Texture lag. How to solve it ?

[whisper 0]

Voted for it, I get the same on low spec PC (E6400, 8800GT 512M), flickering sometimes, and low res textures often.

All settings on medium apart for terrain and object details on low, and post-process to low

[EDcase 87]

It may be an ArmA2 bug but the HardDrive condition is a big factor.

Must be a fast one and defragged.

ArmA (and I assume ArmA2) run best if installed on its own dedicated drive or partition. NOT on the OS drive.

[Razorman 10]

It may be an ArmA2 bug but the HardDrive condition is a big factor.

Must be a fast one and defragged.

ArmA (and I assume ArmA2) run best if installed on its own dedicated drive or partition. NOT on the OS drive.

To a degree but it's not a deal breaker, this game runs fine if you have a decent spec well maintained rig.

By decent i mean a minimum GTX260 card with a 3.4ghz + dual core cpu & 2gb ram, as a minimum.

This aint counterstike or bf2 ladies.

[Yoma 0]

I think as a community we need to get a bit smarter.

Maybe we should try to make a tool that can load certain "proven" presets based on your system configuration.

Don't know if it would be possible to make it though, it would need a lot of trusted user input to get it to a workable point.

[Raechaer 10]

I'm suffering from the same problem, the game is unplayable like this:

That's with all settings maxed out, looks (and runs) the same with everything at low though.

Using the -maxmen option didn't change anything for me. I also used msconfig to limit Vista to 2 GB but that didn't improve things either.

But I noticed that ArmA detects localVRAM=262334336 (that's around 256 MB), I actually have a card with 1 GB though. Maybe that is causing the problem? Unfortunately changing the value in the arma2.cfg doesn't work as it gets overwritten as soon as ArmA starts.

My comp:

i7 920 @ 4.2 Ghz

12 GB RAM

2 GTX 285 in SLI

ArmA installed on a SSD

Vista x64

[_Cappa 10]

...arma2.cfg doesn't work as it gets overwritten as soon as ArmA starts.

Change Arma2.cfg to 'readonly' by right clicking on it > properties > readonly

[Raechaer 10]

That just prevents ArmA from writing the wrongly detected values to the .cfg, it still uses the value it detected and not the one I manually changed in the ArmA2.cfg.

[Dimmis80 10]

The game Crashes to desktop all the time.Every 10-20 minutes when i play it crashes.Some times with a message about it needs more memory on KB or something.My system is a Core 2 Quad 6600,4 GB DDR 2 1066,2 Radeon 3870 512 MB each on Crossfire and i play the games on a 22" 1680x1050.I have the latest drivers, patch 1.1,Service pack 2 on vista.It says Out of memory (requested 1708 KB) Reserved 294212 KB Total Free 10397 KB Free Blocks 139,Max Free size 1595 KB when crashes..Anyone knows a solution to that.!??

[dkd 10]

Raechaer,

I have the same flaw in Chernogorsk missions. The huge texture lag and such LOD of models totally kill the immersion into the game and I've had to stop playing the campaign. In the other missions game runs rather smoothly, fps is aceptable and the texture lag is insignificant. Maybe it can be connected with 64bit OS somehow?

I'm looking forward for a patch which can fix the issue.

My rig: Q9300@3GHz/4GB/4870 512mb,WinXP64bit, screen resolution 1680x1050, fillrate=100%,Visibility: 1600, all video settings maxed out (the lowering that settings doesn't change the situation).

Edited June 5, 2009 by dkd

[Basil Brush 10]

Its not a 64bit OS issue as I get the slow textures (and flickering) on XP 32bit.

This is exactly the same issue I had in Arma 1 and its very annoying.

[-=seany=- 5]

sucks to hear that this is still an issue. Flashpoint never had this problem. Even on the min spec hardware when it was released, why must Arma and Arma2 be plagued by it?

I understand the need to swap LODs/textures when they are in the distance, but why does it need to do it with objects that are 3 meters away? If you spin your view/camera around all objects near you are switching textures (in an intensive town like Corazol). The game actually drops FPS while its trying to load textures so it completely circumvents any advantage of switching to lower quality textures in the first place. Cant all textures just stay as they are for at least 200meters around you?

[Raggz 10]

I set the "videomemory" to default in videooptions as tipped earlier in this thread, and this removed the slow texture loading almost completely for me (rarely happens now). And i started on the "Manhattan" mission and played a couple of hours with NO crashes. Earlier i had this setting on "Very high" and had slow texture loading and lot's of crashes in the "Manhattan" mission. This is with the latest Official Nvidia beta driver 186.08.

System:

Q6600 cpu

4Gb Ram DDR2

XFX GTX280 1Gb memory

Vista x64 Ultimate

[Raechaer 10]

I'd love to give that a try, but I can't select default for the videomemory (only low, normal and high). I'm sure I saw it before though, anyone got an idea how to get that setting back? Also using the 186.08 drivers btw.

[Basil Brush 10]

Does not make any difference for me still get this problem (if its the same one) with everything on low and 500m view distance, textures seem to load slightly faster but then it would with only 500m of objects to load I suppose..

example :

[BF2_Trooper 0]

If I'm stuck with a 512RAM video card (9800GTX+ actually) should I set Video Memory to DEFAULT or VERY HIGH?

[ernesto 10]

If I'm stuck with a 512RAM video card (9800GTX+ actually) should I set Video Memory to DEFAULT or VERY HIGH?

I try everything.

It's a game engine problem. I don't want to hear we consumers trying to find a "magic solution", but a word for the company.

I search the official forums and nothing... A little respect for our consumers will sound good...

I have a mix of "minimum specs" and "recommendade specs", and run the game with unbeliave flaws in visual and performance...

---------- Post added at 11:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 PM ----------

To a degree but it's not a deal breaker, this game runs fine if you have a decent spec well maintained rig.

By decent i mean a minimum GTX260 card with a 3.4ghz + dual core cpu & 2gb ram, as a minimum.

This aint counterstike or bf2 ladies.

Is this type of answer relevant?

If a company want to sell a tilte, do not lie about the recommended specs... By recommended specs I undestand a rig capable to run the game with no big issues...

ArmA II isn't "BF2", but isn't DCS:Black Shark, FarcRy 2 or Crysis either... BS uses a LOT of CPU with all the "balistics", "massive units", etc, with good performance, huge map, beautifull visuals... The other two titles don't have all the "sim factor", but a far better and stable graphics engine...

So... what the point?

[bangtail 0]

I try everything.

It's a game engine problem. I don't want to hear we consumers trying to find a "magic solution", but a word for the company.

I search the official forums and nothing... A little respect for our consumers will sound good...

I have a mix of "minimum specs" and "recommendade specs", and run the game with unbeliave flaws in visual and performance...

---------- Post added at 11:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 PM ----------

Is this type of answer relevant?

If a company want to sell a tilte, do not lie about the recommended specs... By recommended specs I undestand a rig capable to run the game with no big issues...

ArmA II isn't "BF2", but isn't DCS:Black Shark, FarcRy 2 or Crysis either... BS uses a LOT of CPU with all the "balistics", "massive units", etc, with good performance, huge map, beautifull visuals... The other two titles don't have all the "sim factor", but a far better and stable graphics engine...

So... what the point?

Crysis barely breaks 50 FPS on a 965 w/ 4 GPUs @ 1680 x 1050.

As you say, parts of your rig barely meet the minimum requirements, so the problem lies with your machine, and not with the game. Your machine is only as good as it's weakest component.

I would agree that "Minimum spec" seems to have been applied a little optimistically in this case but "Minimum spec" does mean the absolute MINIMUM to make the game RUN and does not imply it is going to run well at any settings.

Eth

Edited July 8, 2009 by BangTail

[pokletu 0]

I think I've found an approach; at least for Nvidia users(there maybe a coincidence, since I've messed with a bunch of settings, EVERYWHERE).

Remembering that those LOD's are called mipmaps, I went into my Nvidia settings; and for the Arma 2 profile, I set "Force Mipmaps" to "Trilinear".

Now, I don't really know what the bi/trilinear deal is, but my thought was to force the higher resolution textures. It appears to have worked, though. I almost NEVER have those texture readings, anymore.

//////////////////////////////

and an aside,

I've also downloaded the evga sli enhancer, which more than DOUBLED my FPS. I play in triplehead @3840x720, both settings, and almost everywhere I get about 22 fps(not great, but for the resolution....) The enhancer set my Arma 2 profile to "Nvidia Recommended-SLI". It has to be there; dunno why. I usually set to "Force Split Frame Rendering". I am able to run "low" antialiasing, "high" video memory, and everything else, including postprocessing, at normal for my 22fps.

2x8800gt w/512; AMD 6600+@3.06; 2 gb Kingston Ram; 3x22" monitors in triplehead.

Hope this helps.

[ernesto 10]

Crysis barely breaks 50 FPS on a 965 w/ 4 GPUs @ 1680 x 1050.

As you say, parts of your rig barely meet the minimum requirements, so the problem lies with your machine, and not with the game. Your machine is only as good as it's weakest component.

I would agree that "Minimum spec" seems to have been applied a little optimistically in this case but "Minimum spec" does mean the absolute MINIMUM to make the game RUN and does not imply it is going to run well at any settings.

Eth

My rig do not "barely meet the minimun requirements". I have more CPU power and memory. And my VGA lies between minimum - recommended. People with 2GB high-end VGA (over-over recommended) have similar problems.

The problem doesn't "lie on my machine". Crysis "breaks" 50FPS in my machine. I don't speak "all sliders up", but DECENTE PERFORMANCE WITH REALISTIC SETTINGS FOR MY RIG!

I really hate this type of nihilistic answers to questions about bugged or non-optimized software... :( If my "minimum rig" can handle the rendering of FarCry 2, why can't handle ArmA II? Even talking about DX9... The CPU power is enough for the much more complex DCS environment processing...

Sounds ilogic to me. I do not see where goes my resources in this game...

[MehMan 0]

Far bigger view distance, far more objects to render, a heck of a lot more information for the GPU to handle, more units on screen than in Far Cry 2, etc etc. Far Cry 2's VD is at around 200m. ArmA2 has the default viewdistance set at 1600m.

[ernesto 10]

Far bigger view distance, far more objects to render, a heck of a lot more information for the GPU to handle, more units on screen than in Far Cry 2, etc etc. Far Cry 2's VD is at around 200m. ArmA2 has the default viewdistance set at 1600m.

I can set the the view distance to 5km in game and fly with a chopper and the LOD and texture loading are beutifull implemented in ArmA II. But when I'm in an empty city, with nothing really forcing the rendering capacities of my hardware, I experience a lot of issues.

I'm comparing FarCry2 rendering in this situation, not the "10km open-field rendering"... When in a city I don't see "10km away"... The ArmA II engine handles well open fields and a lot of units, but is bugged as hell in cities, need a lot of optimization. And I don't comparing the quality of the static obejcts renderend in FarCry2 Dunia engine with the simplier used in ArmA II... or the physics...

I don't know if it's because the focus of the engine is open fields or something, but if a company put big cities in a game, need to improve the logic of LOD/loading textures in this situation.

Finally, Dunia engine supports longer rendering distances... not only up to 200m... Even in FarCry2 I can sniping far away...

[bangtail 0]

My rig do not "barely meet the minimun requirements". I have more CPU power and memory. And my VGA lies between minimum - recommended. People with 2GB high-end VGA (over-over recommended) have similar problems.

The problem doesn't "lie on my machine". Crysis "breaks" 50FPS in my machine. I don't speak "all sliders up", but DECENTE PERFORMANCE WITH REALISTIC SETTINGS FOR MY RIG!

I really hate this type of nihilistic answers to questions about bugged or non-optimized software... :( If my "minimum rig" can handle the rendering of FarCry 2, why can't handle ArmA II? Even talking about DX9... The CPU power is enough for the much more complex DCS environment processing...

Sounds ilogic to me. I do not see where goes my resources in this game...

I have a mix of "minimum specs" and "recommendade specs"

You said some of your parts were the minimum spec. I'm simply reacting to what YOU said.

Stop making comparisons using games that have little (if anything) in common.

And of course, you have proof that DCS:BS has "much more complex environment processing", right? Oh wait, of course you don't!

There are problems with the game, that is 100% accurate but plenty of us have it running well which kind of pisses all over your "It MUST be the game engine" theory.

Eth

Edited July 8, 2009 by BangTail

[S!fkaIaC 10]

And of course, you have proof that DCS:BS has "much more complex environment processing", right? Oh wait, of course you don't!

If they would develop better human body models with better animations and make them human controllable DCS:BS could compete with OFP 1.96 for sure. Well, of course different way of modding.

And there are many good physics simulations in DCS:BS (also for ground vehicles!!!) and damage models which obviously DO WORK in a large scenario.

Since DCS:BS is a flight SIM, the rest of the scenario acts mainly as target, thats why infantry units looking like marsians when you come closer.

But they put A LOT of effort into it for the fact that they should be targets only.

[=Spetsnaz= 0]

i was wondering if setting texture and video memory to very high on a 512mb card does anything? cause it has'nt been doing anything to me.. and probably cause i run on a low resoultion?

[ernesto 10]

ArmA II is not a FPS with some simple vehicles (like BF2) with a larger map and more realistic settings and AI units?

I like to compare with any FPS with vehicles... FarCry2 seems to be a good comparsion...

DCS:BS - reallistic FM and avionics, lots of ground units with accurate physics and ballistics, with on the fly AI... good terrain, large cities, low level flight, no "action bubble"... Maybe a "decent benchmark" for CPU load?