ArmA 2 OA Beta Build 83363

Excellent Thanks.

I saw this strange effect around leaves in Village Sweep:

http://tinyurl.com/3j9jxcn

AToC=7. ???

I get the same, but only with that specific plant/shrub. All of the others don't seem near as bad AFAICT. Also, that specific plant also seems to drop FPS more than the others when zoomed in close on my system (maybe the problems are connected?)

I get the same, but only with that specific plant/shrub. All of the others don't seem near as bad AFAICT. Also, that specific plant also seems to drop FPS more than the others when zoomed in close on my system (maybe the problems are connected?)

It's great that you checked this out and were able to find the same type of shrub. I looked for the shrub in 1.59 vanilla, and I couldn't find the same artifact. How does it appear in regular 1.59 to you?

---------- Post added at 09:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 AM ----------

Fixed in 83406

Thanks Suma!

Is there any solution to this ?

AI getting totally stuck with handgun-animations

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/3168

It's been there for 2 years now, i see.

The best you can do is vote it up. It is a pain in the rear when writing SP missions with AI - especially where you don't want teamswitch (which is a way of 'un-stucking' them). I have resorted to removing all handguns from AI in my missions - this seems to stop them from doing this, but also reduces their effectiveness - a sniper without a pistol is pretty rubbish in CQB situations!!!

It would be very nice to see this one fixed after so long!

It's great that you check this out and were able to find the same type of shrub. I looked for the shrub in 1.59 vanilla, and I couldn't find the same artifact. How does it appear in regular 1.59 to you?

Where is the shrub? If you give me the map coordinates I can check it out on my machine.

---------- Post added at 01:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 PM ----------

Also, I am still getting the issue with this beta where I attempt to change video settings (not always 3D resolution, this time it happened with turning VSync off) where the screen will flash yellow/black and then go dark. It's a video driver crash, and this time it actually caused my computer to BSOD, saying the nvidia driver had caused it. However it seems that I am only getting this issue with the betas, and only when attempting to change video settings.

There is something between nVidia drivers and ArmA2:OA that is just not working properly. All of my GPUs are at stock speeds and are staying plenty cool.

EDIT: Created a ticket - http://dev-heaven.net/issues/23134

Also, I believe the VSync setting is causing this more than anything. It sometimes happens with 3D resolution but I just got it to occur twice in a row by attempting to change the VSync setting after a fresh beta install.

Where is the shrub? If you give me the map coordinates I can check it out on my machine.

---------- Post added at 01:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 PM ----------

Also, I am still getting the issue with this beta where I attempt to change video settings (not always 3D resolution, this time it happened with turning VSync off) where the screen will flash yellow/black and then go dark. It's a video driver crash, and this time it actually caused my computer to BSOD, saying the nvidia driver had caused it. However it seems that I am only getting this issue with the betas, and only when attempting to change video settings.

There is something between nVidia drivers and ArmA2:OA that is just not working properly. All of my GPUs are at stock speeds and are staying plenty cool.

EDIT: Created a ticket - http://dev-heaven.net/issues/23134

Also, I believe the VSync setting is causing this more than anything. It sometimes happens with 3D resolution but I just got it to occur twice in a row by attempting to change the VSync setting after a fresh beta install.

Two of the flakey shrubs are in 059051, see this shot taken using current beta:

http://tinyurl.com/43sfwjg

The shrubs look the same in vanilla 1.59.

they look equally bad in vanilla and beta. Which is not a surprise since the beta doesn't change textures and this looks definitely like a texture mistake.

they look equally bad in vanilla and beta. Which is not a surprise since the beta doesn't change textures and this looks definitely like a texture mistake.

This looks like a ATOC issue to me. Check if you still see the problem with ATOC=0 in your config file.

Here's what it looks like for me with AToC=0 (I always keep it off because I dislike the grainy dot look on foliage)

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii140/AFireEternal/Screenshot39091.png

Must be an AToC issue in terms of the weird blur around it, but it still looks like a texture issue a bit because it doesn't really look like it has leaves, just sort of colored blobs.

Here's what it looks like for me with AToC=0 (I always keep it off because I dislike the grainy dot look on foliage)

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii140/AFireEternal/Screenshot39091.png

Must be an AToC issue in terms of the weird blur around it, but it still looks like a texture issue a bit because it doesn't really look like it has leaves, just sort of colored blobs.

Yep, same for me. AToC for sure. I will say goodbye to AToC pretty much for good now. It causes terrible CTDs for me with vanilla 1.59, but lately has been more stable with recent betas.

Mind that it's only this one single shrub object, all other trees, grass plants and bushes do look good. That's why I said its probably a texture issue. It's not like ATOC in total was borked.

This texture is probably in there since the beginning of time (or Arma2 for that matter^^), it just didn't matter as long as there was no such thing like ATOC. I think it's easy to fix, but we certainly have to wait for a release patch, because betas don't bring textures.

ATOC seems to be only as good as your AA setting level and screen res size, a combination of lower screen res and low AA = a more jagged fuzz, increasing makes it smoother, but to be honest the FPS hit isn't worth it in some cases.

I have still never fully understood why BIS set it to default with not much indication it was introduced in patch readme with much info to turn it off (unless you really search for it).

Mind that it's only this one single shrub object, all other trees, grass plants and bushes do look good. That's why I said its probably a texture issue. It's not like ATOC in total was borked.

This texture is probably in there since the beginning of time (or Arma2 for that matter^^), it just didn't matter as long as there was no such thing like ATOC. I think it's easy to fix, but we certainly have to wait for a release patch, because betas don't bring textures.

Oh yes, I realize it's only that one shrub with a texture that doesn't work well with AToC (it looks great w/o AToC). I just had bad luck running into that shrub. It has been very difficult for me to see the AToC effects on veg. AToC does cause more pixely flashing of bright pixels of sky showing through the leaves, but other than that, I can't see much difference. I've seen side-by-side comparisons of AToC vs. no AToC, but even those haven't impressed me very much. Does anyone know of a particularly good side-by-side comparison somewhere that I could check out? Fixing the texture of that shrub just so that it looks good with AToC is probably the very last thing that BIS would fix before the next release patch. But you never know - BIS could surprise us.

---------- Post added at 07:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:11 AM ----------

ATOC seems to be only as good as your AA setting level and screen res size, a combination of lower screen res and low AA = a more jagged fuzz, increasing makes it smoother, but to be honest the FPS hit isn't worth it in some cases.

I have still never fully understood why BIS set it to default with not much indication it was introduced in patch readme with much info to turn it off (unless you really search for it).

I strongly agree. It took me several weeks of confusion and searching to figure out that AToC was causing frequent CTDs in 1.59. Since it has profound effects on stability, fps, and veg appearance, I think AToC should be added to the controls GUI, and perhaps disabled by default, at least on lower video quality settings.

I strongly agree. It took me several weeks of confusion and searching to figure out that AToC was causing frequent CTDs in 1.59. Since it has profound effects on stability, fps, and veg appearance, I think AToC should be added to the controls GUI, and perhaps disabled by default, at least on lower video quality settings.

Agreed. I have to manually disable it in the .cfg every time I start up a new beta. :(

I also see the side switching when in map mode. Noticed it as my AI wouldnt engage (only some of them). Also other friendly AI on the field switching back and forth.

It has been very difficult for me to see the AToC effects on veg. AToC does cause more pixely flashing of bright pixels of sky showing through the leaves, but other than that, I can't see much difference. I've seen side-by-side comparisons of AToC vs. no AToC, but even those haven't impressed me very much. Does anyone know of a particularly good side-by-side comparison somewhere that I could check out?

Just recently I made a few screenshots to show a difference between AA level, but that setting also toggles AToC, so just check them out:

left: no AA, no AToC - middle: 2x AA, ATOC on - right: 4xAA, AToC on

(in both cases AToC = 7, the setting doesn't make it stronger or weaker, but just switches it on for different categories of objects, like only trees, only grass etc., and 7 means on for all)

AToC influences the look of basically everything that grows in there, trees, bushes, grass etc., while the power lines are smoothed by the AA setting.

Explanation: Mathematically, a line consists of a infinite amount of points. On a computer screen, a line can only consist of a limited number of points/pixels. That means you loose a lot of information. In the case of the power line in the picture you see that the loss of information leads to the line even disappearing completely at some parts, because the line is much smaller than one pixel, and the point in the center of the pixel scanned past it, so the whole pixel became sky-colored instead of powerline-colored. The real problem is that this changes when you move the camera (i.e. look around in game), then the line will flicker extremely, it will be there for a split second, then be gone and a different part will appear that was gone before etc. The same happens with each and everything in the game.

AA in general now takes more of the original information to determine how a pixel should be colored. For example 4x AA means that the scene is scanned at 4 different points for each pixel (called subpixels). To stay in the example above, if three of them hit the sky and one hits the power line, then the pixel will not be completely white or black but 75% white and 25% black, i.e. light grey. If the camera changes a little and the power line will be scanned by another subpixel, then the pixel will stay at the same light grey color. So you have sucessfully eliminated the weird flickering and the even weirder pieces of power line floating in the air, you just get a smooth light grey line, which the human eye will interpret as a black line that is quite far away, the whole scene will look more realistic.

The default multisampling AA however can only smooth out the jagged edges of polygon objects, in this screen for example the power lines and towers. Foilage on the other hand is usually not constructed from polygons, but just consists of partially transparent textures. Think of it as a rectangular glass plate with a thickness of zero where the figs and leaves have just been painted on. These textures however can't be treated by MSAA, i.e. they stay jaggy - not really desirable, because if parts of the screen are smoothed properly and other aren't, it looks even worse.

A means to smooth partly transparent textures would be to use Supersampling AA or Oversampling (i.e. applying a high rendering resolution than the monitor has), both are basically the same. The problem is that they eat up a lot of performance, for example 4X SSAA translates to double the width and double the height, and thus only a quarter of the performance. There are also ways in the graphics driver to apply the SSAA only to transparent textures instead of to the full screen (AMD calls it Adaptive AA, while Nvidia has Transparent AA, but basically the same). But since a map like Chernarus has so much vegetation, that doesn't help that much, you still take a big performance hit. Which means that most people can't use it if they want to maintain playable framerates.

Now with AToC BIS came up with a brilliant idea, they are treating the textures with a dithering filter in game (kudos to the programmer who did that!). It sure has some shortcomings, like the light grey pixels that are sometimes visible, but that is quite certainly due to the engine being limited to DirectX 9, so you have to wait for Arma3 for them to disappear. But on the other hand it manages to give the trees and bushes more volume than you would see with other techniques, so they look more realistic.

But the main advantage is that this eats up albeit some, but not close as much performance as SSAA. So people can have great looking foilage AND maintain playable framerates.

Well, this is weird. I now have what is basically a completely different and more powerful PC than the one I had before, and I'm still getting the exact same ACCESS_VIOLATION graphics driver crashes in these betas. Performance is excellent with FPS rarely going below 25 and no stuttering at all until the game crashes. I am also using the Steam version of CO with both DLCs, running this beta of course. The crashes seem entirely random.

Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION at 00A52CB9
graphics:  D3D9, Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580, Driver:nvd3dum.dll 8.17.12.7533
resolution:  1360x768x32
Addons:
<loaded addon dump removed>
Distribution: 1491
Version 1.59.83363
Fault address:  00A52CB9 01:00651CB9 C:\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\Expansion\beta\arma2oa.exe
file:     C2_HarvestRed
world:    Chernarus
campaign: ca\missions\campaign
battle:   Beginning
mission:  C2
Prev. code bytes: 20 FF 4E 1C 8B 4E 1C 53 EB 06 8B 00 49 89 4E 1C
Fault code bytes: 8B 18 0B DA 3B DA 75 F2 8B 4E 14 89 08 89 7E 14

Registers:
EAX:0824548B EBX:0824548B
ECX:000001E5 EDX:00000001
ESI:C7730000 EDI:C7732580
CS:EIP:0023:00A52CB9
SS:ESP:002B:0185F82C  EBP:0185F844
DS:002B  ES:002B  FS:0053  GS:002B
Flags:00010202
=======================================================
note: Minidump has been generated into the file C:\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\Profiles\arma2oa.mdmp

For reference, here's a break down of the differences from my old PC to my new one, with both systems getting the same crashes:

Operating system:

Old: Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit | New: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Processor:

Old: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz | New: Intel Core i7 2600k @ 3.70GHz

Graphics card:

Old: Gigabyte GTX 280 275.33 32bit | New: EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked Edition 275.33 64bit

RAM:

Old: Kingston 2GB DDR2 RAM @ 800MHz | New: Corsair XMS 8GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz

Location of ARMA 2 install:

Old: Western Digital 500GB HDD | New: Corsair 120GB SSD

Brainbug,

Your post is the most informative and clearly written explanation of AA, SSAA, and AToC I have ever read, and the images are the best examples of AA/AToC variation I have ever seen. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain! BIS should somehow sticky that post.

Which A2 settings for AA do 2x AA and 4x AA translate to? Low and very high?

Here is village sweep with the shrub of doom (;)) with atoc=0 and low AA

http://tinyurl.com/3h8rhsh

Here it is with atoc=7 and low AA

http://tinyurl.com/3tzgs3k :D

Thanks to you, I have changed my video settings, increasing AA to norm from low (see signature). And I am sticking with atoc=7 as long as it doesn't give me too many CTDs. I won't let one stinking shrub scare me away from atoc! :rolleyes:

Zipper5 - that is one sweet new bad-ass system you've got, hoss!

Which A2 settings for AA do 2x AA and 4x AA translate to? Low and very high?

disabled = off (who thought of that^^)

low = 2x

normal = 4x

high = 8x (or 6x in older Radeon cards)

disabled = off (who thought of that^^)

low = 2x

normal = 4x

high = 8x (or 6x in older Radeon cards)

Thanks. PP is set to low, which eliminates most of the blurriness and keeps just a bit of the bloom-like reflections.

I've gotta say that A2 CO/RNF provide the best-looking graphics ever to grace my screen. And that includes Crysis, which is the ultimate compliment for a computer game.

Kick ass:

It really is purely a judgement call about AToC - in a way, veg w/o AToC is more realistic, but veg with AToC just "looks better."

disabled = off (who thought of that^^)

low = 2x

normal = 4x

high = 8x (or 6x in older Radeon cards)

Would it be easy for BIS if they would just make the menu settings match what they are doing? I always wondered why they used the Low/Norm/High layout for things like AA and AF, as it just leads to some confusion, especially for someone newer to the game who then see the options 5,6,7,8 afterwards depending on the card the have. I have a similar gripe with the PP settings, granted upfront they told us what each setting does around OA's release but I always wondered why not separate the blur and SSAO settings. If someone doesn't know what SSAO is they can look it up rather than wonder why their performance dips on their mid level card due to using a setting of Normal or higher in PP.

I noticed a new bug which is there also in 1.59 - I cant lift or rotate objects/units/vehicles in 3D editor (in 3d view, in 2d view rotating works normally).

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/23190

<object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHTrSXloyZk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHTrSXloyZk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object>

(Its a hidden video)

I noticed an annoying "feature" yesterday when playing Coop. AI are drama queens when it comes to slopes. Human players can cross just about any slope, while the AI will refuse to pass down a certain steepness like a lady refusing to get her feet wet.

While that is sort of fine, it doesn't make sense that human players can go there. It also makes it difficult to manage the AI since you never know whether they can go down a certain hillside or not - and let's face it, Takistan isn't exactly flat.

I would really like to see either AI following the human player everywhere, or prevent the human player from going down the same type of slopes. As long as it is consistent, it would be fine, but this is really annoying, especially if you suddenly hear "where are you" after a firefight.

Has anyone tested unit drop with the Simple Support Module lately? Tested it yesterday to call in units and no matter how i set it up i get 2 soldiers only.

Code:

This is the stock line, but no matter how i change it it only drops 2 units. Tested with US Army, BAF etc and different number of units.