New beta build 71548 up

[no use for a name 0]

What do you guys mean by "LOD popping" exactly? Because I still get sudden shifts between low/high LODs as per the usual with ArmA2.

I think I mean what you're talking about. It's most noticeable when traveling in cities. The buildings won't switch LODs fast enough until you're right next to them and all of the sudden they switch to the highest detailed ones.

I also have my HDD defragged so that all Arma2 files are on the outer-most part of the disk where read times are fastest; but I would still get them once in a while (especially during the ArmaMark test missions). But since this patch I don't even get those anymore.

[Yapab 10]

Note: the varying performance numbers people are reporting - some see this beta as faster, some see it stable, some say its slower... it all depends on how long they've been running the game and what they're doing in the game. People need to report this as those that run a single test and say "It's faster!" are not providing reliable data.

This could be an indication of memory leak after extended periods of play. Let's see what happens when the proper LAA exe comes out in the next beta.

Yapa

[AnimalMother92 10]

I get this LOD popping people keep mentioning with certain trees and bushes. Usually I use Benchmark 1, there will be some bushes that stay 2D and blocky until the camera gets within a few meters of them. Quite ugly, especially when everything around them has switched to high LODs.

[MavericK96 0]

I get this LOD popping people keep mentioning with certain trees and bushes. Usually I use Benchmark 1, there will be some bushes that stay 2D and blocky until the camera gets within a few meters of them. Quite ugly, especially when everything around them has switched to high LODs.

I get the same. Also, I will notice in some instances where a building LOD will change and it will look funny because the low-quality LOD has different color/shadowing than the high-quality one, so the switch is very noticeable. Not sure what can be done about that, really, but I thought I would mention it since it's in the same vein.

[TimRiceSE 10]

Might be worht mentioning that LOD popping got better for me with different video memory setting - i.e. Default for very little pooping, whereas "very high" had quite a noticeable amount...

[MavericK96 0]

Might be worht mentioning that LOD popping got better for me with different video memory setting - i.e. Default for very little pooping, whereas "very high" had quite a noticeable amount...

I already use Default, but that's good to know for other users who might have the same issue.

I actually noticed that issue a lot even in 1.05, where High/Very High will have more LOD popping than Default, presumably because Default allows the use of more VRAM.

[Punisher5555 0]

I already use Default, but that's good to know for other users who might have the same issue.

I actually noticed that issue a lot even in 1.05, where High/Very High will have more LOD popping than Default, presumably because Default allows the use of more VRAM.

Is that still true about the VRAM? Did one of the betas fix that?

[Protegimus 0]

Yes it is fixed in the beta, so Default is generally not the desired setting if you have a graphics card with large local VRAM. However MavericK96 is an exception as he is using SLI where Default is accepted as being required to work properly.

I'm not sure where the claim comes from that Default uses more VRAM. No doubt it can be disregarded unless it can be substantiated.

Protegimus

[MavericK96 0]

I'm not sure where the claim comes from that Default uses more VRAM. No doubt it can be disregarded unless it can be substantiated.

Protegimus

Someone did, in fact, do a test with various settings and showed that Default used more VRAM than Very High. I will try to find the post, but it was somewhere in the forums.

[Protegimus 0]

Well I was thinking substantiated by an official source, but in any case wasn't that in very specific circumstances?

Default was introduced to overcome a problem with automatically detecting VRAM >512MB as 8800GTX cards and similar became popular back in ArmA. That problem is fixed in the beta and using it in ArmA2 frequently causes missing objects or parts of objects (soldiers heads being one of the most obvious) and instability.

Protegimus