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 XPRecommended 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
Related Stories:
@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.
@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.
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
@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.”
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.
@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
@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…
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.
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.
@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.
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.
@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.
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).
@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…
@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.
“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.
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.
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!
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’.
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…
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.
@Quinnbeast – go troll elsewhere…
@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!
…. But you just said my video looked smooth? And playable?
Make up your sodding mind already!
Oh, nevermind. You will never be pleased. Ever.
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…
@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?
@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…
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.
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.
@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.
EDIT – “30FPS” obviously, not 3…doh
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.
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.
I should point out that I am referring to the demo version as opposed to the full game.
@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…
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…
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?
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?
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
@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.
Omg this actually runs on my laptop!
Looks like someone’s jizzed on my screen but it runs!
Dell XPS1330 btw
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@Dominic
Those of us playing the demo already had that patch. The AA is highly impacting on the performance: sorry and all…
I only lose 2fps on average using low AA, so… yeah, you ARE playing a different game to me.