sproyd

I run a mostly GPU bound set-up (rare I know) as I have a Core i7 laptop @3.2GHz and a GeForce GT650M 2GB Here are my specs for the latest dynamic lighting changes, in the middle of Agia Marina street lights section. Almost all settings at Standard, with no MSAA, Standard FXAA, Very High Textures. rev 04711 Dynamic Light Setting: Low: 33.25 fps Std: 31.55 fps Hi: 30.00 fps V Hi: 27.1 fps Ultra: 24.5 fps So as you can see, a very linear FPS changes now with the setting actually working. In terms of visible fidelity from an infantry perspective the jump from Low to Std is the most beneficial. Beyond that just seems to light up areas over 100m away or so - could be important in medium range urban engagements. Obviously if sniping then you are going to want a high setting as you are essentially going to get more light on your screen.

Its not copyright infringement if its for personal non-commercial use. YouTube basically 'shazams' videos and most of my YouTube videos have copyrighted songs. The only difference is you can't monetize (put ads on) a video with copyrighted music. Occasionally a video will be blocked in certain countries (usually Germany) if a certain label owns the rights (I don't know why).

If you are prone to frustration (which I am gathering you are) then switch to the STABLE build and then you can quit complaining. The DEV build is really for the devs to do testing of new features and they don't owe you anything. I like the new lighting and I'm sure they will address the performance when they are able. Its not a hard-coded performance issue in any event - as many people have observed it only occurs at certain times of night. Relax!

Okay, when running all in arma I am now missing my A3 units from the Editor. When I select BLUE all I get is Objects (Training) and an Invisible Target Soldier. I know we can't mix A3 and A2 infantry yet but I wanted to equip an A3 soldier with an A2 OA weapon. Is this an intentional feature? Okay and I just opened a prior mission I had created which had an A2 unit and equipped him with A3 Multicam. It was working fine (see screenshot) but is now completely messed up (see screenshot).

+1 for no tasking in dev build. While I've been using dev all along a lot of people are switching to dev build because of the pseudo-anti-cheat measures. They will probably be rolled out to STABLE branch as well given the problems with hackers. Maybe see if you can get a workaround as I'd like to play this without rolling back.

I don't know if Arma 3 is... intimate enough for a buddy slap... check this out, Metal Gear Solid 4 had this (sort of) 0:25

Good job TeaBoy - hopefully that is applicable though? I'm not an expert with these kind of things but I can imagine the demands on the server would be high (rather than the client ^^^) and the loading times could be pretty excessive. There could be other implications I'm guessing? EDIT: Just tried your "test" and dropped from 50fps to 30fps when increasing view distance from c 4,000m to 10,000m. So not sure I agree with your theory.

You do realise this is the internet right?

Well I'm back from testing lighting with today's build 04588. Street Lights and Flood Lights now with the new illumination Looks Great Big FPS hit as reported Hunter, Offroad, Quad all still with old dim lights No shadows cast directly under the flood lights - should be a hard black shadow. Conversely, you cast a shadow as entering the brightly lit area only. Stars look a little too distinct and bright and need to be dialled back a little I think. Overall its improving :)

Did you get today's build?

Strongly agree with this statement. This would look great with collission lights. However, I noticed the instruments didn't light up at all in the cockpit - just me? Just did a little testy in the editor and using the IFRIT now is amazing at night! The lighting there is fantastic and needs to be rolled out to all lights in the game (depending on performance hit). For people mentioning that the Hunter, Offroad, StreetLights, FlashLight are now unusable though in their current state that seems to be because BIS has rolled out the new environmental lighting system (which looks great) but only the new dynamic lights to certain vehicles - i.e. the Ifrit and the MH-9. So comparatively now the abovementioned light sources are useless. Its very cool to load up a map and see the different ambient lighting based on the cloud cover which seems to be very realistic imho.

Lots of great ideas in here! Loading times on an HDD will be horrific though. Also, for those complaining about realism - the islands are actually not to scale and if I recall correctly are scaled down versions about 2/3 the size of the actual ones.

Okay why is your server "perfectly smooth" and others aren't? Is it still smooth with 40 players after no refresh with tons of items?

@Chortles - I wasn't trying to be unhelpful or facetious, quite the opposite! Arma 3 can't be early to learn from scratch - I would honestly start with the A2 OA tutorials.

The reason you feel 'abandoned' is because there is no tutorial. The reason there is no tutorial is that this in an Alpha. The final released version on store shelves will have a full tutorial just like the prior games. If you want a tutorial then play Arma 2 : Operation Arrowhead's. There is a large number of tutorial missions to slowly drip feed this complex game to you. I am not surprised that you are struggling as I would be to if I had never played Arma and picked up a game that is still in Alpha phase of development. Arma 3 Alpha is not a marketing term as many seem to believe!! Its been put in place to (a) involve the community in ironing out bugs before it goes to market (b) appease the hardcore community who couldn't wait any longer :P. Its not for new entrants to the series despite the £20 price tag. Get Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead and you'll see. Also, you get the benefit of integrating this content into A3 through allinarma mod so its not money wasted just for tutorials. Also the campaign is great.

Well one thing that Arma 2 has over Arma 3 is Training missions that drip feed the controls, commands and interface to you. I highly recommend them although you should play the Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead training as the stock Arma 2 training missions can bug at times and hence not conducive to learning because you don't know whether you did something correctly or not. 90% of it will transfer straight to Arma 3, except for stance adjustments, run/sprint, inventory system and some other minor bits and pieces. The AI commanding is identical though and that is quite complex to learn unless you have someone to teach you.

If you have Arma 2 OA there is a fantastic helicopter training mission where you fly through the hoops. Its a really good way to get the hang of it - helis handle slightly differently in A3 but its the same controls. I recommend it and its a Black Hawk if I recall correctly which should handle more similarly to the one in the A3 Showcase Mission than the Little Bird.

As Arma 3 is in Alpha with only a small amount of content its not always conducive to those getting into the series for the first time. I trained myself up on Arma 2 + expansions Single Player and I'm now very competent in the Arma 3 MultiPlayer space (although not part of a clan/group at the moment). I would recommend getting a copy of Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and playing through the campaign and scenarios, all of the skills and commands will port over to Arma 3 (with the exception of the G key ;) and stance adjustments) - its a very good campaign, far superior to Arma 2 basic campaign. As to Arma 3, I think the best drop-in drop-out game mode for casual players is Wasteland. Don't write it off straight away. Its not actually a mod so you don't need to install or customize anything, just join a Wasteland server and it will automatically download it (its technically a custom mission although plays out more like a mod). Wasteland is fairly simple 1) Choose a side - BLUFOR, OPFOR or Independent. Recommend BLUFOR/OPFOR for beginners. 2) You can communicate with your side on the side channel (press COMMA until it says SIDE) either via in-game text chat (press / type then press ENTER) or VOIP chat (hold CAPS LOCK) 3) Equip yourself - find guns, ammo and equipment in the back of vehicles, on dead players or at the GUN STORES marked on the map 4) You can then team up with other players and sub-groups to defend a base, attack enemy positions and complete randomly assigned missions 5) Its a lot of fun and you can usually join an established squad of guys and they'll help you out with arming you to the teeth. The game is fluid so if BLUFOR destroys the OPFOR base its not GAME OVER but OPFOR will randomly spawn around the place and have to regroup, rearm and reconstruct a base from scratch. Bare in mind along with inevitable Alpha bugs, there are some frustrating Wasteland bugs too and occasional hackers killing everyone on the server so patience is key. The main bugs are with the inventory system, requiring you to drag weapons into your backpack before equipping them etc. People will help you out in SIDE or GLOBAL chat with any problems you run into.

A still from yesterday when making the video in my sig

Slowmo showcase of All In Arma Mod

Made a trailer let me know what you think

Just played it also. SP doesn't work as you haven't set one of the playable characters as player. If you make this minor change the mission should be playable as SP and MP. I played the mission in MP mode with AI. I had a good time and enjoyed it. The resistance force was the right strength, however I completed the main objective and wasn't prompted to say that it had been completed. So I kept approaching the OPFOR positions and eventually died and only on my death screen did I see the tick on the task. If I had known this I would have exfiltrated. The way to make tasks pop up is to use the task modules which are fairly easy. There are tutorials on YouTube. Otherwise a good mission - look forward to re-playing it once you've made some tweaks.

Is there a way to set the topographical map as default? Currently I always default to the pseudo-satellite terrain map and I only just discovered that I could switch it to the topographical map that you use in the editor. The Topo-map is better in most ways as it allows you to identify peaks and troughs more accurately and is better for identifying steep gradients and points of tactical interest (for me anyway). Here's an example of the same area in both map types. Default Map Topo Map

Doesn't TrackIR offer analog lean? (not the same thing but along the same lines)

Saying you have 32% CPU utilisation when one of your cores is at 100% isn't strictly correct. In the ideal world we'd just have one core that was 12.0GHz instead of 4 @ 3.0GHz but that's not the case and they don't equate to each other, we have multiple cores due to the laws of physics. I accept that BIS could do a lot to improve multi-core performance. However I don't accept everyone saying "OPTYMYIYIYZZZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NOOOWWW" when BIS have already done such a stellar job on the opty from A2 to A3. If the price we pay for such an awesome game is poor multicore optimisation then we'll have to adapt and get beefier clock speeds.