doveman

I've tracked the problem down to the dxgi.dll file. If I rename that with .bak on the end, ArmA3 loads fine but SweetFX isn't doing anything, whilst if I leave that file in place, ArmA just closes itself before I even see the menu. I've tried disabling MSI RTSS in case the OSD on that was causing problems and my ArmA3 profile in Radeon Pro is set to Disable API Monitoring and Disable Auto-Detection, so that's not being used either, so I can't think what else might be the problem, so if anyone could help me work it out, that would be great.

Thanks for the link. I found this on the same site which might be more appropriate http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-2-Way-Bluetooth-Connection-Between-Arduino-a/ I'm not going to spend any more on this project though (I would need to buy a BT adapter for my PC as well but the combined cost would still probably only be about £8) until someone's able to a) stop the Roll Axis Input receiving phantom data whenever I centre in FTNoIR and b) get the X,Y,Z axis working.

I got it working now thanks. It seems it wasn't finding the settings file for some reason. Once I copied the default preset and settings files into the A3 folder it worked and it's working OK now with a downloaded A3 settings file in the A3 folder and an edited preset.txt.

Yes but as I said, FTNoIR isn't showing any input for the X,Y,Z axis, so either the firmware isn't enabling them or the Hatire plugin isn't I guess. ---------- Post added at 10:28 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ---------- Yeah, I was wondering if we could make this wireless. I use a USB rechargable battery http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/301079254334?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 fixed to my headset to power my LED clip so that I don't have to use a USB cable, so I could use that for power but I'd still need a transmitter/receiver for the USB data. It'd only have to transmit a few feet, so wouldn't need to be very powerful and so shouldn't add so much draw that the battery runs out so quickly that it becomes annoying (it says it's sufficient to power a BT earpiece for 16 hours or an MP3 player for 17 hours so I'd think it should be fine and the receiver could be mounted on top of the monitor, so that it has a clear and direct reception path from the transmitter to minimise the power needed).

That's not what it says here http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/MPU-6050#.UwaVnp1FBaQ

There's got to be a way to make the swapping less painful. I have my ArmA3 install on SSD (S:) but Steam on my HDD (D:), so what I've tried is having the Dev on the SSD and making a symbolic link from that to the Steam folder. Then to use the Stable, I delete the Symbolic Link and download the Stable and to swap back to the Dev build, rename the the folder to ArmA3-stable and recreate the Symbolic Link to the SSD containing the Dev build. All sounds very sensible but whenever I swap between the two, Steam insists on downloading the entire thing again despite it already existing! I'm currently swapping back to Dev and it's downloading to "Downloading\107410". It has a addons folder and a Curator\Addons folder under that and I tried copying all the files from my Dev build addons folder to the 107410\Addons folder with Steam closed but it doesn't seem to have helped and it's still chugging along from where it was previously, 30%. Anyone got any ideas how to make Steam recognise that we already have the damn thing and it just needs to install any updated files, not the whole shebang?

OK, got it wired up but there's a few things that aren't clear. There's 3 files at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gy512forfacetracknoir/files/ All 3 open in the Arduino software (it says they have to be in there own folder and creates this for me), so I'm not sure which is the right one to use. I've used gy_521_send_serial_HAT_ITG for now. The guide doesn't say anything about needing to install a driver for the board but I guess that's covered under "Install the Arduino software". I found the instructions for installing the driver here http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Windows#.UwYVyp1FBaQ It says it will show up under COM Ports before installing the driver, whereas in my case it was under Unknown Devices but apart from that, it was all good. It's rather buggy in FTNoIR, as even though I've unticked the Roll Axis (which stops any Roll showing under Raw Input) under the Hatire settings and only have Pitch and Yaw mapped and enabled, whenever I press my Centre key (which I have to do each time I start it as it defaults to Yaw 108 on the Raw Input with the USB port facing to the right, which is how I intend to mount it on my headphones), it moves the Pitch output to the Roll Axis and the Pitche only shows reduced output (before +/87, after +/-50 whilst the Roll shows +/-95). If I have the USB port facing about 10-11 o'clock then the Raw Input shows Yaw 0. It's not really a problem though, just means I need to centre once each time after starting but the bug with the Pitch and Roll after centering is a showstopper. EDIT: Here's a couple of photos showing how I wired it up in case they help anyone. There's no "right" way to do it really, I just decided to put the wires on the back of the board to keep the top looking tidy but I need to find a little box to put it in so that I can velcro that to the top of my headphones anyway, so it's not going to be seen. EDIT2: I'm not sure if this device is meant to do more than Yaw, Pitch and Roll but if I enable X, Y and Z as well in FTNoIR, it doesn't show any Raw Input from those. I've flashed the second file "gy_521_send_serial_HAT_ITG_spring" now and that doesn't seem to have the issue with the Pitch/Roll axis after centering but I'm still seeing Roll Output despite the Roll Input being disabled and the only Input shown is Pitch and Yaw! EDIT3: One nice advantage is that this seems to use below 1% of my CPU, whereas my LED tracking with PS3 Eye was using about 14%, so that could be an issue for games like ArmA that are very CPU-dependent or for people with not very powerful CPUs.

Just putting this together now and noticed some errors on p.2. You seem to have mixed up the MPU and the Arduino, as it's the latter that has pins marked 2 & 3 and the MPU that has pins marked SDA, SCL. Neither has a 5v (both have VCC). The AD0 is on the MPU, so that line is correct. So you might want to fix those if you ever revise the document.

Actually as this graph shows http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=3205 floppy disc material isn't particularly good for this as it still lets in some visible light but also blocks a lot of the IR as well. Much better is camera film (exposed and developed I believe but I can't be sure about that). I've just removed the IR filter from my PS3 Eye and it's working well now without any daylight filter (couldn't get it working properly at all before) but that might change when it gets a bit sunnier around here.

I found the start of Mission 3 - Bomos, rather tedious. It went something like: Walk and chat with some guy for a bit Stand around a table listening to some guy Walk over to another guy just to select "Go to Briefing" Appear in a hut and select weapons Walk back to table and listen to the guy some more Walk to the Assembly point I think I've got those in the right order but I can't be bothered to run through all that again just to check. I think it would have much less annoying if it went like this: Start at table listening to the guy explaining the situation and giving the briefing all in one go (if restarting the mission, players should be able to skip this step). Go to hut and select weapons. Walk to Assembly point. I'm all for setting the scene but don't drag it out and make me walk places for no good reason please.

Well you can completely customise the voice commands in VAC for one thing.

Certainly there's no reason why VAC shouldn't work with mods or in MP and I have no problem doing so. All it does is send keyboard commands to the game. All I can think is that when launching with PwS it's doing something that's preventing VAC being able to communicate with ArmA. Maybe you're not running both as Administrator?

I was playing the third mission in Adapt with the following mods, none of which are AI related so I didn't think they were likely to mess anything up but after the briefing, when I spawned in the hut I was unable to access any of the inventory and once I got to Assemble, it ended the mission abruptly, no error or anything. I thought maybe that it was just meant to be a short prelude to a proper mission, so proceeded to the next one but that gave me no idea what I was supposed to be doing and had no briefing or tasks other than Scout the area. @asdg_jr; @cba_a3; @jsrs2; @Nords-Terrain; @compassfix; @sthud_a3; @blastcore_a3; @blastcore-tracers; @a3_bearb_ch; @lsd_nvg; @mrb_a3_voicestop; @mrb_a3_norumble; I restarted with just the following mods (I think, I actually thought I'd disabled @CBA_A3 but it showed CBA in the map/briefing screen so I guess I hadn't and I'm going by what the log files show me) and then it proceeded normally when I got to the Assemble point. I did have a few messages in the upper right later saying "Press [undefined] for more information" though, which seems a bit buggy but I wouldn't have thought any mods could cause that. @cba_a3; @jsrs2; @compassfix; @sthud_a3; @lsd_nvg; @mrb_a3_voicestop; @mrb_a3_norumble; I know people say not to run the Campaign with any mods but there's things that annoy us or we want to improve the sound or visuals and if we can't use mods with the campaign, then we can't use them with missions (unless the author has designed it around them), which means there's not much scope for using mods which would be a shame considering all the hard work people put in to making them. Incidentally, I was only getting about 23fps with VD 3000, up to about 28fps with VD 2000. I've come to expect this low in MP (in fact I often get 15-20fps there) but I thought that SP should be a lot higher.

I launched A3 with my normal profile as usual and turned the Deadzone off, then switched to another profile and did the same, then to a third but with this one nothing happened when I clicked OK. I had to Cancel to get back to the menu and then I tried a few different settings pages and OK didn't work on any of them. In fact, after a few attempts even Configure from the Main Menu stopped responding, so I exited the game.

@Fred41, yes I thought the chances of it being related were slim. I'll make sure to check the .rpt file if it happens again. I need to make sure that I reboot before playing ArmA3 as well as I don't think I've had any crashes when I've done that.

Yep, those three in particular really bug me. I've made a number of suggestions on the second point (as well as to deal with the problem of needing to select the required mods for a SP mission before launching ArmA and seeing the mission list). On the third point, I've been thinking for a while that it would make more sense to have a plain Join Server screen (no role section, just join and maybe a text chat box), then when a mission is selected the briefing is viewable and players can toggle between that and the role selection screen, once they've seen what the mission entails and which roles are likely to be most needed, or so that the leader can ask players to switch roles if people drop out, etc before the mission starts. I can sort of excuse AI and performance problems are they're no doubt very hard to fix but basic interface/usability issues like this I find hard to excuse (it just took me four attempts to spell usability right, so I'm going to bed now!)

Several missions on MP last night I (and most of the other 10-12 players) were only getting 15-20fps. I'm not sure Mantle is going to help here, as I understand that it's the AI running on the server which bogs it down and this results in low fps on the clients. I think even in SP lots of AI results in low fps, certainly in A2 it did but I haven't played much SP in A3 yet.

Was using the experimental version in MP last night and my system completely locked up (no BSOD, just sound turned into a buzz and picture froze and I had to hard reset). After rebooting and removing the -malloc=tbbmalloc I played for several hours without problem. It may have been nothing to do with the malloc of course and I'll have to test offline to see if I can trigger it again. EDIT: This is the last log file that was generated, at 21:01 yesterday. I've got about four before that I can post if that would be useful.

All I know is that with my Phenom II x4 955 @3.5Ghz and HD6950 2GB unlocked to 6970 shaders and OC'd to 880/1350, I still regularly suffer from terrible fps, so I don't believe that the HD7850 paired with a Phenom II X2 560 (or a FX 8320BE) will do any better, whereas there's lots of reports from people with i5/i7 CPUs having much better fps than those with AMD CPUs. I calculated the improvement my Dad would get in single-threaded performance (mainly for X-Plane) from upgrading his Phenom II X3 425e, so I've added the comparison below: (Bracketed numbers are the Passmark scores from http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html ) NB. The Phenom II X3 425e isn't in this table, so I used the results from the closest CPU, which scored 972 FX-6350 3.9Ghz (1,491): £100 53% improvement i5-4440 3.3Ghz (1,889): £130 94% improvement (£115 s/h) i5-4570 3.6Ghz (2,076): £145 113% improvement (9% faster than the i5-4440 for 11% extra cost) i5-4670 3.8Ghz (2,186): £160 125% improvement (15% faster than the i5-4440 for 23% extra cost) i5-4670K 3.8Ghz £172. Only the K chips can be overclocked and the 4670K can easily overclock from it's default 3.8Ghz to 4.2Ghz, perhaps as high as 4.4Ghz. At 4.2Ghz, it's about 27% faster than the i5-4440 for about 32% extra cost, (12% faster than the i5-4670 at 3.8Ghz for 7.5% extra cost). At 4.4Ghz, this increases to 33% faster than the i5-4440 (15% faster than the i5-4670). So clearly the i5-4440 wins for price/performance but I guess if you can afford the 32% more for the i5-4670K (plus an extra £20+ for a decent heatsink+fan, unless you already have one, so that you can safely overclock it to 4.2Ghz+) to get that 27% extra performance and feel that will be essential, then that's what you should get.

Yeah, the combined board is $19.99 or £12.16, whereas I can buy the two separate boards for £5.16 on e-bay, so it's over twice as expensive to buy the combined board. Even so I might have bought it just to save having to stick them on some board and wire them together if I was certain that it would work but as I have no idea how to "tweak the firmware", I think I'll just follow your guide. If anyone else buys the combined board and manages to get it working, please post the updated firmware and I might buy it if I decide to build another one. By the way, your guide says you use v3 of FaceTrackNoIR but the latest version appears to be v1.7.

I was just playing the first mission of Adapt with the dev build and I found that the vehicles sounded far too close, like they were literally right next to me when in fact they were maybe 100m away driving along a road, whilst I was hiding in bushes on top of a hill. So hopefully this can be improved so that players aren't terrified to peek out from their hiding places because it sounds like a vehicle is driving 10ft away from them.

I'd recommend you look at an i5-4440 and motherboard, as ArmA needs good single-threaded performance and Intel is much better than AMD in this respect and you won't see any benefit from extra slower cores that you'll get with the AMD. The GTX460 isn't terrible and should suffice for now. Obviously you won't be able to have everything on High/Ultra but it's better to have a CPU that's capable of handling the AI, etc and have to turn some of the graphics down than a poor CPU that's going to limit you to 15-25fps and a powerful GPU that will let you turn on some effects to make those 15-25fps look prettier.

No worries, I just found it a bit strange and was curious. Not sure if dots are better or not but I think I've seen some missions where the mission maker has put markers on the briefing map and they look a bit messed up when using TFAR. I guess it means we can't use nice marker mods like VK Markers either.

Pretty awful. I regularly see 15fps or 20fps. Those are scores for single-threaded operations, which is what ArmA3 mostly uses so yes, they will translate into ArmA3 performance. You only have to look at the number of posts showing how Intel systems perform better with ArmA3 than AMD to see that this is true. If you're using a workaround with your PSU, you could keep using that workaround so there's no real need to replace it. Yes, I said that upgrading to Intel would cost £200 rather than £100 for the FX-6350 but it still seems more sensible to me. It's not for me to tell you what to do though, I've given you the information so that you can make an informed choice.

The X4 640 scores 1,027, so the FX-6350 which scores 1,491 would be a 45% improvement, so I wouldn't say it won't change anything but whether that 45% improvement is enough to give you acceptable fps only you can decide. It just seem pointless to me spending £100 on the FX-6350 rather than £200 on the i5-4440 and Intel motherboard for about twice the improvement, which will also help avoid the CPU becoming the bottleneck for better GPUs (maybe not in ArmA, as the CPU seems to be pretty much always the bottleneck but in other games certainly). Apparently multi-tasking works a lot better with Intel CPUs as well, so that's something to consider and they generally draw less power than the AMD chips too, so you might not even need a new PSU. Certainly you should consider getting the best CPU you can afford to get decent framerates with ArmA before getting a SSD, which will only improve loading times and perhaps eliminate some stuttering as the world data streams as you play but I'd rather have 40fps and some occasional stuttering than 20fps and no stuttering. Here's the table if you want to check the CPU scores yourself: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html