ArmA2: Operation Arrowhead

[Total]

Trailer has been released. Can't wait!

 

[Grimes]

Sweet! I always loved the desert of South Sahrani from Arma1.

[EagleEye]

Cool, a life sign from OA!

[CE_Mikemonster]

I need to buy a new GPU before I can play Arma2, and seeing how excellent the graphics can be is just making me smile thinking that eventually (even in a year) i'll be able to make that huge leap.

 

Currently i'm just playing BF2 because it's simple, I'll have a huge grin when I play this ;)

[zokier]

Too bad Play.com has totally dropped the ball and has taken over a month to ship my copy of Arma2 :/

[Boulund]

Play.com took 5 weeks to get me my copy of Arma2, but it didn't really matter since they were so much cheaper than anything else! =)

 

And mikemonster: remember that just as any good simulation game, Arma2 really stresses the CPU. Getting a better one of those is far better than just getting a new graphics card.

[diveplane]

hope they improve performance.

[Total]

Ya know, people keep screaming about performance. I can run ArmA2 on high settings (not the highest) and it runs fine. Like Lock On, IL-2, and ArmA 1 when they first came out, I actually like a games that cannot be run at full settings with the hardware that's on the market at the time of release.

 

I remember the first time I was able to run each of those games at max settings and it was like an achievement. It was also more than 2 years after they were released.

 

I originally ran ArmA2 on an AMD 4200 Dual core, 2GB RAM, and a 8600GT video card. This was at normal settings and it ran fine. If that rig could run it fine at normal settings, I have no idea what people are having such a dire problem with.

[Boulund]

It's a totally different game playing multiplayer with many people on the server (50+). I can easily run arma2 with all the bells and whistles while playing offline single player missions, but as soon as I get online I'd rather have everything set to low without any fancy effects, to keep the high frame rate.

Regardless, I belive that diveplane was referring to Play.com's performance when it comes to shipping?

 

Also, everyone interested in Operation Arrowhead that doesn't have Arma2 should know that Arrowhead will be stand-alone. You will not need the original Arma2 to play it.

[asparagin]

Ya know, people keep screaming about performance. I can run ArmA2 on high settings (not the highest) and it runs fine. Like Lock On, IL-2, and ArmA 1 when they first came out, I actually like a games that cannot be run at full settings with the hardware that's on the market at the time of release.

 

I remember the first time I was able to run each of those games at max settings and it was like an achievement. It was also more than 2 years after they were released.

 

I originally ran ArmA2 on an AMD 4200 Dual core, 2GB RAM, and a 8600GT video card. This was at normal settings and it ran fine. If that rig could run it fine at normal settings, I have no idea what people are having such a dire problem with.

 

First of all let me tell you that you were NOT running arma 2 "fine" with your last config, because I have AMD X2 6400+ and 8800 GT and going into big cities is not ok.

 

Second the trouble is that like arma 1, high or medium settings have not the impact they should have on the performance (I think it is because as mentioned up, really CPU is the main factor)

[Total]

First of all, let me tell you I WAS running everything fine. By "fine" I mean I was running 29-30FPS steady. And that's online multiplayer in our server in cities and heavy forested areas.

 

Knowing how ArmA works is the key to getting it to run smoother. It's limitation is it's limited data transfer to and from the hard drive. Filling your drive up to 80% capacity or have several processes running (file sharing is a no-no) and your game will run like absolute crap. There are some good work around's for the data xfer problem, one just has to read the forums.

 

Now, I run 40-50 FPS online with everything set to high using three 20" monitors at a 3840X720 resolution, 4GB RAM, Win 7, and a GTX 260 core 216 video card. That's online and with the particle effects mod, JTP fire and smoke, and the VOP Sound mod. I also have post processing turned to normal.

 

So, please don't tell me how my games run ;)

[asparagin]

First of all, let me tell you I WAS running everything fine. By "fine" I mean I was running 29-30FPS steady. And that's online multiplayer in our server in cities and heavy forested areas.

 

Knowing how ArmA works is the key to getting it to run smoother. It's limitation is it's limited data transfer to and from the hard drive. Filling your drive up to 80% capacity or have several processes running (file sharing is a no-no) and your game will run like absolute crap. There are some good work around's for the data xfer problem, one just has to read the forums.

 

Now, I run 40-50 FPS online with everything set to high using three 20" monitors at a 3840X720 resolution, 4GB RAM, Win 7, and a GTX 260 core 216 video card. That's online and with the particle effects mod, JTP fire and smoke, and the VOP Sound mod. I also have post processing turned to normal.

 

So, please don't tell me how my games run ;)

 

Having a better cpu and g-card than you had (<- argument) makes me not believing you.

[Total]

ArmA's performance relies on more than the GPU and the CPU.

 

How many processes are running?

Any peer-to-peer programs running?

How much stuff in your task tray?

What OS?

Capacity of your HDD?

Free space on that HDD?

Buffer size of the HDD?

Capacity and speed of your memory?

How much memory used without ArmA2 running?

 

I keep my system running with as few processes as possible. In XP (the OS I ran on the dual core system) I had less than 30 processes. I think it was closer to 25. My memory usage was under 200MB at desktop. My hard drive had a 16MB buffer. I do not file share and did not run any type of messaging or P2P software when gaming (with my current rig, I'll run xfire, but that's about it).

 

Here's a good read on ArmA2's demand on data transfer to the HDD: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=88629

 

Also, I found that Vista was a performance killer in ArmA2 with the older equipment.

 

Also, I'm not arguing with you :) My roommate had crap for performance with the same GPU & CPU as me until I sat down at his computer and optimized his system. His registry looked like a landfill and temporary files were everywhere. His drive was at 78% capacity with only an 8MB buffer. He was also running Steam, XFire, and about 3 other peer to peer programs plus one file sharing in idle. I turned all of that crap off, cleaned his registry, freed up about 20% of his drive by getting rid of crap he didn't need, defrag the drive, and made a few other system tweaks. He went from running 20FPS in an open field and 5FPS in heavy areas to running 25-28FPS in the open fields with an occasional stutter in heavy areas. He eventually got a 16MB buffer drive and that eliminated the stutter in the heavy areas.

 

That stutter and hang in the object heavy areas is due to ArmA2 pulling those objects from the drive to be rendered. They are not cached in memory unless you are actually in that area. They are pulled from the compressed pbo file, decompressed, and then loaded to be rendered by the GPU. So, the tighter the bottleneck at the drive, the more it's going to go south on performance.

 

My current rig: Q9550 quad core, 4GB 1066 RAM, Gtx 260 GPU, and the game installed onto the secondary drive (16MB buffer)

 

If I run my triplehead2go and three monitors at a 3840x720 resolution, then I run at 30FPS. If I use a single monitor, I run 45FPS steady.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Total

[Boulund]

Anyone has any experience of running Arma2 off a SSD-drive?

[Total]

Tweet from 3sqn does and he noticed about a 25% increase in performance. If you RAMDisk it, you'll get even more.

[asparagin]

Total:

 

Your tipps on keeping the number of processes in background low, tidy pc and so on are trivial to me. The RAMdisk discussion, I have also followed long time ago, and yes it really seems that the data transfer plays a major role, buying 12G of RAM to put ARMA on it is still arguable (they should've sell ARMA on RAM :megalol:)

 

Ya know, people keep screaming about performance. I can run ArmA2 on high settings I have no idea what people are having such a dire problem with.

 

Also, I'm not arguing with you :)

 

..how about showing some understanding then :smilewink:

[Conuk]

Anyone has any experience of running Arma2 off a SSD-drive?

 

got it running off the Intel - very quick to load as you would expect - never had it on the Velociraptor.... could try when I get a few minutes.

[element1108]

I would assume it would run better simply because the desert landscape is usually a little more CPU friendly. I'm on a dual core 2.8 gh/z macbook pro NVIDIA 9600GT she runs nice as long as I keep my rez down, graphics are at about medium (no bloom). Granted I'm not a stiffler for graphics by anymeans, I am however VERy particular at my frame rates so if she's below 30 at any given second I'm not happy.

 

I'm looking forward to arrowhead big time :)

[Total]

asparagin,

 

ArmA2 uses less than 1GB of RAM. It's own limitations prevent it from using anymore than that. Turning off processes and such are not because of RAM usage, they're because of drive buffer usage. If ArmA2 used more memory, then it would probably perform better for everyone.

 

What generally is the performance killer is the model swapping. Keep your view distance at the mid setting or lower and things should perform better :)

 

On the flip side, I have to run LockOn at less than Higher/Highest settings because of my set up. The bottom of my cockpit view in the F-15 doesn't go below the 3/A Mode setting. Can't even see the top edge of the MFD or any of the center guages. If I zoom out to where I can see them, I will be running about 1FPS lol. Yet, there are others who can see more with their triplehead2go setups and have better performance. I haven't found the magic combination of settings and values for my rig yet. Others can do it, so it's not only plausible, it's possible. Just becuase it doesn't do it on my rig (which is better than some others with the TH2G) doesn't mean it can't be done.

 

So, yeah, I do understand. I'll also never tell someone that they're lying on the performance just because I've never seen it (reference your first reply to me ;) )

Edited March 24, 2010 by Total

[element1108]

Sim hq has slated the release dare for arrowhead end of June 29th).

 

Head over there to check out game details.

 

http://www.simhq.com

[Grimes]

and some awesome screenshots were released..... they finally have a modeled FLIR!!!

[element1108]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owVGW_RRtAA

 

New gameplay video (work in progress) posted over at http://www.simhq.com

 

:)

[swtx]

I am a total Arma 2 nut ! I am counting the minutes until OA hits the market. :) They have got a really great community. If your not a member I would urge you to join their forums. http://forums.bistudio.com/index.php

 

Cheers !

 

swtx

Edited June 1, 2010 by swtx

[zakobi]

Czech army will be in it.

 

[zakobi]

some more info on another forum: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=83717