arma2 performance improvement

[infirebaptize]

How would the talented PR team go about improving Arma2 performance? Are you creating new models? Buildings? Trees? Arma2 has problems with LOD texture, texture pop up and flickering and minor stutter due to I/O streaming. Would you be doing your own models e.g. buildings, trees, grass, bushes or using existing pbos?

Thanks,

[Kristian]

Of course they do their own objects, I bet they could use Post Soviet country objects in Afganistan now can they?

[yogibearz]

Performance is my #1 interest too. Can you dev's say anything about it at the moment? Any lod fixes, optimizations? It seems that your map of afghanistan will surely be easier on the cpu than those dense chernarus forests..
How's the multiplayer performance?
I can wait for the full release but would surely be nice to know something

[Scout5555]

Originally Posted by infirebaptize

How would the talented PR team go about improving Arma2 performance? Are you creating new models? Buildings? Trees? Arma2 has problems with LOD texture, texture pop up and flickering and minor stutter due to I/O streaming. Would you be doing your own models e.g. buildings, trees, grass, bushes or using existing pbos?

Thanks,

This is what I am talking about. 90% of the people coming over are gonna need a wake up call. This will never be BF2/COD performance.

PR has nothing to do with the I/O streaming. All they can do is hope there mod can run pretty good on a majority of systems.

If you go to the official BIS beta forum you can see that BIS is working on it. Their current betas are doing a much better job.

Remember this is a 32bit engine. Windows gives the program 2GB to work with (Arma2 is not a Large Address Aware program). BIS is doing a pretty good job of fitting/caching/swapping/streaming all that lovely data into that small space.

All that modders can do is start at square one and then work up from there. Look at Isle Duala. It has great performance because the mod author limited what was on the map. That is why it is a popular map.

1. Start with blank island.
2. Start adding stuff.
3. Test.
4. Add or delete stuff.
5. Test.
6. Add or delete stuff.
7. Test.
8. Rinse and repeat till runs ok.

I will give one thing to PR is that since it is a PvP there will be no CPU cycles dedicated to AI. That should help.

Arma2:OA will have much better performance because BIS took out the FPS killing orange trees/grass/buildings and they will incorporate info/settings from the current beta's.

I understand the limitations of the ArmA2 engine on my system. I will live with texture pops and stuff. I am looking for PR to give me a nice PvP mode sorely lacking in the current ArmA2 multiplayer scene. Just tired of fighting AI. All one can ask.

[UKrealplayER666]

You must remember that ArmA2 loads the entire game environment in one go. that means your computer is always having to track the AI/Player movement where ever they are both on the map and in the game environment. This puts massive strain on the processer. its why most people experience poor gameplay on the large Chernarus map when they become cocky thinking they have a computer that matches the recomended specs so they can just wack it up to high. performance increase can only come from reduceing the amount of objects on an island OR BIS pulling there finger out and doing somthing about this with the engine...

[infirebaptize]

It would be nice to hear from PR team about limitation(s) of arma2 engine, even speculations would add more suspense to it.

[clueless_noob]

Originally Posted by UKrealplayER666

You must remember that ArmA2 loads the entire game environment in one go. that means your computer is always having to track the AI/Player movement where ever they are both on the map and in the game environment. This puts massive strain on the processer. its why most people experience poor gameplay on the large Chernarus map when they become cocky thinking they have a computer that matches the recomended specs so they can just wack it up to high. performance increase can only come from reduceing the amount of objects on an island OR BIS pulling there finger out and doing somthing about this with the engine...

A2 does not load the whole game world into memory because it simply wouldn't fit into that 2 GB of RAM what engine can use. Instead it constantly stream new objects from the hard drive into memory as the player explores the world. This requires fast hard drives to go smoothly.

On the processor side, the most demanding task is rendering the environment, shadows etc. After that comes simulation and AI:
Real Virtuality Going Multicore - Bohemia Interactive

[Scout5555]

For those with x64 systems and bunches of RAM you can try the ramdrive trick for ArmA2. This is the fastest way. Remember RAM is faster than ANY HD/SSD.

1. Get a ramdrive program. There are free ones. Do a google on them.
2. Create a ramdrive. Make it R: or something. 8Gb RAM = 4Gb ramdrive. 12Gb or more RAM = 6Gb or higher ramdrive.
3. Copy the Addons folder to the ramdrive. For the 6Gb or higher ramdrive you can copy the whole folder over. For the 4Gb ramdrive you have to limit the contents to:

a10.pbo
a10.pbo.bi.bisign
ah64.pbo
ah64.pbo.bi.bisign
animials.pbo
animals.pbo.bi.bisign
animals2.pbo
animals2.pbo.bi.bisign
anims.pbo
animns.pbo.bi.bisign
buildings.pbo
buildings.pbo.bi.bisign
buildings2.pbo
buildings2.pbo.bi.bisign
buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo
buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo.bi.bisign
Ca.pbo
Ca.pbo.bi.bisign
chernarus.pbo
chernarus.pbo.bi.bisign
chernarus_Data.pbo
chernarus_Data.pbo.bi.bisign
chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo
chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo.bi.bisign
misc.pbo
misc.pbo.bi.bisign
misc2.pbo
misc2.pbo.bi.bisign
misc3.pbo
misc3.pbo.bi.bisign
plants2_Bush.pbo
plants2_Bush.pbo.bi.bisign
plants2_Clutter.pbo
plants2_Clutter.pbo.bi.bisign
plants2_misc.pbo
plants2_misc.pbo.bi.bisign
plants2_Plant.pbo
plants2_Plant.pbo.bi.bisign
plants2_Tree.pbo
plants2_Tree.pbo.bi.bisign
Roads2.pbo
Roads2.pbo.bi.bisign
rocks2.pbo
rocks2.pbo.bi.bisign
signs2.pbo
signs2.pbo.bi.bisign
structures.pbo
structures.pbo.bi.bisign
utes.pbo
utes.pbo.bi.bisign
water.pbo
water.pbo.bi.bisign
water2.pbo
water2.pbo.bi.bisign

4. Change your startup mod line to -mod=R:\

ArmA2 will now load/stream from RAM to RAM those files. Mileage varies depending on your system. See this thread for more info. ArmA 2 I/O analysis results - Bohemia Interactive Forums

It works. Try it.


***P.S. If you have soooo much RAM you could also fit your other mods/islands in there. Just copy the @xyzmod folder to the ramdrive and change your line to -mod=R:\@xyzmod

[infirebaptize]

^^ Yup this works.

You may wanna try the latest beta patch from BIS with the exThreads=3 switch before you go crazy buying extra ram. The latest beta with above switch has solved the LOD problems and the stutter, more test needed though to confirm but so far i played heavily AI Mission with lots of vehicles and haven't noticed any problems so far "finger crossed".

I have 4GB installed and to get an additional 4GB would cost me $169.00 which i would rather invest in new graphic card, of course i have to add in on top of that.

[STALKERGB]

In response to the OP, the Map designed by DB will be much easier on a computer system compared to Chernarus, the most obvious of these being deserts have less grass than eastern europe, not only that but the number of objects on the island will be less than chernarus (which has about a million I think).

The LOD problems afaik have largely been eased with the latest patch (1.05). As has been mentioned, haveing a fast HDD helps with frames as the game streams everything unless its told to preload items. The models we are making/have made hopefully have slightly nicer LOD switches than the default BIS stuff.

I think what UKrealplayER666 was trying to get at was that there is alot more of the environment render at any one time than other games, so if you had the VD set to 10000 there is a heck of alot for the game to render compared to something like COD or even BF2.

Anyway, to sum up, from my experience of it, the PR mod seems pretty good on the frame rates.