sn0b0ard

Wow, that's pretty cool that you have a custom panel for flight simulators. I was thinking about building one myself, but I don't really have any idea where to start.

The problem you were experiencing with Freetrack, has nothing at all to do with the software, or the technology itself. It is your webcam, and your LED setup that caused the problems with playing in daylight conditions. My VX1000 webcam has it's IR filter removed, and I have a natural light filter attached to the lens (magnetic storage on a 3.5' floppy disk as the filter, cut into the shape and size of a quarter), which allows head tracking in virtually any lighting condition. Glad to hear that you found a solution that works for you though :) I will admit, Freetrack does take some time to set up properly, but for DIYers, it's a fun project, and is very rewarding.

In response to how does Freetrack compare with TrackIR, Freetrack outputs the FPS at 120, exactly the same as TrackIR. The sample FPS all depends on the webcam that you use. I use a Microsoft VX1000 webcam, and it's sample FPS is 30FPS at 320x240. This webcam is PERFECT for Freetrack. I spent $20 on the VX1000 webcam from FRYs electronics, and $7 at Radio Shack for 3, high output, Infrared LEDs (part # 276-143). You can also use a Wii remote as well, the sample FPS on the Wii remote is 120FPS. I will post up some pictures of my freetrack setup, as well as the dimensions I used, a little bit later. My Freetrack setup is a 3-point ballcap, that just clips onto the bill of my hat, and the IR LEDs extend from the front. I am glad that I didn't spend upwards of $200 for a TrackIR setup, when I built one for much less. The satisfaction of building it, and seeing it track your head movement for the first time is amazing :) Thank you so much BIS for adding Freetrack support to this game!!!

ArmA II uses antipiracy software called FADE, which causes the game to become unplayable (i.e. game looks like the player is on drugs, can't aim, etc...). So if your copy of ArmA II is not legit, FADE will kick in and cause your player to appear drunk.

You don't want the pagefile to be too low, just in case some program needs the extra memory. 4GB of RAM, I would just let windows manage the pagefile, especially with Windows 7. I actually saw a performance decrease when I set my pagefile manually.

The tweaking of the pagefile is generally meant for people with low RAM. Most of the information about pagefile tweaking came from when people had Win9x/2000/XP with 256MB-1GB of ram, and they wanted to squeeze out every last ounce of performance. Larger amounts of RAM don't really fit into the whole 1.5x equation anymore. Thus, tweaking the pagefile when you have large amounts of RAM will not do any good; it may actually make performance worse.

Ok, thanks for the reply. I now understand your position. I didn't quite understand initially that you were referring to people saying that the game is completely unplayable. Thankfully, I am not one of those people. I can play most of the game fine; however, I do experience some bad FPS loss in certain areas (battles in cities, harvest red mission), but it was playable enough to where I could continue on with the campaign. With all that being said though, we are in dire need of a new patch, and I am hoping that the next patch will fix the performance issues.

Jumping to conclusions about the performance issues is a bit harsh. Just because you personally don't have any performance issues, doesn't mean that a lot of other people don't. You are basically saying that my computer is crap, or I am acting silly because I have performance issues with ArmA II. Thanks a lot. Check my signature... My computer is not top end by any means, but it's more than adequate, and it is above the recommended specs. I don't think it's too much to ask for 30+ FPS in cities...

It is hard for practically everyone to run the game with good performance. I've tried so many different little tweaks here and there, and nothing has really worked for me at all, except lowering the graphics in the game. The bottom line is, the game is not optimized properly, and Bohemia Interactive needs to fix the performance issues in the game. People with recommended hardware can't seem to get good performance out of the game, so there is definitely something wrong with it.

Unfortunately, this probably won't help everyone with ArmA II performance issues. I just adjusted my virtual memory, and it didn't do anything to help the FPS in ArmA II campaign. The beginning of Harvest Red still is giving me like 20 FPS average :(

Maybe a beta patch will help? You can download the latest beta from here: http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

Signed. It is a great game, and it can only get better with patches/mods/expansions etc... :)

Yeah I am happy it's fixed as well. I didn't notice any sounds missing until I ran the soundbug mission, and there was an obvious difference in sound between 1.03 and 1.03.58972.

It just means, in basic terms, that the game requires either a gaming laptop with a high end dedicated video card (which is going to be very expensive), or a high end desktop computer, which doesn't necessarily have to be as expensive as a gaming laptop, but it does have to have some very high end hardware in order to run the game without problems.

I think you hit the nail on the head. There was one thread in this forum about performance issues where the OP said that they are running the game maxed out, with everything set to very high, but they were receiving crash to desktop issues. The OP listed their specs, and they were decent, but not ultra high-end. The consensus was for the person to lower the graphic settings down to High, and maybe at a lower resolution, but the OP wasn't buying it because they thought that their system should run the game at very high with no problems. This game will take time to mature with patches, and yes, sometimes it is frustrating to see your FPS drop down, but you can always adjust the video settings down a little lower to get the smooth gameplay that you want.