finguide

I've now played with most pbos (the recommended ones) on RAMDISK for 2 days as a test. System specs: MOBO: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 CPU: i5-3570k @ 3,4 GHz GPU: GTX 670 OC version SSD: Samsung 830 256 GB RAM: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 CL9 Dual PSU: Super Flower 1000 W OS: Win7 64-bit I installed free SoftPerfect RAM Disk program, created a 10 GB RAMDISK and moved the recommended A2 pbos mentioned in this topic and also some OA pbos (in \Expansion\AddOns) to the RAMDISK and linked the files with Symbolic Links. I've played on both Chernarus and Takistan a couple of hours now. At first, I saw no magic FPS increase or smoother FPS (there was still some micro stutter, maybe slightly less than before). Then I remembered that someone had mentioned the performance of RAMDISK being limited in practice by CPU (and the RAMDISK program itself), so I changed the priority of Arma2OA.exe and the RAMDISK processes from Normal to Very High as a test (didn't change affinity, because I was using parameters -cpuCount=4 and -exThreads=7) and alt-tabbed back to game. The FPS increased about 30 % (all video settings on Very High and Video Memory on Default, PP effects were Low) to 90 FPS with 2500 m viewdistance (on Domination server that had about 40 players online). The stutter decreased drastically and probably because of that the gameplay felt very smooth. LODs and textures didn't "pop" anymore (that also caused stutter) – when they appeared they had already correct LOD. It made the immersion and graphical experience much better. Based on my test, I definitely recommend to use RAMDISK, even if you have Arma installed on SSD disk, if you have enough free RAM (+4 GB) and powerful enough CPU. Because of the performance boost a question popped in my mind: could dedicated server get a performance boost if the files used by it were moved to RAMDISK? If I've understood correctly, dedicated server can use 2 cores. Eg. on quad core server the RAMDISK process could use then the 2 cores that are not used by the server. Is it even possible, and if is, has anyone tested this? I'd be very interested to see the results if there are any!

Yeah... On our system though, they're positioned in the middle of teams and about 50 meters (depending eg. on the cover that ground has) behind the fighting soldiers and not actually engaging, but ready to "dispatch" from their position to the wounded, if there is need. Medics should stay on the background though, primarily the fighting soldiers should evac the patient to cover to avoid exposing their medic to enemy fire.

Ability to lower also pistols. Essential for at least roleplay missions and mods. This can't be probably changed, but you can always wish... :) Map design so that grass is shorter and map topography designed in micro level so that there's small covers (small holes, slopes (?), rocks) all around the map if possible, like in IRL. I think, that it would make a huge difference to combat. You could advance some steps from cover to cover and eg. evac a patient by using those covers.

I served in Finnish Defence Forces. To be honest, we were told too that in practice we would probably have to hide the international signs and fight like regular soldiers if needed, because it's very likely to happen that enemy doesn't care about the Geneva conventions, and the red cross sign in our uniforms can be spotted really far away (the cross itself is a good target too, "aim here!")

I have somehow positive gut feeling of Arma 3 despite of the delays. I understand that the situation in Greece is causing problems and delays, but I'm sure that Ivan and Martin will be released soon. I don't believe that Limnos would be removed from the game. The game is being delayed, maybe because of that, but on the other hand, devs have more time to finish and polish their baby now. The lack of sneak peek stuff or reports "from the field" doesn't mean that they're just drinking coffee and chattering there. :)

Thanks for your replies. I see that I may have had wrong information. But what confuses me, is that I served in obligatory army as medic, and we were also carrying basic assault rifles. Despite of that, we had lessons of Geneva conventions during our training period and we were told there that no-one of us in the medic training – not medics of infantry teams, not company or battalion level medics, ambulance medics etc. are allowed to engage. We could carry assault rifles but use them only to protect our actions if enemy opened fire towards us, and still maintain the protection of medical corps that Geneva conventions allow to us. On the other hand, we had very visible red cross signs attached to our camouflage uniforms, which was a requirement to have the protection of medical corps. Eg. the US medic character in the game has the international sign in his backpack.

One thing that I've been wondering... If they are developing the features of game to obey Geneve conventions (like they did in A2 too, right?), is that why do medics engage? If they obeyed the Geneva conventions, medics should never engage and they should always be in "hold fire" mode, and on the other hand, enemy should never open fire towards the medical troops. Of course, mistakes happen in real life and there's always chance to misidentify the troops in firefight when you are extremely stressed and in hurry, but it still kind of disturbs me.

I have the same issue, it appeared some weeks ago. Eg. filtering "wasteland" with max 250 ms ping usually gives max. 10 results (usually 0 or 1), when there actually is tens of servers that meet the search criteria. Nowadays I have to use Arma Swec to search servers and connect to the servers with remote IP that is found in the server stats on the site.

The game keeps adjusting the joystick sensitivity during the game nonstop regardless of the joystick model and PC (tested with 2 joysticks and PCs, in A2, OA and CO). I find this very annoying, because when you have to do very gentle and minor maneuvers, the game immediately increases the sensitivity of joystick and makes eg. chopper almost turn around upside down if you even touch the stick. For example, I have to move my joystick multiple times in extreme angles (all corners) when I join the game so that I actually would be able to control a chopper. Unfortunately that isn't possible when you're flying so eg. landing to a place that barely has room for chopper is very hard because the sensitivity increases massively when you move the stick only a little bit. Is there any way to disable this? I've been suffering from this issue for a year now and it's still very frustrating. I found this line from my profile config file, can the autoadjust be disabled by editing it? Thanks in advance, finguide

I have this issue too. In SP everything works fine, but in MP the GPU (GTX 670) usage drops under 50 percent. It's quite annoying, because I play Arma only and only in MP.. :rolleyes:

A (hopefully) simple AI improvement: taking cover immediately and/or switching the stance (if there is no proper cover near) when it's under fire, and in case of infantry, then ability to peek by switching to higher stance or lean, depending on the cover. AI could also spot the direction of the unit that shoots them better, but spotting the unit could be little harder/not so probable as it's now. AI could use suppressive fire too more aggressively. Because this can result in too hard AI for some players, there could be an option to disable or enable it in AI settings. In my opinion, this should definitely be included in the vanilla version. It would make the supporting fire units like MGs actually usable, because suppressing the enemy would actually work. Nowadays sniping the AI from high distances is way too superior tactic compared to other tactics. On almost any public server where people fight against AI (Domination servers, for example), almost everyone gets sniper and high range guidable AT/AA and snipes the AI running around the town and hills randomly, and shoots the armoured targets with AT far away. If it was actually possible to suppress the enemy, also other options than sniping the enemies far away would become considerable options too. Sniping would become useful in assisting the groups to move to target. For example, snipers could eliminate the key targets, like artillery observers, and then make it easier to the groups to move to the target. This would result in better teamplay and increased variety of actually usable tactics to be used to attack enemy and thus make a huge improvement in the replayability and the overall quality of the gameplay.

Agreed too. I'd still buy the Fractal though, I consider it as very good solution. I have the R4 myself, and I can easily imagine that I'll have the same case still after 10 years. Based on Smith's messages, I don't think that he's going to use those any programs that really benefit from hyper-threading or very fast RAM, or if he actually will use them, the build is still very decent to that kind of use. And because the processor may be the bottleneck of the system with 2 HD7970s, I'd definitely get aftermarket CPU cooler (some examples here) and overclock the processor. If one doesn't want to OC the CPU it would be still a very good solution to buy OC service from local IT experts/professionals with that build. i5-3570k is especially made for overclocking, it's often possible to reach 4,5 GHz and even 5 GHz with it...! That makes a huge difference, if the processor is the bottleneck of system like in this case it may be – especially when we're talking about ArmA series. You could buy the components and case and buy service from local IT professionals and let them put the stuff together, maybe even install the OS, drivers etc for you. Much more performance for the money. :)

Computer case: from this to this or this -> save $50 with no difference in case - quality brand case (I have the first one myself), very quiet, looks and keeps your components cool Processor: from this to this -> save $95 with 0-3% performance hit - only difference between these two is hyperthreading technology that almost any game can't use RAM: from this to this -> save $34 with 0-2 % performance hit - the optimal RAM performance/price ratio is at this moment 1600 MHz / CL 9 latency, above that the performance boost is very small when compared to price = Total savings $189 with 0-3 % performance hit (almost none!)

This deserves highlighting... I understand their point about publishing the mission to community, but on the other hand, why not make one yourself if you really like the idea? I wonder what is the reason why Sa-Matra could not host the mission himself and just open as many servers as there is demand. In my opinion, their admin system is good and responsive and they're opening new servers, so I see no proper reason that would justify to steal the mission. Why should the mission be published to community if Sa-Matra doesn't want it? I'm also myself developing a mission in a team, developing it has taken literally hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages of text. I can imagine the feeling if someone just stole the mission and opened server with it, and then began to blame us for not publishing the mission immediately to public and let everyone host their own server... My team is planning to publish the platform of the mission to public, so that community can develop their own versions of the mission if they feel need to do that. In general, I wonder where do these people come from that are not doing/creating anything themselves, but instead stealing others work and then blaim the creators of mission for not giving them immediately what they want. If you want to host a popular mission, make one.

Because of the way that 404games acts, copying the code and removing the credits, I'm going to "vote with my feet" and play on 404games Wasteland servers never again. I've found Sa-Matra as very nice and helpful person, so I want to support him. I hope that others will do this too and support the guy that has actually created this wonderful mission.

Thanks a lot mate, that helped! I actually played with the ambient occlusion in Nvidia settings, but I must have clicked the "Cancel" button instead of "Apply".

When I launched my game yesterday (after Steam updated the latest Beta patch), there appeared strange, dark blur/haze around every object and also in the horizon. The haze is "living" all the time. It makes spotting targets almost impossible, and especially thermal vision is completely unusable (check pics 2 & 3, eg. in pic 3 the town is actually full of friendly and enemy troops and armoured vehicles but the haze fills the view so you can't see the units). I've tried different video settings, custom launch parameters and searching for similar issue topics and replies here but haven't found any solution so far. (in this pic the black haze is shown as white glow because of the thermal vision mode) System specs: CPU: i5-3570k GPU: GTX 670 Nvidia driver package version: 306.23 OS: Win7 64-bit Is there anyone else with the same issue? Could this be caused by the beta patch? Thanks in advance, finguide

Get i5-3570k. It has excellent price/performance ratio and pretty huge ability to OC it. You can OC it from 3,4 GHz to at least 4,4 GHz in most cases, the best can reach even 5,0 GHz. You'll need aftermarket CPU cooler and usually also better thermal paste if you're going to OC it though. i5-2500k wouldn't be a bad choice either, it can be OCed too to very high clocks and the thermal paste on the core of CPU is better than in i5-3570k, resulting in lower temperatures if thermal pastes aren't changed. The only difference between i5 and i7 CPUs is hyper-threading technology (HT) that i7 has, but only few programs (like image and video editing programs) can use it. If you're not professional/serious image/video editer, there's absolutely no reason to buy a lot more expensive i7, because games can't use hyper-threading (well, a few games can, but the performance boost is often almost unnoticeable) and therefore get benefit from it. :)

It's your decision of course. My point was that at least here in Europe 2x 680s cost at least 220 euros more than 2x 670s. That's, in my opinion, a lot of money when compared to the performance boost. I'd rather get bigger SSD or maybe better, IPS or 120 Hz screen with that money. I'd myself choose bigger screen and more vivid colors and better contrast (IPS) or higher Hz instead of one step better video settings in game (for example this) – in my opinion those affect the quality of experience much more than slightly better graphics settings. I'm myself going to replace my Asus VG278HE 144 Hz screen (which is broken, 3D doesn't work with it correctly) to IPS screen that has better colours and contrast. A3 will have nice colours according to the preview videos, I think it'll be a "WOW" experience to play A3 with IPS screen... I'm not sure about this, but I think that the performance may be little bit better on Nvidia cards in A2. At least some older AMD cards caused some annoying graphical glitches in A2 some time ago. On the other hand, the performance (especially when OCed) of HD7970 Ghz Edition is significantly better than even GTX 680 (that may cost 100 euros more than 7970!), I'd have definitely got it if I wasn't going to add another video card later (SLI has much better performance ratio than CF on most cards still). In general, my opinion is that single card -> get AMD, multi-card -> get Nvidia.

In my opinion, if you're going to get SLI, I'd rather get overclockable GTX 670 with aftermarket cooler and OC it to at least to clocks of 680. 670 has much better price/quality ratio than 680, especially when you can easily OC the 670 to clocks of 680. If you're going to get single card only and not add second one later, I'd definitely get HD7970 Ghz Edition, much better raw performance (clocks) already with stock clocks, and better ability to OC it a lot more! I've just spent 2 months and about 100 hours trying to find optimal hardware for my new PC, so I think that I've some kind of apprehension of the topic ;) PS. Stable 30-35 FPS at last AO in Domination with mods and 40 players online, 9000 m viewdistance and almost everything on high/very high... i5-3570k at stock clock & GTX 670 at stock clocks & Samsung 830 256GB SSD

I'm really really really looking forward this mod! I served as medic in (obligatory) army, and have been missing a realistic medical mod like this since that. Great job guys, keep on going! :) This. In my opinion, player should always have the freedom to decide whether he tries to reach the patient or not, because situations vary and any artificial restrictions to that would just cause bugs and problems. And what if the medic stays in the cover but tells the other players to evac the wounded player to the cover (like it would, and should happen in many situations)? Can't he treat the patient still if he's in cover with patient but still under fire?

I've recently got NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 Kit (with IR emitter and Vision 2 glasses) and Asus VG278HE 144 Hz screen. My problem is that I can see the 3D test pictures without problems, but when I turn the 3D mode on in game, I can see the 3D effect somehow but I see ghosting too. The ghosting makes the picture to look very bad, I can barely look at the screen with glasses. Is it common problem caused by ArmA itself or just something wrong with my software or hardware? The screen is manually set to 120 Hz. A2 config files have been tweaked to 120 Hz (cfgs are in "read only" format). Shadows are set to Normal, post-process effects are disabled. CPU: i5-3570k GPU: GTX 670 OS: Win7 64-bit GPU driver package: GeForce 306.23 (tried with 306.97 too) Thanks in advance, finguide

Thanks for your answer -=seany=-, The edges that I see are transparent, so I don't think that it's caused by bad convergence settings. I'm not sure though. They also cause strange mesh on textures, probably because of the triple image... On the other hand, I played with convergence settings too and found out that the 3D effect works fine with 1% 3D depth and minimal convergence, but that makes only my gun (and in general, objects that are less than 0.5 m away from my point of view) look like an 3D object and the other parts on the screen stay 2D. The image looks kinda stupid then, for example there is really no 3D effect when I eg. fly chopper with those settings.

Thanks for your reply Leon86, I think it is ghosting because I can recognize the objects from the "ghosted areas". For example if I use my gun iron sight, I can see the left side of iron sight on left side of the sight and the right side of the sight on right side of the sight. (Lol, what a sentence) I've tried all shadow settings, the recommended setting by NVIDIA for shadows is Normal. I've tried with Vsync on and off, with no difference.

This is really critical issue to me. Is there any way / script to make server to add the joining players to only one side? Eg. if there are 20 players on BLUFOR and 30 players on OPFOR, server would add every joining player to OPFOR, not BLUFOR that has less players. In addition, it would be nice if server would not add joining players to any side if the OPFOR was full. And the last, even better if a player could be forced to only one side, so that he couldn't select slot from any other side. If this would be possible to make true, it would save me from tens of hours of wasted time. Thanks in advance, finguide