Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Full Metal Demo: Arma II

By Jim Rossignol on June 25th, 2009 at 2:48 pm.


Update: Mirrors and some troubleshooting tips in this thread.

The demo of soldiering giganto-sim Arma II, which contains a surprisingly large chunk of the full game – including a limited version of the extremely versatile scenario editor – is now available. Get it here.

The demo comes to just under 3gb, but it’s an essential download for those of you who want to check out compatibility and performance issues before buying. And anyone else vaguely interested in the game, obviously. I’ve been caning the full thing for the best part of two weeks, and I’ve kept delaying the RPS review because, well, I just keep finding more stuff to do in it. I’ll stop tinkering and post full impressions early next week. Launch trailer and full demo content details below.

From BIS:

Overview of the demo content:

Boot Camp:
———-
Boot camp provides you with several scenarios which can help you to better enjoy the ArmA 2 demo.
To play the scenarios, start the game and select SingleplayerBootcamp from the main menu. The following tutorials are available:
Basic Training – You can learn the basics of the game controls, movement and principles of first aid and infantry combat in this tutorial. If you’re new to the world of military simulations, it is strongly recommended to learn these basics.
Parachute Jump – In this tutorial, you have a chance to try precision-jumping with a steerable parachute.
Helicopter – Learn the basics of helicopter flight, transportation of troops and attack chopper tactics.
Team – Learn the basics of your team’s command and control. This tutorial will teach you how to command your subordinates and manage your team.
High Command – You are often given command of whole groups in the bigger battles (e.g. Death Valley scenario). This tutorial describes the basics of the high-commander’s job.
Construction – In a large-scale scenarios (Death Valley in the demo), you can construct defenses, HQ buildings or structures which enable you to enroll certain unit types.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of the construction interfaces.

Singleplayer:
————-
Three scenarios and an editable mission template are featured in the demo. Scenarios are accessible from the main menu’s Singleplayer > Scenarios section.

Trial by Fire – A marine assault team is inserted on the Utes island to capture an OPFOR base. To successfully complete this mission, advance together with the rest of your team, follow your orders and avoid being too brave.

Death Valley – Small mission to introduce and also teach you how to use the RTS/FPS blend mode for ArmA 2 – The Warfare mode.
In this large-scale battle, your objectives are to capture all strategic locations or destroy all structures on the enemy base in your area of operation.
It is recommended to play Team, High Command and Construction tutorials before you start playing this mission.

Benchmark – This scenario is an unplayable cinematic benchmark test that will help you determine the best setting for playing ArmA 2 on your computer or to compare your hardware. Average FPS is displayed at the end of this scenario.

Mission Template: Basic – To start this mission template, activate “My missions…”, select “”, “01:Basic”, choose the side you want to play for, and edit the mission conditions.

Multiplayer:
————

It’s possible to play a multiplayer battle or customize some of the available mission templates.

To start the template-based multiplayer, select “< >” and select from the list of available templates. Note that templates are customizable, and you may prepare many variations of existing setups.

Death Valley – Multiplayer version of the scenario. Up to 16 players may take part in this battle. In “Create game”,
Multiplayer Mission Template: Deathmatch – Free-for-all fight for up to 16 players.
Multiplayer Mission Template: Team Deathmatch – Two teams fight in a small area. Up to 16 players may play in this scenario.
Multiplayer Mission Template: Seize The Area – Cooperative scenario for up to 6 players, whose task is to eliminate all hostile units in a designated area.

Mission editor:
—————
Limited version of Mission Editor is present in the demo. Note that it’s not possible to either save or load a custom mission in the demo.

Check http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA:_Mission_Editor to learn more about the basic features of the editor.

And those system specs:

Minimal PC System Requirements
• Dual Core CPU (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, Intel Core 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster)
• 1 GB RAM
• GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM
• Windows XP

Recommended PC System Requirements

• Quad Core CPU or fast Dual Core CPU (Intel Core 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster)
• 2 GB RAM
• Fast GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT or ATI Radeon 4850 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB VRAM
• Windows XP or Vista


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161 Comments »

  1. 25/06/2009 at 14:49 cullnean says:

    download server is full…………..gah

    must take advantage of work uber connection!

  2. 25/06/2009 at 14:50 dartt says:

    Oh Wow! I had no idea this was even coming.

    I had forgotten that they did demos for OF and AA. Roll on home time!

  3. 25/06/2009 at 14:54 Tom says:

    thanks for the comments

  4. 25/06/2009 at 15:02 cullnean says:

    hopefully its as good as the flash game!

  5. 25/06/2009 at 15:08 Markoff Chaney says:

    This game has moved to the top of my must play list. Thanks for the tip on the demo. I can’t wait to read more of the hivemind’s (Overlord or plebian like meself) thinks on this game. The last thread was fantastic. Make me spend more money I can’t afford. At least this game looks like it has some LONG legs to her and will be more than worth the money. Now I can find out for myself.

    On a similar note: I’m always glad to see a demo pop up. Doubly so on a game as ambitious as ArmA2 is. I wish all games had one so we could test out the code on our boxes and see if we can even play what that fifty dollars buys us. Thanks Bohemia Interactive!

  6. 25/06/2009 at 15:09 Mike says:

    Yeah, really do download this before buying. Even if you hit the specs, hardware and software conflicts still seem abounds in places.

    I’ve heard it’s awesome though.

  7. 25/06/2009 at 15:12 tapanister says:

    Man, I dislike military fps’s where you liberate the world and stuff from evil tyrany (being more of a quake/ut/sci-fi guy) but that’s some seriously good visuals in that game.

  9. 25/06/2009 at 15:15 Bergotronic says:

    Hmmm, do I download the demo to play for a couple hours before my steam pre-order unlocks tommrow? Dare I needlessly contributre to my bandwith cap? DAMN YES!

  10. 25/06/2009 at 15:17 Turin Turambar says:

    This is a case of the recommended specs being really the “medium” specs. The really recommended specs are a overclocked (or high speed) iCore 7, 4 GB of RAM, and a Ati 4890 or GTX 275 (or even better gpu if you want AA, everything on Very High, and a good framerate).

  11. 25/06/2009 at 15:35 TC says:

    Too late…Already speculated £25 on it.

    Mission editor is worth it alone really, SP campaign not as much fun IMO but I never really was one for ground pounding.

  12. 25/06/2009 at 15:40 IdleHands says:

    Already brought it and found it hates my lappy with a passion. I just see it as an investment for my future computer, nothing worse than upgrading a computer and having nothing to truly test it on.

  13. 25/06/2009 at 15:41 Theory says:

    If you don’t fancy a 3GB HTTP download, and like me don’t have the luxury of Bittorrent, wait for the demo to appear on Steam. :)

  14. 25/06/2009 at 15:43 Richard Clayton says:

    Does the mission editor allow you to make single-player missions or is it just for multiplayer? Anyway I will clear some space, start the download and go down the pub while it gets on with it!

  15. 25/06/2009 at 15:44 Theory says:

    I take that back! Looks like BT have unthrottled torrents (for GameUpdates, at least).

  16. 25/06/2009 at 15:51 Bogie says:

    Dont be fooled by the pretty graphics this game is as buggy as hell.
    I’m done with it after 2 hours of frustration. I’d send it back to the shop if I could.
    I might try it again after a few more patches.

  17. 25/06/2009 at 15:52 meeper says:

    I bought the full version a week ago and am thoroughly enjoying it. That being said, it’s still very much an ArmA or OFP.

  18. 25/06/2009 at 15:54 ascagnel says:

    This might be my game of the summer… if it doesn’t run as poorly as ArmA. That, on a Core Duo w/ 8800GT, still chugged in cities at the lowest settings.

  19. 25/06/2009 at 15:55 Anton says:

    Excellent, great thinking about the gamers. And from the demo description it looks like lots of gameplay is possible in it. Lots of gameplay HOURS too, for slower PCs :)

  20. 25/06/2009 at 16:00 Mr Dan says:

    I’m trying http://www.gameupdates.org/ game demo/patch torrent tracker. Faster than fileplanet or gameshell so far anyway

  22. 25/06/2009 at 16:00 IdleHands says:

    Actually while I’m here, if I may intrude and ask for some advice. What kind of specs would you recommend for playing such games? I may be a gaming geek but I know very little of the latest tech out now.

  23. 25/06/2009 at 16:06 jatan says:

    wow- i was big into ofp– but the reviews and the videos make it all look just the same as ofp but with 2009 graphics….i have played that game already (for about 2 years :)…… no sale…not sure why but the player uploaded videos look so like my memories of ofp that it barely looks any better at all – memory is a funny thing …..

  24. 25/06/2009 at 16:10 autogunner says:

    took longer for vista to scan the bloody thing than it did to download, anyway installing now, apache flying soon! thoughts later.

  25. 25/06/2009 at 16:48 autogunner says:

    oh dead installer isnt working, this makes me sad

  27. 25/06/2009 at 16:54 Fat says:

    Enjoying the retail version of this, and not sure of all these bugs people keep mentioning, have they all even played it? Only bug i had was a graphical one caused by my drivers.

    But that said, the patch that came out a few days ago actually made SOME bugs appear that weren’t present after i first installed it, so i uninstalled and am gonna stick to the DVD version (1.01).

    I’m only playing the co-op campaign with friends and a bit of solo stuff anyway… the lag (maybe bad netcode) is so awful at the moment that any large scale battles seem to kill the servers so that’s pointless at the moment. Which is a bit of a shame, but hopefully they’ll fix that.

    But yeah, patch or not… i ain’t seen any of these crashes or anything that people keep talking about.

  28. 25/06/2009 at 16:59 MrBejeebus says:

    got the full game on tuesday and while it all looks like a blob on my screen – my pc sucks – its great fun, me and a friend decided to take motorbikes and take some hunting rifles and just went off into the forest hunting deer :D

    I cant wait till i get a new pc anyway, will be able to enjoy it fully

  29. 25/06/2009 at 17:05 Gap Gen says:

    My main complaint is the intelligence of Razor team. In the assault on Chernagorsk, I lost a team member and was forced to reload a number of times because they wandered into the open and were shot by the sniper we were trying to take out.

  30. 25/06/2009 at 17:11 Petethegoat says:

    Also got this on Tuesday, and have now ordered another copy to get me some multiplayer action! I have seen no crashes yet, and very few bugs actually, which is awesome.
    It doesn’t bring my system to its knees either, even at most settings on high and with the view distance at 3000-ish.

    This begs for a Stalker mod though- it already has boars and a similar atmosphere! Come on people, get modding! :D

  31. 25/06/2009 at 17:30 Gap Gen says:

    On reasonable settings at the native resolution of my monitor, the framerate is about 20, which is OK, but to be really playable I had to turn my resolution down to a vaseline-smear, which is a shame.

  32. 25/06/2009 at 17:46 Petethegoat says:

    Actually, I noticed that the Razor team AI isn’t brilliant too, but I guess that’s what coop is for. Also, I’m running it on the above settings at 1680*1050, with a nice frame rate. Maybe it just likes my PC. I’m not running an uber-rig, either. How bizarre. Oh well, at least I can play it! :p

  33. 25/06/2009 at 17:48 Ed says:

    A pox on shader model 3.

    My PC is reasonably decent, my GPU was decent a year or so ago. Plays Bioshock with the community hack really well.

    It’s a mostly arbitrary limitation that annoys the crap out of me. I can’t justify the cost of a new graphics card.

    This must be what it feels like to own a HD-DVD player.

  34. 25/06/2009 at 17:55 Jim Rossignol says:

    “the assault on Chernagorsk”

    The AI does seem to really struggle with urban environments. Battles in woodlands etc see Razor team behave much more sensibly.

  35. 25/06/2009 at 18:33 Thirith says:

    I’m hearing contradictory things on the game’s performance on different hardware setups. What’s the RPS crew’s impression of how the game runs?

  36. 25/06/2009 at 18:38 Shamanic Miner says:

    I find that it runs much better than ARMA did and really is a step up in visuals. I’m very impressed so far even with some bits not doing what they should. In fact, it can come over to my house and f**k my sister.

  37. 25/06/2009 at 18:42 Thirith says:

    I run better than ARMA did and on a good day I look better than it. Can I come over? ;-)

  38. 25/06/2009 at 18:47 Dominic White says:

    I’ve got a fairly aged PC, and run the game at maxed out detail. In fact, I uploaded a video of it to youtube here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDufigx7r7A

    And a direct download version (81mb) here:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fahmzwimqnm

    That’s 1440 x 900, maxed out detail on:

    Windows XP 32bit
    2GB RAM
    2.13ghz Core2Duo
    ATI 4850HD
    Creative Audigy 2

    And very playable too. Plus, recording via Fraps lowers the framerate by quite a bit as well.

  39. 25/06/2009 at 19:01 Koopa says:

    The demo is available on Steam now. Looks like I got my friday night plans all set up for me…

  40. 25/06/2009 at 19:18 Linfosoma says:

    Must.Get.Home.
    Download.Demo.
    Watch.PC.Burn!

  41. 25/06/2009 at 19:23 Dominic White says:

    Oh, by the way, in my video above I’m using an audio mod (better gunfire, engine sounds, etc), and a radio protocols hack that makes radio comms faster and more terse, so while the information flows faster, it doesn’t sound as natural as usual.

  42. 25/06/2009 at 20:15 GregP says:

    A couple of things I wanted to mention:

    1) No need to wait for Steam unlocks or retail availability in the US; it’s been available online from Nexway (http://arma2.nexway.com/payment.html?REF=671796&killcart=1) since last Friday, I bought and downloaded and was playing by Saturday morning.

    2) If everything looks blurry when you start the game up, crank up the ‘render res’ (I think that’s the name of the setting – it’s the one that shows higher resolutions than what you’re actually running and then what percentage that represents of your actual res, i.e. 100%, 125%, 133%, etc.). Rather than using the standard FSAA/MSAA technique, ArmA2 uses an “over-rendering and downsampling” technique where internally it renders a higher res and then downsamples to the res you’re actually running. FSAA is actually supported via a tweak in the arma2.cfg file, but doesn’t look that good and deactivates most shadowing.

    3) Required system specs to get good performance at high res are indeed quite high. I run a Core2Duo E8500 @3.8GHz, 4 GB PC-8500, and a GeForce GTX 280, and at 1920×1080 with render res set to 150%, I often stuggle in the 15-20 range.

  43. 25/06/2009 at 20:33 Dominic White says:

    @GregP – the reason you’re struggling is because you’re effectively rendering a 2880 x 1620 (which is a retardedly high resolution) image there, and downscaling it to 1920 x 1080 (which is merely very high).

  44. 25/06/2009 at 20:34 Turin Turambar says:

    1080p with 150% fillrate is 2880×1620, GregP. A big resolution.

  46. 25/06/2009 at 20:58 GregP says:

    @ Dominic and Turin,

    Right, I understand that. :) I guess I didn’t say it clearly enough, but what I meant was, if you want to run high res AND high quality, sysreqs are REALLY high, and/or you’re going to suffer low FPS.

  47. 25/06/2009 at 21:00 GregP says:

    Also, should’ve mentioned that for me, even at 1080p the jaggies were annoyingly too distracting, that’s why I choose to over-render. Although admittedly, even at 125% it’s a good enough improvement over 100%; I’m just using 150% because I actually didn’t see much of a FPS drop going from 125 to 133 to 150.

  48. 25/06/2009 at 21:23 Feanor says:

    Too much for my PC to run.

  49. 25/06/2009 at 21:36 Pedwarpump says:

    Dominic, that’s almost exactly the same as my specs, in fact it is the same, yet I get 20ish fps running the campaign on mid-settings? Any secrets I’m missing?

  50. 25/06/2009 at 21:51 Turin Turambar says:

    Gregp, in the demo i get AA and shadows working, perhaps in the next patch it will be also the case, in the full game.

  51. 25/06/2009 at 22:00 GregP says:

    Hmm, maybe, as the devs have been saying this would eventually be fixed. Also, I mis-spoke earlier, I shouldn’t have said that all shadows get disabled with AA, rather, most do but not all. You might want to try to turning AA off and turning shadows up to max, to verify that you’re not losing any shadowing effects, because for me it was a pretty big difference.

  52. 25/06/2009 at 22:35 Pavel says:

    1920*1200, everything very high including AA, 2KM, 30fps stable in the first mission.Prettiest game on the market, reality-wise.

  53. 25/06/2009 at 22:41 Railick says:

    I downloaded the demo and installed it then Michael Palin burst into my room dressed like a Catholic cardinal and started throwing marshmellows at me until I uninstalled it. Otherwise I would have enjoyed it I’m sure.

  54. 25/06/2009 at 22:59 ChampionHyena says:

    1920 x 1280, “Very High” settings. Beautiful. Smoove.

    I do have one question.

    I was playing the training missions when I went to the anti-tank range when suddenly gunfire rang out, my CO leapt to the ground, and I was shot dead.

    …why?

  55. 25/06/2009 at 23:00 Paul Moloney says:

    A lot of fun, and I will probably buy. Couldn’t land a chopper for toffee though, even with my new snazzy joystick.

    P.

  56. 25/06/2009 at 23:08 Railick says:

    Champion Hyena ) something very similiar happened to me when I was playing Arm-A’s bootcamp. I was doing the M16 shooting range and had an almost perfect score (good enough for getting to try the sniper rifle) and then suddenly my CO freaked out and I was arrested O.o No idea why.

    Maybe you carried a weapon you shouldn’t have beyond where it was suposed to be or accidently fired near someone I dunno.

    Paul it can be a B trying to land a chopper by hovering slowly down onto the ground. Can be a bit easier if you fly forward , then lower your power until you’re falling and at the last second flare and pull back so that your chopper lands gentle on the back first then the nose lands a few seconds later. Really useful for choppers with wheels , and semi useful for black hawks and the like.

    When I try to hover land I always end up sliding side ways and knocking over a truck or something.

  57. 25/06/2009 at 23:28 Jeeva says:

    @Champion Hyena, Railick

    AFAIK, the shots fired were by the lads “dressed as insurgents” (as the CO says, it’s the option 2) who are in the village down the road, if you take too long they wander towards you and shoot at you. The CO drops automatically. Bless Dynamic Gameplay! Or that’s what happened in mine.

    Also, in the nearby crate, there are a few weapons for which the models were not provided in the demo, leading to a hideous aiming experience for me, when I tried to use the optics. =( I thought it was funny up until that point. =)

  58. 25/06/2009 at 23:53 FGF says:

    I get A AUDIO ERROR WHEN TRYING TO START ANYBODY ESE?!

  59. 25/06/2009 at 23:53 Railick says:

    @FGF maybe it is because your capslock key is on

  60. 25/06/2009 at 23:59 Howard says:

    @ Pavel & ChampionHyena
    What are your system specs for reference?

  61. 26/06/2009 at 00:05 Howard says:

    @Ed
    Sorry but if your card does not have SM3.0 it was FAR from “decent a year ago”. SM3.0 has been standard since GeForce 6 times and that it, what, 4 years ago? Maybe 5?
    Your card would have to be of GeForce FX age and that is just decrepit.

  62. 26/06/2009 at 00:07 Railick says:

    @Howard so if I got a Geforce 7300 GT it should have SM3.0?

  63. 26/06/2009 at 00:11 Howard says:

    @Railick
    Well obviously not. That is not how GFX card ranges work, as well you know I think =P
    Point is that a mid to high card from the last 4 generations of cards would be SM3.0 compliant. Citing ridiculously low level stuff that is not designed for 3D work is unhelpful.

  64. 26/06/2009 at 00:31 Don says:

    Hmm, so a couple of hours downloading later I install the game but launching it pops up an error message about a DX sound dll not being found. Looks like Bohemia decided to make it dependent on a specific version but couldn’t be arsed to include the redistributable in the demo. This is the good thing about demos, if the developer can’t be bothered to make sure they work properly it’s a fairly good clue about the game as a whole. Another £25 saved.

  65. 26/06/2009 at 00:47 Dave says:

    FFS it runs like a crippled donkey on my machine, what is with releasing demos after the game is out nowdays?!?! now im going to have to SLI it up or some shit, gah… well at least its fecking mighty eh? and i can get it to work on ultra low without massive FPS spasms. My main problem is with the armoury mode. Console style unlocks make baby jkittens masturbate a jebus (thats sooo 2006 sorry) i want to practice in a gunship not the helicopter equivalent of the number 1 on a hot day (aka the dreadfull skybus)

    p.s dwarf fortress is the best game ever made by man, PLAY IT!

  66. 26/06/2009 at 00:49 Eliot says:

    Don, as posted earlier in the thread you just need to download the latest version of Direct X.

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3

  67. 26/06/2009 at 01:20 Paul Moloney says:

    Runs fine for me, am I lucky? Q6600/Radeon 4870/4GBs/XP; at 1280×960 with most normal, some high, settings, I get around 55 to 75 FPS.

    P.

  68. 26/06/2009 at 02:12 Nafe says:

    I hate to be… that guy… but does anyone know for certain if the retail version has 5 activations? I read it somewhere unofficial and can’t find anything other than the fact that there’s *no* securom on the steam release.

  69. 26/06/2009 at 03:03 BBQ says:

    One word… WANT.

  70. 26/06/2009 at 05:50 Geoffrey says:

    I find it mildly disquieting that the MOUT course in the boot camp involves live ammo and blood and dieing. I kept waiting for a “Oh look! The MOUT course has been overrun with real enemies, time to put your training to good use!” But, instead… I just kept getting the sinking feeling that I was a soldier on a FF rampage.

  71. 26/06/2009 at 05:56 Thiefsie says:

    too late… I just ordered it from cdwow haha

  72. 26/06/2009 at 06:06 Shawn says:

    how much better does this game look compared to the first? I’m on vaca and won’t be able to grab it until next week..

  73. 26/06/2009 at 08:11 Turin Turambar says:

    Shawn, there is a good amount of videos in youtube.

  74. 26/06/2009 at 08:38 Mr Pink says:

    Am I the only one who is finding the mouse “floaty” in this game. It seems to carry on moving in a direction after I stop the mouse. Very annoying.

  75. 26/06/2009 at 08:47 Jim Rossignol says:

    Pink: have a play with the mouse settings, there’s probably something not configured quite right.

    Re general performance issues: it’s running fine at 1440, on a 2ghz dual core with an 8800 GTS, but I did put simple shadows on, which is fairly ugly.

  76. 26/06/2009 at 09:50 Nighthood says:

    @Nafe: Just a CD key.

    Also, I love the mouse dead zone option, so you can aim a little without moving your whole view. More games should use it.

  77. 26/06/2009 at 10:00 Howard says:

    Oh wow. That was an experience. Just spent an hour playing with this demo and I am utterly bewildered. Are you guys playing a different game to me or is this rampant fanboy-ism running amok? This game is all over the show. Just playing the demo and you are treated to a list of bugs as long as your arm and the performance is considerably worse than I ever could have imagined it to be. So to put it is context, here are my system specs:

    C2D @3.1 gig
    3 GIG of stupidly fast memory
    GeForce 260GTX OC” (i.e. it runs at 280 GTX speeds)
    400 gig RAID 0 SATA 2 array.

    Not the fastest rig in the world by a long chalk, but no slow poke either.

    First up I selected my resolution (1600×1200 – optimal for my monitor) and the game selected “Very High” from the main drop down. Fine; let’s try that. Played the boot camp and it is immediately clear what a mess the engine is. HUGE, epic, world-ending mouse lag, ridiculous pop-up, horrible redraw levels for retexturing, aliasing that veritable “buzzes” it is so bad and the most over-used depth-of-field effect I have ever experienced. Here’s a hint lads: DOF is supposed to imitate the way a human eyes works, focussing on one part of the screen and blurring the rest. Bohemia, on the other hand, have used it to blur out everything beyond about 10 metres in front of me. Apparently my character is myopic and his focal point is somewhere south of his own navel. All that aside the performance did not seem *too* bad. Then you realise why: there is nothing on screen. As soon as you get to a situation where anything happens your happy 30-40 FPS turns into a less impressive 10-15 and there by becomes unplayable.

    So, after toiling about, struggling to find any way point I was given (another hint: if you have to give me markers on the landscape to signify objectives, don’t make then TINY yellow marker on a mostly green background, particularly if you are going to have an engine that is so over saturated and blurred. They are simply invisible), I completed the boot-camp (another hint: if I am stationary, crouched, holding my breath, aiming down the sights of a gun at a target less than 10 metres away while remaining utterly stationary, I HIT the damned thing. Another hint: bullets travel fast. Very fast. It does NOT take a full second for a bullet to travel 3 metres. Ever. Not once. Really.) and head off to a proper mission. (Last point about the Boot camp – Yes, the soldiers who are “on exercise in the nearby village” DO start to shoot the shit out of you for absolutely no reason. Apparently my hummer offended them…nice…)

    Marching out into your first battlefield you get to see exactly how crippled the engine is. 10 FPS is order of the day so I go to the options menu to turn stuff down. First thing I notice, with some amusement, is that selecting “Very High” from the drop down means no such thing. The global setting Very High apparently means “Mostly High With a Lot of Stuff on Normal”. Interesting. Anyway, I knock the global setting down to high and gain…5 fps. Humph. Okay, let’s knock it down to Normal… another 5 fps. Wow, 25 FPS: we’re cooking now! Okay then, time to fiddle with individual settings. After much fiddling it becomes apparent that shadows need to be on normal for anything to have a hope of functioning, and that if you set the over-render thingie to anything below 100% the game looks terrifyingly bad. Fine. AF and AA seem to have, startlingly, limited impact and while knocking the texture detail down brings SOME FPS gains, it is not worth the sacrifice. Post Processing seems to be the most FPS damaging setting which regrettably makes the least amount of sense. Turning it off offers a huge performance boost but then you are also treated to a step behind the magician’s curtain. With PP turned off the actual quality of the renderer becomes apparent and everything starts to look very familiar. Is that you under there, Operation Flashpoint? I see you’ve stuck grass, trees and bits of crap all over yourself (very poorly rendered ones too), and you’ve gone and gotten yourself some better rendered humans but beneath it all beats the heart of a truly, diabolically, ugly game.

    So, settings fiddled with and a mind-numbing FPS of 25 settled on, I head of into battle. Or rather I don’t. What I do do is stand about silently for 5 minutes while the AI whispers odd announcements to each other and huge hills of dirt magically appear, then disappear only to, again magically, be replaced by a military base. Fun stuff. We are then told to head to a check point. A checkpoint that is a bloody kilometre away! Can I get in on of the 5 APCs? Oh no. How about the tanks or jeeps? Sod right off! This is the Army: we walk everywhere! So, winded, disorientated and generally confused I arrive at the waypoint just in time to see my AI buddies clean out the entire village we are supposed to be assaulting. Apparently I was superfluous to requirements. But wait! They have given me another way point. Of course it comes with no instructions or information but hey, it’s something.

    Off I trot. Arriving at said indicated spot I find a tiny and completely empty structure festooned with camo-netting. Upon approaching it a huge progress bar appears on my screen. Fun, what’s that for? Well, after watching it for 5 minutes, apparently nothing. It slowly ticked down but once it had disappeared there were zero visible results. Well at least it seems I did something…? But lawks! A new checkpoint for little old me, and by Jove if it isn’t another kilometre away! My heart all aflutter I jog out of the mini-base and, miracle of miracles, see my first enemy! An enemy APC has been spotted, apparently by a satellite ‘cos the bleeder was MILES away, and I am told to attack it. So, remembering that this convenient zooming device I have been carting round also doubles as some kind of fire-arm, I leap heroically behind a defensive sand-bag wall and wait for the APC to approach. It, however, has other plans. Although it is over 500 metres away, down hill utterly unable to see me, although there are at least 5 of my sides vehicles dotted about much closer along with 10 infantry and one stationary support gunner, he aims directly at me, right through the sand-bags and kills me in one shot.

    An hour of paddling about looking at horrible graphics with nausea inducing camera bob and migraine inducing mouse-lag all to fire precisely zero shots, see no enemies and die thanks to shonky AI. Yep, this is the perfect sequel to ArmA…absolutely perfect…

  78. 26/06/2009 at 10:15 Paul Moloney says:

    “Also, I love the mouse dead zone option, so you can aim a little without moving your whole view. More games should use it.”

    Is that why Mr Pink is finding it “floaty”?

    P.

  79. 26/06/2009 at 10:20 D says:

    If your point is that it’s not a gamey enough for just anyone.. Well, you’ve got me convinced.

    Other than that, your mini-review was nothing like my own experience, but I am of the sort to turn off post processing right away in any game.

  80. 26/06/2009 at 10:24 Howard says:

    @Paul Moloney
    No, the mouse dead zone option is off by default and all it does is give the kind of aiming you got in OFP.

    The floaty mouse thing is mouse-lag, which ARMA II has in spades and I can find no way to get rid of.

  81. 26/06/2009 at 10:24 D says:

    My previous post obviously a reply to Howard :)
    –
    No the deadzone is off by default, I think the floatyness comes from simple mouse lag. Getting a good amount of fps first will help to mitigate, and after that I personally didn’t find it disturbing, it just requires more active aiming. I’m wondering if its even intended, altho it seems stupid.

  82. 26/06/2009 at 10:26 Howard says:

    @D
    I gathered it was for me but what did you mean exactly?

  83. 26/06/2009 at 10:28 D says:

    Well my own time was not a perfect experience either, but I had a lot more fun with the demo than with the entirety of ARMA 1, years back.

    It’s more of the same, so if you’re not the sort to like OPF/ARMA1 then it should be a given that you didn’t like ARMA2.

  84. 26/06/2009 at 10:32 Howard says:

    @D
    But that is just it. I adored OPF and played it to death. I was waiting outside HMV, nose pressed to teh glass on launch day for both its expansions and I played them to death too!
    Now I grant that OFP was damned buggy as well but it was at least fully playable very quickly after release. Also we have to consider how much that game was pushing the boundaries of what we though games could do so it got away with a lot more.

    All these year on and all Bohemia seem interested in is adding more and more graphical bells and whistles to their engine while utterly breaking their own games.

  85. 26/06/2009 at 10:49 JM says:

    Howard,

    “(another hint: if I am stationary, crouched, holding my breath, aiming down the sights of a gun at a target less than 10 metres away while remaining utterly stationary, I HIT the damned thing. Another hint: bullets travel fast. Very fast. It does NOT take a full second for a bullet to travel 3 metres. Ever. Not once. Really.)”

    Firstly, you can’t hold your breath forever. Just hold it when you want to shoot. You should not be missing much on that range.

    Secondly, a full second? There’s something seriously wrong there – the bullet mechanics are top notch.

  86. 26/06/2009 at 10:52 Howard says:

    @Jim
    Yup, a full second.
    I was crouched, during said mission, in a gateway. I stuck my back against the right hand wooden post and fired at the left hand wooden post. it took one, whole, English second for the impact to show up.

    And I didn’t miss “that much”, but it was enough to annoy me. Think I missed 4 targets and not one of them was my fault.

  87. 26/06/2009 at 10:53 Howard says:

    that last comment was “@JM”

    Gah! We need edit back!

  88. 26/06/2009 at 10:56 JM says:

    Do you still have “hold breath” bound to the RMB along with zoom? I decoupled them so I wouldn’t end up out of breath all the time.

    In the full game I have no problems with the bullet mechanics – close range stuff is instant, long range stuff as you’d expect. Not sure why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.

  89. 26/06/2009 at 11:01 D says:

    I see your point. I’m still on the fence myself. And to be honest, I’d wished it would be more accessible than it is. We’re more demanding of streamlined gameplay these days and Bohemia hasen’t been keeping up with it.

    But when I hear complaining (not from you so much :) ) about confusion and inability to spot enemies – I just think “well, find a better suited game” because it simply isn’t for everyone.

    It’ll be interesting to see if OPF2 is going to grab this presumably huge casual-military-sim-fan.

  90. 26/06/2009 at 11:01 D says:

    Oh man am I slow huh. That was for Howard again :)

  91. 26/06/2009 at 11:03 Howard says:

    @JM
    yeah, I separated them – stupid design them being together, tbh.
    I imagine it is a result of the engine running so badly. I am likely getting lag as I would online as the engine is flapping about trying to render everything (badly).

    Interestingly I’ve just been messing about with the benchmark (didn’t spot it at first). If I put everything to max details (actual max, not global settings max) at 1600×1200 I get an average of 16 FPS in the benchmark.
    If I change this down to global Very High, I get 18. Global high 22.
    If I drop the res to 1280×1024 (another thing the engine cannot handle as you cannot set refresh rates manually…sigh…) at Very high I get 20FPS and High I get 24. Gaining 2 FPS per resolution drop or full details downgrade: yeah, great engine…

  92. 26/06/2009 at 11:05 D says:

    Also I understand that there must be something horribly wrong with your installation, and that will ofcourse insta-ruin any game. You should consider trying it again after a patch or two, I found the demo quite “fun”!

  93. 26/06/2009 at 11:06 Howard says:

    @D
    Oh yeah, I have no complaints about the difficulty. Anyone who has soldiered through the ioriginal OFP campaigns will have no issue there. My complaint is functionality. As far as I can see they have done nothing to fix the issues of ARMA 1 (AI is still a shambles) and while I am not demanding that the game should run flat out on my rig, I am demanding that it should be playable at a REASONABLE amount of detail. However the only way to get a playable framerate is to turn the detail down so far that I cannot actually see what the hell I am shooting at or being shot by.

  94. 26/06/2009 at 11:25 Paul Moloney says:

    “Are you guys playing a different game to me”

    Wow, it does seem like it alright. I was very impressed on how smoothly it ran and how slick it was. I wasn’t at all impressed with the Arma I demo and, hearing about the issues surrounding the sequel, I definitely wanted to check out the demo of II before I even thought about buying it, especially since I’ve never really played soldier sims before. I was impressed with the performance, the tutorials, the interface and even the fact that it automatically picked up all my joysticks settings (something Flight Sim X couldn’t do). Go figure. I wonder are the wildly different performance issues related to video drivers?

    P.

  95. 26/06/2009 at 11:38 Howard says:

    @Paul M
    Well I’ve got the lastest drivers and updates as I always do so I doubt it. Odd you should say that it picked up your joystick perfectly. Even though I have a Sidewinder, probably the most popular joystick ever, I had to teach ARMA all about it before it would talk to it properly and even then it still thinks the throttle control is not an analogue slider.
    Regarding tutorials and whatnot: sure they are reasonably clear, but with the issues around the objective markers being barely visible and your own men in boot camp thinking you are part of the target practice the experience is more than a little lessened.
    Since posting I have continued to try and make this work smoothly but I simply cannot. The only way to get even CLOSE to smooth is to take most of the details to normal or below and that is simply not gonna fly with me.

  96. 26/06/2009 at 11:43 Slippery Jim says:

    If you have issues with the game, let the devs know directly:

    Full game feedback: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=75537

    Demo feedback: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76187

  97. 26/06/2009 at 11:58 Howard says:

    Actually, just for the sake of honesty, I have to admit I checked nvidia’s site just now and realised that I am a release behind on drivers! Oh noes! lol They are just the WHQL release of what I am using anyway, but, like a good sport, I downloaded them and installed them.
    And man! what a difference! That 1 frame per second extra has changed my world. =) Sorry, will stop with the sarcasm now
    Anyway, I am now able to get a whole 25 FPS average (dipping to 17 (eek!)) and going as high as 29. Still utter rubbish

    @SlipperyJim
    You are probably right but you will have to forgive my cynicism. As far as I can see ARMA 1 barely got any better after hundreds f hours of feedback so I cannot really see my voice changing anything at all…

  98. 26/06/2009 at 12:07 Howard says:

    More benchmark fun:
    1280×1024, Very High Details – 25FPS
    1280×1024, High Details – 25FPS
    1280×1024, High Details & shadows *disabled* – 26FPS!

    This engine is borked beyond my ability to insult it…

  99. 26/06/2009 at 12:29 shamanic miner says:

    It’s an odd one, I played it on my mate’s old Socket 939 dual core athlon with a 4850. I really expecting it to run like a dog due to the 4 year old CPU but it was super smooth at 1920×1200 normal detail and fillrate at 100%.

  100. 26/06/2009 at 12:34 Paul Moloney says:

    I’m on 2-gen old Catalyst drivers (9.4), but that’s because 9.5 and 9.6 have caused frequent freezing on my system when playing videos or games; seems to be a common problem.

    P.

  101. 26/06/2009 at 12:50 Thirith says:

    @Howard: Do you think all the people who say that the game’s running reasonably well and that they’re enjoying it are lying, either to you or to themselves? From what you’re writing, I believe everything that you’re saying – but since lots of people are quite positive about their experiences so far with the game or demo, I’m inclined to think that the game has problems with your setup (hardware, drivers, whatever). Doesn’t make it any less frustrating for you, obviously, but there’s a difference between a game that has showstopping bugs that occur on some rigs and a game that is technically crap regardless of what you’re running it on.

  102. 26/06/2009 at 13:10 Howard says:

    @Thirith
    Well, yes: people are deceiving themselves in the same way they did with ARMA 1. The only people I am seeing, apart from maybe 2 exceptions, who state that this game runs fine are either die-hard ARMA fans or are just so determined to believe that Bohemia got it right this time that they cannot see wood for the badly drawn trees. To those who are finding it acceptable but are of an actually sane disposition I would suggest 2 things. Either you are buying in to the hype of how much this game contains and therefore cutting it way more slack than it is due OR your standards of what is “acceptable” is very low.

    I’m not, as you have thankfully realised, being a AIM about this, but I do find myself wandering around with a huge sense of disbelief when I see people so eagerly downing the Cool-Aid. I have nothing to gain over hating this game so I did not set out with any preconceptions. If anything I was actually optimistic about it when I saw how impressed crufty old journos like Jim were about it (Sorry Jim, you know I love ya!). Cold hard fact is that if you look around sites that have reviewed ARMA 2 from a more clinical, none-fan base stand point, it is seen in a very different light.

  103. 26/06/2009 at 13:15 Howard says:

    Oh and as another fun point: The demo actually includes the latest patch that is yet to be released for PC. It apparently runs *better* than the full game O_O
    http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?s=b8c87d8560146ba73fe0d7998b597c7e&p=1328411&postcount=7

  104. 26/06/2009 at 13:16 Thirith says:

    @Howard: Thanks for your reply. I don’t want to get into a flamewar about this, so perhaps the following is ill-advised and stupid – but while you’re not being an AIM, you are being arrogant, telling people that their standards are too low or that they’re deluding themselves. Obviously I can’t judge the game itself from YouTube videos, so the following is just about the engine and visuals, but there are obviously people out there (including, it seems, the RPS crew and Eurogamer staff) who are running this at absolutely acceptable framerates – added to which, many of the videos I’ve seen (user videos, not Bohemia trailers) look absolutely gorgeous. Again, I’m not saying anything about how well (or not) the engine is optimised, but saying that any and every positive thing people say about the game is down to their being fanboys or dangerously deluded makes it difficult not to dismiss what you’re saying out of hand. Especially your last paragraph seems to boil down to “Those reviewers who agree with me have seen the light, hallelujah, while those who disagree with me are blind, deluded fools.”

  105. 26/06/2009 at 13:22 Dominic White says:

    I’d also like to repeat that the game runs very nicely at maxed-out detail on a several-year-old 32bit XP machine, as I have exhibited for the world to see in the above video. And again, my youtube clip there is a good 5 fps or more slower than usual, as Fraps recording takes a chunk out of it.

    Sure, call bullshit if you want, but I’ll post my DXDiag file if you don’t believe me.

  106. 26/06/2009 at 13:27 Howard says:

    @Thirith
    Fair comment, but it is hard not to see ARMA fans as deluded, drooling fools some days =)
    With the best will in the world that game is utterly unplayable. I’m sure the multiplayer is grand and those that do have great fun in it, but I bought it as a single player game and to this day I cannot get past the third mission though I regularly try.

    ARMA is unfortunately trumpeted by people who exclusively use it as a multiplayer game and it seems, to me at least, that Bohemia have cottoned on to that and put all their focus there. All fine and good but it leaves people like me rather out in the cold.

    Anyway, all that aside, with ARMA 2 there are clearly issues and I cannot divine what. I build gaming rigs for a living and while I admit (as I did at the start) that my PC is no longer cutting edge, it is far from shabby. It is perfectly installed (indeed freshly so, but a week ago), has nothing on here bar games (no whacky codecs, no media players: no software at all bar what came with Vista) and plays every recent title without a hitch (eg: Far Cry 2, 1600×1200, Max Dx10 details: never drop below 35 FPS). As I said back in one of the first preview posts about ARMA 2, if this game looked mind-bendingly good and was the Crysis for a new generation, then I might accept bad performance and just play on low details. Problem is that no matter WHAT I tweak I cannot get good performance here and moreover I am still plagued by a mouse input that is totally out of time with what I am doing.

    Could it be my system? Of course, thus is the nature of PCs! Do I think it will turn out to be my system? Not for a second. I really, really, REALLY know what I am doing with gaming rigs

  107. 26/06/2009 at 13:29 Howard says:

    @Domonic White
    Please can you elaborate. Exactly what settings are you using, what is your hardware and what is your Min/max/average FPS? (Even just running the benchmark would suffice..)

    As I say, the argument may be getting lost in the details…

  108. 26/06/2009 at 13:29 Jim Rossignol says:

    Howard: I’ve not written my review yet, and when I do I think you’ll find it to be measured and balanced. A game is more than its performance issues, and in this case *much* more.

    I’m going to be reviewing it on what, so far, has been a frustrating, fascinating experience – not to mention it not running too badly on my not-that-buff PC.

  109. 26/06/2009 at 13:30 Nocode says:

    I’m more inclined to believe there’s some serious flaws/un-optimized features of this game.

    I’ve got a PC which is more or less at or above the recommended specs for this game: Q6600 @ Stock, 4GB RAM, GTX260 OC, Vista x64.

    I’m running at 1920 x 1200 @ 100% fillrate, with everything on normal and post-processing disabled. I’ve got the full 1.02 retail version of the game and I’m less than impressed with performance. I too hover between 25-30fps, and changing the graphics settings between low/high seems to have very little effect.

    In fact, I’d probably same this game seems to be more CPU dependent than GPU dependent… But I haven’t exactly got a crappy aged PC, but neither have I got an i7 CPU.

    I dunno, I’m quite dissapointed tbh. I’m just hoping that BI can look at the issues that are being widely reported in their forums and figure something out. Find they’ve overlooked something and can optimize things.

  110. 26/06/2009 at 13:39 Dominic White says:

    @Howard – copy-pasting my post from above:

    I’ve got a fairly aged PC, and run the game at maxed out detail. In fact, I uploaded a video of it to youtube here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDufigx7r7A

    And a direct download version (81mb) here:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fahmzwimqnm

    That’s 1440 x 900, maxed out detail on:

    Windows XP 32bit
    2GB RAM
    2.13ghz Core2Duo
    ATI 4850HD
    Creative Audigy 2

    And very playable too. Plus, recording via Fraps lowers the framerate by quite a bit as well.

  111. 26/06/2009 at 13:42 Nafe says:

    Howard, just so you know I never even knew about the Original Arma being a spiritual sequel to OpF until Arma 2 started getting attention. I’m no OpF fanboy – though I played it briefly and was very impressed with the scale. I say this so you have context – I’m not a silly fanboy looking at this game with rose tinted specs.

    C2D E6600, 4Gb of Ram, 8800 Ultra (768mb), Vista 32bit. The game runs beautifully – 40-50fps on normal settings, with everything maxed out, full 1920×1200 on 3d and normal resolution, all the settings topped with the exception of AA and AF which are at low and normal respectively it looks and plays really quite well. I intent to tweak things a bit but in its current state I find it’s completely playable at what feels like 25-30fps, though I’ve not tried fraps yet.

    It strikes me that given the evidence, you might want to consider that it’s not the game that’s completely buggy but merely that it doesn’t perform so well on your system. I read a thread on the BI forum suggesting that Nvidia 2xx series struggle (though a few came back saying this isn’t the case). Either way, plenty of people are playing it fine on modest systems, myself included, and it is pretty absurd to accuse them of deluding themselves rather than thinking the problem lies somewhere between you and the game.

  112. 26/06/2009 at 13:42 Bluester says:

    @Howard

    It runs fine on my system. You’re right though, BIS doesn’t really do the single player aspect that well. You should try getting online and playing 30 player coop missions, that’s where ArmA 2 really excels. Despite the very noticable bugs in the current version i’m absolutely blown away by what BI have achieved with the game.

    People seem to forget how bugged Operation Flashpoint was when it came out.

  113. 26/06/2009 at 13:44 Nocode says:

    Also, like some people here I also experience a degree of mouse lag when playing the game. I read somewhere that for Nvidia graphics cards you can change a driver setting called “Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames” to a lower setting e.g. 0 or 1 (think the default is 2 or 3) and it reduces or eliminates the lag.

    I think this setting seems to relate to how many frames are pre-rendered by the CPU before being passed to the GPU. Therefore, as changing the graphics settings seems to yield very little result for me I thought I might as well take the strain of the CPU and let the GPU do more. It has kind of worked for me as I know how less input lag.

    However, I still faced with less than stellar performance from the game itself. Also, I don’t really think it’s conclusive evidence that the game doesn’t tax my GPU, but my GPU does seem to be much much cooler when playing ARMA2 compared to most games. If I play something like ‘The Witcher’ than my GPU gets quite hot and the fan ramps-up, but playing ARMA2 it seems noticeable cooler (e.g 10c under load cooler).

  114. 26/06/2009 at 13:44 Howard says:

    @Domonic
    Just downloaded you video. Fuckign WOW! You really ARE playing a different game than me. Even from that vid I can see that your rendering is FAR smoother than mine and that you have no mouselag. But given that my machine is a lot more powerful than yours, what the hell is going on? The post above from Nocode seems to reflect my experiences too, so I am at least not alone…

  115. 26/06/2009 at 14:02 Nocode says:

    @Dominic
    Yeah, I’ve just watched your video and it is like watching a different game. I’ve got a better PC than you e.g. 2GB RAM extra, quad-core w/ clock speed slightly higher and GPU ~ the same and mine doesn’t run that smoothly.

    I am running a higher resolution than you, but all my settings are at normal and I barely get 30fps. I’m not sure if it’s down to Vista x64, or ATI vs Nvidia. I don’t know what tbh, but I can certainly say mine doesn’t run that smoothly. I’m just hoping there’s something obvious that BIS have missed and patching it resolves the issues I’ve got with ARMA2.

  116. 26/06/2009 at 14:18 Paul Moloney says:

    “The only people I am seeing, apart from maybe 2 exceptions, who state that this game runs fine are either die-hard ARMA fans or are just so determined to believe that Bohemia got it right this time that they cannot see wood for the badly drawn trees. ”

    Oh, well, there’s me, who was completely bored by both Arma 1 and never really got into Operation Flashpoint, but found the Arma 2 demo ran like butter and went online to buy it straight away.

    But then, since I don’t fit in your neat stereotype, feel free to ignore me and continue your Angry Internet Man impression.

    P.

  117. 26/06/2009 at 14:20 Markoff Chaney says:

    Went ahead and made the plunge and bought the game yesterday. Played and tweaked for a couple hours last night (and just played some this morning since I was finally almost satisfied). The scope and breadth of the game is without parallel, imo.

    Running on a C2D E8400@3.0ghz, 3.25gb o’ RAM (thanks XP32!), and an 8800GTS (512mb OCed) this is a beast. I game at 1280×1024. I’ve played with everything (though rendering distance will still get a few more passes for optimization) and I’ve gotten to where I can run with about half of the settings on high and half on medium (and some, like AA and Post Processing just off) and I seem to hover around 35FPS during that first mission (with it dropping to the high 20s during some explosions in that intro mission (I missed the benchmark. I’ll have to go back to get some hard numbers)). Blech.

    30FPS is barely playable, to me, but I’m an old school push the FPS twitch gamer. Mouse is a little floaty, but I love being able to move my head a bit and aim without moving my whole head feeling like it has had its vertebrae fused together. The engine is pretty bad, but it is doing a LOT.

    I’ve heard differing things about the maximum pre-rendered frames. Some say put it to 8, some say to 0. In a post, someone in BIS said that it is CPU heavy, but that it was more dependent on the speed of the processor. For example, a 2.2ghz Quad doesn’t necessarily run faster than a 3.0ghz Dual (I think that was the example he used and he also said in “busy” parts it may be better) but a 3.0ghz Quad will definitely run faster. I don’t mind tweaking my games. Hell, that’s always been half my fun. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve fired a game up I just bought and made it run perfectly then put it back down until I was in the mood for it.

    Regardless, seeing the support BIS threw toward ArmA I feel confident they will keep working on the engine and optimizing it for us. I also have no doubt the community of this game will be phenomenal. Single Player is fun, and a requirement for me, but MP with a large squad promises to be unparalleled thus far. I am, to some degrees, buying in to the hype (hey, I owned a lifetime Hellgate membership!) but I strive to reward those who try for too much rather than those that embrace mediocrity and the lowest common denominator. I just wish their engine (right now) was a little nicer to the bell curve of computer specs out there.

  118. 26/06/2009 at 14:21 pkt-zer0 says:

    AMD Athlon 64X2 6000+, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 8800GT. Tried using the benchmark, just to see what it takes to go above 30 FPS. No antialiasing used in any of the tests, render resolution is 100% unless noted.

    Everything on very high, 1280×960 – 22 FPS
    Everything on normal, 1024×768 – 27 FPS
    Everything on normal, 640×480 – 28 FPS
    Quality preference set to “Very low” – 30 FPS
    Everything on normal, minimum visibility, 320×240 render resolution, 640×480 – 31 FPS

    Brilliant. Time to go SLI so I can possibly run it at more than 30 frames in a resolution as high as 400×300!

  119. 26/06/2009 at 14:28 Quinnbeast says:

    Can someone point me in the direction of the Arma II Demo article?

    I can only find this one at the moment, which appears to need some modification to the title – ‘Howard’s PC: Tears and Heartache’.

  120. 26/06/2009 at 14:32 Howard says:

    Okay, a conclusion: something is wrong. There is definitely something up here, be it a driver incompatability, or a code pathing error I do not know, but something ain’t right.

    At 1600×1200 all Very High details I get 22FPS in the benchmark
    At the same details when playing the solo mission I get about 22 FPS
    With everything set to Very Low (and unbelievably ugly) I get 29FPS in the benchmark and about 28 FPS in the single player mission.

    Something is bottleknecked somewhere. Therefore I shall leave of with with the criticism until it becomes apparent what it is (when I say that I mean until Bohemia/Nvidia realise their mistake, ‘cos the fault damned well ain’t mine!)

    @Nocode – your suggestion about prerender seems to have helped the mouse lag – cannot tell for certain because at under 30FPS you just get lag period…

  121. 26/06/2009 at 14:32 Dominic White says:

    Just pointing out that while my video does look nice and smooth, it seldom (if ever) breaks the 30fps mark.

    But that’s fine, because it’s not a twitch shooter. It’s a realistic military sim, and maybe one in a hundred encounters will be decided by that split-second reaction. Every other time, it’s a matter of tactics and planning.

    As you can see, it’s very playable and looks lovely even at the chuggy rates I get while recording, so just adjust your expectations and you’ll have a much better time of it.

  122. 26/06/2009 at 14:32 Howard says:

    @Quinnbeast – go troll elsewhere…

  123. 26/06/2009 at 14:34 Howard says:

    @Domonic WHite
    ARGH! I may have to retract the above post if that is the case! Sub 30FPS is utterly and completely not acceptable to me. Ever. For any reason. It is headache inducing watching a game run that slow!

  124. 26/06/2009 at 14:37 Dominic White says:

    …. But you just said my video looked smooth? And playable?

    Make up your sodding mind already!

  125. 26/06/2009 at 14:37 Dominic White says:

    Oh, nevermind. You will never be pleased. Ever.

  126. 26/06/2009 at 14:45 Howard says:

    I said it looked smooth as in there was no mouse lag. However it is not really possible to judge how smooth it is to play from a small video that has been run through all kinds of compression. Shrinking it down adds smoothness to start with.
    Admittedly I’d be happy right now to get it running smoothly at around 30 FPS but I cannot.

    Wanting a game, no expecting a game, to run at more than 30FPS is hardly unreasonable…

  127. 26/06/2009 at 14:49 Nocode says:

    @Dominic
    I wonder if your video creates the impression of being smoother because you’ve got post-processing enabled? Perhaps that helps to mask the issue? Have you tried without?

  128. 26/06/2009 at 14:53 Markoff Chaney says:

    @Dominic & Howard – Coming from a heavy twitch background (I also loved OFP and the more strategic thinking shooters too though) I can handle 30FPS since I’m supposed to be taking my time as well. I probably didn’t make that clear but, even with my desire toward faster rendering, it was perfectly playable at 30FPS. Now, understand this is coming from someone who considers anything less than 50 FPS (in a standard twitch based First Person Shooter) to be utterly unplayable and who’s really happy in triple digits.

    This is a Military Simulator and not Painkiller or Serious Sam so a completely different skill set is required. Playing at 30FPS in this game is completely acceptable and completely playble to me and I did so for an hour this morning and killed 6 OPFOR with no problems. This is because I thought about how I was going to kill them and worked on executing a strategy, even if it took a while. That being said, when my wife came down last night to ask how my new game was, I turned to her and said “It’s great. When I can buy a new video card and processor?”. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that, though. Something else always pushes past bleeding edge…

  129. 26/06/2009 at 15:00 GregP says:

    My experience so far is that the game is often CPU-limited: Task Manager shows a consistent 100% CPU usage on my dual-core machine, with resultant annoying “hiccups” during missions.

  130. 26/06/2009 at 15:02 Dominic White says:

    I’ve provided a direct download link to my video for anyone who wants to know how it looks with much less compression, minus downscaling to half my normal res.

    Imagine things looking twice as sharp, and actual gameplay is at least 5fps faster due to it not recording.

  131. 26/06/2009 at 15:03 Howard says:

    @Markoff Chaney
    fair enough but I am not even getting 30 FPS and no matter what I put my settings to I continue not to get it. The game is literately staggering along like a dying horse. The mouse movement whips you round in a ridiculous blur and the input is so sluggish that aiming is impossible. Clearly (especially now I have read the forums) there are other issues here. Once they are resolved we will see how 3-FPS feel, but I doubt it will be acceptable.

  132. 26/06/2009 at 15:03 Howard says:

    EDIT – “30FPS” obviously, not 3…doh

  133. 26/06/2009 at 15:04 Trombone says:

    I have tried the game on both xp 32bit and windows 7 64bit (dual boot). I am running a core2 duo 2.7gig, and an ATI4850, not a million miles from Dominic White’s set-up. For reasons I have yet to deduce, winxp is far smoother than win7 on identical settings, running on average about 30% faster with significantly less stuttering. I have tried disabling the audio to see if that was a factor as the win7 drivers aren’t really mature yet, but it made no difference.

    This strikes me as a little odd as win7 has been consistently quicker than xp with any other game I have tried.

  134. 26/06/2009 at 15:05 Paul Moloney says:

    Is it possible that your CPU is throttling? I once had weird performance issues with some games until I realised that one pin on my CPU heatsink wasn’t seated properly to the motherboard; the CPU was overheating, not enough to cut out, but to throttle back during demanding games. Or, it could be good old dust as well. Worth checking.

    P.

  135. 26/06/2009 at 15:09 Trombone says:

    I should point out that I am referring to the demo version as opposed to the full game.

  136. 26/06/2009 at 15:11 Howard says:

    @Paul Moloney
    Way ahead of you! =)

    Already taken the PC apart and cleaned it this morning. Also stripped out the thermal liquid and replaced it, reseated the fan and cleaned it and then carefully mounted the entire thing. All is well.
    I have noticed that the CPU is under 80-100% load when playing, but that is to be expected given what is going on. The fact that dramatically scaling back the details has no effect would normally indicate a CPU bottleneck but I am unconvinced thus far. Will keep playing around…

  137. 26/06/2009 at 15:19 Markoff Chaney says:

    It is odd the disparity that some seemingly similar systems are getting. I can only hope for some kind of ArmA 1 “OMG almost 100% frame rate increase patch?” optimization in some future patch. Part of the problem in investing in an idea or hope is that the dividends may not be what are expected. Really odd to hear about Windows 7 performance. My next thought was to install it on the Vista Partition to see how she goes, but I only fire that up for L4D it seems. Darn post 178 nVidia drivers and XP with the Source engine grumble grumble…

  138. 26/06/2009 at 15:21 Nocode says:

    Interestingly, an updated patch has come out today.

    http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1330520#post1330520

    I don’t think it will see any major performance improvement for us though, unless we’ve got >= 8GB of RAM in our systems. But, hey – it’s worth trying?

  139. 26/06/2009 at 15:24 Howard says:

    No the new patch just brings the retail to the same version number as the demo.

    On the subject of CPU overheats. You got me worried so I checked =)
    Running Orthos flat out for half an hour now and both cores are at a steady 60 C at full load. At least that rules out heat. May still be that my CPU is just underpowered but…well.. seems a little unlikely, no?

  140. 26/06/2009 at 15:42 El_MUERkO says:

    New Patch:

    It’s a new release of 1.02 bringing it in line with the demo, niceness includes fully implemented Anti-Aliasing.

    Forum Post Here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1330520#post1330520

    Download Location Here: http://www.arma2.com/support/updates/file/54-arma2patch_102_58134.html?lang=en

  141. 26/06/2009 at 15:43 Colthor says:

    @Trombone:
    I had the opposite experience; Win7 was marginally faster and smoother in most cases than XPx64, using ArmAIIMark to test. Hey ho.
    (4870 1GB, cat9.6; Q6700@3GHz; 4GB RAM)

    I found dropping terrain to Normal or Low and post-processing to Low made the biggest improvements.

  142. 26/06/2009 at 15:44 clive dunn says:

    Omg this actually runs on my laptop!
    Looks like someone’s jizzed on my screen but it runs!

    Dell XPS1330 btw

  143. 26/06/2009 at 15:45 Thirith says:

    Seeing how much the original ArmA‘s performance improved through patches, I have doubts that the ArmA 2 engine isn’t exactly well optimised. It’s amazing to see how much the results diverge even on fairly similar builds. It’s also one of the reasons why I’m happy to wait a few weeks or even months before getting the game – Bohemia did a great job optimising the first game via patches, so in that respect I’m happy that I’m only now playing it. (Their dodgy single-player campaign is more difficult to defend, but in that respect I’m perfectly happy with the mods, Cold War Rearmed in particular. Operation Flashpointy goodness!)

  144. 26/06/2009 at 16:35 Pedwarpump says:

    Weird, I’ve got the same setup as Dom White, it was running real slow (~20fps) on mid settings. I re-installed graphics drivers and cranked the setting up to V.High and it runs around 40fps now? I heard ARMA I did something similar.

  145. 26/06/2009 at 17:29 mrrobsa says:

    Really wanted to enjoy this but found it sluggish (2.4 DualCore, 9800GX2, 4gb, 1900×1200) and unbelievably broken. Played for a couple of hours and I swear each ‘life’ was accompanied by a different bug.
    Getting ‘stuck’ in the air, walking clean through any building/wall, ragdolls that slide off to infinity, heads disappearing into torsos, Autosaves when I am critically injured. Quite funny in a free demo, but I’d be sad if I’d bought this in it’s current state.
    What a shame.

  146. 26/06/2009 at 19:55 Dominic White says:

    That updated patch that just went live adds proper antialiasing to the game – a feature which Howard and co were grumbling about the lack of. It seems to be practically free in terms of performance, and really helps smooth out the rough edges.

  147. 26/06/2009 at 21:08 MrMud says:

    I was really intersted in this game but after spending just a few minutes with it im not sure im convinced.

    The depth of field effects make me dizzy by just looking at the screen (something that never happens otherwise) and the mouse feels extremely imprecise and floaty.

  148. 26/06/2009 at 21:18 cowthief skank says:

    Installed the demo, made no changes to settings, ran smooth (except for the odd freeze – due almost certainly to my computer being fucked as it does exactly the same playing videos or mp3s). Think I have an E6700 (or something? Core 2 Duo; one of the first ones to come out. Been so long I forgot what), a Geforce 9800GT and 4GB RAM. Running Windows 7 RC. Been so long since I put my system together I have kinda forgotten what it contains.

    Running at 1920×1200. Made no attempt to optimise, just wanted to give it a quick go to see how it felt. Simply default settings. Am almost definitely gonna buy it as it was great fun even just one play of the demo mission where you start in a helicopter. An unsuccessful attempt at the mission was more engaging than some entire games I have played. I love having to think about what I am doing. Even if I am rubbish at it.

  149. 26/06/2009 at 21:52 Howard says:

    @Dominic
    Those of us playing the demo already had that patch. The AA is highly impacting on the performance: sorry and all…

  150. 26/06/2009 at 22:10 Dominic White says:

    I only lose 2fps on average using low AA, so… yeah, you ARE playing a different game to me.

  151. 26/06/2009 at 23:13 Markoff Chaney says:

    Wow.

    So I just ran this ArmAII-Mark mission 3 times. First time was with my 2 hours fiddled with “optimized settings”. I got a 2798. Then I lowered all settings to the worst possible. I got a 4919. I then cranked all settings to the absolute highest possible (outside of 3D resolution which I left at 100%). I got a 2848. I got a higher score on the test with everything turned on than I did my optimized settings.

    I had been reading that if you reduced everything to the lowest, then turned them back up that the game somehow rendered those new settings almost as fast as the lower ones. I didn’t believe it, but I have some tasty pudding here… Now to run more tests. :)

  152. 26/06/2009 at 23:34 Howard says:

    @Dominic
    Yes you are as I am playing the demo and you are not, and “low” AA does virtually nothing so its impact is unimportant, and because you apparently do not understand what a render path issue is. Which this game has.

    @Markoff
    I think this may be the issue. People who claim they are getting uber settings on hardware that clearly cannot handle it. The game is simply not making the changes it claims to be, i.e., changing everything to Very High detail does no such thing, instead leaving the user on normal or so as the game realises it cannot handle what it is being asked to do.
    We’ll see in 6 months once Bohemia extract a digit from an orifice and patch this monstrosity.

  153. 26/06/2009 at 23:59 Stromko says:

    Two words – Motion Blur.

    When your character turns, he experiences instant vertigo and his environment turns into a smear. This is not realistic, at least not for someone who hasn’t suffered a serious concussion and needs immediate help. It doesn’t help that due to the insane upsampling/downsampling shenanigans, the lead character clearly has myopia(short-sightedness).

    It can’t be disabled, except by disabling ALL post-processing effects.

    I posted to the demo feedback thread, and hopefully they do make motion blur a separate option, someday, because I’d quite like to play ARMA II but right now I have an option between a) vomiting uncontrollably / experiencing horrific migraines, or b) ruining the graphics by disabling a very important effect.

    I can’t fathom why BI decided to make their game look so horrible with this upsampling junk, and the sickening motion blur / no post-process choice. Did they not put this in front of testers, or did they assume the testers were vomiting uncontrollably because it was ‘so awesome’?

  154. 27/06/2009 at 01:35 Markoff Chaney says:

    A few more tests and I’ve got her to a pretty stable 40+ (in the woods lol) with my shame being that my visibility stays around 2000. Post Processing and AA disabled. Texture and Video card memory at high and everything else is normal. Zoomed in I get to break 60, even with a few other on the screen at the same time. I want the full 10000 one day but anything over about 2050 starts giving me a somewhat noticeable FPS dip whereas it barely drops but maybe 1-2 FPS per 600 until that 2000. I’m sure it will change when I’m in a city though.

    I can toggle AF from off to Very High with 0 FPS hit (well, maybe 1). AA, however, is a noticeable hit of about 20% even at low, for me. That’s ok, to me. AA is the last thing I usually ever turn on when tuning an engine up. Again, I like it fast as I can see it and 60 frames a second would get me killed out against the lions. Good thing I’ve moved on a bit as a primate goes…

    I can see how playing this with mates would make it the ultimate coop experience, from a “complete this objective” viewpoint. I have to try to talk some of mine into it or maybe we can get a group going somehow. Intelligent people playing together is always a pleasure. The modability of the game is what really brought me to the game and the infinite possibilities contained in the future of community building.

    The motion blur is vomit inducing at best. I liken it to me not having my glasses on while running. I’m legally blind without my glasses. Off it stays. :) I hope we can put the rest of the pretty stuff in soon. In the config file (if you edit it manually) the values for it vacillate between 8, 16 and 32, so I assume further delineation is somewhat possible.

  155. 27/06/2009 at 01:37 Markoff Chaney says:

    Come home to me edit button! – Also limiting the pre-rendered frames in the nVidia control panel to 1 helped a bit. I need to try 2 and 0 as well, though. 3 is default.

  156. 28/06/2009 at 03:25 psyk says:

    mmmm the first page of http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73947 says to set it on 8 havent read pass that so might of changed on a later page.

  157. 29/06/2009 at 11:22 Markoff Chaney says:

    Balderdash(in my experience)! 8 was the first setting I tried, based on that guide. I saw no improvement, maybe even a decrease in FPS. The drop to 1 or 2 is noticeable from 3 and I did gain a few FPS in the process.

    Another thing I found really helped out was disabling Pointer Precision on my mouse. I usually leave it off but ArmA2 was on a fresh install and I hadn’t done it yet. Feels less floaty now. Of course, the higher FPS helps in that department too.

  158. 29/06/2009 at 13:42 Chicken Dinner says:

    P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM and a 256MB AGP card… runs smoothly on the lowest resolution. The blurring actually makes it seem more realistic than looking at hard, defined edges. I’m shooting at blobs rather than pixels if I don’t have a scope, but from what I remember of OpFP I spent a lot of time shooting at bushes anyway, which amounts to the same thing. Textures and mem are on low, but terrain and object detail, and Aniso are all Very High. It’s certainly got a great feel to it, and the demo’s convinced me to buy.

  159. 29/06/2009 at 13:54 Howard says:

    Okay, this is probably most relevant to those with a GeForce 2XX card, but anyway: hope it helps.

    Turn your Pre-Rendered Farames int eh Nvida control panel to 0. 8 Won’t work but 0 seems to help
    Turn OFF the PhysX accelration in the Nvidia control panel.
    While you are setting the Pre-rendered frames, ensure that VSYNC is disabled.
    Open up the .CFG file found in My Documents\ARMA2 and edit it so that your resolution and 3D resolution are the same.
    In ARMA2 itself ensure that you have “hold breath” bound to a separate key. I did this but the game forgot so check it. For some ungodly reason “hold breath” was at least part of the cause for the massive FPS drop I got when zoomed.
    Last point: Ignore the benchmark. As far as I can see it is broken (or at least brings out the worst in the game). That very first scene you see with the man on the cliff has bugger all in it yet I cannot get out of the teens FPS wise. To test your FPS play an actual mission.

    With all this done I not have it set to 1600×1200, all details on very high bar AA which is on low (the AA they have implemented is geared for ATI cards it seems) and Post Processing which I have on Low (‘cos it is VERY badly implemented) and, in a mission, I get 25-35 FPS. This is still pathetically low and I still have some mouselag issues, but I can at least play a mission to see what the game feels like.

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