then remember my words on "a lot of games have problems with this type of setup", ask ATI for a decent crossfire profile...)

-If this doesn't work at least try it with the 8800 GTX you seem to have laying around, remove the ati drivers first)

-How is your HD setup? Are you using RAID? Have you run some HD benchmarks (it is after all a streaming engine that reads stuff from HD on the fly)

-It's very unlikely but another cause for this kind of behaviour might be some virusscanner that's freaking out/slowing down the constant reads.

[KorpeN 0]

-same low fps in a powerful formated system

If your system really is powerful then low FPS is likely to be a problem on your side. My old PC is running the game great at 1440x900 at 4xAA.

How about some details?

I have noticed the same on my old system:

Pentium 4 @ 2.5Ghz

6800GT 256MB

2GB ram

The game runs smoothly at low-very low settings.

But on my new system the fps are crap whatever the settings.

[stilpu 0]

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, so here goes: last night on TacticalGamer's ACE server (running 1.15) we encountered the JIP "possessed" bug (I haven't seen this one since the demo).

Basically, two players were sharing the same body, struggling for controls and speaking in chat with the same nickname.

[hamis 0]

Quote[/b] ]Nothing helps those pop ins, you can see in the vid nothing is lagging you can just stare at an object for up to 8 seconds sometimes until its all fully loaded.

I have same problem,just changed gtx280 to 4870 x2.So it is most likely Ati thing.

[maddogx 13]

I finally got it to run after doing a full system format and using the exact same drivers.

Reinstalling the OS to find that the game suddenly runs, even though you are using same drivers and setup as before is a clear sign that something was wrong with your system. Maybe something is still wrong. It could be a hardware problem, for example overheating, CPU or RAM problems. Have you tried running Memtest86+ and Prime95?

[hamis 0]

Does this patch modify any of the original configs?

[vipermaul 246]

Yes it is great Christmas present BI !!! Thanks! Much appreciated!!

Especially thanks for fixing the JIP lag and the Parachute bug. This really hampered big tournaments like IC-Arma and Theatre-of-war. No it appears to be fixed!!

I do have a question concerning the following AWESOME addition.

5262  - New: Optional server.cfg entry timeStampFormat to specify time stamp for each line in *.rpt file.  Possible values: "none", "short", "full".

I have tried all of the following:

timeStampFormat=1;

timeStampFormat=full; or timeStampFormat="full";

timeStampFormat=short; or timeStampFormat="short";

in the server.cfg and in the arma.cfg.

I have looked in the server side RPT and the client side RPT.

I cannot seem to get it working. Can BI help me get this awesome feature to work to help make it easier to isolate those more difficult bugs?

Thanks in advance!!

Ok it is working just with some caveats.

Thanks again for such a cool feature for us Server Admins and MOD scripters.

See the my details here:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Talk:ArmA_Beta_Patch_1.15

Thanks again BI for this Public Beta!!!

[kremator 1065]

Got a new machine in preparation for Arma2 !! However I now have the vista bug! Problem with fail to load with Vista64 and 6GB RAM.

If I use msconfig down to 3GB it works fine.

Machine spec

Core i7 2.66GHz

6GB DDR3 RAM

ATI Radeon 4870

I thought this beta was meant to fix it .... or am i doing something very wrong !

[TAO] Kremator

[CyDoN 0]

personaly i saw no change at all, not in the fps not in nothing but the zoom thing is messed up. Still I hope for something to go back to 1.08 Field Of VIEW (FOV) or at leaste if we could have an option to choose from. Realy i think that after 1.08 things are getting bad, whenever i hear about a patch I am never optimistic as 1.14 had a major (bad) effect on my fps and screwed the FOV. Now some (as always) will say that the i can use addons if i want but i dont want to cause i want to play on tournamets where the FOV cannot be changed as there equal mod is used.

[Philljc 0]

I finally got it to run after doing a full system format and using the exact same drivers.

Reinstalling the OS to find that the game suddenly runs, even though you are using same drivers and setup as before is a clear sign that something was wrong with your system. Maybe something is still wrong. It could be a hardware problem, for example overheating, CPU or RAM problems. Have you tried running Memtest86+ and Prime95?

The patch clearly states what its trying to fix with the 4870, and it hasn't done a good job. I hope the final is a lot better, because I'm sick of waiting for patch after patch, getting a little excited each time for nothing.

[Sagan 0]

My weird no texture lag bug still shows on the beta patch. I used to play fine until patch 1.14 I have the latest drivers and everything but ArmA is acting up.

Any one knows how to deal with this specific problem look at screenshot below.

link

[Dynamax 0]

im having network issues with this beta.

for some reason when connect to a server and start to load the mission, my router dies and stops communicating with my modem. during this Arma hangs and wont exit, so i end up doing a reset on my PC.

after restarting my PC i no longer have internet and i need to reboot my router befor i get it back.

i have tried five times now to load a mission from an online server, and it keeps doing the same thing.

i can load into 1.14 servers without any issues.

i can browse the server list and join a server with out any problem, i just cant load the mission file or my router dies.

[Mr_Tea 0]

Make sure that the server you try to play on use patch 1.15 too, else it could only lead into problems.

[Gunja 0]

OS: Vista 64 SP1

CPU: e8500 @ 3.16 (stock)

GFX: ATi 4870x2 (catalist 8.12 for vista64)

RAM: 4 gb

Sound: SB Audigy LE

----

The game now starts ok without limiting ram to 3072

FPS seem a bit more stable and gained about extra 5 fps.

No more stutters when driving/flying.

Sometimes stops responding in menus (ctrl-alt-del & end task is only way out) but way less than before with 1.14

It is improvement in my case, so thanks.

@Philljc

so sorry to hear you still have issues

Is there a newer version of bios for your mainboard? I would give it a shot if there is one.

[N'kEnNy 0]

I cannot find the words expressing the joy of getting yet another patch for ArmA; it makes me think that BIS really cares.

If I had but a single suggestion for this patch (barring any necessary bug fixes) is that they (bis) make it possible to BIND buttons and combinations directly to the AI command interface.

ie:  I want to be able to press  say  "Shift-1" to select TEAM RED  and so on. Or the possibility to bind  "#/Move/Advance" to  "shift-w" for instance.  

I feel this is a very feasable and logical change which would greatly simplify or even enhance the control and command layout.

##

If BIS really would want to make my day they would look through the Command interface scripts and try to fix some of the existing bugs in regards to changing "combat mode" (danger/stealth/aware/safe).  Perhaps re-ordering some of the command buttons/numbers to a slightly more streamlined or ergonomic layout.

I recognize that this is potentially a time consuming endeavour, time possibly better spent working for ArmA2.  Yet the advantages present in using ArmA1 as a test bed for ArmA2 features cannot be understated.

Thank you,

Ken Mikkelsen

[max power 21]

I just wanted to report some weird behaviour. I don't think you can really call it a bug. If you set some forced driver settings for anti aliasing in Catalyst Control Centre, and then change the AA settings in ArmA, it breaks the view distance fog. The fog changes colour, and seems to be one solid value for all distances, making close objects murky and the end of the world view distance visible.

32 bit Windows Vista

Intel Q9550

Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6

4 gigs of Ram (2.83 gigs)

ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (512 MB)

[Philljc 0]

@Philljc

so sorry to hear you still have issues

Is there a newer version of bios for your mainboard? I would give it a shot if there is one.

Apon formatting I updated EVERYTHING.

[boomboomer 0]

Okay, been playing for a while now and started getting an old bug again - where the screen freezes for about 20 secs then upcomes a random bitmap i.e. a tree or bush, while the last sound played loops.

Alt-tab to desktop, then back, fixes it but I think a Nvidia driver update cured this last time. Current driver is fine in 1.14 but not the 1.15 beta.

32bit XP

Q6600

4Gb ram (3.4 in OS)

8800GTS 320Mb