Can't we totally turn off post processing?

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Okay, here's another theory on why A2 (and also A1) are so slow, compared to other games. If someone more technically competent can correct me, please do so.

I get the feeling that "Post processing" simple means the entire screen output is pushed trough some shaders, every little pixel. While other graphically great games - as far as I understand (Fallout3, Stalker are what I play) are using shaders only on specific objects and scenery (for example, to generate water effects or light effects, for bump-mapping on house walls, or to generate "depth" on some uniform textures on soldiers) in A1 and A2, shaders are used to generate the "Aperture/Eye Adjustment" effects, the NVG on/off effects and similar stuff that is ALWAYS there.

For me this seems - again, if someone can contradict me, please do so - that in Arma this means the entire screen is also thrown into the shading process. Not only has the card to do shader work on soldiers, houses and vehicles, but then AGAIN on the same frame for overall brightness. Another example of full screen shading is the "Noise" effect you get as commander in some tanks when looking trough your vision system. And yet another example is the color correction you see in some missions (that brownish tint which for example is used in the second SP scenario).

Now, I benchmarked that: Color correction off, and color correction on in the same mission do make ZERO difference on frame rate. How can that be, that the additional shader work of changing every single pixel on the screen to a different color has no frame impact? Simple, because every single pixel on the screen already is shaded independently all the time.

The only other game I have that does "Post Processing" is Silent Hunter IV, which can do a color-changed and grainy "film-like" overlay over the whole screen to fake period film material look. PP in that game costs more than 20% framerate when enabled.

In A2, it seems we don't get the choice to disable it. Basically to get good graphics from a legacy engine, already in Arma1 BIS has put a shading process AFTER scene rendering on top of the already existing render process.

In A2 this means the engine is rendering objects/soldiers, shading/bump mapping their textures and FX effects, THEN does another shading run for Motion Blur and HDR, THEN does another shading of the final scene for the whole screen resolution to incorporate eye/aperture simulation and color correction. Is it any wonder that you need very fat hardware to do such a lot of shader operations?

The pure amount of geometry and textures in a given scene (frame) in A2 are not higher from F3 and Stalker, least not in low view distance. The difference in performance can thus likely be explained in the shading requirements, which also explains why turning settings around only has a very small influence on framerate.

Honestly? If we could disable the shaders that account for colorcorrection and eye adjustment, maybe also for the DOF and other effects, I think we'd all see 25% performance increase. Wouldn't it be nice to have that option?

[S!fkaIaC 10]

We? BIS!

Edited June 17, 2009 by S!fkaIaC

[-)rStrangelove 0]

Have you tried the noblur addon by Kegetys yet?

[Nutlink 10]

What I'd like to see is to keep the motion blur enabled but to turn off the bloom. Having everything so reflective just blows, but I like the motion blur.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Strangelove, yes I did and it gives me 5 or 6 extra frames (up from 24) so that already showed what a load shaders are. Shame though since I liked the effects.

I'd really rather trade the brightness/NVG effects and everything else that goes with them for a playable framerate. In fact if BIS included an option to make A2 look like A1 (while keeping the core game improvements like AI) I'd go for that too.

[Defunkt 431]

Good Lord! Would you please just go and buy a graphics card suitable for a 1920 x 1200 display.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Good Lord! Would you just please stop being a BIS fanboi defending a low-performance game engine?

Seriously, do you get some weird kick out of jumping into topics where people try to decipher why Arma2 is running slow EVEN FOR PEOPLE WITH MASSIVE HARDWARE? It's not like I'm the only one not satisfied with game performance here. And at least I make an effort to underline my conclusion and arguments with tests and facts, not like you Mr. Oneliner knows all.

And my card IS very able to run current modern games at 1920x1200 in high detail. It's not my fault if BIS - as it seems - has been slapping new effects onto an old engine at the cost of decent performance.

Oh, and if it really annoys you so much, feel free to send me your rig since you seem to think that throwing hardware at a poorly optimized game engine is a good way to spend money.

Edited June 17, 2009 by Helmut_AUT

[Razorman 10]

Power & performance come at a cost, this game uses masssive CPU power primarily, upgrade your cpu, nothing short of a 3GHZ (that's clock speed not some silly hyped up name but actual speed) dual core cpu will do.

I get excellent performance using the rig in my sig below.

Good luck.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Razor, if I'm standing at an EMPTY island the CPU doesn't matter. By adding group after group of fighting AI in the editor (out of vis) I have also benchmarked how my frames go down as the CPU starts taking over the load from the GFX card. Short of 10 or more large AI groups, my bottleneck is the card (CPU slows stuff down to 25 avg, but card drops frames down to less than 20), so please leave it to me to decide what CPU I need.

Sorry if I sound a bit provocative, but why do people always second-guess benchmarks and tests posted by others? I'm talking about shader overhead here in this thread, not CPU overload. CPU overload is a different matter that can also happen, but at least I can control that by creating smaller size missions.

And don't even get me started on the idea that "nothing short of a 3GHZ will do" - then BIS has been lying by stating the "optimal CPU" is a 4400+ or better.

[FraG_AU 10]

Helmut, hold out for the patch and new drivers, then revist it :)

I have thrown my head against the wall in terms of performance in this game on my "state of the art" rig. I have found something odd, which I am replicating now..

I managed to enable SLi by using a clean install, crysis64.exe and -winxp (clean install from OS up).

Now all was fine in single player and I enjoyed 58odd fps avg at 1920x1200 with half things on high/very high. FINALLY i thought, now I went online to play some multi (only reason I wanted this game) and instantly performance went back down to 30fps.. NOw i just thought well fuck it i'll play SP at good FPS and hope the patch fixes the MP.

BUT Guess what, after playing multi i went back into SP, and my FPS are back to where they were on my old install!! Back to 35-40...

So now I figure something in MP is either kicking FADE in (I haven't changed any files aside form 1.01 patch and using mods in their seperate dir), OR some of these MP modes screw with the detail configs.. If you notice Evolution etc will change detail level for you not using the game engine..

Anyway I am just about finished my reinstall from OS up (I have even ghosted a clean install just to mess with this).. If this happens again then well we know there is a big performance bug for people. I will lock my .cfg files once I set them up before going into MP.

Actually anyone know how to check if FADE has kicked in?

And sorry you can't defend the performance of this game, its rubbish at the moment. I get better preformance in Crysis Warhead with DX10 and full details then I do in ARMA on normal/low. And sorry, telling me that this is more CPU hungry would be rubbish as my CPU usage has not been over 35% in this game (well in the current state, i will check when i finish my reinstall)

Either way I have been trying to get to the bottom of this, I always understood i was buying a buggy game but having time off work, i wanted something to play with.

@ Razor - what do you classify as excellent performance? Excellent performance is subjective, and to me excellent would mean 60+ FPS smooth as butter.

50-60 is good

40-50 is average

30-40 is poor

20-30 Unplayable

Now my subjective performance is based on the fact that I can afford the best hardware, and on top of that through overclocking I extract more performance then any off the shelf PC available on earth. If a game I like does not perform to my standard I upgrade until it does IF i see that its a justified expense.

[Potatomasher 0]

50-60 is good

40-50 is average

30-40 is poor

20-30 Unplayable

20-30 unplayable and 30-40 poor. Jesus. I know that even some of the X360 console games are designed to run at 30 fps. Like RacePro.

You aren't easily satisfied. I would be very happy if i would get that 20-30 stable. And one thing, i must be partly blind or something but if i see say like 50 fps game and next to it 60 fps i won't fucking recognise the difference.

I totally understand Helmut's angry but you i don't get.

Edited June 18, 2009 by Potatomasher

[Razorman 10]

Min 33fps in singleplayer max 180fps @ 1920x1200 with all high settings & 100% fillrate, plays very fluidly, i agree that performance is not as it should be & i too will spend what i need to bring a game up to playable fps's if it justifies it, i beleive ARMA 2 does.

However i dont think spending anymore on a graphics card over the one that is installed warrants it, by definition this game is cpu bound, while graphics cards do make a difference, this game/sim is affected primarilly by cpu.

Sure your ARMA 2 does not utilize all of your cpu power, that's due to poor coding but i beleive it will improve with patching as ARMA 1 did massively.

Again i don't disagree that this game/sim has bugs, all i wanted to say was CPU power is the key, i see so many users whining about how it runs like shit on their X2 4200's that i want to make it clear that those kind of cpu's are not sufficient,allthough clearly ok for some (but not for me).

I also run ARMA 2 on a Athlon 64 X2 6400 overclocked to 3.4GHZ with another GTX260 & 4GB of ram, it performs at a minimum 25fps with the same resolution & settings compared to the other rig @ 33fps.

Is that evidence enough for you?

I hope you get your issues fixed as this game/sim is well worth the hype.

Razor out.

Edited June 18, 2009 by Razorman

[FraG_AU 10]

20-30 unplayable and 30-40 poor. Jesus. I know that even some of the X360 console games are designed to run at 30 fps. Like RacePro.

You aren't easily satisfied. I would be very happy if i would get that 20-30 stable. And one thing, i must be partly blind or something but if i see say like 50 fps game and next to it 60 fps i won't fucking recognise the difference.

I totally understand Helmut's angry but you i don't get.

Like I said, I do set the bar high but I have the hardware to back it up. I can easily pick the difference between 30 and 60. The biggest thing your eyes notice is the change in FPS, so a consistent 30 would be better then things that jump from 30-50. Then again some people have slightly different eye sight as well.

http://www.daniele.ch/school/30vs60/30vs60_1.html Old but decent article, tho its been shown we can tell the diff up to 120fps or may have even been 200fps (some eyes - eg fighter pilots etc)

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Again i don't disagree that this game/sim has bugs, all i wanted to say was CPU power is the key, i see so many users whining about how it runs like shit on their X2 4200's that i want to make it clear that those kind of cpu's are not sufficient,allthough clearly ok for some (but not for me).

Well, then blame BIS, and not the users. The Box clearly states a 4400+ AMD CPU as OPTIMAL SYSTEM. Not just "recommended to run it". Now when on a 5000+ AMD which exceeds the official system specs, I can not even run most of the BIS-included missions since my CPU is bottlenecking (1t 15 FPS), that is simple a lie to write "4400+ is optimal" on the box, and you can't blame the users for complaining. I guess with the minimum recommended CPU you can have only a player and one AI soldier on the map then?

And besides, I run a lot of CPU intense games - mainly flightsims - just fine on this rig. Also stuff like CMSF, which has very good AI soldier calculations and still runs nicely.

Still, this thread is about the graphics side of things. And I'm saying that the forced post processing certainly costs about 20% FPS on weaker cards. For some fancy effects that people could happily live without. I can scale down the AI units in the missions I play or create, but I can't shut down the shading effects, so for me that is even more a concern.

And BTW, I consider avg. 25 to 30 frames for a game like this perfectly playable, coming from flight simulations you get used to not having "twitch speed" and A2 is not such a fast gameplay. And avg. 25 to 30fps I get, but the occasional slowdown to 15fps kills any enjoyment.

[moosenoodles 0]

I did some testing with Overclocks on 2 pc's one with amd dual core that runs standard at 2.4 ghz and an intel dual core that runs 2.4 ghz standard..

Now I find in my tests that arma hits the sweet spot of no issues when you reach 3.4ghz overclock, if you go by that roughly then everything else issues wise seems to pure code/game related.. (not saying thats a cert but thats what Ive found with my cpu testing, even 3.2 to 3.4ghz seemed to make a good fluidity change regarding AI/players on screen)

were talking 30 people in that city begining with E ? coast of the map, 2 teams duking it out and no texture issues smooth mouse play with no problems zooming in with scopes and no popping textures..

As said above, cards make little diff really if its a 8 or 200 series nv or top end ati's, more vram the better yes for future and probable coding issues in gfx settings via game menus. But other than that if your running ur cpu stock and its a low stock 2.4 your going to probably not be overall impressed when you start to play arma large scale.

[thr0tt 12]

20-30fps here, so if its CPU restricted then let me know which CPU to buy next please ? I currently use AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition (3.2Ghz).

[Balgorg 10]

Yes it would be nice to have the option available to turn off bloom, keep motion blur (if you want it).

I just got the game and I agree that the bloom effect is totaly unrealistic, as well as the HDR overkill. In certain weather conditions the game can appear very gloomy, its hard to see the enemy units.

Otherwise the engine is smoothe and resposive, so no probs there.

Is it possible to shrink the ugly picture mug shot of your team units, cos they take up too much space.

Also it would be nice to turn of the tag, the large green square that also shows you the position of your team, it again looks rather distracting.

[whisper 0]

Also it would be nice to turn of the tag, the large green square that also shows you the position of your team, it again looks rather distracting.

You can do it in difficulty settings

[technologickill 10]

20-30fps here, so if its CPU restricted then let me know which CPU to buy next please ? I currently use AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition (3.2Ghz).

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/ :P

Edited June 18, 2009 by technologickill

[Razorman 10]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/ :P

Great test, they agree ;)

[rowdied 44]

Good Lord! Would you please just go and buy a graphics card suitable for a 1920 x 1200 display.

^X2

Seriously, give it a rest already with the 9600gt and buy a card to suit your 27 " monitor.

[kklownboy 43]

Good Lord! ...

Good Lord!

And my card IS very able to run current modern games at 1920x1200 in high detail. ...

"Good Lord!"lol.

Your settings are too high. Your resolution is too much for your hardware, you should be playing at 1280/1024, or at whatever geometry you prefer.

Oh, and it really annoys ... throwing poorly optimized hardware at a game engine , way to spend money.

just a joke :)

Good Lord! lol

You are doing what allot of buyers do, they buy a bigger Display than there Hardware can render. And since you have a LCD, that is way cool @ 24in? or 27in? and is just freaking fantastic in your webbrowser, it may be just too many pixels to push, and the games have too many filters for your hardware.

Edited June 19, 2009 by kklownboy

[bushlurker 45]

* in ArmA 2 version 1.02, it will be possible to disable various post effects including bloom.

Direct from Marek Da Big Boss..... here

Edited June 19, 2009 by Bushlurker

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Good to hear. He also explains that HDR can never be disabled since the engine uses it for lighting.

Klownboy, Rowdied, your names fit you well. I already explained in sufficient detail that I can run other MODERN games at this resolution and high details just fine (F3, Stalker), whereas even people with MEGA hardware can not get A2 to run fast and without large frame drops in certain situations.

Please explain to me what gives A2 the right to demand double the hardware than other current games, and the right to far exceed the OPTIMAL PC SPECs written on the box before you can actually run it?

[Razorman 10]

Please explain to me what gives A2 the right to demand double the hardware than other current games, and the right to far exceed the OPTIMAL PC SPECs written on the box before you can actually run it?

It's doing double the things (at least) that all other current games are.

This isn't your normal game. I run it fine with the specs below (average 32fps 1920x1200), have you ever run the original ARMA or OFP? If you had you would know exactly what's going on.

Shame you can't enjoy it, i really hope you get your issues fixed.

Btw, i can't seem to find your cpu specs in this thread?

Edit: Never mind i see you run an X2 5000, that's the reason your're having issues, sorry but that CPU is "weaksuace" for this game, the link below shows you at an average of 17fps, understandable as that cpu cannot & will not handle ARMA 2 well.

Maybe they were a little generous with the optimal specs, never the less your cpu is the issue.

You have seen this right? http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/ If not it should answer your questions.

Edited June 19, 2009 by Razorman