Texture problems..

[tzvetoslav 0]

Greetings!So,I've been having this problem since I got ArmA and now I decided to write it down and search for some help..I've been looking over for the same/similar problem,but I didn't find one.Well here it is : Whenever I'm in a "quiet" area with not much people/npc or vehicles everything runs fine!But when I get to a more "violent" zone the textures (building and ground ones) start changing from "High" to "Low/Medium" and they keep switching like that "Low/Medium".When I zoom in on the ground they get a little better (something between High/Medium ),but when I zoom out they become "ugly" again..It's really annoying and I also recon drop in the FPS.I've tried many things - different drivers ; reinstalled my whole Windows! ; defragment the HDD ; deleting my ArmA profile and ArmA.cfg file ; changed video settings ingame (tried Low/Medium/High textures but same result) ; tried with mods and vanilla ArmA

BTW,here's my system - VGA 8800gts 320mb ; CPU Intel C2Duo E4300 1.8 GHz (clocked to 3.0 GHz (I've also tried the game without overclock)) ; RAM 2GB ; OS Windows XP 32bit Service Pack 3.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

P.S. ArmA version is 1.15 right now and VGA drivers 181.22

[kklownboy 43]

more Vidram. more system ram, more cache on your CPU...set lower view distances, Try a different Profile in your 3Dsettings in your nvida CP.

[nobrainer 0]

I have somewhat the same problem I think.

It all gets very bright. Is this how you have it?

C2D E6850 default, 4 GB DDR2 memory, 850w powersupply, 2x 320 GB Sata  disks and 2x 8800GTX SLI Graphic cards

Using Nvidia 15.23 chipsett drivers and updated windows XP 32-bit.

Using Nvidia 181.22 graphics drivers.

Having problems with the lights turning all too sunny...

I would like the HDRPrecision to be 32, but it allways turns back to 8.

I uses a Samsung 226BW in 1680x1050@60Hz

If I switch to desktop and then back again, it fixes my graphics until next time it gets to bright. If I just play for 5-10 minutes in sun/shadow, it turns like this.

[Yoma 0]

If you mean that certain objects switch to a very low LOD, i have the same thing here (8800GTX on 6750CoreDuo on VISTAX64).

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with 1.15 as i didn't have it before.

Of course lower LOD's could occur on 1.14 as well, but now some static objects (mostly walls, buildings, tree's) seem to get stuck on lower LODs sometimes.

On some islands this happens more then on others (afghani often gets ugly at times).

The weird thing is that when that happens, all ingame performance takes a dip and doesn't come out of it untill i alt tab.

Besides that i also have the feeling the islands are shrouded in foglike conditions permanently. (there used to be a "milk" bug on the 8800, it's not as bad as it was back then, but still doesn't give the impression of "clear view")

I wonder if ATI users have the same "problems"?

[tzvetoslav 0]

If you mean that certain objects switch to a very low LOD, i have the same thing here (8800GTX on 6750CoreDuo on VISTAX64).

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with 1.15 as i didn't have it before.

Of course lower LOD's could occur on 1.14 as well, but now some static objects (mostly walls, buildings, tree's) seem to get stuck on lower LODs sometimes.

On some islands this happens more then on others (afghani often gets ugly at times).

The weird thing is that when that happens, all ingame performance takes a dip and doesn't come out of it untill i alt tab.

Besides that i also have the feeling the islands are shrouded in foglike conditions permanently. (there used to be a "milk" bug on the 8800, it's not as bad as it was back then, but still doesn't give the impression of "clear view")

I wonder if ATI users have the same "problems"?

Yes,it seems you have the same problem!Also as you said it happens more often on the Afghani maps.I really hope it gets fixed!Btw,I've also tried the "flush" command but didn't work.

[nobrainer 0]

I also tried the "flush". No luck there.

I haven't tried the beta drivers for Nvidia yet, but that I may do.

It makes my playing a pain in the a** since I have to alt+tab so often.

[Yoma 0]

To Nobrainer:

The bug you have (judging from the movie you uploaded) is the SLI Hdr bug. This doesn't happen on my pc in the same amount as on yours (but i don't use SLI).

Do you also have the "stuck in low LODS" problem on SLI?

[nobrainer 0]

I'm not sure what you mean by that?

If I use 3000m visibility, most other settings to HIGH, I get great scenarios for a short while.

I try to set HDRPresicion=32; but it allways reset to 8.

But maybe this is what you refered to as "stuck in low LODs"

I would be happy if I don't have 10k ViewDistance, since I don't fly too much, but I can't stand when it gets all too bright and unplayable.

[Yoma 0]

What you seem to have is that the whole scene goes very bright (but the textures stay good, be it very bright) and that's not what i'm talking about.

What "we" are talking about is stuff like a wall with bricks texture looses it's brick texture permanently, unless you bang your head against it, and even then sometimes stays "textureless".

I have this on viewdistance 2000, which is not normal for a 8800 GTX (1.14 didn't have this problem). I don't think "my" bug has to do with HDR at all, but more with lodswitching.

[tzvetoslav 0]

What you seem to have is that the whole scene goes very bright (but the textures stay good, be it very bright) and that's not what i'm talking about.

What "we" are talking about is stuff like a wall with bricks texture looses it's brick texture permanently, unless you bang your head against it, and even then sometimes stays "textureless".

I have this on viewdistance 2000, which is not normal for a 8800 GTX (1.14 didn't have this problem). I don't think "my" bug has to do with HDR at all, but more with lodswitching.

Exactly.

[kklownboy 43]

ATi can get it (and does), I am sure the way all the buffers are used, HDR, and the filters ,ect cause our comps to joke on the textures. Then the input lag at the same time of low lods can send you to desktop... Not a very elegant way to recover form a borked renderer....but to be snarky nothing is very elegant in ARMA...

@NoBrainer, Try using Crysis.exe for your SLI( rename ARMA.exe ) and or set the ARMA profile in your 3D setting in your Nvidia CP.

The low lod issue isnt as bad as it was pre 1.08.

Heres hoping Suma s fix will alow me to use all my system RAM (6gb) with my CFX 4870x2's as it is right now i have to go 3gb or its black screen and -window mode is a no go for Cf or CFX.

[jackass888 0]

The slow lods/textures changing are the result of a "slow" CPU. Just try FFN or ECS in heavy battles... they dont change any graphics but they eat cpu workload and this causes lod/tex slow loadtimes. Vanilla arma has no trouble with tex/lod but with these mods i can run only small battles. Domination type missions are too heavy already. I have a 3.4Ghz quadcore and its barely enough to run arma.

[Yoma 0]

Again i'm not talking about "slow" lods, these have allways occured.

I'm talking about lods effectively being "stuck".

It did occur on 1.14 but not as bad as in 1.15. I can't even talk about 1.08 anymore as too me that's "ages ago".

However i do think it's a bug somewhere and not only limited to cpu power... It does occur often in "vanilla" Arma as well.

I think it may have something to do with some kind of changed memory handling in 1.15

Unless all of the sudden arma needs a lot more cpu power in 1.15 then in 1.14.

Also having loads of memory won't help a bit (i run it on a 6GB Vista64)

I'll make myself a small testmission and drop in loads of ai to see if it occurs faster then.

[nobrainer 0]

What you seem to have is that the whole scene goes very bright (but the textures stay good, be it very bright) and that's not what i'm talking about.

What "we" are talking about is stuff like a wall with bricks texture looses it's brick texture permanently, unless you bang your head against it, and even then sometimes stays "textureless".

I have this on viewdistance 2000, which is not normal for a 8800 GTX (1.14 didn't have this problem). I don't think "my" bug has to do with HDR at all, but more with lodswitching.

I had that until I adjusted my settings. Not sure what I did adjust that made the drifference, but it's gone now. So now I'm left with just the brightness.

[hamis 0]

You could try GDTmodhdr for brightness problems.

[nobrainer 0]

The GDTmodHDR you are referring to, is not what I would like to do.

I see the point and it would make things easy. But then again no.

Thanks for reply!

[Alex72 1]

I was going to post about this on my machine as i have what the OP is saying.

It is changing from the actual texture setting to very very very low. This happens mainly on the ground textures but sometimes even on buildings. When i zoom into the ground it can "come back" to the textures it should have. The problem is that it starts to lag/stutter when this happens really bad sometimes. I find that the only setting this never happens to me is on "very high textures". Now my computer cant run that when too much is going on so it kinda sucks noodles.

Im running:

AMD X2 64 6000+ (3.1ghz)

2gb DDR2 800mhz RAM (normally 4gb but due to XP32 only 2 atm)

Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB (too little i know - and maybe the problem?)

7200RPM Seagate HD

It seems to happen much more now after i upped from 2ghz (same CPU model) to 3.1ghz, and upped the RAM from DDR 400mhz to DDR2 800mhz. Really annoying and i hope a new videocard will solve this. I think ARMA system specs was at least 512MB VRAM? Dont remember. I will get a better videocard soon plus a faster HD for this PC and hope it will solve the problem.

For now, does anyone run ARMA with the same kind of specs as me? Especially with the same amount of VRAM. Would be interesting to hear how it runs for you and what settings you have in ARMA.

Regards

Alex

[Yoma 0]

I just noticed something in an online game:

All was fine untill i upped VD via script to 2500 then all stuff went blocky.

Resetting ingame VD to 1500 does not solve it. Strange thing is i don't get it all the time, just sometimes.

Could this be a "bug" that sometimes occurs by changing ingame VD?

[kklownboy 43]

not scientific, but it seems that High to Veryhigh Textures and 2500 and up do not have the issue for me, also terrain on Verylow with High Textures and 3000+ VD can have issues after awhile.

[Yoma 0]

I've set my textures to default as i think this is the best option for the 8800 GTX. Will be testing it tonight.

[Rexxenexx 0]

You guys are talking about this right?

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" WIDTH=480 HEIGHT=295><PARAM NAME=MOVIE VALUE=http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl81855.swf&video_id=UUGlK42O-OQ&rel=1&eurl=&iurl=http%3A//i2.ytimg.com/vi/UUGlK42O-OQ/hqdefault.jpg&sk=Hv5jztaRGJ0lvMXHgysyj6JL7p9oSJ9RC&use_get_video_info=1&load_modules=1&cr=US&avg_rating=0.0&length_seconds=76&allow_ratings=1&title=Arma%20TextureSwap114><PARAM NAME=PLAY VALUE=TRUE><PARAM NAME=LOOP VALUE=TRUE><PARAM NAME=QUALITY VALUE=HIGH><EMBED SRC=http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl81855.swf&video_id=UUGlK42O-OQ&rel=1&eurl=&iurl=http%3A//i2.ytimg.com/vi/UUGlK42O-OQ/hqdefault.jpg&sk=Hv5jztaRGJ0lvMXHgysyj6JL7p9oSJ9RC&use_get_video_info=1&load_modules=1&cr=US&avg_rating=0.0&length_seconds=76&allow_ratings=1&title=Arma%20TextureSwap114 WIDTH=480 HEIGHT=295 PLAY=TRUE LOOP=TRUE QUALITY=HIGH></EMBED></OBJECT>

I have a similar setup to you Yoma.

Q6600

8800 GTX

4GB

Vista64

Here is the settings I have now:

You should be able to do similar or better.

The LOD swap doesn't really chug the game for me. More VD than what I have now and Corazol + Paraiso become sub 24fps.

[Yoma 0]

That's exactly what i'm talking about. Except that on my system sometimes the textures don't come back at all.

I could understand this kind of behaviour with a very high VD (like you are using) but not with a much lower vd (2200 for example). Haven't had much time to play so i can't say what it does with textures on "default" yet.

[.kju 3245]

try to turn down texture detail, then shader details and maybe

even shadow details.

[-=seany=- 5]

I have the enough cpu & gfx card power to be able to play at "Very High" textures, but if I use it I get LOD swapping that some times wont fix its self. E.g. a dashboard on a vehicle or my gun texture or a building texture will just refuses to load for ages and consequently this halves my frame rate until it has finished loading, which (from testing I've done) could be up to several minutes.

The only way I could fix this was to use High textures. I do still get LOD Texture swapping, especially in Corazol. They just don't seem to get "stuck" for as long.

q9300

2 9800gtx

4gb ram

Vista 64 U

maxmem=512

[Yoma 0]

try to turn down texture detail, then shader details and maybe

even shadow details.

Just a small note: texture detail was on normal, shader on high, VD on 2200

Shadow details on high, but that actually gives me better FPS then on normal  

It mostly happens on busy missions to me, and on some islands it occurs a lot more then others (Afghani e.g.) but it also happens on default Sahrani.

Wasn't the "Default" texture parameter supposed to "measure" what texture size to use on cards with 512+MB?

Anyway I've been too busy on my tool the last week to test a lot ingame