Arma 2 settings question

mike.grayizzle

mike.grayizzle

mike.grayizzle

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I used to game a lot on PC when I was in my late teens early twenties, mostly Desert Combat and Joint OPS.

Bought myself a nice computer some years later although this was around 2010. The specs are as follows:

Intel Quad Core Q8200 @2.33GHZ
4 GB
Radeon HD4850 with 1 gig.

I'm not too hot on specifics and thought I would be smart adn bought a £60 card from OCUK thinking it would give me a boost as something made 2 years after the intial build would probably be a step up. :confused: Turns out I was wrong.

I got the ARMA set of steam which includes all the expansion packs. However I am struggling to get any settings that seem playable. Is it wishful thinking that I could run ARMA 2 / OA on the above settings without a system upgrade?
 
AA to low or off, Post process to low or off (Post process is ugly, the motionblur is a hinderance and a performance slayer, AA looks great but murders frames)

Video memory to Default (very high = 512mb, default = whatever you have)

Rest of settings to high/very high

Bump that CPU clock up. ArmA2 loves it.

very high shadows gives better performance than high. High are CPU rendered, Very high are GPU rendered.
 
Do you have a screen shot of your in-game settings, or post what they are here, also have you looked at the game configs and your in-game name profile configs ?

Are you aware of the new-ish fxaa and smaa settings ?

There are many settings that can be tried, so that you can try to run A2 OA better..

Your card should be o.k. its not the fastest for A2 but it should be able to run it after the new 1.60 improvements. 2.33ghz is a little lean but not impossible... you do after all have a quad core and they seem to be utilising that better since 1.59..

The new tweaks BIS have included do help a lot, they will not double your frame rates (only if your frame rates were rock bottom 20-ish to begin with) but will help..

What fps counter do you use to monitor your frame rates in-game ?

If you really want to run A2OA we could try a few things to help get it going at least better than it is already..

.
 
Oh and how could i forget to mention drop that view distance, get IVD (Instant view distance) and use it to hide grass if you dislike it. recovers a few frames.

Last few times playing ArmA2 iv noticed 5.5-6.5gigs of ram usage and 30-40% CPU usage (12gig total 920@4GHZ) so its certainly started using more of whats available.


On Foot a 2k view distance is perfectly adequet! Dont mess around with more. However if you later get a beefy system, or are in a recon role. 3k would give you that marginally higher sight range.

In a tank as a gunner id reccomend 5-6k view distance so you can spot targets at thr range you can enguage them.

Flying transport I use 4k view distance.

Flying gunship 6k+


Obviously when in those tank/gunship roles drop your detail settings down somewhat (you're on thermals most the time anyway)

a light overclock would yield great results.
 
jakspyder said:
AA to low or off, Post process to low or off (Post process is ugly, the motionblur is a hinderance and a performance slayer, AA looks great but murders frames)

Video memory to Default (very high = 512mb, default = whatever you have)

Rest of settings to high/very high

Bump that CPU clock up. ArmA2 loves it.

very high shadows gives better performance than high. High are CPU rendered, Very high are GPU rendered.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip about video memory , i had set it to very high but obviously it should have been default !
 
jakspyder said:
AA to low or off, Post process to low or off (Post process is ugly, the motionblur is a hinderance and a performance slayer, AA looks great but murders frames)

Video memory to Default (very high = 512mb, default = whatever you have)

Rest of settings to high/very high

Bump that CPU clock up. ArmA2 loves it.

very high shadows gives better performance than high. High are CPU rendered, Very high are GPU rendered.
Click to expand...

Went with these settings on on a lowish Rez and got 30 fps with the in game benchmark which is guess is the best I can hope for. Am now going though the boot camp to try and work things out before I start on the campaign. Will have a look at view distance and check what it's set at.

Many thanks :cool:
 
OK, took me a good while to put this together, may help some A2 players, may not..

The following screenshots are taken from the island ‘Podagorsk’, the island is a heavy island to run in A2, its a large map area, heavily wooded with lots of clutter, villages, towns etc..
I took the screenshots from a reasonably heavy fps location. There are a few farm buildings, plenty of clutter, bushes and really heavy trees, although as you will see from the first screenshots ‘AA’ is a great wood trimmer..

Please note I am using ‘IVD’ ‘instant view distance’ mod. This mod enables you to override the in-game VD, so the in-game VD of 6281 shown in the in-game menu, is not what your seeing. The IVD is set to 2000 for these first examples. I have had to save screenshots as jpeg as I tried with png but the size was too big for my imageshack account (5mb), so the quality is not as good as should be, but still fine..

There is a test further down, its best to follow the post down step by step it will make more sense..

Screenshot 1; 49.2 fps (49 average). 2000VD (view distance)
Clutter, buildings & tree’s. Now before the recent changes in A2, to obtain these type of frame rates, many players had to do exactly what I did here, disable in-game AA to get a decent fps boost. You can see the trees and bushes are o.k. but very thin because of no AA. However I have managed to boost slightly above the average, that’s down to game & profile config tweaks..

Screenshot 2; same as before but showing the menu, my 49 fps average. 2000VD
Shows the in-game video control menu, as you can see most all the main settings are on ‘Very High’, however I have disabled AA. Note the Video Memory is set to ‘Default’, imo that’s the wrong way to do it now, after the recent changes by BIS. Lets see..

Screenshot 3; Vast difference.. 42.1 fps (42 fps average) so I only lost 6.8 fps, but look at the difference in the screenshot. 2000VD.
Well I set AA to ‘Low’, but as you can see we are getting an effect of AA set to more or less ‘Very High’, that’s because I no longer use the in-game menu for the main set-up of Arma 2, but instead combine it with config tweaks. The screenshot shows that enabling AA has clearly plumped out trees and bushes almost to the highest pos. But this effect is mainly courtesy of the now, in-built, fxaa & smaa settings, managed via the configs. Remember Video Memory on ‘Default’ here, but imo a mistake. So lets see..

Screenshot 4; 44.7 fps (44fps average), I gained 2.6 fps even though I increased VidMem. 2000VD
As you can see I have increased Video Memory to ‘Very High’, this works well for me and should for many. The old method of ‘Default’ setting does not work as well as it used to, BIS have made real headway with A2 optimizing wise, with the adding of fxaa & smaa, plus managed with a mix of other settings that you can change, that may not have sprung to mind for many, all this can bring about a really good change..

So I have a 2km view distance and an average of around 44 fps on a heavy island in a heavy-ish location..

ok. So lets try and get better still..

Screenshot 5; Take a good look at these three screenshots, left, middle & right, put together so that you can compare the quality.. The left hand side is where I left off (Screenshot 4 = 44.7 fps), the middle & right side are from separate screenshots with different settings I made via game-configs & profile-configs and some adjustments in-game .. All are 2000VD

Screenshot 6; 44.7 fps, just the left side..
The left side, full size screenshot..

Screenshot 7; 62.0 fps, just the centre..
The centre, full size screen shot, but note the 62.0 fps. Don’t forget it’s different settings, the centre of this was the example in the comparison screenshot.. Quality looks o.k. I think..

Screenshot 8; 66.1 fps just the right hand side...
The right hand side, full size screenshot, note again the 66.1 fps.. Average fps here was 65-66, very high for this type of terrain/island.. The quality is slightly less but still looks quite nice..

So the question is, from my example here, could you use the right side at the quality level shown, which is screenshot 8 = 66.1 fps (average 65-66 fps).

Well lets see how this setting (screenshot 8) performs with view distance increased by 500mtrs each time..

Screenshot 9; 2000 view distance.. So as previous 65-66 fps.
I have begun from the last screenshot. As I said earlier I am running ‘IVD’ (instant view distance), there are other VD mods to use ‘DVD’ ‘dynamic view distance’ being a very good one, it takes a little getting use to as it auto changes the VD while your playing, depending on fps rates. Also ‘MWVD’ ‘mouse wheel view distance’ which you can alter on the fly using the mouse wheel and a key combo together..
Anyway, here is the ‘IVD’ control panel. The current VD shown, is the small number to the left just below the slider. I don’t use the ‘Terrain’ buttons at all, but I do sometimes use the quick View Distance buttons up top. Now to alter the increments by 500 per click I simply click the right hand arrow of the slider, the 500 increments are set in the ‘IVD’ config..

Screenshot 10; 2500 view distance.. 62.0 fps. Here we go then, the test begins..
I am using the frame counter that uses the game's own integrated function of measuring FPS. The IVD addon aims to bring the best accuracy with the smallest performance impact..

Screenshot 11; 3000 view distance.. 58.0 fps
The FPS counter is colour coded, ie. ‘Green’ writing and your fps is very good, ‘orange to yellow’ your fps is good-medium, ’Red’ your fps is getting low, but still playable.. However below 20-ish and your going to struggle.. But no fear of that here at this setting, and this would really be cut off point for ‘on the ground’ VD..

Screenshot 12; 3500 view distance.. 55.0 fps. Still dropping in relatively small frame rates..

Screenshot 13; 4000 view distance.. 52.8 fps, quality still fine and frame rate holding up..

Screenshot 14; 4500 view distance.. 51.0 fps, still fine..

Screenshot 15; 5000 view distance.. 48.3 fps, still o.k. small drops in frame rate..

Screenshot 16; 5500 view distance.. 45.8 fps, still o.k.

Screenshot 17; 6000 view distance.. 44.1 fps, its holding up o.k.

Screenshot 18; 6500 view distance.. 42.6 fps, very slight drop in quality, but still fine.

Screenshot 19; 7000 view distance.. 41.1 fps, we are at 7km view distance, still above 40fps on the ground..

Screenshot 20; 7500 view distance.. 40.0 fps, still 40 or above at 7.5km through reasonably heavy terrain..

Screenshot 21; 8000 view distance.. 38.9 fps, below 40 now but still very good rates..

Screenshot 22; 8500 view distance.. 37.6 fps, its taken some from the quality but still v/good rates for this terrain..

Screenshot 23; 9000 view distance.. 36.7 fps, rate loss has slowed a little taken a little more from the quality, still o.k. though..

Screenshot 24; 9500 view distance..35.2 fps, one click away from the magic top number and still very good rates to play..

Screenshot 25; 10000 view distance.. The magic top VD for A2 and still getting 33.4 fps, just cracking into the orange/yellow zone. Nowhere near the ‘Red’ so game-play is rather nice still, even though I myself, would think this a pointless VD on the ground or indeed in the air unless your sightseeing. I must admit I do use 10000 VD for sightseeing..

So as you can see the settings stand up to the test with view distance being able to reach its highest at 10km (10,000mtrs) on the ground, in reasonably heavy terrain.
I am not saying for one moment you would or should run at the high VD on the ground, but its an example of what you can obtain fps wise with the right settings.. 2000-3000 VD is more than ample on the ground and even lower than 2000 in urban and heavy wooded areas, say down to 1000 VD..

Now I have done the same test on a few of the original Arma islands, converted to run on A2, ‘United Sahrani’ is a marvellous set of islands and the results there were way higher fps rates..
On less demanding islands the fps rates can be very high indeed..

It is the way A2 is set up now, with the new added tweaks and fxaa & smaa, rather than setting the game up the old way..
Its configs, mods & set-up that works best when tweaking A2 to run great, trial/error and tweaking..

This test above is done with just one standalone player. However, ai do not make a great difference when not on screen, obviously on screen in combat and there is a very noticeable strong fps hit, but if your rates are high to begin with you should be able to cope with the hit and that’s the point here in this post.

I have done another test and made screenshots. I will post these here over the next day or so.. I took 100 ai and put them head to head (literally on screen facing each other, 50 per side, in full viewing distance of each other), the test shows that the fps drop is still well within decent playable frame rates, as the ai die off the fps increases really nicely..

How to obtain the above if your not already getting similar fps rates, well that’s a long explanation as well, I will have to take screen shots of the configs as well as explain what I did. I will post that over the next few days or weekend..

Bare in mind I had to tweak to get really nice frame rates for this test, I could tweak some more and get higher, but quality would change as well, and I think the quality of the test above is very good. Obviuosly as jpeg screenshots the quality is lost a little but you can get the idea..

Sorry its really a long post but I wanted to show, rather than just say, so I did it in steps, with screenshots..

.
 
Quick questions

1. With video mem set to very high ... how long have you run a game for as in have you run it for 2-3 hours ?

2. In your documents/Arma 2/ArmA2OA.cfg file
AToC=;

what value is this ?

3. When trying out different view distances it might be better to stand on top of a high hill or mountain
because then you will be rendering that much distance , your shots dont seem to be rendering more than a few hundred meters.

eg
1200 http://i.imgur.com/4sMyp.jpg
3000 http://i.imgur.com/ncMCJ.jpg
5000 http://i.imgur.com/eRRhC.jpg
7500 http://i.imgur.com/1cLCq.jpg
 
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Kinda agree, also playing on a dedi server often slows things down. Chuck in a large modpack and 20+ players on the server with TS/ACRE running and ACE and you will loose those frames. Also, juding by your settings and FPS im gonna guess you have a fairly beefy system. probably a good clocked CPU with 4+ gigs of ram and an nvidia GPU? ArmA2 seems to prefer Nvidia. I run pretty much identical settings but with 3k view distance standard min and All on very high except post process (off) and AA (off or low depending on map and role in mission) But im on a 4GHZ cpu with a couple of 5870s and 12 gigs of ram (use about 5.5-6.5 gigs ingame) The op is on a far lower spec machine. I guess at the end of the day its trial and error.

Would you still say Very high memory over Default when using 1gig+ cards?
 
‘lurkio’
Thanks for your questions and your scepticism, not that its a bad thing, on the contrary I fully understand it;

1: more or less all the time all the time unless I’m testing, then it would be set to whatever setting I am testing, but more or less always on VH, I play A2 for maybe 5-6 hrs straight, most days, well actually nights (I’m disabled and don’t sleep too well). I make missions for a small group of us on a private server, that’s why tweaking around is important to me for the mission to run at its best.
But yes it will run like that for the whole day.

2; Atoc=6, you hit on a good subject, AToc in A2 has various settings and 6 is one of the better one’s now (not 0), however this has to be combined now with fxaa both value & level..

3; Misconception, if I stood on a hill it would be around the same in the new updated A2. I would just say that I am running the latest ‘Beta’ patch’ the next official patch is going to be a good one, 1.61 I think. 1.60 was a little over hyped..
The whole reason why I put it where it was, is precisely that, A2 does render the whole lot, thats why the fps drops. But the distance your seeing from that spot will not really go beyond 2000 because of the trees etc..

If I were to use your example on what looks like a desert type island/map then the fps would be quite a lot higher, this is another reason why I used ‘Podagorsk’ as an example, if you have run this island you would understand its heavy going, a little like ‘Chernarus’..

My trusty ‘Mozzie’ the best aircraft for sightseeing on a sunny day, note the fps counter, 2000VD I am at the same spot as the test above. Quick look in the other direction, note the fps counter still just 2000VD, but this is what would be happening to my system on a desert type map, less clutter up go the fps, there is a little dust showing thats because I started the mozzie..

Ok, altitude at 50 looking north-ish edit sorry mistake uploaded the 112 altitude 50 was the same more or less, note the fps counter also I am looking for a hill, so note the radio mast in the distance on the hill… here is the IVD menu.. 10000 VD full view distance edit there you go this one at 50 altitude..

Ok I am up on the radio mast that is on that hill we saw, looking back to where I was (south-ish) note the fps counter. Here is the IVD menu.. 10000 VD full view distance.. Don't forget no one should use 10000 on the ground or up a mast, if I turned this down to 2000VD, the fps would shoot right back up again..

Thanks..

.

jakspyder
Now thanks for your reply, I run around 200 mods (that includes 150ish islands), the example is done by myself on just my pc not MP tested. But the same sort of results come from the group game-play sessions we have.

I run a Sapphire Radeon 2gb HD5850 Toxic, just the one. Now that is probably not what you expected, it was a short edition run. I have a run of the mill good system not the best by any means. But the pc I use is solely for A2, there is nothing else on it, but I will mention a little about that when I do the ai test post. However one of our group plays with the next up from mine and uses it for work as well and gets the around same results..

.
 
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HR4 said:
Snip...
Click to expand...

Awesome post! I will say I recently got myself a crucial 128gig M4 (warranty replacement for my M225) and its only on a sata2 interface. But its got windows, drivers and ArmA2 on it. While the FPS remains almost identical. The game feels far smoother, especially in fast flight. And load times are very quick even with a collosal mod pack, windows, drivers and the "slow" sata2 interface.

Before the SSD I had arma2 on my raid0 pack and before that a single hard drive. I certainly noticed the difference going to the raid0 and even more going to the SSD. As someone who pilots a lot the smooth LOD changes and texture loads across these big maps really improve the game.

What is the Atoc=7 thing?
 
Again many thanks to those who helped initially have started to play through the OA campaign and is running to a standard which is enjoyable.

The first major mission has you knocking out an airfield and then moving on two small hamlets. My team leader kept telling me to jump in the jeep presumably to make moving the rest of the team quicker.
However they just sat with their asses in the grass and did not move. I zipped over to both areas got on a roof and killed anything that moved whilst they remained in the middle of no where lying on their bellies. Is this a bug or was I meant to go it alone?


Was also curious if there are user generated campaigns and are they a similar standard. Not really fussed on MP at the moment so would like the idea of more campaigns to work through.
 
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