ArmA 2 Demo feedback

[ebud 18]

3 of us tested the MP here at work on a lan for a couple hours and after tweaking settings and resolutions we were getting really good performance, but a couple of times each of us had to alt-tab after the screen went black or there were a couple of "explosions of polygons." Alt tabing fixed that though.

Really fun session of dm, co-op tdm, freeforall... now I know what people are complaining about with the movements too "clunky" for MP, but I totally disagree with that. It makes tactics and decisions more important that mouse control or twitch shooting. The person with the better tactics wins 9 out of 10 times here.

[mpoverege 10]

Demo works Great on my i7 system, grafics are awsome, love it.

[Azamato 0]

Am I the only one who's monitors goes to standbuy after a while playing?

[Litos 10]

Am I the only one who's monitors goes to standbuy after a while playing?

I think so.

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

of course. I did it to let developers know more ppl having the problem, as this is a FEEDBACK thread (as you noticed) and problem may be fixed in upcoming hotfix. all my DirectX games works fine btw (Vista has DX10 integrated), so this is a demo issue.

I also had to get the DX9 update, yet my W7 has DX11!

I understood the simple reason as to why DX9 had to be installed.

I also had to get DX9 to run 3DMark06 on my Vista 64, it to was a simple reason. Blame MS for not including their files with their lastest OS's ;)

[mcbane 0]

Anyone have any success commanding in M02 Death Valley? I can't figure out how to order a squad to enter a vehicle...

[BaseJumper 10]

Am I the only one who's monitors goes to standbuy after a while playing?

Not enough power for you computer ?

check your Power Supply Unit (PSU) wattage.

Intermittent shutdown of PC or Monitor could be due to not enough power output from our PSU.

[swat.tr 6]

Hi my System P 4 2.6 CPU ATI Sapphire 3650 series GPU 1.5 RAM DDR 2 video optıons is normal ..

Very much tanks.. very good optimizıon to Demo.

Edited November 5, 2009 by SWAT.TR

[Azamato 0]

Not enough power for you computer ?

check your Power Supply Unit (PSU) wattage.

Intermittent shutdown of PC or Monitor could be due to not enough power output from our PSU.

Never did that before.. Exept nowadays it does that with CoD 4 and now the ArmA 2 demo... :( its 420watt how to make it better? dumb question but does removing other games help? :D

[Placebo 29]

You need to buy a more powerful PSU, removing some hardware that might not be needed could help temporarily.......

[Dogtags 0]

Q6600 @ 3GHZ

Nvidia 8800 GTS 512 (G92 variant) slightly overclocked

4 GB RAM

Windows vista 32

20" LCD 1680 * 1050

In game benchmark:

Both benchmanr were taken with no AA and Aniso on Normal

With everything on high = 32FPS average

With everything on Normal = 35 fps average

You see what's happening here? this game is very CPU intensive, I am limited by my CPU and not by my semi-old GPU.

I'll try to overclock a little bit more my CPU, but it's summer here and I don't know if it'll be worthy.

Omega Man personally I think you will find that your GPU is holding you back slightly. I say this because I had a very similar setup except I had the slightly slower 8800GTS 320MB card but same overclocked Q6600. I was getting around 12000 in 3dmark06 as soon as I put in a 48701GB card I was getting over 15000. This suggests my card was holding back my CPU.

Now my problem is my CPU is holding back my graphics card, LOL, can't win.

[funkee 0]

to everyone with MOUSE LAG issue!!!

first time I launched demo (nvidia display driver v.185.85) I got nasty mouse lag like in ArmA1. then I reinstalled nvidia driver to the newest one (186.18), disabled "enhance mouse cursor" option in windows control panel: click! and the game runs pretty smooth now! I'm getting 45-52 fps in training mission (where it starts) on erverything (except postprocessing and antialiasing) set to very high! I need some time to say anything more about the demo, but as far I like it (shooting is much better than in AA3) :D

btw. my system specs: E8400@4GHz, GF 8800 GTS 512, 2 GB RAM

Am I the only one who's monitors goes to standbuy after a while playing?

I think it may be caused by display refresh frequency that your monitor sets when you enter the game. try RivaTuner to set optimal refresh frequency for each resolution: click!

Edited June 29, 2009 by funkee

[Stromko 10]

I can't find an option to just turn off motion blur, I have to completely turn off post-processing effects.

This level of motion blur is really, really sickening to me. I've never had a problem with motion sickness while gaming, but motion blur is a perfect recipe for it.

It doesn't even look realistic to me, as far as I can tell if your whole environment turns into a smear when you turn, you have a serious medical problem. Or maybe I'm a freak and just don't experience motion blur. I don't know.

So yes, I dearly need an option that just says, "No motion blur kthx", and lets me enjoy other post-processing effects. They're rather important effects and the game is way less awe-inspiring without them, but motion blur is horrible, horrible, and fake.

[funkee 0]

motion blur should be set to "low" by default imho. btw. there is no "turn on engine" option, after pressing "turn off engine" in the vehicle menu.

Edited June 26, 2009 by funkee

[Stromko 10]

If by "low" you mean, "just stepped out of a bunker after six concussion grenades went off in front of your face" then yes it's definitely set to low.

I'll check the config files, maybe there's a 1 I can replace with a 0 to get rid of this? I hope so. I really enjoyed ARMA 1 and quite want to enjoy this thing.

[by 'this' I mean the motion blur]

Couldn't find the config files right away, found it under My Documents/ArmA 2 Demo. This isn't a lot of settings for a program this complicated. Nothing to disable motion blur, just post process effects. I've still got a headache from the last time I tried to soldier on despite the motion blur, so it looks like I'm going to have to shut them off entirely, and tweak the texture sampling so that things render more clearly. I don't think 1920x1080 should look this fuzzy(turns out it was at 1280xsomething and at 1920x1080 it looks much better so problem solved), I understand it's actually upsampling to some maximum res and then reducing it down for some reason, and I need to raise sampling to 125% or something. I'll figure it out.. (couldn't find advanced texture options like that anywhere, but raising the resolution helped a lot)

An option to disable or reduce head bobbing would also be nice. It never bothered me much in ArmA 1, I don't remember if it was just less severe or if there was an option to turn it off. It's distracting and unrealistic the ArmA 2 demo, at least. It assumes that the eye doesn't stay focused on a point during motion, which is also probably the excuse for the excessive motion blur. It's neither realistic, nor fun. Maybe it doesn't bug some people, but an option to lower or disable it would be nice. Right now, I can avoid it by just hitting num-enter and going to external view at least.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Stromko
(removed a comment about some broken scripts in the bootcamp level, because I don't actually care. Multiplayer is king)

[MareNostrum 10]

is there a way to set a respawn script for the coop campaign in the demo? I get so many new people on my server that die early and complain.

[Flock 10]

Best and biggest(content wise) demo i ever played, full stop.

[Dogtags 0]

I am afraid there are major issues with the demo which means the same for the game I guess.

Started out smooth enough but doing mission 2 the crap hit the fan. Below is a list of things I saw that were bugs or I hated during this mission which by the way I never got to finish because of a CTD.

1. AI are definately drunk. Worst drivers ever, basically hopeless
   
2. AI will drive into houses, knock down fences and I even saw an armoured vehicle drive up the back and onto the top of another armoured vehicle, he was persistant.
   
3. At one point fps suddenly dropped to 2fps and textures flashed white on buildings, signs and fences around me. After 40 seconds of this it came back to normal
   
4. I heard others complain about flashing textures specifically on buildings. I figured that is just ARMA but I was wrong this is much worse that ARMA1 ever was. The flashing textures detract immensely from the gameplay, I hate it.
   
5. The fact that textures behind you unload so when you turn around you have to wait a second or two for them to reload is crazy. Again detracts a lot from atmosphere.
   
6. Every single vehicle explodes and seems to explode twice. Once when it is hit and once when the flames go out. I find this annoying because not all vehicles explode all the time, this should be random. Secondary explosions can happen and look great in ARMA1 ACE and again are random. Secondary explosions should not happen at the end of a burning wreck every time either, very weird.
   
7. And then of course there is the crash to desktop which happened when I died and clicked to reload last save and bang kicked out. This is about 3 times now on different missions and with different errors.
   
8. Multiplayer - Well I tried it. Once when trying to place an MG I had a CTD. Another time I drove a HUMMER into a town and as I entered the Receiving.... message came up on a black screen. I could still see all of the chatter and deaths on the bottom left of screen but Receiving... flashed in and out for 5 mins before I just gave up. Multiplayer not playable right now for me anyway and this was on a good server.
   

Still looking forward to the full game but these things are bugging me right now. I realise BIS will eventually fix them but there is a lot to fix.

Q6600

4870

Win XP 32 Bit (Legit)

2GB RAM

Edited June 26, 2009 by Dogtags

[mcbane 0]

If by "low" you mean, "just stepped out of a bunker after six concussion grenades went off in front of your face" then yes it's definitely set to low.

I'll check the config files, maybe there's a 1 I can replace with a 0 to get rid of this? I hope so. I really enjoyed ARMA 1 and quite want to enjoy this thing.

[by 'this' I mean the motion blur]

Couldn't find the config files right away, found it under My Documents/ArmA 2 Demo. This isn't a lot of settings for a program this complicated. Nothing to disable motion blur, just post process effects. I've still got a headache from the last time I tried to soldier on despite the motion blur, so it looks like I'm going to have to shut them off entirely, and tweak the texture sampling so that things render more clearly. I don't think 1920x1080 should look this fuzzy(turns out it was at 1280xsomething and at 1920x1080 it looks much better so problem solved), I understand it's actually upsampling to some maximum res and then reducing it down for some reason, and I need to raise sampling to 125% or something. I'll figure it out.. (couldn't find advanced texture options like that anywhere, but raising the resolution helped a lot)

An option to disable or reduce head bobbing would also be nice. It never bothered me much in ArmA 1, I don't remember if it was just less severe or if there was an option to turn it off. It's distracting and unrealistic the ArmA 2 demo, at least. It assumes that the eye doesn't stay focused on a point during motion, which is also probably the excuse for the excessive motion blur. It's neither realistic, nor fun. Maybe it doesn't bug some people, but an option to lower or disable it would be nice. Right now, I can avoid it by just hitting num-enter and going to external view at least.

I don't mind the motion blur at all and I'm playing on my 42" tv.

BTW, there is an option for head bob in the Game Options.

[ceeeb 147]

I've had a lot of trouble with performace in the demo (using latest video, sound & directX drivers). The demo's default graphical settings provide about 1 fps, which was a nasty shock on first load. I've found that changing the video memory to low gives me about 25 fps, but this is still below what I was expected from my pc, since it's performance in ArmA is great. ArmA2 is only playable when the graphics are set to low.

Specs:

C2D E8400 @ 3.75 Ghz

2x2048 MB @ 442Mhz, 4-4-4-12

Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB (slight factory overclock)

X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty

RAID-0

Windows XP SP3

I've recently changed to from 2x1GB to 2x2GB of RAM, with a fairly large reduction in FSB, but the CPU is still running at about the same speed. Any ideas?

edit: disabling "Enhance Pointer Precision" under Mouse in the Windows XP control panel has almost doubled my FPS. I can now set video memory to normal and get a passable FPS of 20, although I am still playing with it set to low and FPS of about 40.

Edited June 27, 2009 by ceeeb

[Stromko 10]

How do I get rid of the mouse acceleration shenanigans? It almost 'feels' like my mouse is connected to a bunch of rubberbands. It isn't, that's just how it feels. Any motion is resisted, in a kind of laggy manner. This is most noticable on the menus, in the game itself the effect seems much more reasonable.

I can kind of understand they don't want us to be whipping around like Counterstrike addicts, but that's better accomplished by just expanding the firing cone every time we turn, which I think it already does.

I found out motion blur goes away if I play in 3rd-person view, so that's good. One major reservation out of the way.

edit: Ceeeb, your computer's better than mine so you should be getting better performance. I've heard that once you set the settings to low, then raise them again, performance remains good. Try messing around with that non-interactive benchmark mission, it might help you narrow down the issue.

My systems' much like yours (8800 GTS, some sort of quadcore CPU, but nothing's been upgraded in the last year), and I got 25 FPS in the benchmark scenario. This was with post-processing turned off. It not only adds motion-blur, but also tries to simulate periphereal vision fuzziness(at least on the parachute training mission), which is a pretty terrible effect. The problem with simulating periphereal vision in a game is that, if I'm looking at that part of the screen then it isn't in my periphereal vision. So it not only looks fugly, it breaks my immersion. Am I supposed to be trapped behind the character's eyes, unable to turn those eyes in order to focus on the edge of my vision? It's too bad I have to play it without post-processing because the heat shimmers and other effects are quite good.

Edited June 27, 2009 by Stromko

[Dumile 10]

Well, I'm amazed. Massive performance increase, especially in urban combat! Getting down to 25fps on Trial By Fire on retail, but the demo blazes away at 40+fps.. to get to 25fps i have to set fillrate to 150% and AA Very High..

Amazing stuff guys. To quote Shaftoe on Manhattan, "Well done team, truly above and beyond". :D

edit: oh, and the AI! MUCH, much smarter so far. Sure it wasn't perfect, but i saw some moments of brilliance. For instance, sweeping through town I surprised an AI who suddenly found himself vulnerable (i was merely half a second away from leaning from cover and taking my shot), only to see him quickly about face and dart for the cover he had emerged from, and in quick time. He definitely made the right move there, as anything else meant his death. Aside from the occasional "well that was dumb, wasnt it?" moments, muchly improved.

Edited June 27, 2009 by Dumile

[wipman 1]

Hi, in the Demo this are some of the bad/wrong things that i've found:

Pale Character Skin:

You can compare how that custom face looks here and how it looks in the ArmA, way better

and more detailed and less pale in the ArmA than here.

Bad Shadows:

Sometimes you see the shadows casted over objects, inside houses and over the units,

as dark (completly black) like on that tree; so it's impossible to distinguish what or who's

under that shadow.

Very Low Object Textures:

Even when set on High or Very High, i don't see any difference what so ever; i see most

of the objects that bad, as if they were set to Low or very Low.

Low Vegetation:

The trees and bushes look like that and makes very hard to distinguish any detail on 'em

of if a friendly or enemy unit is using it as cover because it looks as bad as that.

Very Low Vehicles Detail:

Don't happens with all the vehicles, but the army HMMWVs that BIS has gave us, look

as bad as that, they're like a mud dirt in a field, only the wheels look as they should; with

the required and propper detail. Also the MTVs that are at more or less 60m show what

may be the 4th LOD, just a couple of boxes ones on top of the others.

The FPS have gone under 20fps in Chernarus, with the view distance at 3000m on my

Dual Core 3.400mhz with my Nvidia 8800GTS 256Mb and my 3Gb of DDR. So for all this

reasons and the ones deleted my a moderator... i've to lower my rating from 6.8 to 5.4 .

It's a unfinnished and few polished game at this point in my opinion. I like the demo, but

i wont buy a game that works and it's seen like this, i did that mistake with the ArmA and

i won't make the same mistake again. Let's C ya

[snake eyes 0]

Curious, I had no such problem with this and everything went smooth with the HALO mission, how many times did you retry it?

Well it seems to have been a fluke cause i just played it again and it worked from beginning to end Perfect:D

[BongoBoy 10]

As a Huge ArmA fan I am saddened to say the whole thing was going fine until "launching". Then I get an error screen about the a 3D file thats missing.

I uninstalled and installed a bunch of times, I dunno. Arma and Op Flash work great.

and I have been waiting so long for this.

BB.