datter

Maybe you should go outside for awhile. The graphics are great, and reality rarely crashes.

More info would be helpful, but I'll say this. I was getting the odd crash/freeze in SP and the same every 10 to 20min in multiplayer. I had no clue what was causing it, until one time I got lucky enough to see the error. Every other time the freeze would force me to hit reset, but this one time it allowed me to alt-tab back and see the error window which was an n4v_disp error... basically saying my video cards had stopped responding. The only time I'd ever seen this was when trying to overclock another video card a few years ago. My cards are nVidia BFG 8800GT OC2 cards with a pretty hefty factory overclock on them. Using Rivatuner I pulled that overclock back a little bit and the problem has gone away. If your card is overclocked either by yourself or a factory OC, you might look at trying to pull that back a bit. Either that or check your temperatures and ensure you aren't overheating. Hope this helps.

A friend and I have been playing co-op with Hamachi and it works perfectly. Highly recommended.

I recall raising that to 16 or 32 with Armed Assault for improved lighting effects. Might be worth messing around with in ArmA2 as well, try it and report back.

Just for the record, one thing I'm noticing is the factory overclock on my video cards (BFG 8800GT OC2) is a bit much, which causes the cards to shut down with an n4v_disp error. I usually don't see this of course, as most of the time the screen freezes and I'm forced to reset. Bringing the factory overclock back a bit has little if any impact on performance, and eliminates this problem.

That's excellent info, thanks for sharing. I'll lower things all the way to stock 8800gt speeds tonight and see how it goes.

Are you running SLI by anychance? I'm starting to think it might be something to do with that.

I ran some simple tests to see if the AI can actually see through the grass as some have been speculating. Results here for anyone interested.

A friend and I are looking for some good two player co-op missions. Any recommendations? Most we've found are for larger groups. Thanks.

Good thought, and something I should have mentioned but yes... I uninstall drivers, boot to safemode then use Driver Cleaner Pro, then boot back and install the new drivers with no virus software running.

That was the first thing I thought too, but I cracked the case open and redid my ventilation and now even under heavy load the cards hardly break 70c, which is well within the acceptable limits for these cards. When I first installed them they were running near 90c with no trouble, though I've obviously sense sorted my cooling out better.

As an avid FSX pilot myself, I must say I've noticed the same thing. Not bad advice this, though it's a harder sell to those who are having actual freezing/crash problems... or FPS so bad they can't play. Still as I've said elsewhere, give it time. These games (OFP/Armed Assault and now ArmA2) get worked out. datter Cave of Distraction Your Thread Sucks

I'm using 186.18 and having no problems. In fact I get slightly better FPS using them than the 182.50's.

Try this

How is this fix impacted if you also run enhancer... or is it?

I've come across two performance items that might not seem immediately obvious, but are worth trying. The first I found mentioned about the original Armed Assault and around here related to ArmA2, and the second just something I tried on my own. Try setting shadows to "Very High". I've heard that this setting may perform better than "High" or even "Normal" on some systems, and for me personally it is in fact much better. I have yet to fire up Fraps to determine any actual frame rate increase, but I can say that the game plays much smoother and feels much better at "Very High" shadows. Worth a shot. If you're running on an LCD monitor you'll no doubt be trying to run ArmA2 at your screens native resolution. In my case that is 1680x1050. In the campaign however I found some slow down so out of annoyance I lowered my 3d resolution to one step below my native res (should be 1440x990... though in ArmA2 it shows up as 1436x984 or something odd) with the AA set to "Very High". This gave me an obvious and quite noticeable increase in performance of course, but I initially thought it was going to be a bad decision since it wasn't my monitors native res. I would describe the picture as "soft" when running this way, and after playing for a minute or two I found I actually liked it better than the perfect crispness of my native res. The softness somehow makes it feel more lifelike, and when switched back to the native res (with AA) I find the crispness to be very... computery. So, try "Very High" shadows as well as setting you resolution one notch down from you native res. You might be surprised, and you've nothing to lose. datter Cave of Distraction - Gaming articles, including lots of ArmA2 material Your Thread Sucks - A web comic about life on the internet

I get that exact same thing while "Receiving...". Black/white/black/white/black/white and yes it's a bit annoying. The only way I found to fix that is to lower my 3d resolution once step below what I usually run at (1680x1050). For some reason this makes the black/white flicker go away, although it also means I'm playing at a lower resolution of course. So far I've been putting up with the flickering while loading but you know, that slightly lower res (1440x900 or whatever it is) really doesn't look bad with full AA turned on. Things are a bit soft perhaps, but not bad and there's a performance boost too.

My current system: As these 8800GT's are beginning to get a bit old as far as computers go, I'm wondering if anyone has any opinions on this GT275. Do you suppose I'll be looking at a huge performance boost compared to the dual 8800's, a moderate one, or something about the same as what I've got going now? Thanks for any input. datter Cave of Distraction Your Thread Sucks

Try assigning your immediate group to a team prior to getting on the helo. I use a voice recognition app called Pilfius with ArmA2 and at the start of a mission will just say "2,3,4,etc assign red" and they'll all be on team red. You can do this with the regular keyboard commands too of course. Then, once in the helo you can just tell team red to disembark... that will leave the pilot and co-pilot in the chopper. Now, if only there was a command to raise the intelligence of the AI pilots so they won't try landing in the trees.

That's sort of what I've been thinking, but I haven't found any real world situations where someone has tested one against the other. Thanks for the opinion.

I've been doing some temperature monitoring lately so isolate any related problems that might be causing the odd crash and found something strange. In ArmA2, just sitting in the multiplayer lobby (where I would select a mission to play) my video card temperatures rise dramatically to the point my system would freeze up. If I started a mission in time, these temps would actually go back down. Strikes me as odd that the menu screen would crank my temps up farther than actual game play does. If anyone is experiencing strange crashes I wonder if it's not due to menu screens and temps? I wrote more about this over here for the sake of being thorough, including some other in-game testing and some links to temperature tracking apps. Has anyone else been monitoring their temps, and found the same thing with the mp lobby menu screen?

That is absolutely correct. The double bind will show up as a conflict (red) but ignore that and you'll be much happier for it.

Key things about flying helicopters: You do not fly a real helicopter with a mouse and keyboard for a reason. Use a joystick. Configure your controls correctly. Notably: Throttle up (throttle forward) Throttle down (throttle back) Nose down (joystick forward) Nose up (joystick backward) Bank left (joystick left) Bank right (joystick right) Turn left and left pedal (rudder left) Turn right and right pedal (rudder right) Pay special attention to the bank and turn set up for left/right joystick and rudder (twisty stick or pedals). That's key. After that set up your views on your hat (up/up, left/left etc). Once in the helo double tap the alt key to give you free look and try flying. Note how you can move left/right as expected and also have nice rudder authority this way. Also note that most helos lose a lot of this rudder authority over 150knts so keep the speed under that if you expect to be maneuvering a lot. Set up like this I can fly pirouettes around a pine tree. Hope it helps.

You could try setting the dpi on your mouse down very low, which I was going to experiment with this evening. What brought me to this post is not the mouse look aspect of all this but the W-A-S-D for moving the camera. Is there any way to slow down the movement, or even better script in some sort of ease so if you hit W for a second you slowly speed up to walking speed, then when you let it go you gradually slow to a stop. Easing in and out like this would make for much nicer camera shots, but if that's not possible it would be nice to at least be able to slow the motion down a bit when moving the camera. I suppose I could try moving it with the joystick. Any thoughts?

I can't speak to the civilian modules and such, but take a look at this for some basic Ambient Combat Module tweaking info. Hope it helps.