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windies

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Posts posted by windies

  1. Posted

    we need a disclaimer, sticky whatever because no one reads nothing :p

    We need a disclaimer or sticky telling people to spend upwards of $300+ on hardware to improve their performance marginally at best? I mean really even going from an equivalent AMD system to Intel you're only looking at a few FPS difference at most. Hell even going from a Phenom II x4 @ 3.4ghz to an i5-3570K @ 4.5ghz only resulted in MAYBE a 10 fps increase average. That's a justifiable upgrade in a sense not because I did it for one game but because the Phenom II is outdated as hell. Suggesting someone upgrade an FX-8XXX to an equiv Intel though is a tad silly though, especially for one game. The cost doesn't come close to justifying it.

  2. Posted

    OK, just wanted to clarify since a "rewrite" can mean different things for me.

    /KC

    They completely rewrote the entirety of the rendering portion of their engine. No it's not an entirely new engine, it is however a giant step forward and probably as close to defining what the term "new engine" should mean in context for laymen. I would say it's akin to what BI are trying to do with DayZ and hopefully that transitions to ArmA as well.

    My issue is that history dictates the future and BI's history with issue's like this is generally to band-aid and sweep the rest under the rug. A lot of their solutions seem elegant but have little thought or regard for the future generally. The data streaming the engine does for example is a very unique way of getting around 32 bit limitations for 64 bit systems without actually requiring 64 bit binaries, however as 64 bit becomes more the norm it becomes more of a limitation to itself as it's basically trying to mimic larger addressing through file mapping when you have the ability to do it native now and really you always did just with a lower saturation of capable systems.

    Is it a huge issue? No, not really, I would say it's pretty minor but it's a good example where good intentions and bad implementation can and do create an issue. Things like that compound over time and as more and more band-aids are placed it gets harder to correctly fix the issue's the band-aids cover up. It just seems like they create more work for themselves by trying to take the easy way out or what looks like the easy way out at the time rather than just doing things properly.

    Does that mean they need an entirely new engine? No, I think RV is as fine a base as any for all intents and purposes, it's simply what BI do with it and how effectively it can use modern hardware which is where the real problem lay.

  4. Posted

    I have an SSD. I saw a significant improvement after testing it. Of course, not all improvements are readily seen in FPS numbers, though they do come up in frametimes.

    Guess I'm a liar.

    I also have seen significant performance boosts since A2/OA, as have many others. Just run AinA, it's obvious, the engine has been improved. MP has been seriously improved too. 120 player games now, yes. In 2009? lolno, be lucky with 60.

    I've tried two different SSD's neither improve load times or FPS very much, FPS pretty much not at all and load times a little bit but far from any staggering improvement. Not calling you a liar, simply saying I have as much anecdotal evidence as you do.

    Yeah A2 maps run better in A3, does that really mean that the engine has been improved if it can't readily handle it's own newer content? If ArmA 4 suffers from the same issue's, are you gonna say "But hey look we can run Takistan/Chernarus better than A2!". I mean your point is valid, older content does run better in A3. It's just not really much of a useful point to be made in the argument against the engine though. Maybe they could use it as a selling point " ArmA 4, runs older content better than it's predecessors but can't manage anything newer!". What an improvement!. Sarcasm aside that's basically what you are calling an improvement to the engine.

    I was in 100+ player games back in ArmA on Sahrani, it lagged like hell then and it lags like hell now TBH. I actually wouldn't try to tout the Multiplayer in A3 as a beacon of improvement with all the focus on issue's it has.

  5. Posted

    Arma 3 has well performance problems, especially regarding modern hardware utilization and multiplayer. I doubt that anyone would deny this. However, all of the things you reference here could certainly be contributing factors or exacerbate the already existing performance problems.

    The OP is describing a 90% drop in framerate when going from SP to MP. Are you saying that this is a common occurence?

    I will say it's a common occurrence for me and a couple people I know, another guy has no issue's whatsoever and guess what his rig is older. The only commonality I can find between people with issue's and people who generally say they don't have issue's is literally the age of their hardware. It seems people with much older systems tend to say it runs good while those with newer systems say it runs poorly. I don't know if this is an issue of perspective, for example people with older hardware expecting it to run like crap and accepting what they can get and people with newer hardware expecting it to run good and it runs like it should on older hardware, or if for some reason the engine takes better advantage of older hardware versus newer hardware for some strange reason.

    I think most people can agree that MP performance takes a "nosedive"(Subjective) for no other reason than it's MP.

  8. Posted

    you guys realise though that the dayZ team is a fork, right? it may be independent in terms of organisation but it's kind of naive to think that bohemia doesn't have a centered interest and resources aren't shifted according to that. it's the same stuff that always comes up for VBS (not quite but similar :p).

    sure it's different teams and in the last years no mention of Spanel is to find connected directly to VBS. but let's not forget that OFP is the mother of all. and the rights to that (not the name :D ) should be at just plain old bohemia (who-/whatever that is). because everything else would be insane. why would they just give away what generates their income.

    not saying that devs get directly "stolen" or crazy stuff like that. just using common sense here. this whole "but it's a different team" thing gets a bit old and is a bit overly defensive. let's be realistic please. i've accepted (kind of :D ) arma's state and i see slow progress. and i'm carefully optimistic for the future. i just hate these pseudo knock out arguments.

    That's generally how I surmise it at least as well. It's more about where their interest lay, Something you can see in the news between both titles for example. DayZ is generally overly optimistic with detailed specifics on what they intend to do or implement in the future where ArmA is generally of the attitude of "We're gonna do what we can do" with nothing concrete ever really specified or stated. I don't have a problem with DayZ or even DayZ taking the focus as long as ArmA can be upkept in a playable and usable manner if they intend to keep selling it. The different teams thing is always going to be a scapegoat more or less, but it would be unrealistic to think that resources, in terms of team members, don't get shifted around between projects with more lucrative projects receiving more resources and support.

    If that means that in the end we get a better ArmA, I will be happy but I'm honestly doubtful. In the mean time though It really feels like little is being done about the existing performance issue's within ArmA and it's core, things that have existed for awhile. I also feel somewhat burned by ArmA 3 as it feels like they threw bunch of ideas on an engine that just can't support those idea's. I know Dwarden talks about eeking out performance all of the time but frankly I have yet to see any benefits in general usage and it's mostly smoke and mirrors IMHO with probably a little truth to it in very specific limited scenario's.

    ---------- Post added at 00:17 ---------- Previous post was at 00:11 ----------

    Another vague and impossible-to-reproduce claim about getting low FPS in multiplayer. Are you afraid to say which server you were playing on and what scenario it was running, when you experience this FPS?

    I've played coop missions from people like Varanon and Alwarren that frankly ran like complete crap for honestly no ascertainable reason. No huge amounts of AI, no huge amount of scripts running, just simply ran bad for no real reason. Part of it is where on Altis it's located, part of it is server stress, part of it is the engine itself and part of it is the mission itself. None of that though has anything to do with the system running it and has a lot more to do with how the engine is coded in general and how it handles it's load.

  9. Posted

    No I wasn't getting pissy with you. I've talked to you before and that was all cool so why would I suddenly have a problem with you?

    I was just telling a nice story about when stuff didn't seem so business orientated and it all felt a bit more involved. That probably got lost in translation the way I posted but that was all that it was.

    I wasn't getting pissy either. Like I said, I agree with you but wasn't sure what point you were exactly trying to make if any. I personally remember back in ArmA when we had a lot of performance issue's after the release and BI worked very hard on the issue's, there was a lot of communication both on what was wrong as well as what they were going to do to fix it. It wasn't just hope and talk, things actually got done, you could see the advances every patch. Even in A2 and OA it felt like they put a lot more into fixing things and the communication was better. I don't see the same with ArmA 3, it feels like the exact opposite where things are getting worse as the game gets patched and again I feel like it really changed with the financial success of DayZ shifting priorities from one project to another. Business wise I can understand it, but as a fan of ArmA and with the state of ArmA 3 I can't accept it.

  10. Posted

    Hi man,

    I remember back in the day (mid-life arma 2 time), the CEO of BI (marek or maybe suma (I'm not good with names or forum names)) came on the forums and laid out a plan to sort out Arma 2 performance (and also terrible warping that got sorted out for 1.60 release)***. That for me was a golden time in that there were very knowledgeable people active in the community like Sickboy and Xeno who could help out very immediately with what needed to be done.

    Now it seems the creator of Arma has gone on to his next project (programming DayZ architecture) and a lot of the old guard have moved on so it becomes a different game. ****

    I liked how Dean Hall managed the face of his game, and I'm aware he's jacked it in now, but at least for a while it seemed there was actually a figure at the helm of DayZ.

    I'm just trying to say that I like the maverick side of BI, that made revolutionary products in 2001 & 2012, and I hope they don't disengage with their bread and butter audience (ie: us).

    *** = you have to spare a thought for all the Project Reality people who released under 1.59 and found that their intended userbase hated the warping and ultimately killed the mod at the time.

    **** = not forgetting knowledgeable people like .kju who stay on.

    I remember it as well but it's not like that anymore so reminiscing really doesn't do anything for the problem at hand. Personally and this is only my opinion but I think you mistake "maverick", in the sense you mean it, to be more akin to having to be innovative and creative in order to sell their product and keep their company alive. Back then all they really had was ArmA and they had to keep not only the hard core coop crowd interested but also try to bring in new blood to increase sales and drive their company. Frankly, and I don't really blame BI for this because I think it's a sign of the times, Business wise BI are smart to not exactly abandon ArmA but to basically keep it in stewardship while developing DayZ. It's a new platform with a much much larger demographic and outreach than ArmA could ever possibly hope to achieve. Doesn't mean I like it though, and it doesn't mean that I like the direction ArmA is heading playability and technical wise. There's design decision I don't agree with but it is what it is, I'll deal with it. But when I can barely run the game, when I can barely enjoy it in over 50% of the plausible scenario's it SHOULD be able to simulate, that to me is untenable.

    Again I don't know if you have a problem with what I posted or not, I mean I agree with your post but fail to see really what it has to do with what you quoted me on unless you're just trying to say they weren't always like that, in which case I agree with you but that matters little what they did in the past if they don't continue to do it. While you hope that they don't disengage with their bread and butter audience, I hate to tell you they already have as you succinctly pointed out in your post comparing the BI of old versus BI of new. We're no longer their bread and butter audience, DayZ is and the 50 million people behind that and they cashed in on the craze and that's where they're sinking their priorities. They're priorities have changed and their demographic along with it sadly. Out with the old in with the new as OMAC said. I just wish I wasn't left with what ArmA 3 is, which feels and amounts to a broken pretty buggy game when it comes to playability, not moddability.

  11. Posted

    If there is ever going to be a major improvement to performance, it's going to come in these "specific/mundane" fixes, not some magic one time patch.

    Don't misread mundane/trivial as technical fixes. Again it's not so much that it's done, because even trivial things need to be fixed, it's just that when you take away the trivial fixes you see that not a whole lot really changes.

  12. Posted

    There are couple of misinformed posts like "They create Karts but not fix game bugs" and "400 developers".

    First Karts were created by one of the modelers that he made karts in his spare time for training purposes.

    Game bugs are being fixed everyday - check devbranch changelog for that.But! every new features brings new one

    and is every game vicious cycle, in case of arma even bigger cause of non scripted AI, deeper engine calculations

    for every change be it balistics, weather, flight models...

    And second point with 400 developers - in my knowledge there is about 50 developers including managers, IT's

    legal team, encoding and others that a related to BI company.

    Really have to say something about the bolded part above. BI usually has huge patch notes filled with cryptic or very specific/mundane fixes that while they are technically a fix are rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. Take most of those out and the patch notes loose their fluff more or less. A lot of fixes and improvements generally tend to be towards the modder as well and less towards the end user. I guess depending on which point of view you share will determine more or less how you view how well BI maintains or patches their product. I feel like in the case of the OP, it's about the playability of the game in which case I have to say that having shared his frustration for the most part with a system that's probably better than most I feel he has a valid point. BI has more or less let their games go after release and it's hit or miss on how well they support them as far as from a technical and usability point of view. Again I think that it will depend a lot on point of view as well as someone who truly gets more enjoyment out of modding will probably find less wrong with ArmA 3 than someone who wants to hop in a server and blow shit up.

    I don't exactly agree with the whole "rage quit" attitude, although in truth I think it's more about saying "Hey I just can't support this and I want you guys to know so maybe you will get your shit together". In that respect, I agree with him.

  13. Posted

    Why the hell I got a bad feeling about that? Like only DayZ will benefit from that and Arma 3 will keep using RV

    I think a lot would depend on how similar Enforce is to RV in implementing existing content into them. I would assume since the current foundation for DayZ is basically RV, for the most part they would build it to be somewhat similar but who knows. Secondly would be if the ArmA team actually wants to port all of those assets into the new engine, QA everything and then release it for free or paid. A lot of IF's really but who knows.

  14. Posted

    Yeah something's not right there.

    I've got similar setup (older processor and less RAM) and it's not that bad.

    @Shypa - post up an rpt file (doesn't matter which one) - just play the game like you normally do then find the .rpt and post it here.

    I have a similar system to someone who I played coop's with and connected to the same server, running almost the same settings on the same mission we would get pretty divergent results between us. He would literally always have anywhere from 5-20 fps higher than me. Oh and he ran his CPU at stock and I overclocked mine to 4.2ghz. Seriously I have no idea, I even have ArmA installed on a SSD and he would always have better performance than me. It could be background processes but I don't run any unnecessary things so I highly doubt it.

    Anyways just trying to say that similar systems can have wildly divergent results, as far as I have experienced, in ArmA 3.

  15. Posted

    You know exactly why they're pursuing a new engine for DayZ SA, why DayZ SA has seen very little development outside of content and more or less scripted feature's and enhancements. I thought it ironic when they announced DayZ on the PS4 considering Jay Crowe's statement about PC being the only platform with the horsepower able to handle what they want. Technology is way ahead in the sense it's progressed into another dimension as far as performance is concerned, it's not longer about clock cycles but parallel clock cycles and not what you can do in 1 instance of time but 4-6-8 instances of time. We all know that yes, paralleling all the threads comes at a cost and doesn't always mean magical performance gains but it doesn't mean that things can't be processed in parallel to increase performance. It simply requires new design, new concepts and overall a new engine, something you can easily tell they didn't want to pursue for ArmA 3 but are completely willing to pursue for DayZ SA now that their backs are against the wall. They're perfectly fine with selling out ArmA 3 to their community knowing the limitations of their engine and probably felt the same about DayZ SA until they really started development and realized, "Hey our engine can't do what we need it to do". I just feel like ArmA 3 was a last hurrah for ArmA fans but overall was a mediocre improvement upon ArmA 2 at best and DayZ SA is basically a project that will eventually fall to time and improper development and management and dwindling interest as time progresses.

  18. Posted

    I find it odd that their idea of parallelizing the AI is to seed it across multiple machines rather than the multiple cores already in the machine but sorry to say that's typical BI. I wouldn't exactly say that's an advancement, even if it might be an advancement from where we currently are in terms of multiplayer performance. It's another band-aid on a bullet wound more or less, like the file mapping API was a band-aid for the limitations of 32 bit addressing instead of coding 64 bit binaries. Either way it's work, but one way is work towards a better future while the other way is work towards a quick fix that will end up biting you in the ass later on.

    Ultimately the HC should be transparent to the end user and even the server administrator, it shouldn't actually be a "thing" but simply the way the game calculates the routines for the AI natively. Yet again though it's a burden thrust on to the end user to do for themselves while BI can focus on something else and it's going to end up being a bad implementation for the reasons you mentioned, increased network traffic and the AI being isolated from one another because of the medium you are using for parallelizing the AI, a network connection rather than say the internal memory bus and crossbar of the 4-12 cores in the desktop/server.

    It's getting pretty moot arguing or discussing it at this point though, it's obvious which way the wind blows. They might as well stop worrying about their engine and just keep tacking on extra additions until the game ceases to function properly and then they might try to fix it properly, but somehow I doubt it and it would just be more band-aid fixes. Things like Jay Crowe's comment at E3 about the PC being the platform for them because of the power of it come to mind and yet they don't even seem to try or care enough to harness that available power and use it properly. The irony of DayZ going to the PS4 and how they will probably actually spend time getting it to run properly on basically an 8 core PC more or less, yet when it comes to ArmA it's apparently not worth the time or effort. I'm sorry to say but it's pretty sad to see from a company I once actually really respected. It's really no different than the Battlefield or CoD franchises at this point that this community loves to shake their superiority stick at.

  19. Posted

    I just upgraded my rig to:

    i7 4790K @ 4.7 GHz

    16 GB DDR3-2400

    GTX 970 OCed

    ...and performance is better than my old rig, but not amazing. Most of the time I can maintain 40 FPS in MP, which is better than before, but that still leaves a fair amount to be desired. I still get massive drops when enabling PiP or having the view distance beyond 3000 or so.

    I wish I could get my i5 that high but no matter what I do I'm stuck at 4.2ghz unless I wanna jack the voltage up. I was in the same boat as you, went from an old ass phenom II to an it 3570K that I could easily overclock higher than the phenom and yeah it was better, but not really "better". It's kind of futile to expect anything different at this point.

  20. Posted

    This kind of post isn't helpful or constructive at all. People have every right to complain; telling them not to or to "give up" is not a valid contribution to the discussion.

    It's actually kind of sound advice TBH. I gave up trying to do all the useless tweaks, hoping that things would change, trying to "Bitch" to put more pressure on the devs to fix things etc... and realized literally how many other good games there are out there to occupy my time not to mention the less frustration while trying to play them. Notice I said other good games, I think ArmA 3 is a good game, It's just plagued by lots of problems that keep you from being able to experience that good game. That's why It's so frustrating to so many people, we realize that we really like it and want to play it, you just can't though with the performance you experience.

    Case in point, it's a year later, literally over a year and a half later since Alpha and yet we're still having this "discussion". You can't really blame people for having the "OMGWTFBBQ" mentality about it at this point. About the only thing you can say is either give up and stop complaining or accept it and deal with it. Neither is really an optimal choice from the perspective of someone trying to enjoy something they bought TBH.

  22. Posted

    I've been reading these forums a lot over the years but I don't think I've ever seen a definitive explanation for this FPS dependency of server/mission and client.

    Someone should try this with the client. I've only heard very contradicting opinions about it; does a better cpu really matter on a bad server?

    I mean, if you have a powerful rig (~4.5GHz CPU, fast ram etc.), just join some low performance server and check the fps. Then downclock to 3GHz and join again.

    I would do it myself but cpu is already badly low-end. :(

    I pushed my CPU up to 4.9ghz once since I have watercooling, I don't like running it that high since This MSI board doesn't have offset voltages, and MP performance literally stayed the same as the normal 4.2/4.4 I run, tested on the same server. SP performance did go up, but again it was very very modest gains for the stress on the hardware like 4-5 FPS or so. Honestly when I switched from a Phenom II 965 to an i5-3570K, in multiplayer there was almost no difference in performance, I think maybe like 3-5 fps in multiplayer. I know some people will say "WOAW 3-5 fps that's massive for ArmA" but for my eye's it really feels like nothing. I can't play ArmA when I'm getting like 15-20 FPS. What's really annoying is when you have a pretty good rig that can run things really well, like I can run some games in 4K and still get 40-50 fps average.

    Is PhysX sync'd across clients? I could imagine that would be a huge reason why I see such a large difference between ArmA 2 and ArmA 3 MP performance vs SP.

  23. Posted · Edited by Windies

    Eh food gives me life, DLC gives me 2 useless overpriced choppers. Semantics 0 - Logic 1.

    You want something to "donate" to? Go find a good charity to donate to instead of a for profit company. I actually kind of find it appalling and annoying that people try to liken buying DLC to donating money, especially when they're most likely the type of person who would bitch if asked to donate to a worthy cause.

    Also I can't really believe how grossly negligent people are with money because they "Gots to have it!!!!" and how they expect others to feel the same way >.>

  24. Posted

    I dont understand why i am getting sub 20 fps when my system should be more than adequite, Here are my pcs specs, any help wuold be appreciated!

    Processor Intel® Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz

    Manufacturer Intel

    Speed 3.7 GHz

    Number of Cores 8

    CPU ID BFEBFBFF000306A9

    Family 06

    Model 3A

    Stepping 9

    Revision

    Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti

    Manufacturer NVIDIA

    Chipset GeForce GTX 660 Ti

    Dedicated Memory 3.0 GB

    Total Memory 4.0 GB

    Pixel Shader Version 5.0

    Vertex Shader Version 5.0

    Hardware T & L Yes

    Vendor ID 10DE

    Device ID 1183

    Plug and Play ID VEN_10DE&DEV_1183&SUBSYS_36633842&REV_A1

    Driver Version 9.18.13.4411

    Memory 16 GB

    Operating System Microsoft Windows 8.1 (build 9600), 64-bit

    Service Pack 0

    Size 64 Bit

    Edition

    Version 6.3.9600

    Locale 0409

    BIOS BIOS Date: 03/23/12 22:47:30 Ver: 04.06.05

    Version American Megatrends Inc. F4

    Manufacturer American Megatrends Inc.

    Date 03/23/12

    i get sub 20fps during any gameplay whether it be multiplayer, single player or just pottering around in the editor, i have tried running the game in ultra and i actually get better framerates than if i try to tun it in low which makes absolutely no sense to me at all, i normally try to run it in a high/very high state but as i mentioned i can knock ALL of the settings down to low and i still have the same framerates. i have tried running all the startup line tweaks i can find (which used to work for arma 2) i have all the latest drivers installed, i have the game installed on the same harddrive as my OS which is an SSD. I am stumped.

    I got an i5-3570K, pretty similar system to yours and I'm in the same boat. Only difference is I have 2 R9 280X's. Not much you really can do AFAIK. I've done all the tweaks and for most the results are negligible at best.

  25. Posted

    Because a chunk of the money they get from players buying the DLC's they put out goes toward keeping the studio operational and allowing them to fix and improve the game/series. Core game features such as firing from vehicles, the new helicopter flight model and sling loading are still being delivered for free.

    The way I see it, the players who choose to pay for the DLC, get far more than full access to the content. They realize the potential of the Arma platform and the gameplay/learning possibilities it offers and decide to invest in a stable future for it.

    I could see that, if that's how it worked. Rather it's more like, "Player buys DLC, supports BI, BI does what it wants irregardless of what the game or playerbase wants/needs". That's the biggest problem and honestly I think they are becoming out of touch with their fanbase and their platform. If you ask why performance problems aren't solved, you always get the response of money or time. What you're saying is DLC gives them both money and time, yet do the problems get fixed? It's basically the same response for any problem, there's always an excuse. If it was truly about supporting them, if the DLC should be bought on the basis of support and not content, then at the very least I wouldn't mind seeing proper support of the platform, and less excuses like "It's too hard" or "It would take too long", "We don't have the financial resources" etc... There's just too much wrong anymore and it seems like nothing ever gets fixed, so saying that you should buy based on future support is pretty weak reasoning IMHO.

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