New Beta Build 70709 is up!

[Zipper5 74]

The ai has an internal "attack most dangerous targets above others" since

OFP-and it works!

Just another proof that you just complain with no base.

We get that they attack the most important vehicle or unit first, but the issue is when that unit is technically either inoperable or no long a threat, they still engage it. Like when they shoot the gunner out of a static MG and continue to shoot at it. Whenever I include a static MG in my missions I always need a check to see if it's gunner is dead, and then destroy it manually.

[RN Escobar 0]

i installed this beta last night, and i have to say i think it is horrible.

When joining a server i found it impossible to play due to the stuttering and inconsistent framerates. Tried with all exThreads options and none of them were as smooth and playable as the vanilla 1.05.

I don't know if i'm missing something, but i just can't believe how much worse i found the playing experience with the beta.

Ran 3 runs of the FPSAnalyser which confirms that the betas in any configuration give a lower and more erratic framerate than stock 1.05.

Core Specs

i7-920 @ stock

6Gb DDR3 - triple channel

Ati 5870 running a 24" @ 1920x1200 (8.702.00 drivers)

Patriot TorqX 128Gb SSD

Win7 64bit

[NoRailgunner 0]

Nice try SWT_Janowich :rolleyes:

Your assumption of an "internal attack most dangerous targets above others" doesnt work very well. Otherwise the AI in helicopters/planes would attack their highest threat's first.

Place some vehicles, soldiers and static weapons on the ground and watch how AI in a plane/helicopter decides to engage AA threats. Then add some enemy helicopter/planes and watch it again.

Its more like the AI still isnt able to differ properly between low-medium-high threats. So my suggestion is to make a general threat-list for AI so they won't be overall wasted or wasting time + ammo on (very) low threats.

"stop shooting them on destroyed/burning vehicles" is another annoying issue with AI or status-info cueing/sharing.

[Zipper5 74]

Nice try SWT_Janowich :rolleyes:

Indeed. I'm quickly coming to the assumption that he just trolls all the time, given what he posts and makes threads about. Not a very successful one at that either.

Fail troll is fail.

[jw custom 56]

Fine, but we're talking here about BIS beta builds - not ACE's or any other addon/mod beta builds. And no the AI dont "see" like human players do they're more dealing with infos. Wild guess is that during combat the AI gunner dont get the vehicle status and keeps on shooting at it till the info is shared. Perhaps one of the issues with optimsing/tweaking A2?

Well i mentioned it because theres really many around here who plays with ACE and would still see the problem. I'm fully aware that it's not BIS's job to make sure things works correctly with 3rd party addons :)

I haven't played without ACE for a really long time so i can't say if it still happens on vanilla ArmA 2.

I have played a lot of Domination the last few days and a couple of times i tried the beta but it always ended up with a CTD :(

Edited May 26, 2010 by JW Custom

[Yoma 0]

i7-920 @ stock

6Gb DDR3 - triple channel

Ati 5870 running a 24" @ 1920x1200 (8.702.00 drivers)

Patriot TorqX 128Gb SSD

Win7 64bit

Just a small silly question: do you have hyperthreading enabled on that i920?

If so try disabling it in bios, then try again.

I have had a personal allergy for hyperthreading ever since Intel came up with it years ago.

It should be better implemented in the "i" cpu's that have it, but i've seen massive problems with it in lots of different applications/drivers/blabla ever since it was deployed. Most of these problems were performance problems, but some were even crashes of all kinds.

This thread has some interesting links if you want to learn some causes.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Yoma

[RN Escobar 0]

Just a small silly question: do you have hyperthreading enabled on that i920?

If so try disabling it in bios, then try again.

I have had a personal allergy for hyperthreading ever since Intel came up with it years ago.

It should be better implemented in the "i" cpu's that have it, but i've seen massive problems with it in lots of different applications/drivers/blabla ever since it was deployed. Most of these problems were performance problems, but some were even crashes of all kinds.

This thread has some interesting links if you want to learn some causes.

Whilst i haven't played a proper game and "felt" it it would appear that you have nailed it.

just to give you an idea of the differences, here is the same FPS benchy with HT on and HT off.

[MavericK96 0]

Whilst i haven't played a proper game and "felt" it it would appear that you have nailed it.

just to give you an idea of the differences, here is the same FPS benchy with HT on and HT off.

Nice work. Good to see some hard testing of HT on vs. off. One comment, though, I would resize your pic. They don't like pics larger than 100k posted around here. :cool:

[jdonner 10]

Yes, I think so too!

Edited June 2, 2010 by jdonner

[mr.g-c 6]

Never forget to always delete your ArmA2.cfg (In "Documents/ArmA 2/") after every patch, then start the game, and set everything to default - save it and apply to your desired values.

Only then you should test if a Patch brought ANY improvements/disadvantages...

[Zipper5 74]

Great...11 pages with people mostly talking about some third party tool like Fraps... how helpful for the majority of members and the developers...sigh

Wtf is with you people and getting pissed off at us trying to figure out why Fraps stops working with the latest betas for some people? It goes away when switching to the older betas so it's obviously a change in the newer ones that makes it an issue and...

Y'know what, I cbf to explain it all again just because another person has decided to be ignorant. See my first post for more info.

[MJK-Ranger 0]

FRAPS and Beta Build 70709:

- FRAPS does not work with -exthreads=3

- FRAPS works OK with -exthreads=2

- FRAPS does not work with -exthreads=1

- FRAPS works OK with -exthreads=0

- FRAPS works OK without -exthreads command

So where is the logic here??

[Zipper5 74]

Well, nothing changes with -exThreads=2 as only 0, 1 and 3 are accepted values for that command. But since it doesn't work with 1 (creates a new thread for file operations) or 3 (creates a new thread for texture loading) then it must be something to do with memory and Fraps dragging it way down when recording?

[MJK-Ranger 0]

Well, with -exthreads=1 and 3 my FPS drops to 1 FPS when i'm start recording. No HD activity at that moment.

So you are telling me i have some memory issue? Well, i play looooot of other games and use i use FRAPS too. So this is no hardware issue, it has something todo thet way those new patch are build.

But is not a problem for me, i can still play arma with my settings and have good FPS with the last beta patch and record. As i told earlier i don't see any different in performance with -exthreads=X.

I'm happy so fare with this beta, since is no point for me to use -exthreads=X, i can't see any performance boost if i use -exthreads command :)

Cheers

[suma 8]

FRAPS and Beta Build 70709:

- FRAPS does not work with -exthreads=3

- FRAPS works OK with -exthreads=2

- FRAPS does not work with -exthreads=1

- FRAPS works OK with -exthreads=0

- FRAPS works OK without -exthreads command

So where is the logic here??

Logic is perfect here (other than exThreads numbering is not obvious at first sight):

-exThreads is composed of two parts: 1 (file threading) and 2 (texture loading threading). As 2 is impossible to perform without 1, specifying 2 alone does nothing. Specifying 3 causes both 1 and 2 to be used. Default is 0. This probably indicates the part interfering with fraps is the file threading. I will try to see if I can reproduce the problem on my machine.

[Zipper5 74]

Well, with -exthreads=1 and 3 my FPS drops to 1 FPS when i'm start recording. No HD activity at that moment.

So you are telling me i have some memory issue? Well, i play looooot of other games and use i use FRAPS too. So this is no hardware issue, it has something todo thet way those new patch are build.

No, I'm not telling you that you have a memory issue. If you looked at my previous posts you'd see I'm having the same issues. I was simply suggesting it could be something to do with memory.

Thanks for looking into this, Suma. At the end of the day, the opinions of some forum posters don't matter as much as the actions of the developer. :)

[maddogx 13]

I will try to see if I can reproduce the problem on my machine.

For proper repro, note that the problem only seems to occur on dual cores (at least that's what I've gathered so far). On my quad core, Fraps 3.2.2 works fine with -exThreads=3 and the latest beta.

[suma 8]

For proper repro, note that the problem only seems to occur on dual cores (at least that's what I've gathered so far). On my quad core, Fraps 3.2.2 works fine with -exThreads=3 and the latest beta.

One possible explanation for this: Fraps fully utilizes one core with a high priority while capturing, therefore if the application captured uses some additional thread doing some substantial time critical work, is is "under-scheduled" (two threads scheduled to one core).

[sbsmac 0]

Escobar wrote

just to give you an idea of the differences, here is the same FPS benchy with HT on and HT off.

Interesting - that is the first time I have seen some real data behind this. There is a startup parameter "-cpucount=N" that you might be able to use instead of turning off HT altogether. Eg, use -cpucount=4 on a quadcore. I'm not sure whether this would give the same performance as disabling HT - would be interesting to test.

Mr G-C wrote

Never forget to always delete your ArmA2.cfg (In "Documents/ArmA 2/") after every patch, then start the game, and set everything to default - save it and apply to your desired values.

Can you explain that one ? I don't see anything changing in the cfg file but maybe I'm missing something ?

[mr.g-c 6]

For proper repro, note that the problem only seems to occur on dual cores (at least that's what I've gathered so far). On my quad core, Fraps 3.2.2 works fine with -exThreads=3 and the latest beta.

This is correct! Same result here at home.

Mr G-C wrote

Quote:

Never forget to always delete your ArmA2.cfg (In "Documents/ArmA 2/") after every patch, then start the game, and set everything to default - save it and apply to your desired values.

Can you explain that one ? I don't see anything changing in the cfg file but maybe I'm missing something ?

Sure, its what we've been told sice Arma1 in this Forum and from the german support.

And believe it or not, it somehow has a effect on FPS for many people.

So when you get suddenly awful bad performance/stuttering after a patch, its worth to give it a try anyway.

[LondonLad 13]

One possible explanation for this: Fraps fully utilizes one core with a high priority while capturing, therefore if the application captured uses some additional thread doing some substantial time critical work, is is "under-scheduled" (two threads scheduled to one core).

Sorry for going off-topic here (related to FRAPS)

Suma,

If this is something that is already in-place then please ignore.

The FRAPS team offer complimentry site licenses to game developers - Should you wish to obtain a complimentry site licenses from FRAPs just contact them and put in a request (I'm sure they'll do the usual checks to ensure your bonafide).

Should you want a direct contact I can provide this, just PM me.

As a thank you to FRAPs we put a mention into our game credit section (I work for a games development company).

Edited May 27, 2010 by LondonLad

[mibf 0]

Heyho,

I have some problems hosting a Dedicated server with the new beta. Once the Server is loading a mission - he will stay at that point and do nothing else anymore (the system runs continuosly without any problem) - now if I close the Server - I have to kill the process.

Do you guys noticed that problem too?

Same here.

[sbsmac 0]

Mr G-c wrote...

Sure, its what we've been told sice Arma1 in this Forum and from the german support.

And believe it or not, it somehow has a effect on FPS for many people.

The Cfg file is just a text file and you can read it or compare it to previous versions with any standard editor/diff-tool. If you can point to something that changes in it between patches then that would be a very good clue to what might be causing performance problems but if not I'm inclined to put this down to a bit of an urban rumour ;-)

[MJK-Ranger 0]

Thanks Suma for you are looking into it and the info :)

Yes.. seems to be the issue are only for Dual Core CPU's.