ArmA2: Operation Arrowhead Impressions - ALL OA Impressions/Videos/Screenies Here

[Zipper5 74]

Is the campaign only 4 missions?

7 missions, 2 cutscenes.

[Richey79 10]

So what the hell is wrong!? :confused:

I've had exactly the same experience as this.

Honestly, the performance is like Arma 2 on 1.01 for me, rather than even 1.05.

Frame rate is fine on empty maps, but as soon as you place a few men and start running a couple of scripts, everything becomes as stuttery as all hell.

It's not even a case of comparing FPS and saying I get ten or fifteen less with OA; it's that it's pretty unpleasant the instant it drops under 60fps in this engine.

Badly needs optimising. Those using CrossFire, quad cores and x64 systems seem to be suffering the worst at the moment.

[Fox '09 14]

i'm running 64 bit and quad core.., no problems.. but not crossfire/sli, unless you meant a combination of those

[Wolfstriked 11]

I am a bit undecided on OA.I like it but find performance is bad in the bigger maps while desert map performance is sweet and perfect.My harddrive flashed constantly in bigger maps.PC's we have today just aren't up to snuff for huge worlds.Give me 10 maps like the desert map and I would be in heaven.

Some things that are bugging me silly.The collision detection is horrid.I am shooting at enemies with nothing in path of bullet and the bullets are being deflected.Then I go to shoot thru windows and take personal damage since the window is just visual.The weapons getting stuck on every door jam is another one that gets me.You cant fight an enemy standing outside the doorway since you first have to walk thru door straight ahead and then turn....dead for me since I play with super AI and the trrops I spawn at 100% ability.

The new screen shake...at first I hated the screen shake and turned it off right away.Its too noticeable that its a cosmetic effect more than a realistic recoil effect from weapon.But I started playing with it again and noticed something.Prone has no effect,standing is overdone while the sweet spot for screen shake is crouching.It looks perfect when crouching and I really think all positions should have this setting.Just a slight screen shake that adds to the weapons power feel.

The SA-58 with CCO sight is one sweet weapon.Thats the perfect CQB weapon in my opinion....love it!!It also seems to have a reduced movement of sight when your leaning with sight up and that adds to its CQb ability.

I noticed also some vehicles can go up steep inclines with power now...great!

Also,I love the ability to have two keys for body position.X is prone and V is crouching/standing toggle.....love this BI!!!!!

Edited June 30, 2010 by Wolfstriked

[jpinard 10]

For those who feel the graphis in the expansion maps look really bad, can you please comment on this thread I made in the troubleshooting forum? I think I've found the cause of why it looks so bad for some people.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=101402

in response to:

No need to do this... I had formated my PC and only installed ArmA 2 OA.

The vegetation simply look's terrible and i don't think that my GPU can't handle ArmA 2 OA or any new driver will change the vegetation.

Edited July 1, 2010 by jpinard

[enad 11]

Badly needs optimising. Those using CrossFire, quad cores and x64 systems seem to be suffering the worst at the moment.

Exactly. I have a Quad core CPU and a 4870x2. ArmA 2 runs GREAT! Especially on Desert Maps, but I can still get 50 FPS on Chernarus....I cant even get 50 FPS on that barren Desert Map. :confused:

[Windexglow 10]

Played with it for an hour - having a blast. Everything about it seems like an upgrade over Arma2. The game runs faster for me, it looks better (especially the static props like buildings. Many of the models in arma2 felt unprofessional), and far more immersible.

The only poor spot I have with OA are the weapon sounds. Can't wait for Zeus AI & a sound mod to improve them and allow some ranged firefights.

[nodunit 397]

Played with it for an hour - having a blast. Everything about it seems like an upgrade over Arma2. The game runs faster for me, it looks better (especially the static props like buildings. Many of the models in arma2 felt unprofessional), and far more immersible.

The only poor spot I have with OA are the weapon sounds. Can't wait for Zeus AI & a sound mod to improve them and allow some ranged firefights.

Did you try the sound mod anyway? alot of people are reporting addons working with OA out of the box.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

I must say, BIS really learned their lesson with OA. The features are nicely polished, the campaign so far seems great, and the performance & overall presentation seems greatly improved. This is the kind of quality I hope to expect for all of your projects from now on Bohemia. :cool:

[Fox '09 14]

love the new post processing and faces.. :)

edit:

sorry.. I had to :p

whatever. it looks nice, I'm okay with it. woulda liked the groin pad to be a bit bigger tho.

Edited July 1, 2010 by Fox '09

[enad 11]

performance & overall presentation seems greatly improved.

wut? Nope.

[Lhowon 10]

wut? Nope.

Guess what, Enad does not equal everyone else. We know you are getting worse performance than you'd like, that in no way invalidates another person's experience getting much better performance.

[sniper pilot 36]

Guess what, Enad does not equal everyone else. We know you are getting worse performance than you'd like, that in no way invalidates another person's experience getting much better performance.

Exactly, and Enad, you probably have FADE still activated thanks to your earlier pirate-sponsored vacation. :rolleyes:

if that's not the case, just post in the troubleshooting forum, because it's obviously just a problem with only a select few.

Edited July 1, 2010 by Sniper Pilot

[Fox '09 14]

it has been reported that OA runs bad on the 4870x2 on this forum. It's not just him... well, yeah, select few.

[Reverend 10]

I run 2xHD4850 1GB in crossfire and in ARMA 2 it made no difference (in XP or in Windows 7). I would get double the framerate in the cut scenes but in actual gameplay crossfire would knock me down a few frames and cause stutters. And yes, I knew it was running as the obnoxious Crossfire symbol was in the upper right hand corner (I know you can turn it off).

I actually get better frames in the old ARMA 2 missions now by starting from the Arrowhead exe. This is with higher settings as well, and absolutely no stutters. I was thinking about reinstalling everything fresh but I figured if it ain't broke don't fix it (especially with this game). This game is put together with an old engine mixed with new tech. If you are lucky enough to get a good setting "DON'T MESS WITH IT!!!"

Optimizing a game for PC is pretty much impossible as everyone has has different hardware and OS. This is the reason Xbox360 & PS3 games look good even with 7 year old guts. The developers know everyone has the same machine and they have had 7 years to perfect it. This is also why the "new" xbox 360 is nothing more than a shiney new outside with a quiet fan and DVD, the developers would riot if they put in a faster hard drive or DVD drive.

The point is AMD has not released a crossfire profile for this game yet and when they do it will sadly do nothing for performance. You will however get that super cool crossfire badge in the upper right hand corner of the screen (you know, the one blocking the sniper from your view).

Rev

[minimalaco 30]

it has been reported that OA runs bad on the 4870x2 on this forum. It's not just him... well' date=' yeah, select few.[/quote']

here crossfire 4890 :mad:

[CarlGustaffa 4]

it's pretty unpleasant the instant it drops under 60fps in this engine.

Badly needs optimising. Those using CrossFire, quad cores and x64 systems seem to be suffering the worst at the moment.

Wow, 60FPS is the pain threshold? I still find Chernarus enjoyable if I manage to stay in the 25-35 range, which sadly rarely happens. Below 20 for a prolonged time, then it starts to hurt, and that is typical for advanced missions or hogging addons.

This is a tactical shooter, and frame rates doesn't seem to me as important as in other "fast games" where basically every frame counts. Am I the only one to think like this? Am I old fashioned or are "new players" way too demanding? I admit I'm only in it for the coop gameplay though.

[Fox '09 14]

I like to have my frames above 40 in ArmA 2, but in Chernarus I find 25-35 enjoyable.. not too much CQB going on in chernarus. In OA.. well... yeah... I find it hard to aim with low framerate when I'm engaging a target less than 100 meters from me.

[GunnDawg09 10]

First let me start by saying I haven't played the original ArmA 2 in a few months due to getting burned out I suppose.

I loaded OA up and did the sniper mission.... Let me tell ya, when that colonel stepped off the chopper, he was dead before he made it 6 steps, clean kill.

Awesome moment. Can't wait to get back into the mission edition/scripting and put some stuff together.

P.S. I think I spent more time scripting missions in ArmA 2 than I did actually playing the game, lol.

[Fred DM 0]

i hope the people claiming worse performance than in ArmA 2 realize the post processing options in OA have been upgraded. Very High in OA does not equal Very High in ArmA 2 (it's more like Low). ;)

[EricM 0]

Takistan has very nice buildings, but they must be real fps killers, because with almost no grass or trees, I'd have expected a bigger fps boost.

In its current state, I get similar perfs as Chernarus most of the time (slightly higher in parts, but much lower in Zargabad... so thanks for making it a separate map) for a lesser visual impression. I'm also mixed on the new vegetation. Some of it look nice, some feel strange...

Nothing beats Chernarus so far, but the rest (faces, lights, flir, uav etc...) are very nice additions. I feel the combined operation is really the way to go.

[Dwarden 1125]

once again Crossfire will run bad because there is no profile in drivers to detect OA binary, in my other post somewhere on this forum i posted possible workaround using NTFS symlinks ...

[ast65 10]

Messing with CCC- settings can affect performance heavily, too.

Best set them to default with Catalyst- AI on high.

Runs like a charm for me: same settings (yes, even pp on very high) and same performance like ArmA2.

I7 920 stock

HD 5850

Win 7 64

[Placebo 29]

wut? Nope.

Yes we know, it doesn't run well for you, we get it already, it doesn't require you posting about it 50 times to know that it doesn't run great for you, continually repeating that fact is spamming so please cut it out before you end up on another "holiday".

[Richey79 10]

Wow, 60FPS is the pain threshold? I still find Chernarus enjoyable if I manage to stay in the 25-35 range, which sadly rarely happens. Below 20 for a prolonged time, then it starts to hurt, and that is typical for advanced missions or hogging addons.

This is a tactical shooter, and frame rates doesn't seem to me as important as in other "fast games" where basically every frame counts. Am I the only one to think like this? Am I old fashioned or are "new players" way too demanding? I admit I'm only in it for the coop gameplay though.

I only say that below 60 it plays like crap now because in A2 1.07 I could be playing a heavy mission running at 25-30 fps and everything would be smooth and enjoyable.

We've taken a big step back now for many users, in that the engine seems to wait to do all it's calculations at once. It tries its best to run smooth, but that means it makes the bad decision to run as smoothly as possible until it needs to do some work, at which point it stops processing the graphics at all for a tenth of a second. Even just saying that makes me wonder if this build includes the work they did (not that recently, surely) on making scripts wait for activation until such a time that a processor was ready to cope with them.

So, instead of a smooth 30fps, you have a smooth 60fps for .9 seconds, then it stops entirely for .1 second. Rinse and repeat for an unplayable campaign.

That's the last I'll say about it 'til we get another patch, because I know they're working on it. It's just frustrating that they finally fixed the performance of A2 so it ran great, and we only got to use it for 5 minutes before a new engine came out which included heaps of cool stuff.

Edited July 1, 2010 by Richey79