dnk

Still, couldn't we at least run the sim and render steps in parallel, and the AI and other sim stuff also in parallel? Surely, that would decrease frame times significantly, even if we're still bottlenecked at the back end in terms of scene complexity, and indeed it could allow for more draw calls since we are no longer having to wait for the simulation each frame (we'de be render-bottlenecked, so to speak).I suppose I don't understand why if API/driver overhead is the thing keeping the render half of the problem from performing better, why that can't be done in parallel. Is there a reason these translation steps need a single thread on a single core?

Why not render the last sim step at the start of the frame while starting to calculate the next sim step at the same time. Perhaps this would cause issues for all the additional overhead, since every object/etc would need 2 states saved - current and "last full frame", and the renderer would only access "last full frame". You still have to wait for both to finish each frame, but because they both start at the same time, it should be considerably shorter.Hell, couldn't you split the render part up into multiple threads for different parts of the screen? So you have 4 cores: one for sim, the other 3 get horizontal thirds of the screen to compute geometry, make draw calls, deal with DX and the GPU (perhaps this is not so straight-forward though, and some aspects would need to be single-threaded). You can scale this up with cores. The sim also still needs to be scalable and multithreaded eventually, preferably with AI functioning independent of other sim aspects on multiple threads, using a similar "two frame" approach, with them always acting on information from the previous frame, and starting to compute their desired actions at the same time the rest of the sim starts, then their final state changes are made at the end of the frame once the rest of the sim is run - if the important aspects of each AI unit's state hasn't changed (like they died or were wounded to not be able to walk), then they proceed along with their planned change, otherwise they follow a predetermined process for each sort of "action interrupt" which is calculated and then applied. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying the sim/AI interaction, though (but then this NEEDS to happen somehow, certainly for A4, so perhaps streamlining of that interaction is required if it's currently impossible). Yeah, I am willing to deal with this single threadedness for this one final release, but I won't buy A4 if it isn't seriously improved in regards to CPU/thread usage. It needs to be priority #1, along with working in 64-bit (non-hackish).

Plants.pbo is 300MB. It might be 1GB with this? What's that, a 7% disk size increase. Worth it.

I hear direction chat constantly. Helps me find the enemy.

The only "instant" death is a CNS hit, and even then it's only really "death" when it's the brain. I would imagine a .50 round hitting you dead center would be fairly instant regardless, just due to insane amounts of shock. You're not shaking that one off... But if we're going to get nitpicky... also, where's this decapitation coming from? Pretty sure getting hit in the torso by a .50 doesn't make your head pop off. Guess I've never been in war, though, so what do I know?

They're on a 1-month vacation.

Jogging simulation. I've never been more virtually fit than after a long Arma session.

While I really love the new detail, I'm not sure about totally changing the color palette. The island does seem to look pretty tan and dry when you check out the pics online.

Well, when you make it that armorless people can get 1-shotted by a torso/head shot, then yeah having plate carriers add 1-2 bullets of protection triples their "health" while preserving the more lethal playstyles we've grown accustomed to. It still makes sense to wear that vest, regardless of weight costs, as it does to wear a helmet, even if that helmet only offers a 1-in-3 chance of saving your life from a headshot (a reasonable compromise, btw).

Extra graphical complexity would also show up for many as a CPU bottleneck... Calculating scene geometry and handling draw calls seem to be what cap things at the CPU for many already (without AI and scripts even).

I would also like this responded to. That said...The realism side of me says, yes, let's keep people as bulletspongy as they are now. Why not empty a mag into someone to kill them? It's only realistic, especially for 2035 armors. That said, shooting someone 3 times in the arm with 7.62 really ought to be incapacitating, if not solely due to bloodloss (decent odds of hitting an artery, and even if not that's a lot of tissue damage to ignore and fight on with). The headshots... not realistic that point-blank AR rounds to the face (or any part of the head) aren't lethal. This brings me to the other side of the issue... It's both nice and not nice for gameplay to have headshots be 2-hit lethal for helmets. It's nice because it reduces the incidence of instakills of the player due to bad luck (mostly a COOP concern). On the other hand, when I'm the one doing the shooting and am placing well-aimed lead on an opponent's head, it's unendingly frustrating to watch them just duck down and live on. "Getting the drop on someone" just has a lot less importance than before the patch now. Now, it's more about getting in closer and spraying them with lead or just getting lucky and hitting someone that was already hurt (or sniping with a 1-hit weapon). Players need to close distance now to dump entire magazines at each other, and sprinting across open ground isn't as stupid as before since they can take 3 or 5 or more shots and live to see their destination. I feel like, even if the armor system is more realistic (at least for the torso), the actual action and gameplay have become less so. With fewer consequences for being caught in a bad spot, players have even less reason to move tactically and with good awareness, and bad play (in a realism sense) is just not nearly as punished as before. Also, it's pretty clear to me now that to get fast kills you need to aim for the legs.

Awesome. This, JSRS, a new GPU. I am liking this Christmas already :D

Excellent response. Sums it up as perfectly as I could.The CPU is limited in its usage (60-70% on core 0 usually, even on a 3.3GHz) likely due to having to wait around regularly for new data as it calculates all the geometry or AI routines and such. Even with 0 latency RAM and infinite bandwidth, there are laws of physics and clearly the engine isn't able to cache everything it needs in a frame to keep the usage near 100%. That's my take on it, but I'm not 100% sure either. note that VD, object quality, and terrain quality will all heavily affect your geometry-based CPU bottlenecking. Especially with higher object quality, where LOD switch distances are extended much further and the %age of objects drawn is much higher at each LOD level, the geometry on screen can increase exponentially with increases in VD (since we're squaring the distance). Note that 12000VD is ridiculous, and setting it under 3500 is advisable unless you're not having FPS issues.

1. I should note these are center-of-mass shots, heart/lung area.2. It would "incapacitate" someone (after a few moments/minutes at least), which is what "dead" means in this game. It's up to the mission maker to add revival/medical scripts to allow such "incapacitated" people to return to the fight or not. It would certainly be nice if we had more advanced medical modeling, at least as a modular option.

Believe my table includes the armor names and I've mentioned they're BLUFOR. For the record, they're BLUFOR (I am unaware of different sides having different health values - is this the case?). Yeah, it'd be nice to have a more thorough medical system that can be activated by modules, as in A2. People who want to play arcadey just don't activate those modules. Don't we already have this? Shots lose their speed/penetration with distance.

Yeah, the streams and lakes alone I'd kill for, snow is cool to. The rest, though... mostly just new models/textures and thicker ground clutter (not more detailed, just thicker in coverage, which can be done by config tweaking some .cfg file in the map.pbo, I think).The physics-based destruction would play hell with MP given how it seems just having ruined building models plays hell with it. It'd be awesome for SP, though.

Note that this is a higher damage than what I was referencing (and also at the 5-shot mark)... Try it with a weaker weapon or heavier body armor (plate carrier is best I think). You'll see it happens very often. Also note that I'm disussing the torso, not the leg. I have not noticed this with legs, but I haven't tested it for legs either.Eh, I am really hating this new patch. It's turned PvP into more spray&pray than tactical shooting now, especially with everyone sprinting around still and the lag issues. Plus I'm crashing once an hour now. I might just leave off for a few weeks until they fix it (hopefully) in the next patch. I've been meaning to go back to America's Army 2.5 (personal gold standard for tactical play) for a while now. Guess it's time :/

Right, I'm watching unit total health and delta total health for each shot. That's what the numbers are from, not just damage to the one body part. And these are chest shots, not leg shots (I didn't count leg/arm shots, but you can see in the table the typical shots-to-kill in parentheses). It goes: -16% -16% -16% -16% -36% or: -13% -13% -13% -13% -13% -35% After trying your mission, I see the same thing happening on the BLUFOR units (your mission is much nicer than mine :), but the same data is coming across). Shouldn't have different results, and we don't. It's just the weakly armored units (OPFOR particularly) that you don't see this, but for the BLUFOR they're clearly getting a "supershot" after the 4th or 5th round from the 6.5 to force a kill. It's especially present with headshots, where the first might do just 15% damage, and the second always kills. ---------- Post added at 12:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 AM ---------- On another note, I agree with the sentiment that if you're going to make the damage less for shots, you have to have some additional effects, like TPW fall or more than just a mild head jerk.

[TABLE] [TR] [TD]Weapon [/TD] [TD]Helmet Head[/TD] [TD]Plate Carrier [/TD] [TD]Tac Vest[/TD] [TD]Unarmored Chest[/TD] [TD]Arm[/TD] [TD]Leg[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7.62 ABR[/TD] [TD]17/45/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]29-35% (3-4)[/TD] [TD]35-37% (3)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [TD]44-50%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]6.5 MX[/TD] [TD]32/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10-25% (5-6)[/TD] [TD]23-30% (4)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]17-22%[/TD] [TD]31-36%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]5.56 SOAR[/TD] [TD]17/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]7-15% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]7-17% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]5-10%[/TD] [TD]16-19%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD].45 Vermin[/TD] [TD]22/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10% (7)[/TD] [TD]12% (5)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]15-25%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]9mm Pistol[/TD] [TD]10/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]5% (9)[/TD] [TD]7% (6)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]5-13% [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] I've updated these numbers from further testing and a mistake regarding the 556 ammo (it was dual purpose originally, now STANAG). There seems to be a scripting that occurs that forces a kill after X shots (in parentheses). I'd prefer it if the shots were just more powerful. I do not understand this at all - why auto-kill after 5/6 shots rather than make each shot more deadly?

Anyway, I made a mistake in my testing, since I was using dual purpose 556, hence the low values. Here's updated with STANAG, plus armor names: [TABLE] [TR] [TD]Weapon[/TD] [TD]Helmet Head[/TD] [TD]Plate Carrier [/TD] [TD]Tac Vest[/TD] [TD]Unarmored Chest[/TD] [TD]Arm[/TD] [TD]Leg[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7.62 ABR[/TD] [TD]17/45/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]29-35% (3-4)[/TD] [TD]35-37% (3)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [TD]44-50%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]6.5 MX[/TD] [TD]32/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10-25% (5-6)[/TD] [TD]23-30% (4)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]17-22%[/TD] [TD]31-36%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]5.56 SOAR[/TD] [TD]17/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]7-15% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]7-17% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]5-10%[/TD] [TD]16-19%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD].45 Vermin[/TD] [TD]22/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10% (7)[/TD] [TD]12% (5)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]15-25%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]9mm Pistol[/TD] [TD]10/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]5% (9)[/TD] [TD]7% (6)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]5-13%[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Ok. I didn't realize that. I've updated the chart, including the armor names.

Apparently. What's the point of this ammo exactly?

@Armilio Good question. Against BLUFOR. I'll experiment with OPFOR and see what the result is.

Here's the thing, in 2035 I figure an AP round would be standard with the body armor improvements. I doubt real-world militaries are going to accept having to hit someone 5 or 8 times to incapacitate them, and ingame "kill" = "incapacitate" (it's up to mods/scripts to determine if you can revive or treat an incapacitated person).

Yes, after a good bit of testing... UPDATED [TABLE] [TR] [TD]Weapon [/TD] [TD]Helmet Head[/TD] [TD]Plate Carrier [/TD] [TD]Tac Vest[/TD] [TD]Unarmored Chest[/TD] [TD]Arm[/TD] [TD]Leg[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7.62 ABR[/TD] [TD]17/45/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]29-35% (3-4)[/TD] [TD]35-37% (3)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [TD]44-50%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]6.5 MX[/TD] [TD]32/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10-25% (5-6)[/TD] [TD]23-30% (4)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]17-22%[/TD] [TD]31-36%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]5.56 SOAR[/TD] [TD]17/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]7-15% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]7-17% (5-7)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]5-10%[/TD] [TD]16-19%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD].45 Vermin[/TD] [TD]22/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]10% (7)[/TD] [TD]12% (5)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]15-25%[/TD] [TD]25%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]9mm Pistol[/TD] [TD]10/100% (2)[/TD] [TD]5% (9)[/TD] [TD]7% (6)[/TD] [TD]100%[/TD] [TD]10%[/TD] [TD]5-13% [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Here are the rough damage ranges for each weapon at close range. Generally, a second head shot always kills, as does a 4th or 5th chest shot. It seems scripted in that way, since even the 9mm can kill in 6 shots. Unprotected headshots are always a kill.