Is FB more optimized than the others?

[RockinHarry]

 

Buildings are nasty things for the virtual environment.  They contain more polygons than you think because of the windows, doors, floors, roofs, and need to make them appear 3D (i.e. there are interior walls too).  For sure there's all kinds of tricks with these things in terms of what is hitting the CPU/GPU at one time, but there's still more going on there than you might think.  I also suspect, though am not sure, that the visual blocking nature of tall buildings has an impact on redrawing speeds.

However, buildings are nasty for another reason... LOS.  Think of how different and more complicated a 5 story building with a couple dozen windows is compared to a rock or a bunch of trees in terms of LOS.  Then think of the poor CPU and RAM having to deal with that difference.

I've made a note of the building factor, though it's probably like trees in that some people are fine and others are hammered by them.

Steve

Good description, thanks. Another factor worth to mention probably is that unlike trees, CMX2 buildings both cast and receive shadows. Certain games, particularly in the FPS departement use various techniques that blend out actions and geometry beyond a limited distance. I.e units get cached away in memory, backside faces of certain geometry is not drawn and all that. Unlike CMX2, in many high quality GFX games you can not freely (virtually) camera move across a map outside the fixed player POV. Something like that frees more resources for drawing a higher quality environment in the imediate area of the player. IMHO CMX2 achieves a good balance of speed and quality if you largely remain on ground level, the actual player POV. 

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, the pervasive camera viewpoint is the single biggest reason our bag of tricks is way, way, way smaller than a AAA game.  The other reason is that inherently CM is about putting hundreds of "actors" into a single battle, sometimes thousands, whereas most AAA games it's dozens with a very hard cap.  CM is like someone needing a transport for both use while living in a city as well as traveling freely at any time anywhere, AAA games are like someone never having to leave a city block.  Not only a car cuts way down on personal expenses and therefore the money can be used to buy other things.  Which means the urban only guy has enough money to regularly buy $8 cappuccinos while the guy with the car has to buy his coffee at McDonalds

Steve

[RockinHarry]

I´ve not tried ARMA III yet, but I know from ARMA II that the majority of at least the larger buidlings are simple facaded empty boxes, inaccessible to any player. A larger number of buildings with usable interiors had been added through modders or provided by default in the case of the Iron Front 1944 derivative of ARMA II. While these sort of buildings are fun to play with by a human player, but also decreasing general performance of the game, there´s a remaining problem for the AIP´s path finding capabilities which appears to be a challenge for almost all game companies who attempt moving a whole lot of "actors" in a 3D environment. In the case of CMX2 there´s countless actors, including vehicles, single soldiers, projectiles and all one way or the other interacting with the games 3D environment, either through collision or path finding to avoid it.

Another game performance bottleneck from my personal experience appears to be sound file playing, when there´s a lot of shooting and action on parts of the map.

[AstroCat]

I tried CarlWAW's saved game file with the following settings and in the same position showed 35fps. As I moved around I stayed usually in the high 20s but I did see some high teens at a few places. If I moved 3d Model: Better to anything higher I got a big drop in fps though, same as the other CMx2 games.

Please note: Turning off the NCP AA and AA-T made zero changes in my fps although the image quality was of course much worse. The screen "crawling" is pretty much eliminated with them both at 4x and I get zero fps loss.

In game: 

Display Size: Desktop (1920x1080)
Vsync: On
Antialiasing: On
3d Model: Better
3d Texture: Better
High Priority: On

Nvidia Control Panel profiles setup for the CMx2 games:

Ambient Occlusion: Not supported for this application
Anisotropic filtering:16x
Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On
Antialiasing - Mode: Enhance the application setting
Antialiasing - Setting: 4x
Antialiasing - Transparency: 4x (supersample)
CUDA - GPUs: All
Double Precision: None
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 4
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): Off
Multi-display/Mixed-GPU Acceleration: Single display performance mode
Power Management Mode: Prefer maximum performance
Shader Cache: On
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization: Off
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Clamp
Texture Filtering - Quality: High Quality
Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On
Threaded Optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: On
Vertical Sync:Adaptive
Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1

 

Edited January 12, 2016 by AstroCat

[Hister]

AstroCat, what if you set the NCP settings to "Application controlled"? Get any more frames out of it? Do you lose visual quality if doing so?

[AstroCat]

AstroCat, what if you set the NCP settings to "Application controlled"? Get any more frames out of it? Do you lose visual quality if doing so?

Same fps in the test spot. Moving around seemed very similar. On that map since it's so big I can find a place to get 60fps and I can find a place to get 18-19fps. Average is prob high 20's, to low 30's overall.

[Hister]

Lost any visual quality by going "application controlled" or not? 

[AstroCat]

Lost any visual quality by going "application controlled" or not? 

Honestly it was a bit hard to tell. Antialiasing - Transparency: 4x (supersample) is the big one for increasing quality because it gets rid of almost all of the "shimmering" on movement. I think the Antialiasing was a bit better setting it to 4x and since there was no fps change I will probably keep them both set to 4x with "Enhance the application setting". I'll keep messing around with it as well and see if I can come up with a better set of settings but so far this seems to be the best balance I've come up with.

Oh and I am definitely open to suggestions!

 

Edited January 18, 2016 by AstroCat

[WallysWorld]

I've been using the AA setting in the CMx2 games instead of setting any sort of AA through nVidia Inspector. Been doing that for a number of years with my 660Ti and now GTX 970. At 1920x1080 resolution, the game's AA looks better to me than setting AA at any level in nVidia Inspector. Even just selecting "Enhance the Application Setting" seems to make the graphics a bit jagged at least for me.

So I stick with the AA turned on in the game and leave the settings for nVidia's AA off.

[AstroCat]

Even if you use the in-game AA I highly recommend Antialiasing - Transparency: 4x (supersample), it makes a big difference in the image quality. Of course that is if it doesn't cost too many fps for you to turn it on.

Edited January 18, 2016 by AstroCat

[Bulletpoint]

No doubt about it... you definitely have higher expectations.  I saw that pretty clearly several pages ago because you argue like someone who has higher expectations.  I've debated issues like this for almost 2 decades and it's pretty easy for me to spot where people sit on the spectrum of whatever the topic is.

It's not me you replied to, but I'd like to chime in... I used to play CM on a really weak laptop, weak CPU, weak GPU, lack of system RAM, lack of video memory.. and I found that despite of all that, I could still play CM, and while it was choppy, it was playable on "balanced" settings. So, I was happy.

But I also assumed that if my crappy laptop could do that, then upgrading to a new powerful gaming computer would hit it out of the park, so to speak. Finally I would be able to crank up the graphics and enjoy smooth gameplay.

But now after I finally bought that new computer, I find that performance is not all that much better than on the weak laptop, despite the new PC being massively more powerful. It IS running better now, but it seems like marginal gains. Actually I thought it must be my PC that has a technical problem, or there must be some magic setting that I forgot to activate, but then I read on the forum that I'm not alone in having these issues.

And at the end of the day, it does impact my purchasing decisions. I'm still on CMBN and was looking forward to move on to Commonwealth or Red Thunder. Have been holding off on those because I hear they have many big battles, and I wanted to have a computer that could handle that before jumping in. Now I'm not so sure.

Please don't take it as a tantrum to not buy anything unless you cater to my preferences, I just thought you might like to get some feedback from a player who spent countless hours playing your game, started designing scenarios, and even heavily based his decision to buy a new computer on getting more fun out of your game.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Hister]

Even if you use the in-game AA I highly recommend Antialiasing - Transparency: 4x (supersample), it makes a big difference in the image quality. Of course that is if it doesn't cost too many fps for you to turn it on.

That indeed gets rid of a lot of shimmering in the game. Setting it to 4x or 8x supersample doesn't seem to make any FPS drop with my rig. Pairing it with Anisotropic filtering set to 16x even enhances the effect for real crisp visuals. 

Edited January 18, 2016 by Hister

[sburke]

It's not me you replied to, but I'd like to chime in... I used to play CM on a really weak laptop, weak CPU, weak GPU, lack of system RAM, lack of video memory.. and I found that despite of all that, I could still play CM, and while it was choppy, it was playable on "balanced" settings. So, I was happy.

But I also assumed that if my crappy laptop could do that, then upgrading to a new powerful gaming computer would hit it out of the park, so to speak. Finally I would be able to crank up the graphics and enjoy smooth gameplay.

But now after I finally bought that new computer, I find that performance is not all that much better than on the weak laptop, despite the new PC being massively more powerful. It IS running better now, but it seems like marginal gains. Actually I thought it must be my PC that has a technical problem, or there must be some magic setting that I forgot to activate, but then I read on the forum that I'm not alone in having these issues.

And at the end of the day, it does impact my purchasing decisions. I'm still on CMBN and was looking forward to move on to Commonwealth or Red Thunder. Have been holding off on those because I hear they have many big battles, and I wanted to have a computer that could handle that before jumping in. Now I'm not so sure.

Please don't take it as a tantrum to not buy anything unless you cater to my preferences, I just thought you might like to get some feedback from a player who spent countless hours playing your game, started designing scenarios, and even heavily based his decision to buy a new computer on getting more fun out of your game.

There are likely two different issues here.  One is the graphics, the other is flat out computing power. A larger map requires a lot more computing because of the spotting requirements.  Those with minimal computing specs can probably not even load these.  I expect with your upgrade that won't be an issue.  Personally I have no issues with map size these days.  As to graphics, how you are impacted can also have a lot to do with viewing aspect (at least that is what I think I am hearing from some of the above comments.) I guess I haven't really been bothered by those so much as I only use the high level viewing to get an overall impression of the battle - what new spotting icons have popped up, who is under fire (flashing icons etc).  I then zoom down to eyeball level to watch what actually occurs and at that level I never seem to have FPS issues.

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

  I then zoom down to eyeball level to watch what actually occurs and at that level I never seem to have FPS issues.

 

 

I get fps problems at ground level too, especially looking down the length of a map. Doesn't even need to be all that big of a map really. My old crummy laptop was using AMD tech, the new one is based on Nvidia graphics tech.

Maybe CM works better on the AMD machines ?

[AstroCat]

That indeed gets rid of a lot of shimmering in the game. Setting it to 4x or 8x supersample doesn't seem to make any FPS drop with my rig. Pairing it with Anisotropic filtering set to 16x even enhances the effect for real crisp visuals. 

Yep, exactly same here.

[AstroCat]

I get fps problems at ground level too, especially looking down the length of a map. Doesn't even need to be all that big of a map really. My old crummy laptop was using AMD tech, the new one is based on Nvidia graphics tech.

Maybe CM works better on the AMD machines ?

Nope, I'd stick with Nvidia for sure.

Edited January 19, 2016 by AstroCat

[Hister]

AMD GPU's are atested lower compatibility with CM games due to less support for openGL drivers.

 

I have AMD 6300 FX and have a hunch having same level i3 CPU would make the game run better.

 

Avoid AMD by all means.

[Bulletpoint]

Nope, I'd stick with Nvidia for sure.

The shadows seem to render differently too on Nvidia compared to AMD, if I'm not mistaken. On the AMD graphics, shadows were more pin-like, Nvidia shows them more blocky (if that description makes sense to anybody..)

Edited January 19, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

I have AMD 6300 FX and have a hunch having same level i3 CPU would make the game run better.

The issue with AMD is their graphics card drivers not their CPUs. I do not think that changing your CPU to Intel would help.

[Hister]

The issue with AMD is their graphics card drivers not their CPUs. I do not think that changing your CPU to Intel would help.

Hope that is really the case but in my future upgrade none of the AMD stuff is finding it's way into my rig. I hate stock AMD CPU being loud as a jumbo plane landing km from my house for example...

[Thewood1]

AMD CPUs tend to generate more heat and require more power than Intel CPUs.  But AMDs tend to be a lot cheaper than Intels.  So what happens, especially in laptops, is that an AMD tends to be throttled to maintain heat levels and reduce power consumption.  Also, AMDs do not classify cores the same way as Intels so they tend to overestimate the multi-core capabilities a little.  

But you can build a very inexpensive laptop with a fairly powerful multi-core CPU with AMD.  For AMD laptops, it is usually about the cooling system as much as the CPU itself.  I had two AMD A10 laptops last year.  The HP had great liquid cooling and I got 3.1GHz steady.  The Lenovo had only air cooling and was constantly being throttled in the low 2's.  And the fan was loud and on all the time when playing CM.

For comparison, my current laptop is an i7 at about 3.4GHz and an nVidia 980.  My old HP laptop was the A10 with Radeon graphics.  The i7 runs any non-CM game at full settings with not a hiccup.  The A10 ran at mostly decent, but lower settings.  With the AMD, I had to have shadows off in CM to avoid massive stuttering.  The i7 still stutters somewhat if there are a lot of buildings and units.  But nothing like the A10.  And the A10's fan runs incredibly hard the entire time.

Hope those data points help.

[Hister]

yeah, as I said. Avoid AMD if possible.

[c3k]

LOL... some FUD going on. AMD =did= have some driver issues. So did Nvidia. (Whereas AMD's caused some stuttering, especially (particularly?) with multi-card setups, Nvidia's driver snafu famously caused their video cards to melt! Yet, Nvidia's fanbase glosses over that.  I'm agnostic. I run both.) Current AMD driver series, "Crimson", is very good. So is Nvidia's.

AMD gives more brute horsepower, cheaper. Think big-block Trans Am, versus Porsche. Both go fast. One is cheaper, louder, etc., the other is expensive, and uses more refined engineering to get better performance.

(At ~$300-350 price point, AMD offers the R9 390, 8GB GPU. It can run 1440 pretty well. Tests show it using ~285 Watts. For the same money, Nvidia offers the GTX970. They advertise 4GB of vram, but famously lied. It's really 3.5GB + .5GB of slower ram. (This causes stuttering in some circumstances when graphics require more than 3.5GB of memory (vs. the r9 390's 8GB).) The GTX970 is not as capable at 1440. It can run it, but not at the same settings or fps as the R9 390 8GB. At 1080, they run the same. However, the GTX970 only uses about 160 Watts. If less heat is important, then GTX970 wins. However, if you run 2560x1440, and want 60 fps, then the GTX970 will force you to lower your graphics settings. The R9 390 can run maxed settings at 2560x1440/60fps.)

AMD cpus have more cores. An 8 core AMD actually has 8 cores. An intel "hyperthreaded" processor can run 8 threads, but only has 4 cores.

If you do multicore, cpu-intensive, tasks (video editing is the usual example), AMD cpus generally do better. Otherwise, Intel.

AMD is cheaper, hotter. For a laptop, I'd go intel, purely for the cooling requirements. Ditto the video card: nvidia runs cooler than amd (lower TDP for similar performance). In a desktop, it doesn't matter. Just put another fan in the case.

Nvidia has seemingly relegated OpenGL (which CM uses) to a back room. AMD seems to have done the same, but visits less often.

 

[Thewood1]

For a desktop, AMD is not really an issue.  But in laptops, if you have the money go with Intel and Nvidia...that is the conclusion.

btw, the AMD backend cores are not full cores.  Hence my comments about the issues with AMD's definition of a core.  The AMD backend cores look like full physical cores, but have limited functional capability.  SO the extra cores over an Intel are fully usable only for certain things.

[Hister]

Stock Intel CPU fans run way quiter then AMD ones. I can't bare the noise so I need to get me the extra 3rd party fan to get rid of this annoyance which adds money to the equation which in the end makes Intel CPU's a better choice also for desktop rigs.

You can check how loud stock 6300 FX fans are on youtube...