Der_Richter

Well so it seems, but as i said, if you reapply the same settings as you already have in-game, like select same preset and click apply again, ithe nvidia profiler frame limit works again... I also like to keep it limited at 30 to prevent fluctations in framerate despite running 45-75 fps without limiting. I absolutely can not stand non synced displays, they make me physically ill. Note that ingame vsync is always off in my case, so no interference. But if it is by design anyway, that the nvidia limiter is supposed to be disabled, then ingame should have the half refresh option as well...

Hello. No big issue, but i would just like to see if anyone else have this issue with 337.88 drivers for NVidia... I set adaptive vsync and prerendered frames, in my NVidia profile for ARMA3. This has alway worked before... Also, i set my settings ingame for AA etc. This usually gives me 60fps, when looking at "intro scene" in the main menu, i can see this due to always having FRAPS active to record. I recently reinstalled ARMA3 and the new NVidia driver, and now the same settings in the profiler and ingame gives me everything from 40 fps to 70 fps (thus not correct ingame settings sometimes and definitely no adaptive vsync) UNTIL i go to the video options and select the exact same options again and apply them. Then it's back to good framerates (correct settings) and/or adaptive vsync... There seems to be a bug that requires you to apply the settings EVERY launch of the game to make them active, both for ingame settings as well as profile settings. I can do this every launch, so not critical, but just a heads up to other NVidia users.

Has been debated over and over again, and you ARE wrong. Simple as that. Precisely measuring on my end shows pretty even spread on all 4 cores (measuring by processes and per core), with threads spawning all over the cores nicely. The cpuCount parameter is however useless, but for the simple reason that the engine assigns the threads automatically. To return on topic, i am seeing slight changes in FPS as well, but not as major as described... Have anything else changed in your setup recently?

Exactly. But it works if i reset all ingame settings to the same values as before (just change to the same values) and apply video settings again. Then it works. So i have to do this every time i run ARMA3. Also, it is not only the VSYNC for me, it seems to ignore some of the profile AND ingame settings (AA etc.) completely sometimes, until i re-apply video settings, then it uses the set values (that are the same as before, just re-applied)...

Greetings. First of all let me say congratulations to BIS on a successful (judged by the large interest online in the product) release of the Alpha! Then let may say that if this is in the wrong category (was deciding between here and Alpha subforum), please help me move it. I really like the Alpha so far and i can clearly see the efforts made to streamline the experience for new and old users alike. It's looking good. However, being a former simulation developer (defence contractor) myself i as usual have a large interest in the technical aspects of the simulation. I'm an avid simulator user (be it flight, milsim, racing etc.) and that is about the only type of software i run for entertainment. I have actually helped in some other alpha/beta programs, in my spare time, to look for optimizations and bugs etc. due to the fact that i have access to some specialized hardware to bechmark and analyze bus bandwidth etc. (eg. specialized monitoring boards). Since i have enjoyed the ArmA-verse since OfP days, i feel that now that the chance is given it is given that i should try to help in ArmA3 Alpha development and bug testing as good as i can. I found some free time yesterday evening (well not really "free" but it was prioritized :) ) to start testing on a prepared benching system i connected to my reference computer (my own home computer). I am still crunching the numbers, but it seems that issues exist surrounding AI. If i look at the initial graphs for CPU LOT (Load over time) i see that when alone on the map, the player can set 10k of View Distance and all details max on GPU without issues (using at least 30fps+ as reference). However if adding AI (tested by playing scenarios included) the VD can be as low as 3800 with 3900 object distance and run smooth, UNTIL you look in a direction where AI (any AI) would be present. Then it's instant drop to 25-ish FPS (in Helicopter scenario as low as 19ish). Looking at the Tiger VMk2 Virtual test board graph output i see congestion on CPU and loads of it. The GPU is keeping up even despite huge amounts of high detailed objects so at least this is a good sign. But the CPU congestion and core utilization is screaming red figures at me. I will continue to help in any way i can and i just wanted to share these first findings. However, i would like som more reference systems to compare the test rig with. Perhaps this could be a general thread for these comparisons as well. I will keep it as my vent for tests i do, to try to help. If you would like to compare this is the spec. system: I5 3570K @ 4 GHz. on all cores (no throttling) GeForce GTX680 4Gb. VRAM with latest WHQL drivers MSI Z77A-S01 motherboard with attached Tiger VMk2 and SEcCSys CU LOAD analyzer boards (not when playing for fun obviously :) ) Crucial 1600 Mhz. DDR3 RAM Samsung 568Mb/s. SATA-3 SSD as ArmA 3 install drive and these are the settings: No launch parameters added All graphical settings on max/ultra with 1920x1080 resolution and 8x AA combined with FXAA Ultra View Distance varying but for test spec. 3800 with object distance 3900 and shadow distance 100 Can you also try this on your computer giving my average FPS on the scenarios and your specs. and i should be able to cross compare with my data, to try and find bottlenecks to help BIS if i can. The main issue however seems to be core utilization for the AI at the moment... The average for spec. system is 35-50 FPS. with exception of helicopter scenario (16-25 fps.) Investigation continues! :) Kind Regards Richard

The most important setting for benchmarking is the view distances total and object... The fancy graphics are not that straining and pretty well optimized as it is... Try the same at a total view distance of 3800 with objects at 3200 or so and you will see what i mean :) What distances did you use when getting your numbers now? Oh, and since the new update i can see a good increase. 4ghz. Quad core and gtx680 4gb with ssd and high speed 8gb. Ram now yields playable 25 to 50 fps in most situations. So for more fps you need say... 4,5 ghz. Cores. :) ---------- Post added at 06:59 ---------- Previous post was at 06:53 ---------- By the way, small edit, has anyone seen yet what the default view distances are online when set by the server?

Ok. Further measurements that i have done over a longer time has now led me to the conclusion that GPU is not under large pressure, regardless of settings. However, what really kills the framerate is object count. High detailed objects choke the FPS like mad. But contrary to what you may think it does not choke the GPU at all, it brings the CPU down. The more objects that happen to be in your viewpath (accounting also VD setting), the worse the CPU load at least on one core. The same behaviour can be found for A2 as well... A small question to a dev, if possible... Is there reason to believe this is due to preprocessing of frames loading all geometry on the CPU? Lower your Object Detail and you should never drop below 60 fps, at least i don't...

First of all, once again congratulations BIS on the fantastic uptake on the game! It's amazing to see a series that i have loved since OFP get some well deserved attention. As an old harcore player i actually welcome the new players. However i think that the elitism sometimes shown in our ranks are horrible. New players are accused of being "hackers" and "kids" and the consensus seems to be "if you want this or that you can go to hell, cause i've been playing with this broken system for years! Thus you are the problem, kiddo!" This is hostile and wrong. I actually welcome the fixing of "stiff" mechanics and the actual work towards streamlining the experience. When i saw some threads starting with "I am new to ArmA but i would like to know how i script this" or "How can i get into squad gaming", i am really feeling happy. Just think of what the new players can bring us! In the spirit of my recent "enlightenment" i would like to try something. As i see request for genuinly interested new users for tutorials and help with base game mechanics (daunting task to learn) i was thinking that i, and hopefully other more seasoned players, could offer our support My main idea is to see if we can perhaps organize a server with a friendly TeamSpeak-setup to use for playing together with the new guys and letting them test their missions/scripts and learning the ropes of controls, functionality and general ArmA (the 'BIS feel'). I can volunteer as a staffer and will try to help as much as i can, if someone is, instead of complaining and shouting at the "non-hardcores" and "DayZ kids!!!" (irony), are actually willing to help me to help :) Best Regards Richard

I could use some ACE reference myself actually. Thanks! About the whole ignorant players thing, i agree. What really grinds my gears however is comments like "too bad DayZ wasnt made with a real game engine, arma engine is crap cause i cant have 60fps with my b34st master rig. It runs battlefield on ultra yo! " Of course there lies a failure to understand that the rv engine is probably the only one capable of doing what DayZ does... But despite my irritations sometimes i actually like having some patience and every once in a while you find a new player drawn in by the franchise and thats where we need helpfulness and good guides. I think you have to 'learn' to appreciate what arma is... And on your own, that can be daunting.

Interesting intel there... And yes i would agree with the points raised, although it is not really the problem. Threads is one thing, but when we can see 40% TOTAL cpu usage while the simulation as well as rendering thread grinds to a halt something is locking it. Its not the cpu being bogged down as much as it seems to be routines taking a long time to complete. As for resource sharing, my work in the past in similiar fields was constructed so that we put a render thread that was constantly fed by calculation engines on multiple threads. This however was possible when locking the update tick of the calc threads to a peedetermined rate. This would imply locking the framerate as well, to keep the render thread sync to calcs. This way the grunt work was theeaded but fed the gpu pipeline at the same sync, and the pipe counted on not being fed data out of sync. I was working on predetermined hardware with smaller subset of simulation however so i can understand the woes of bis on this one... But as stated, i think the 40% total cpu time usage is more worrying, than how it spreads on the cores and spawns threads as that would indicate some single thread routines taking their fair time to process. Or in fact, a deadlock, where it is threaded, but the threads wait for eachother far too long. My opinion without knowing jack about this particular engines internals is that it is related to movement of objects and specifically AI.

Could you motivate why we should avoid helping new people who might stay in our beloved armaverse? Really? Aren't you a tough soldier!

I have a TeamSpeak up if anyone wants to get in and talk some basics, and have a go at some proper COOP without any pressure or such. Will probable be COOP 4 or 8 depending on joiners. I have an old mate joining me as well, who is also quite new to ArmA. If anyone feels like jumping in and having fun and trying out to squad lead without pressure, get in TeamSpeak at: 37.2.153.200

If i would dare a guess i would say large chunks of "something" being stored in memory as a single bitmap and transfered as one chunk, probably object data for the GPU, this will stall the buffer like this. But since my knowledge of the RV3 engine is as good as anyone elses not working for BIS i'd just take it as a general area of investigation. I don't think rendering is defered to it's own core, it must be sharing with something...

Ok. I have tested and TeamSpeak server seems to work fine. I have tried to host with 4 players and it seems to work ok. Should be ok with more players as well. I will run a maission from time to time to get this rolling. The idea is to let the new players take roles that need practice while being backed and helped by veterans, in a laid back atmosphere, i.e. noone is to blame if something fails, we restart mission midpoint if needed, we can experiment as much as we want. No problems. I will sign in as veteran at this first event, and hopefully tremanarch, as he so willingly volunteered :) I was looking at running this: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19294 for training of fireteam command and navigation. If interested in joining, let me know, and i will set a time for server go... Remember, i live in the cold arctic hell hole known as Sweden, so times will be GMT + 1 //Richard

I actually think chat would be preferable due to easier understanding and clarity, and also due to not all players having mic. Teamspek for announcements/chat would be active however.

I get the exact same behaviour. I think there is a problematic object somewhere in that general direction... In my case rotating the view as little as 3-5 degrees bumps framerate up again...

Alright... I was thinking of trying to host a first session myself this weekend with some coop squad play. My plan was to let new players take turns in leading and commanding the squad and i will just be along as a regular gi joe for the ride. This way i can also answer questions on commanding and tactics as we go along. Commanding a fire team is something that is crucial also in single player, in arma... If interested pm or shout here and i will see if i can get a private teamspeak going. Any veterans wanting to help out, are also very welcome. Bear in mind that my machine while powerful, may not be able to accomodate anything over, say coop-15

Sounds very inspiring, what would really be great is if dedicated server space could be given for this purpose OR a thread of sorts on the forum, where seasoned players willing to assist may announce when we have time to host a session ourselves and new players may announce a desire to join and perhaps get some mission tested and commented on or something. @Winfernal: We shouldn't welcome them with open arms, we should welcome them and take them under our wings! <- Exactly this! ---------- Post added at 13:11 ---------- Previous post was at 13:10 ---------- I should also add that sometimes it could be good for us "old-timers" as well, to be able to attend a session hosted by someone more knowledgable in a certain area! I for one would love for someone to educate me on the finer details of air-support flying. :)

I like this approach. Perhaps we can make a mission file where the player will stand still and record fps as soon as 3d world loads, while a set number of AI units in different distances from the player move towards waypoints and engage in firefights. The average of three such runs (to account for dynamic AI) should give a close approximation? It's also interesting if CPU and GPU loads could be measured as averages as well... I can do it by hardware boards, very precise, but i guess there is software others may use to compare? Is this an option in Afterburner (have not used this software)? ---------- Post added at 00:12 ---------- Previous post was at 00:09 ---------- This as well... Is an approach, as that mission is already there. It is very interesting to me if someone can record the load seen on CPU at the heli mission, for all cores (if multi-core) and total. I see, as stated, values as low as 45% total. Does seem like there is an issue somewhare. The amount of indivdual threads is 37 however.

Test system uses SSD SATA3 568 MB/s r/w. I wrote settings in first post i believe, but i like your idea of measuring an estimate... Helicopter mission is indeed a good basis as it it easily the most intense. Settings to use: Res - 1920x1080 AA - 8x Post Processing - FXAA Ultra Quality Settings - All max, Ultra where applicable View Distance Overall - 4000m View Distance Objects - 3200m Running this on the test system yields following over 3 mins of flying towards first objective (across the airfield and town): MIN: 19 AVG: 24 MAX: 38 Measured using FRAPS. Interesting side note is that the CPU core utilization according to the monitor board is only ~45% total, however load on bus (queue for CPU) is 100%

I think you may misunderstand... I was talking in a purely multiplayer, public server sense... And that is already not "no unlocks" due to most being password protected, requiring you to join a clan. But i agree with your view that content as such should neve be locked out.

Something struck me before... Now that the ArmA-verse is fully on Steam with A3, why not take advantage of this and implement a possibility for "ranked" instead of "passworded" servers? You could give in server creation, options for creating a server based on "rank" something that Steam could hold info about due to account being on there already. This rank could be reflected by playing time (+), unlocking of certain modes (+), friendly kills (-), hacking of public servers (-) etc. Then to be able to join and/or use certain contents you must uphold a certain rank (ie. how iRacing license system works). That would open possibilities for training servers run by people who may volunteer that can teach the basics and as you advance in rank you can join other public servers. Also, it would give public servers available for all, but no one tk:ing and behaving badly would have enough rank to actually join them... Just an idea taken from basically observing iRacing for many years...

Thanks.

I just felt inclined to open a discussion around the subject of the amount of new users we are seeing wit the release of this Alpha. There seems to be hostility on some ends to this, sometimes with good ground, like in the case of hacking and teamkilling online... I have personally enjoyed ArmA-software since the beginning of the series and also have a background in advanced simulators, both as user and developer (not development to consumer markets however) and only uses that type of software myself, apart from the occational Wii session with my wife :) so i understand the view taken by those who find it annoying for instance, when a new user throws a grenade wrongly and kills his team. However. Yesterday i was asked by an old friend if i could introduce him to ArmA 2, after he had heard from me he should try it. I went in and created a COOP session with some AI, and i found myself initially annoyed that he was taking his time with stuff and really did all kinds of strange things. But then he told me that he found it overwhelmingly complex. I then initiated him to some base commands and mechanics and we tried them together. He then started to get it. And it was amazing to see his transition from first expressing a behaviour leaning towards wanting to run around and shoot, to actually playing advanced and strategically, having control of the mechanics. He told me that he found that it was "boring" at first and thus wanted to shoot and kill (as it is the easiest element to understand). However, when calmly and gently introduced to the subtle nuances of ArmA he took on another view. This delighted me very much and we then played all night. He has now prepurchased to get ArmA 3 Alpha and has become very interested in the modding scene and started to download additional content already. I started this thread after just speaking to him, after he called me to ask for some commands for ACE that he had managed to install to: "Get a more authentic experience" :) And that got me to thinking... As i previously stated i have been in a few Sim-communities and all excibit the same "elitism" and "conservatism". Then i look at the Alpha and the "streamlining" frowned upon and people hating that new players find one of the strongest contenders to defend PC advanced sim/gameplay. I then start to think, that we may see this the wrong way... We have been here so long that we have forgotten that ArmA is a daunting experiene when first confronted with it. Perhaps these new users will eventually be like my friend and start loving the franchise and what it stands for, if only given a little "nudge" by more experienced users. Is all this "run and gun" stuff really that strange, given that if you don't understand the subtle ways ArmA can be experienced and tactics that can be used, how are you supposed to do anything but that? I think Bohemia is actually going the right way with an included field manual and streamlined controls to ease the transaction. I believe that we all would like more users to share our love for the series and we have to get it out there somehow. So after thinking about it i actually welcome the new way of packaging the ArmA experience and the new mechanics... What are your opinions on this? Should we actively seek out and welcome new users and if so how? And if you have not tried to teach a friend to enjoy ArmA, do so, it was an amazing experience!

Interesting. How did it go?