Texture lag. How to solve it ?

[Balschoiw 0]

As with Arma 1 I have texture lag and LOD problems all over the place with Arma 2. I have already installed the older Nvidia-driver but it doesn´t help.

Whenever I zoom in, be it with a scope or right mouse only I get the lag. Even when looking around the LOD swaps very slowly. Sometimes the game comes to a complete stop for some time.

Even when running the grass and tree detail just randomly loads which makes running a funny LSD experience.

I don´t get it why this is still happening with Arma 2 ?

I have a rather fast computer, so I don´t get this at all.

My Specs:

Intel Quad Q9550

Nvidia GTX 280 1GB

4 GB DDR 800 Dual channel Ram

SATA HD with own partition for Arma 2

The issue gets worse after playing a while which indicates to me that either the GFX-Ram or the shared RAM is filling up and then the things are temporarely loaded to harddrive.

What can I do...I mean I can´t buy a new comp ? It is already pretty fast.

To be honest I´m not happy about the comeback of Arma deficits :(

[Revelation78 10]

What's your view distance set to? I remember in Arma1 that the shorter your veiw distance the less this occured. I didn't have any occurrance of this until I updated to the 1.01 beta patch. It now happens from time to time, though I do have my view distance set at 3000 meters.

[.kju 3244]

What are your texture settings?

What is your HDD speed (HD Tach)?

In the long run a SSD is probably a good idea for A2.

[bluesteel 0]

Try setting video memory to the last setting (something that translates to "default"). In ArmA 1 that setting was specifically added for videocards with more than 512MB RAM (the only one back then was the 8800GTX with 768MB). It autodetects the video RAM and allows more of it to be used to store textures.

Before that option was added, cards with more than 512MB actually had incredibly bad texture lag. Houses 10m away would be extremely blurry until the texture finally loaded after half a minute or so...

So give it a shot, I don't have any texture lag on my system. (4GB RAM, GTX 260 with 892MB RAM)

Oh, and you should also set texture resolution to either High or Very High; the lower the setting, the sooner the low-res textures will be loaded. (soon meaning closer to the camera)

[sickboy 13]

Yea or Video Memory to "Normal" I'm thinkin High = for 1 GB, and Very High for like 2 GB, though just a guess :)

How much space do you have free on the ArmA 2 partition and is it defragmented?

(IIRC, having less than 20% free space on a partition can degrade performance)

[bluesteel 0]

Well, I meant setting "Grafikspeicher" (Video RAM) to "Voreinst.", which means "Default".

From the changelog of patch 1.08:

- New: Support for larger texture cache with new Texture Detail level "Default", useful for cards with over 512 MB VRAM.

That added setting fixed all my texture loading problems on my 8800 GTX back then. Worth a shot on that GTX 280 of yours!

[bangtail 0]

1.08? We are talking about ArmA 2 here, not ArmA.

The LOD/Texture problems are horrendous and totally kill the immersion. I love the game but I would have to say that this is the only real issue I have at the moment. Buildings appearing and disappearing, textures on NPCs and buildings taking far too long to update.

SSDs don't help JFYI so don't waste your money thinking that they will. I have 2 X-25s and there is no difference whatsoever. I was doing that Campaign mission where you have to move through the town (the one after you have to designate targets with the LD) and I had to stop playing because the texture problems were so bad.

I'm sure it will get fixed but it is a problem. Im not sure but it looks like ArmA.cfg is saying I am only using 256 MB of VRAM (I have 1 Gig of VRAM). I don't really want to mess with the setting as I'm not sure how to change it without causing more problems.

Great game though, one of the best I have ever played.

Cheers,

Eth

EDIT : Several people have said that using the -winxp switch helps, Im going to try it out now.

EDIT2 : Doesn't help at all. Turning all the settings down does help but that isn't really a fix tbh.

Edited June 2, 2009 by BangTail

[Scrub 0]

Thanks for the insight to this problem. After about 5 hours of playing (wow does time fly) I started to get these issues.

[cross 1]

Try setting video memory to the last setting (something that translates to "default"). In ArmA 1 that setting was specifically added for videocards with more than 512MB RAM (the only one back then was the 8800GTX with 768MB). It autodetects the video RAM and allows more of it to be used to store textures.

Before that option was added, cards with more than 512MB actually had incredibly bad texture lag. Houses 10m away would be extremely blurry until the texture finally loaded after half a minute or so...

So give it a shot, I don't have any texture lag on my system. (4GB RAM, GTX 260 with 892MB RAM)

Oh, and you should also set texture resolution to either High or Very High; the lower the setting, the sooner the low-res textures will be loaded. (soon meaning closer to the camera)

try this

[bangtail 0]

try this

There is no such setting in ArmA 2 (at least I dont have one).

All I see is "low" or "normal"

Has anyone else seen this option?

Eth

EDIT : I just tried setting both Vid memory and Texture size to "low" and it doesnt help. Im still getting white buildings and slow texturing. I think this is a problem that only BIS can solve.

Edited June 2, 2009 by BangTail

[.kju 3244]

Test your HDD speed with HD Tach and post here.

[bangtail 0]

Test your HDD speed with HD Tach and post here.

This isn't an HDD issue. At least it isnt for me. I have Intel X-25 SSDs and 12 gigs of DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM.

The game uses very little RAM (about 10% on my system). Is there a way to force it to use more?

Eth

[ohara 0]

Try run game with argument -maxmem=2048

[Maddmatt 1]

Personally I see texture loading glitches at the 'low' setting, but not at 'normal'. But my PC is about on the games minimum requirements so maybe isn't a good comparison.

[bangtail 0]

Try run game with argument -maxmem=2048

Will do mate :)

Tx

Eth

EDIT : I set it to 3072 and the game is much improved (still not perfect) but way better than before, so cheers O'Hara. I'm really enjoying the game, one of the best I've ever played :)

Edited June 2, 2009 by BangTail

[bluesteel 0]

1.08? We are talking about ArmA 2 here, not ArmA.

Don't forget that ArmA 2 is built on the same engine, every fix that went into ArmA 1 is also present in ArmA 2.

But I'm glad that you managed to fix it, have fun!

[bangtail 0]

Don't forget that ArmA 2 is built on the same engine, every fix that went into ArmA 1 is also present in ArmA 2.

But I'm glad that you managed to fix it, have fun!

Delete please.

Eth

Edited June 2, 2009 by BangTail

[bluesteel 0]

That may be but my point was that the settings you are talking about are NOT present in ArmA 2 (at least not via the menus).

Eth

Apparently we get different options to choose from, since I get this:

[bangtail 0]

Apparently we get different options to choose from, since I get this:

[iM]http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3814/arma2.jpg[/img]

Nevermind, I found it :)

It's weird though, sometimes they are there and sometimes they aren't. I always get low and normal but the others only show up sometimes and they are always back to normal after I reload the game :(

Edit - Shadows can not be on very high for this to work apparently.

Eth

Edited June 5, 2009 by Placebo

[craig3000 10]

if your PC doesn't run it were screwed :D

But seriously I saw this complete stopping your talking about when I watched a video on youtube, I thought it was auto saving or something but I guess not

[mr.g-c 6]

Try run game with argument -maxmem=2048

Ohh noes, do we have again to use all such kinds of workarounds to play Arma2 properly? :confused:

Sorry but why doesn't BIS Games since Arma1 run simply out-of-the-box, without the need for custom hacks/switches/shortcuts with switches/and so on ?? :(

Not that its a Problem for me personally, but what about all those "casual gamers" which never will read this forums and such "tips" ? ;)

They have a screwed game then "maybe" and throw it back into the next corner. :eek:

[Balschoiw 0]

Will check the suggested methods when I´m at home again.

Thx for the input.

[telejunky 0]

pcgames mentioned it again: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,685661/Armed-Assault-2-Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-plus-Optikvergleich/Rennspiel-Sportspiel-Simulation/Test/

ArmA2 can be beautiful but textures wont look good if a house/model only gets beautiful textures if you stand 2m in front of it...Please fix this :) This is the second thing after depth of field-removing option and bloom-reduce-option^^

[bangtail 0]

pcgames mentioned it again: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,685661/Armed-Assault-2-Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-plus-Optikvergleich/Rennspiel-Sportspiel-Simulation/Test/

ArmA2 can be beautiful but textures wont look good if a house/model only gets beautiful textures if you stand 2m in front of it...Please fix this :) This is the second thing after depth of field-removing option and bloom-reduce-option^^

Maxmem worked for a while but then I started seeing massive corruption etc and my save corrupted as well (not sure if it was maxmem that did that) but the graphics corruption is definitely caused by maxmem.

Eth

[Skeptic 10]

Added to A2 bug tracker.