windies

Bolded part is exactly how I feel about it. I'm tired of bitching about it anymore but it feels like it's going nowhere while the focus is simply on adding more. There are to many little ways BI could have truly improved the game in these regards. Better functionality and better performance.

There are instances in SP where performance tanks, though nothing like MP issue's. Usually it stems from lots of units, though honestly I don't think 100 active units should really be too much to ask of the engine to be able to handle in SP. If I create a mission with civilians and ambient life and hostile and friendly units, I can easily surpass 100 active units without breaking a sweat. Most missions you see are devoid of civilian life and ambien animal life, for one thing because there's no easy module for implementing it like there was in ArmA 2. Also though it's because it would create even more performance problems. I agree though the majority of the problem is in MP.

Problem is that most of the FPS "Tweaks" only make a difference in ideal conditions, like an empty map with no entities. Go in multiplayer and that 9 FPS is nullified or load up an actual mission and it becomes 1-2 fps which is within margin of error at best. Basically you and JumpingHubert sound like you lower your standards until they reach a point that you can accept what ArmA is and has become and you expect and preach for others to do the same. I guess you'll have to excuse me if I don't follow suit and have higher standards. rest assured that I can live with it. Whats funny is how much you both deflect the issue while admitting the issue is real and pressing while then telling us how we should have fun with and accept a lesser product. Mostly what I care about is not letting issue's be swept under the rug which BI is frankly becoming exceptionally good at and has become their M.O. at this point and what both of your deflective arguments and statements seek to enable.

Hit the nail on the head OS. I voted no but in reality it depends heavily on a lot of things. Are the performance issues fixed? Have the long standing bugs been addressed? What kind of setting is the game in and what kind of quality is there to the units and that setting. I'm not against buying it, if things improve, but they have to actually improve and not just be some faux initiative. IMHO A lot of what I see in this thread as justification for support is coming from modders who have no other option and from nostalgia, I.E. "OFP was the secks nothing will ever compare an since there isn't anything I will keep buying it!". Most of the opposition is from people who frankly I think just want to enjoy the game because it is unique in what it and the engine can do. In other words, if there was something else out there that gave you what the RV engine does, but didn't suffer from the long standing problems, it would probably be no contest as to what you would choose. Maybe it's because I enjoy all types of games not just one sect of them, but I can live without ArmA. It's not that I don't enjoy it, it provides a very unique experience from your typical BF/CoD experience, but in reality it's not something I can't live without. So my basis of support comes from the product itself, not nostalgia and since I find programming to be mind numbing I don't find enjoyment in creating mods. I think in essence that is what ArmA has become, a tool to create your dream upon. It's much less of a game to be played and much more of a platform for content creation. However whenever it fails to do that, when the bugs consume your ability to do mod and create content that you wish and when performance issue's prevent you from experiencing your content in a playable fashion, and playable is very subjective since I truly truly believe there are those on this forum that would be content for the game to run at 1 FPS as long as they could mod, You will probably stop supporting it as well, and then it will most likely die. Anyways I think this is all moot as I would very highly suspect that BI wants to move away from the ArmA style of game since their engine quite frankly is no longer suited for it. It can do it, yeah, just not very well anymore honestly. What would be required for it to be able to handle high object counts and large amounts of parallel instructions, physics and AI, they aren't willing to pursue, at least for ArmA. Personally I think DayZ was meant to be the new series bread winner and it's proving to be a challenge just to get the engine to function with that type of environment, hence why you see so much work being put into it. I was expecting a sudden drop in support of ArmA 3 after DayZ SA came out, just like the myriad of other BI titles that weren't ArmA before DayZ. I think the only reason that it hasn't is because while DayZ sold amazing, they know they're still going to have to produce something, and it's proving a lot more challenging than they anticipated. They might as well fold up shop if they can't deliver on DayZ because I don't think ArmA will support them anymore, not with the way they've treated the community surrounding it with long standing problems and issue's. It's harsh but true.

Without the modders, they really wouldn't have anywhere near the same success they do now. They're a smart company, They know how to work this community and they've been doing it for a long time. Yeah everyone would benefit from better performance, I just don't think the time invested is worth it to them if people keep buying a sub par product and supporting them with money even though they don't support us with a better product. Modders support them because it's the only platform they can live out their digital dreams on without costing them much of anything. Modders make up a large, very large portion of this community. It stands to reason that supporting them, keeping them interested, is more important than having a good functioning game, because in turn those modders bring in niche groups who will also buy the game because they can't get X mod anywhere else, Performance aside and even bugs aside as long as they don't break a mod. That about sums it up in this community, We can have total shit performance where the game is unplayable and everything is accepted, but break a function in a mod and watch the community rage. It shows where the priorities lay both from the company and the community. Until there's a reason to fix issue's, until the community gives them a reason, they're just gonna continue to exist and with the above mentality, that point will probably never be reached so in turn we get the same issue's every iteration like a CoD franchise spinoff. That's how BI operates. They don't care beyond the customer they might lose and if that number of customers is big enough to justify fixing or changing something, just like any other company out there. This community in turn, doesn't really care enough for it to matter unless their mods are affected. So to sum it up, as long as BI supports modders, the game will survive and continue to have the same issue's because they aren't as important as scripting commands and bloated feature's. Also why would you fix issue's that prevent you from playing at the end of the life cycle versus the beginning? Why would you focus on content before the game is really playable? Kind of odd logic but hey it works for them so keep it up! :rolleyes:

It's still unplayable even with a 4690K, for example I went from a 965 to a 3570K and in the same scenario's where I had problems before, Multiplayer and single player with high player counts or a mediocre amount of AI units, I had problems with the 3570K. I'm not arguing the results of his benchmark but benchmarks, especially in the case of ArmA, are very subject to their content. If There's a bunch of AI standing around doing nothing versus a battle going on for example, the results are going to vary wildly. The amount of AI in the battle are going to skew the results. My point being unless you use the very same benchmark across all test machines as well as use a benchmark that targets problem area's like AI counts and lots of "action" going on, then the results are pretty moot. I mean I see a huge 40 fps boost on the title screen between my 965 and 3570K but play a normal mission or play multiplayer and the performance is exactly the same. This says that the engine doesn't scale compared to it's workload as well as the hardware it's running on. Meaning this is an engine problem and while you can create a smoke screen for it by saying hardware upgrade makes a world of difference, it's ultimately just hiding the real problem which is the engine. I went from a 965 @ 3.5ghz to a 3570K @ 4.4ghz and a GTX 480 to an R9 280X to finally "two" R9 280x's in crossfireX and in the same scenarios I see a difference of 10 FPS. I can hop on a multiplayer server and get below 25 fps and I can pretty much guarantee you that same result across almost every multiplayer server out there and that's about 10 FPS higher than the 10-15 FPS I used to get with the 965 and GTX 480. I can load up a multitude of Single Player missions out there and show you about a 5-10 fps difference going from same hardware. The only place I see huge differences in performance is on an empty map with nothing going on, and then I might, might, see about a 20-30 FPS increase over the 965 and GTX 480. It's not about bitching, honestly at this point I'm tired of seeing the issue's get swept under the rug time and time again by some modders or developers wet dream implementation being prioritized over fixing the actual game because you know the community won't be happy until that hat sits perfectly right on a units head or that new scripting command that 5 people might use is introduced, meanwhile the game still barely functions in most useable scenario's :rolleyes:. Sarcasm aside though that pretty much sums up the problem, project management and project goals and directions. They're focused on DLC content, new additions and pleasing the modders rather than fixing whats already there. All the while we're told "Hey we're working on it" for the past like year an a half now with hostile communication from *redacted* developers an even the head honcho himself telling us BF and similar games make better use of hardware because they secretly run prime95 in the background to spike up usage :rolleyes:. How can you trust or take anything seriously when the "CEO" tries to use that as a scapegoat?

Good points Alwarren and Varanon. The immersion factor in ArmA 3 is nowhere near what it was in ArmA 2 and it stems from some of the reasons you guys brought up.

I'm not offended by any means, but neither is what you said really an excuse for the shape ArmA 3 is in. Yeah it might be realistic from the standpoint of "This is what we have" but it's not very realistic from the standpoint of "What we have to work with". You can't design something over 10 years ago and expect it to still hold up with modern technology and hardware like it did 10-15 years ago. That's the whole point of engine revisions, it really should be the whole point of RV 1.0, RV 2.0, RV 3.0 etc... AI CPU dependency for example isn't exactly something that just caught them off guard or surprised them. We all know the AI routines are resource intensive. So why is it really that very little has been done between engine revisions to either help lighten the load or find better ways to do it? You can't tell me there aren't none because the Navmesh idea from DayZ is probably exactly what's needed here and it's been suggested by many community members. 64 bit happening in DayZ but we're told it's not needed for ArmA, the whole file mapping BS is sufficient? I call BS. Lots of reasons are the problem, but the real problem is that it never gets fixed and never gets addressed. Instead we get new FM's for helicopters that we were told killed performance hence why they weren't included before that will probably drop performance and cause issue's as well in real world scenario's outside of just messing around in the editor. More bloat on top of an already bloated product frankly. Things like PhysX being added into an already CPU dependent environment. It's great to have don't get me wrong, but priorities really should be elsewhere. Seems like all we get are facelifts when we need some major internal surgery. Also I really don't see a next gen ArmA 4 from the way they are looking to "support" ArmA 3 with content and expansions, at least not anywhere less than 5 years from now. Hoping for it to be fixed in some phantom next gen title in the series is probably not going to bode well as that's exactly what we've been "hoping" through each previous revision. It's honestly what has supported BI for so long, they made one magic title before and that nostalgia has kept them running since. I'm not saying that post iterations after OFP weren't good, just that they all suffer from the same problems that have been exacerbated by time and progress in technology and hardware and nothing has ever been done to fix them. I've always supported BI but still always had that feeling that more could be done for key area's and key problems of the engine and of the game and I guess I've just reached that point where I'm done believing and hoping and want to actually see some proof or action.

Lemme know when those 10ghz monocores start rolling out from Intel and AMD *yawn*. I just think the engine is super inefficient for what it wants to do, be a jack of all trades for modding and mission making or even just simulating combat scenario's. The higher we go in revisions the more limitations we run into and that's generally ass backwards from the point of even revising an engine. Whatever it be, memory limitations and data throughput limitations, inefficient instruction handling, doesn't really matter. We can argue about what it is till the end of time. It's up to BI to care enough to fix it and put the time and effort in. They're supposed to be that awesome company that supports their products, I don't see much support with critical issue's. Until they start supporting their products properly, I'm done supporting them.

Got a second R9 280X real cheap for a crossfireX config. Loaded up ArmA 3 and was surprised to get about 1 1/2 the usual FPS, around 90-110 FPS, wasn't really expecting the scaling to be all that great even though it is in most everything else bar some niche games and flight simulators. Hop in a multiplayer server, go back down to 24 fps. SMH.

It boils down to how much of the core is really there between revisions. How much of UE1 is in UE2 and UE3 and UE4 etc... How similar is RV4 to RV1 for example. Do things get rewritten if they need it? Do they just get spruced up with some tacked on code/features? It's like comparing a 2014 Mustang to a 1969 Mustang. Would you want a 2014 Mustang with the same tech, engine and powertrain as a 1969 Mustang? I honestly would assume that UE gets much more work done on it than RV most likely. I'm sure the only reason that the focus in DayZ development is the engine is simply because the engine can't cope or handle with what they want to do in DayZ, therefor it's born out of necessity. If they want to impress and not just be another WarZ CF with tons of raging early access backers, they need to actually produce something functioning and complete. Makes sense that they would have to put work into the engine then. On the flipside, ArmA works and is fully functioning to a standard but debatable degree. Work on the engine in key area's would be good, but not a necessity. There's always a "fix" so to speak with performance issue's and bug issue's in ArmA. Performance issue's? Keep dropping settings and lowering AI counts until you're the only one on an empty map with no objects. Bug issue's? Report them on the tracker, they will eventually get fixed, except for the bugs that have been on there since the Alpha that honestly have more of an impact than some of the other bugs that have been fixed before them. ArmA's community enables this whereas DayZ community can't really enable it because the DayZ community is "new" in a sense without a fully functioning product for a franchise to enable. Bug that's persisted through 4 engine iterations? Support them by buying every game because you figure by the $Nth it will be fixed. Performance issue's? Same thing. There's no proven track record of this with DayZ, so obviously the unknown and new contender is going to get more work put into it. I don't think that ArmA isn't supported, I just don't think it's supported very well and I think it's a reflection of what the community itself tolerates and allows and has a proven track record of doing whereas DayZ has no track record which is why you see this kind of public out pour of supposed development on key problems area's, where with ArmA you kind of get generic "We're working on it" responses and little bits and pieces here and there. * And when I say that UE gets more work done on it than RV I mean work to improve the flaws of the engine and fix whats already there, not add more stuff on top of already broken stuff. *

Well for instance, you would have a penalty to aiming as in where your sights are when you turn, kind of like in real life where you may be able to turn quickly with a big weapon, but actually shouldering and bearing the weapon accurately right after would be very very hard to do. That's what it sounds like to me, basically a randomization of where your "aimpoint" would actually end up after quickly turning.

More or less it's what they're doing anyways, just have to hope they don't want pink tanks. I don't agree with the sentiment that the customer isn't important, not exactly always right because without the customer, BI would cease to exist, but logic like that obviously doesn't belong on these forums. I mean the logic behind -Coulum- and others statements are basically that because a customer thinks Tanks should be pink, BI will fail, but if BI decides tanks should be pink, I.E. doing whatever the hell they wan't regardless of customers, BI will flourish in the monetary gain of pink tanks. Obviously two extremes to prove a point and you can argue the semantics of the extremity of the example, but the principle still remains the same and is just as flawed. Both sides are equally important as both sides want something out of each other, money from the customer and a product from the business. Now a symbiotic customer/business relationship, based on customer needs and company goals, who woulda thought that might work.....

Saw the same line, thought the same thing. Also find the whole "progressive notification" thing a blatant nagging push to buy the DLC. I much preferred the lite DLC over this method even though I admit it incurs more development time.

I know mantle makes a huge difference in BF4 for me performance wise compared to DX. Less stuttering, higher avg fps etc....

Yeah.... I'm thinking the same thing.

I give that reply 5 stars, mostly because they gave you a pretty honest reply rather than some bullshit. I think their "story" for the most part is true but there are a lot of factors that play into it, like they said "high object presence". These big missions with much larger action going on may be on different parts of the map, for instance very devoid of actual map objects. Just because you have 25 NPC's and only 18 people playing doesn't mean you're not playing on a "busy" part of the map as far as object count goes. I know a clan mate of mine has mentioned on the forums here how he made a mission and was getting terrible performance and simply moving it to a different part of the map made it completely playable. There's definitely truth to their statement. It also differs between server hosts and who's to say the bigger servers with much larger action aren't just renting a box in some datacenter that they can do with what they wish, basically bypassing the need for a server host and their limitations.

Hah, hysteric. Made my day kid, thanks.

Because he can't and most of his arguments revolve around theatrics and hyperbole support by his own opinions that he mislabels as facts which he then passes the blame of their inaccuracy on to the reader absolving himself of all guilt or responsibility in his own mind. He doesn't even argue because he has no legitimate points, he just tries to "yell" louder.

Hopefully you guys can find a good solution to it.

As with most things in life, the best things generally require the most work. No one said it wouldn't be a big undertaking, no is saying it isn't a big undertaking. The question is why has it not been undertaken yet? the HC and MP just show that the AI can be processed on whole different systems and sync'd across a link or medium. If it can be done across a network, it can be done across any connection. Also no one said it's not the same code. What we are saying is why is it that the code we have now can support splitting of AI based on locality across multiple machines over a network, then why is it somehow so complicated to do the SAME THING internally across multiple cores? Sure it will require rewriting code and making big changes, does that mean it shouldn't be done though?

They outlined that you would be able to specify command line parameters with their launcher. A lot will depend on the sophistication of their mod workshop implementation.

We don't know at this point. Hopefully because they share the same engine, just different revisions, so it would be beneficial to both, it's not like DayZ is some memory monger compared to ArmA for instance.

This, exactly this.