private plowjoy
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Posts posted by private plowjoy
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Hi,I'm experiencing slow loading textures and - probably unrelated - flickering textures.
(Please find my system in my signature as reported by cpu-z)
I'm usually getting up to 23 fps. Arma2 is not installed on the same harddisk as Windows or the Swapfile. I'm starting the game with the following switches: -winxp -maxmem=2047 -cpucount=4.
texture loading lag: it looks like very briefly there is no texture for an object (bright white), then there's a blurry texture which get more detailed after a second or so.
texture flickering: for example if I use the binoculars to look at a house, there is constant flickering, as if the texture goes below the surface and back all the time.
It seems I can't attach a screenshot, so I'l type my gamesettings.
Settings are in Geman, I'll try to translate because I didn't find an option to change in game language:
Viewdistance: 1600,
3d resolution: 1680x1050,
Graphics RAM: High,
Shadow details: high,
postprocessing effects: disabled,
texturedetails: normal,
everything else set to normal.
Vsync is forced off, pictures rendered ahead is set to 8 (as mentioned in one of the optimization threads).
The game version is 1.02.
I think I read most of the optimization threads, and tried many of the tricks described there.
Any hints to get rid of the texture loading lag and/or the flickering textures appreciated.
My advice, be sensible with the in-game settings.
Move everything to Low or Normal. Test the game. Does it run well? Yes? Up one of the settings to Normal or High. Test the game. Does it run well? No? Turn the setting down and turn another up. Test the game. Etc, etc, etc.
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Dammit, it's nothing to do with your system. Ignore everyone who tells you to swap graphics card or some such rubbish.
I tested this exhaustively when I had 2GB of system RAM, by watching the client memory usage. When it climbed to 1GB i'd start to get mental graphic corruption with shapes and geometry stretching all over the screen and performance took a massive hit. If I then stared straight up or down I would not crash. However if I continued to attempt to move around, causing the client to exceed 1GB of physical system RAM, it would blow and i'd be dumped to desktop with an Nvidia driver not responding error.
This is not anything to do with your system. It's entirely a fault on the client side and the only 'fix' is to install more memory so that you don't hit the 'cap' as quickly or lower all the in-game settings right down so that large textures aren't being loaded into system RAM.
It's as simple as that.
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I still want to know what settings he's running on. 11-15 FPS with everything on very low and 500m view distance would be a cause for concern. With everything on very high and 10km view distance, it would be nothing unusual.The fact that they haven't responded speaks volumes. Most likely cranked every single setting onto Very High with max View Distance.....
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Could be many things.You need to make sure that your output is set to 5.1 etc in the Windows sound control panel.
For Creative/Auzentech X-Fi cards, you should also enable Dolby Digital Live for accurate 5.1 decoding on a 5.1 system.
Eth
That's a pretty basic requirement, checking that 5.1 is prepped in Windows sound.
We're not talking about 'accurate' we're talking about 'absolute'. Again, not worth discussing the finer points of the differences between positional audio, EAX and DDL-enablement. We're talking about black and white. Yes and no.
There has to be something that's peculiar to the soundcard hardware and supported standards. Bottom line is, I get positional audio in Arma2 with an X-Fi.
I don't really care whether EAX is adding reverb, because i'm in a ravine. I can hear gunshots to my rear left and a lorry approaching from my front right, then pan across centre and fade off front left. For a game like Arma2, that's all that's required.
Having said that, if the positional audio is being software generated i'm very surprised that the cores aren't being hammered. Perhaps this is the reason why some people get poor performance over others? Because CPU time is being dedicated to sound?
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No, EAX is not a broad term for your sound card. It refers to a set of "effects" that are processed in hardware IF x game supports them.It's a well known fact that Xaudio2 is software only. I wouldn't make a claim like that if I didn't know it for a fact.
I believe Xaudio2 uses OpenAL.
Alchemy was created to support old EAX/DS3D etc games (in OpenAL) that are written to support it. If the game doesn't actually support these hardware enhancements, you won't have access to them.
Eth
Ok, forgetting everything else apart from Xaudio2 software generated audio.
Why do some people get positional audio from this on their 5.1/7.1 setups but other people do not?
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You said you had EAX working, you quite simply don't. Of course the Xengine2 simulates "positional audio" in software. That's not what you said originally.Eth
I thought we'd already established that I use EAX as broad term for my surround sound?
Regards Xengine2, do you have any links that back-up your claim that all Arma2 in-game positional audio is software generated?
And i'll reiterate. If the Arma2 client is generating the positional audio natively, why is there such a disparity between users regards who can and who cannot actually get positional audio to work? I mean there's no drivers involved for one thing, so blaming differing hardware configurations is out of the window isn't it?
---------- Post added at 11:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 PM ----------
You must be misreading/misunderstanding this thread. I'm not saying that ARMA2 does not support positional audio. I'm simply saying that it currently doesn't work on my 2 speaker setup. Most probably due to a bug or driver issue.Btw, what is the default sounddriver used by the engine; D3DS or OpenAL ?
Now that is interesting. If it is OpenAL, that could be feeding straight into the Creative ALchemy drivers on the Audigy and X-FI cards....
"The good news is that the Creative ALchemy Project allows you to run your favorite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista as the developers intended - with full hardware accelerated 3D Audio and EAX support! This is done by translating the legacy DirectSound calls into OpenAL"
Taken from http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx
I'd be the first to admit that i'm not particularly up on the finer points of soundcard drivers and standards but this could potentially account for the disparity between Arma2 players who can/cannot get positional audio out of the game, couldn't it?
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There is an enormous difference.Hardware positional audio/EAX 5.0 is vastly superior to anything software. The sound from 5 speakers is not the same as hardware positional audio/EAX in any way shape or form. That's simply the way that Windows is "broadcasting" the audio to the ouput device.
If you want to see the difference, play Bioshock with a decent pair of Sennheisers.
I'm not sure why BIS dumped EAX etc for this simplistic sound engine but since Vista and the introduction of OpenAL, EAX/DS3D games are becoming few and far between.
You're arguing to entirely the wrong level. This isn't a discussion about the finer points between positional audio and EAX 5.0. This is a discussion about why Arma2 doesn't have positional audio.
It does have positional audio. How that positional audio is generated is neither here nor there, in context to the question as to why there is no positional audio in Arma2.
The real question is, why do some people not get positional audio if it is indeed software generated by the client and yet some other people like myself do.
And you still haven't answered my question. Is the positional audio in Arma2 generated by the client? Or are you trying to convince me that I am not hearing positional audio at all?
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There is also a problem with voice radio. It seems like a robot is talking."Enemy...sniper...left...flank...fifty...meters."
So they recorded each word separately? Most of the voice we hear in radio could have been recorded in a single sentence instead.
My guess is that it's entirely on purpose. It allows them to generate a massive amount of radio, sadly at the expense of it sounding like a failing robot....
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FFS, it doesn't use it. The engine doesn't support it.5.1 sound Not equal to EAX I'm afraid.
It's annoying when people make these claims that are blatantly wrong and they only serve to mislead people.
What's the difference?
I mean, forget the technicality of how the sound is generated (I only mentioned EAX because that's how I term 'surround' sound) but if I have a 5.1 speaker setup and I get positional audio out of all my speakers, then thats working isn't it?
Lets not quibble about the finer points of this. People are stating that they do not get positional audio out of Arma2 and that the reason is Arma2 does not support positional audio. If that is true, why do I get positional audio?
Is Arma2 running positional audio in software? Somehow I find that very hard to believe...
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No you don't. The sound engine doesnt support EAX mate. It's an entirely software based sound engine that doesn't take advantage of Creative's hardware sound.Sorry to disappoint you.
Eth
I'm not disappointed because I have sound coming out of 5 speakers when playing Arma2, with perfect positional audio.
So either Arma2 has 5.1 positional audio in software (which I doubt very much) or Arma2 is using EAX on my X-Fi card.
Either way, it's working.
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X-Fi Fatal1ty here, running 5.1 without any problems whatsoever.
See sig for further details.
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Can't help but agree. It does sound like they got the tea-boy to do some of the lines. Truly awful.
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Ok, I am going to throw in my 2 cents on the subject.I don't have any issues with not running a page-file. I have never run a page file. Even in 32bit XP with 2GByte. I specifically turn it off.
This game is buggy. It all depends on your hardware/software combination. Some combinations get you 90% workable game. Some combinations get you 0% working game. It is hit or miss. You just have to hope BIS fixes it for your combination in a future patch. That is all you can do.
Stop spending money on new rigs/upgrades because you think it will help in this game. It won't.
Stop spending time on "tweaks" because you think it will help in this game. It won't.
The game is buggy plain and simple. Just hold tight until BIS gets the "major" patch out. If you cannot play at all I am sorry, but don't lose faith.
BIS is under major pressure to get this stuff fixed before OFP2 hits the market in October. Your patch should be out before then.
They know and understand they need to get this game/sim up to snuff before then so they can give Codemasters the finger and crush that game under their boot heels.
My rig:
HP xw8200
Dual 3.4Ghz Xeon
8GByte RAM
Four 10,000RPM UltraSCSI3 HD's in RAID10
EVGA 285GTX 1GByte
600 watt PSU
Win 7 RC 7100 x64bit
Sorry but I have to chime in here.
I recently upgraded from 2GB of system RAM to 12GB and have noticed a significant increase in the overall stability of my system when playing memory hungry games.
Now, I could probably have seen the same improvement with 6GB but the point is that new hardware is not always a total waste of time. It's never as black and white as that.
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I have absolutely no idea what you're all talking about.
I have EAX running perfectly in Arma2. I have a 5.1 setup and can hear gunfire, choppers and all sorts of stuff hammering out of the rear, front and centre speakers depending on my view.
In fact, the fly-by of choppers from rear to front is stunning, in the middle of a gunfight.
Check the sig for my hardware/software.
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Can anyone here tell explain to me why changing my resolution has no effect on my frame rate? I have the game set at 1920 x 1200 which is my Lcd's native resolution, but If I set my resolution to a very low setting my frame rate remains just the same.Windows Vista 32 bit, but also tried windows 7 with same result.
Asus crosshair motherboard.
Amd64 x 2 dual core 6400+ 3.21 Ghz.
Geforce 260 Gtx.
monitor 26" IIyama.
4gig Ram.
Audigy gamer soundcard.
HardDrive, Western Digital 600GB.
Correct me if i'm wrong but apart from the view-distance, nobody appears to have suggested that you could try altering the rest of the in-game settings?
One huge mistake that a lot of people, me included like to make is going into a game with expectations on it roaring and putting all the in-game settings to max. The reality is that most of the time for new games the results are less than stellar.
First off, make sure out-game settings in the Nvidia Control Panel are set as follows. V-Sync off and all the rest of the Arma2 settings set to Application Controlled.
Next, make sure your in-game settings are set to no higher than Normal, with AA, AF and Post Processing set to Off.
When you're happy that the game is running acceptably, go back into the in-game settings and notch one of them up to High. Try the game again. Repeat until you have good performance with acceptable graphics settings.
Also, OS-level settings can be tweaked to further improve performance. Try to put the Arma2 install onto a different physical drive to the OS and Page File. Set the Page File to be a set size, in your case 6000 - 6000 should suffice. Remove indexing on your hard-drives.
Grab the Ultimate Defrag (http://www.disktrix.com/ultimatedefrag_home.htm), free for 14 days and put your Page File and Arma2 install folder to High Performance. After this is done, perform a File/Folder run and make sure you select 'Respect High Performance' so you don't overwrite those placements. This will mean your Page File and Arma2 install folder will be in the optimal location on your hard drive, for the best possible seek times.
I'm not going to pretend that all of this will be a wonder cure for Arma2 as there are clearly issues with the game but if you can squeeze another 4-5 FPS out of the above, its still a free benefit.
Give it all a try mate, you've got nothing to lose. Good luck!
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When I say most games dont use more than 2 gigs, I mean the game itself uses up to 2 gigs, not including the OS etc. 4 -6 G is all u need for gaming.The amount depends on what I am doing. The custom map I am playing now hits around 600MB at the most and stays there. Again, this is after hours of play.
Aha, I see. Well, that does explain why more memory = less chance of crashing then because in all the time i've had 6GB and 12GB of RAM, i've not had the same client popping problem as I did with 2GB.
Bit crap that 2GB is no longer classed as 'gaming' spec, mind. Can't think of any other game out there that has a requirement of more than 2GB system RAM.
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Aye, have done that as well. The folks from Direc2Drive have suggest I re-download the game and then try to unzip it with somthing other then the built in decompression utility built in with Vista. Don't have the ware with all to do that at the moment, I'll hold off till the weekend and if that does not work chalk it up to unplayable.I can't imagine it will have anything to do with that but at this stage you need to try the obscure.
It's not some odd, half-cut version of Vista is it? I don't tend to dabble in gamer laptops but I do hear that manufacturers provide 'lite' versions of hardware and software in them, sometimes.
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how the hell do you get the squad to move in the badlands mission?They just stand there and say rogerSadly, squads tend to randomly decide not to follow move orders. You could try reloading a previous save to see if that helps but it's a known issue.
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Because the memory usage is always roughly the same and it isn't "spilling", even after extremely long sessions.I've played for hours and hours now and I've never seen anything that is characteristic of a memory leak.
It has nothing to do with the 12 gigs of RAM either. Games don't normally use more than 2.
12 gigs is a waste of money for gamers (purely for the willy wavers who only end up looking stupid because anyone who knows PCs, knows 12 gigs is not helping your gaming).
Eth
What is the amount that yours evens out at?
Like I said, with 2GB of system RAM my Arma2 sessions would die in Multiplayer after about 30 mins to an hour and it was always at the point where the Arma2.exe clipped beyond 1GB of physical RAM usage.
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It runs fine on a stock 920 but I would change the video card to an Nvidia 200 series (or an ATI 48xx if you prefer).There are problems with HT under Vista/Win 7 and no word when they are getting fixed so best to stick to XP for A2 or dual boot.
If you are only gaming, 12 gigs is a complete waste of money.
No memory leaks on my rigs.
Eth
Eth, just curious but how do you know that you're not getting a memory leak?
In my old rig with just 2GB of system RAM, the client would die when it popped 1GB physical system RAM usage but my total system memory use would only display 75% as in-use.
Just curious that maybe you and I aren't 'seeing' it now because with 12GB we're far and away from being anywhere near the system RAM limit? That's not really a basis on saying that the client isn't leaking, it's just that we're not prone to the effects.
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The system is only $1500 thats why im asking... every other comparable system is priced extremely higher and i was just wandering would it still run good at almost max settings then? Im not wanting to kill my pocketbook for a $4000 pc upgrade lol.Completely understand mate. I'd remove 6GB from your list, take the 9800GT SLI out as well and buy a single Nvidia 275 card. Can't say that the costs will tally up, so you'd need to look into it but that would give you more graphical oomph without comprising your system RAM to the degree that it would be detrimental.
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I know this question has been asked time and time again; but I am beating my head against a wall trying to decide if i should purchase a certain system. This system is the best deal i have found and was wanting to know if it would serve my purpose without Overclocking and spending alot more money.Intel Core i7 920 2.66ghz
12GB Corsair DDR3
1TB Hard Drive
DVDRW
(2) 9800GT SLI
650W Power Supply
Vista Home Premium 64
Thanks again for the patients with the same question over and over. But you will save me alot of grief and money if someone can help me out.
Sadly not, is the answer.
Take a look at my sig. With that setup I can run on almost all in-game settings at Very High (inc AA) at 1920x1200, at a good frame-rate.
I'd imagine you'd get a mixture of Normal and High, with the 9800GT SLI, at best.
But even if you did get a rig that can do Very High settings in-game, the game client itself will cripple itself (and performance) with the memory leak anyway, after a while.
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i have a very bad and annoying texture problem and i dont know what it is please help
im using a geforce 7600gs and im getting my 450 watt power supply on thursday please help:(Looks like the classic near-crash situation that I always used to get when the client system ram tops 1GB.
Can you confirm that this only happens after playing Multiplayer for a while? And not long after, Arma2.exe crashes?
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I run the Qosmio x305 with Windows Vista 64bit and the game will not launch. I get the error here."The version of this file (Arma2.exe) is not compatible with this version of Windows your're running. Check your computers system information to see whether you need an an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the sofware publisher."
Any idea's or am I out $50.00?
Not sure what to suggest mate, i'm also running Vista 64bit and Arma2.exe launches without error.
Forgive my ignorance but what's a 'Qosmio x305'? Is it a prebuilt PC?
illegal copys may degrade?
in ARMA 2 & OA - TROUBLESHOOTING
Posted
You've never heard of Sins Of A Solar Empire? Great game! You definitely should look into it :)