Armed Assault Optimization.

This is just a small question going out to those who own ArmA: Armed Assault. I have noticed that many people who have played the demo say the game is horribly optimized and can barely be played on lowest settings even with high-end PCs. On the other hand, owners of the full-game say that the game can be cranked to maximum settings easily on many cards. I played the demo and so far I%26#39;m agreeing with the horrible optimization opinion...I have a Geforce 7600GT and 3GB of RAM and the demo has to be set on low to get just above 15 FPS. Too bad as the game seems like it would be very fun.If anyone has played both the demo and the full game it would be nice to know if the full game is playable. I%26#39;m sure a lot of other people would like the answer to this as well. :/
Armed Assault Optimization.
I have a decidely mid-range PC and the full game runs very well on my machine whereas the demo was a slideshow.Armed Assault Optimization.
The demo for me was horribly jerky. The full game is much better but it is probally one of the most system demanding games out at the moment. There really isn%26#39;t a mainstream system around at the moment capable of playing it maxed out. Also at the moment ArmA has a major problem with Nvidia 8800 GTS/GTX graphics cards. Problems with too much fog and LOD texture popups and flickering are common. It%26#39;s hard too tell if this fault lies with the developers or Nvidia. ArmA really needs some major patching before it can reach it%26#39;s potential.
Full version:On my XP 2400+, x1600 pro, 1,5gb ram its playable at mixed low to medium settings, 1.8 km view distance, 1152*864, 4xAA no AF.On the X2 3800+, 8800 GTX, 2 gb ram I mostly use max. settings, 3.5km view distance, 1440*900, 8xS AA and 16 AF, which of course often looks gorgeous.There are still some problems with optimization, and especially on the 8800 series you can run into other things like problems with the LOD.However I%26#39;ve only played the first demo that was released in december, so I can%26#39;t really comment on performance differences between demos and the full version. But I%26#39;ve also used all the patches for the full version and there definitely was some nice improvement performance wise over this time. Especially the new public beta patch 1.07 seems to be a step into the right direction, heard good things from users of nvidias 7xxx series. However, as a 8800 user I%26#39;ve had to lower view distance to 2km, not because of problems with the performance, but problems with level of detail if I use the 3km+ settings, while some other 8800 users had no problems at all, it%26#39;s probably time for me to try out some other drivers too. (Hopefully this problems will also get sorted out with the final release of the patch, after all it%26#39;s just a beta release and that%26#39;s what they are made for.)Beside possible problems with optimization that are being sorted out, there are also other possible reasons why it%26#39;s such a strain on hardware. The destroyable environment, real time day/night cycles, the generally high view distance compared to most other shooters and so on, surely have their part in this too. Just like OFP back in the days ate ''state of the art'' hardware alive, but also was a ''feature monster''.It was released too early without a doubt, I%26#39;ve seen worse, but they definitely should have waited a bit longer with it (not that this did stop me from playing hundreds of hours). Anyway, if you%26#39;re not sure about it, just wait. You will not lose much if you buy it in half a year and probably some of the bigger mods will be released by then too.Edit:[QUOTE=''Spindry69'']The demo for me was horribly jerky. The full game is much better but it is probally one of the most system demanding games out at the moment. There really isn%26#39;t a mainstream system around at the moment capable of playing it maxed out. Also at the moment ArmA has a major problem with Nvidia 8800 GTS/GTX graphics cards. Problems with too much fog and LOD texture popups and flickering are common. It%26#39;s hard too tell if this fault lies with the developers or Nvidia. ArmA really needs some major patching before it can reach it%26#39;s potential.[/QUOTE]I mostly used the 1.05 beta patch and it%26#39;s playable with the maxed out settings I described above. By playable I mean that your fps will often drop to 20, for example when in a dense forrest, or flying over a big city. Lower view distances than the high one I used ofc would improve this. Also keep in mind that my cpu isn%26#39;t exactly a match for my gpu, but the game is probably more gpu limited at those settings anyway. I wouldn%26#39;t normaly say that this is playable for games with a fast gameplay, where a quick triggerfinger really matters, but for a slow paced game like ArmA it works out pretty well. Biggest downside is probably that I%26#39;m often just thinking ''Wouw, that looks hot.'' instead of beeing worried about enemys in the area. ;)Interestingly enough, I have almost no 8800 related problems with said 1.05 beta patch, they just popped up with the 1.07 beta. It looks like they changed something in how the game communicates with the driver/card and depending on which one you use you will get no problems at all or a rather unsatisfying experience like I did (at least I could easily work around most problems without changing drivers, I%26#39;m such a lazy bastard sometimes.).