Post by MO on Feb 15, 2013 4:21:51 GMT
In-Game Settings
Once you start your game, under Options>Settings>Video settings you can adjust your settings for most performance and quality as per your likes.
Visibility - View distance, in other words how far you can see things in game, the lower this setting is the better performance you will get. Some thresholds I found - 300 meters is the absolute minimum for playable view distance, can be used for CQB specially under rainy/foggy conditions without appeal loss, huge performance boost. 1000 m, the golden standard, any value above this will start to take on performance on the double, suggested value for under 1000 is 800. 2000, minimum realistic view distance, doesn't impact performance much yet still adds to realism. 5000 preferred realism setting, does affect performance but adds on quality. 10000 is maximum view distance in ArmA 2, unless you have a monster machine to run the game on all settings highest possible and fly jets all the time this setting is useless, whiplashes GPU's and CPU's and even the best on the market will find it hard to handle all of the detail. Visibility setting is dependent on other game options, thus it's affect on performance varies.
Brightness - Adjust how "white" a scene is, I suggest values from 1.0 to 1.1 (best)
Gamma - A setting that combines brightness and contrast, in other words, makes things brighter and sharper suggested values 1.0 to 1.2 1.1 is the best for almost all monitors.
Quality preference - Best left untouched, however if you are a lazy one use it for preset graphic settings on the go. This setting changes automatically once you start to adjust things manually. Mine says Very High after all the tweaks I applied to my A2 and OA settings although not everything is on highest.
Interface resolution - Game screen resolution. Almost all monitors will give significant boost for 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions as this is a golden standard for many devices, including computer monitors and newer screens. The two resolutions lack on quality, however if you need performance do use them. Other resolutions will hit performance, with each bigger one (by standards such as 1024 p, etc also wide screen) doubling on resource usage. Other settings depend on resolution strongly. 1024x768 is the best resolution between quality and performance, any resolution above that gives little to no noticeable quality gain if your monitor is 17'' or smaller.
3D Resolution - Aka renderer. This setting is best left with the same resolution size as for the interface, in other words 100%, any value above that will squeeze more detail under same pixel density which may improve quality but will take a on performance greatly. In the most extreme cases, if you really need performance gain, set 3D renderer on 50%, this will give 2/3 performance gain but make everything look pixelated and blurry, less noticeable with higher resolutions.
Texture detail - Self explanatory. The higher this setting is the more memory your GPU needs, doesn't have much effect on performance if you have a good graphic card. Whatsoever, it is recommended to use higher setting if your GPU is newer than your processor as GPU's RAM memory module and onboard CPU will handle load-render processes better. Lower setting textures are basically processor backed compressed textures. So what you do when you play on Low settings is force your processor to re-compress data on the go in order for your game to use less RAM memory (GPU and local) If your CPU is newer yet you need performance gain, use lower setting, if your GPU is newer than processor use higher setting, however make sure you have good amount of RAM for both GPU's (1 GB recommended) and local (2 GB recommended) Other options depend on this setting. Affects graphic card RAM the most.
Video memory - Aka game "pagefile" except that this one is for your local RAM memory sticks. The lower setting uses 256MB of RAM, while Very High uses up to 2 GB. Default setting uses custom values defined in cfg settings file. Refer to Memory Tweaks section for more detail. Lower setting is recommended if you have less RAM memory installed but a fast processor, while higher setting is recommended if you have more RAM memory but slower processor.
Anisotropic filtering - This is what makes everything look crisper because this setting loads more textures further. However do note that the higher values will affect your performance. Lower values best used when your processor is slower and when you are using lower texture setting, while High is recommended for faster processors (GPU's with more RAM memory as well) and higher texture/memory values. Recommended Medium or Disabled (no difference between low and Disabled, however Low will in fact affect performance) for performance gain.
Antialiasing - This is what makes 3D object edges look less pixelated, this is also what will eat a lot of resources. Don't use antialiasing unless you have a high-end system.
ATOC (A2:OA Only) - Antialiasing on certain objects such as foliage. Refer to BI's ATOC wiki page for more detail. It is recommended to use ATOC instead of Antialiasing highest setting.
Terrain detail - How many objects are loaded on terrain scene, very low will add grass, while higher value will more density and complexity to 3D objects. Best recommended for performance gain are Low and Normal values, use Very Low if you don't want grass.
Object detail - Defines how many objects will be loaded on a scene. The higher this value is the more objects you will see further in distance, best combined with view distance. This setting also affects how far you can see enemy targets, so while lowest setting may remove enemies from under 600m Normal and Higher settings will display them above 1000 thus I recommend Normal for Chernarus and Utes while High for Takistan, Zargrabad and any other large scale desert terrain. Objects are loaded in local RAM memory.
Shadow detail - Adds shadows. Disabled setting removes shadows, however, interestingly, in come cases there's no performance difference between Disabled and Low settings as it seems that A2 engine pre-renders shadows anyway regardless of what you choose, so Very Low/Low setting is recommended anyway however do mind that this setting will make some object shadows blocky. High and Very High setting add smoother shadows but greatly impact performance, they also draw shadows on objects further in distance.
HDR quality (A2:OA only, however A2 and A2Free have this in cfg settings and can be used) - Often misunderstood, HDR has huge effect on performance and even quality. Most people wonder what it does and can't notice anything, that's because most pay attention to wrong details. What HDR quality setting does is define bit depth for lightning effects such as sky, muzzleflashes, reflections and even night/heat vision. Normal uses 8bits High uses 16 bits while Very High uses 32 bits. A difference between 8 bit and 16 bit quality is easy to spot. With Normal setting sky looks somewhat sliced, as if someone painted it with different brushes while on High it looks smother and has more natural colors. Normal setting makes terrains darker and more pale, specially in Dusk/Morning while High setting adds more realistic nights and colorful environment. Normal setting for night/heat vision has huge impact, for night vision it uses only green and black, heat uses grey and white or grey and black while High setting uses green, white and black colors for night vision making it a lot more realistic and black, grey and white or black for heat signatures (BAF scopes use red and orange for thermal on Normal while red, orange and yellow for thermals on High). What I suggest is to use High setting, unless you really need to gain on performance. Very High setting should be used only with 64 bit systems because there's no big difference between High and Very high for 32 bit systems where difference isn't significant.
PPAA/FXAA (A2:OA only) - Is antialiasing via post processing. Don't try to understand how it works, look at it like antialiasing for effects. Refer to this link for more detail - community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg
After several tests, I came to a conclusion that PPAA is safe to use on any system as it doesn't impact performance like default AA but does indeed smothen scenery. FXAA shown the best results, recommended Low to Medium, while FXAA is perfect for large screens with bigger resolutions as it sharpens scenery and makes everything look more realistic. SMAA on the other hand smothened edges but did impact performance, what's more even it blurred objects in distance even on Very High.
Post process effects - What makes lightning look more natural. Disabled uses no effects whatsoever. very Low uses bloom and adds night vision flicker, Low uses all that and adds motion blur with bloom, Medium/Normal adds higher bloom and depth of field (blurs things in distance) High adds SSAO (A2:OA only) while Very High adds more SSAO (A2:OA only) in ArmA 2 High and Very High add more bloom and better night vision. This setting depends on HDR quality setting.
Interface size - User interface, aka boxes, buttons, texts size. use larger values for larger resolutions, Normal is recommended. Can be customized in cfg files.
Aspect ratio - 4:3 is standard, any other aspect ratio is either widescreen, multiscreen or custom preference. Can be customized in cfg settings beyond presets in game options.
Vsync - Just don't use it. Unless your system is a beast and you wear immerse goggles, headtracker, have DIY simulator hardware and want to experience war without going to the battlefield and dying. Basically, Vsync stops screen tearing, making everything surreal but ONLY when your system can render everything on highest at 60fps.
Once you start your game, under Options>Settings>Video settings you can adjust your settings for most performance and quality as per your likes.
Visibility - View distance, in other words how far you can see things in game, the lower this setting is the better performance you will get. Some thresholds I found - 300 meters is the absolute minimum for playable view distance, can be used for CQB specially under rainy/foggy conditions without appeal loss, huge performance boost. 1000 m, the golden standard, any value above this will start to take on performance on the double, suggested value for under 1000 is 800. 2000, minimum realistic view distance, doesn't impact performance much yet still adds to realism. 5000 preferred realism setting, does affect performance but adds on quality. 10000 is maximum view distance in ArmA 2, unless you have a monster machine to run the game on all settings highest possible and fly jets all the time this setting is useless, whiplashes GPU's and CPU's and even the best on the market will find it hard to handle all of the detail. Visibility setting is dependent on other game options, thus it's affect on performance varies.
Brightness - Adjust how "white" a scene is, I suggest values from 1.0 to 1.1 (best)
Gamma - A setting that combines brightness and contrast, in other words, makes things brighter and sharper suggested values 1.0 to 1.2 1.1 is the best for almost all monitors.
Quality preference - Best left untouched, however if you are a lazy one use it for preset graphic settings on the go. This setting changes automatically once you start to adjust things manually. Mine says Very High after all the tweaks I applied to my A2 and OA settings although not everything is on highest.
Interface resolution - Game screen resolution. Almost all monitors will give significant boost for 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions as this is a golden standard for many devices, including computer monitors and newer screens. The two resolutions lack on quality, however if you need performance do use them. Other resolutions will hit performance, with each bigger one (by standards such as 1024 p, etc also wide screen) doubling on resource usage. Other settings depend on resolution strongly. 1024x768 is the best resolution between quality and performance, any resolution above that gives little to no noticeable quality gain if your monitor is 17'' or smaller.
3D Resolution - Aka renderer. This setting is best left with the same resolution size as for the interface, in other words 100%, any value above that will squeeze more detail under same pixel density which may improve quality but will take a on performance greatly. In the most extreme cases, if you really need performance gain, set 3D renderer on 50%, this will give 2/3 performance gain but make everything look pixelated and blurry, less noticeable with higher resolutions.
Texture detail - Self explanatory. The higher this setting is the more memory your GPU needs, doesn't have much effect on performance if you have a good graphic card. Whatsoever, it is recommended to use higher setting if your GPU is newer than your processor as GPU's RAM memory module and onboard CPU will handle load-render processes better. Lower setting textures are basically processor backed compressed textures. So what you do when you play on Low settings is force your processor to re-compress data on the go in order for your game to use less RAM memory (GPU and local) If your CPU is newer yet you need performance gain, use lower setting, if your GPU is newer than processor use higher setting, however make sure you have good amount of RAM for both GPU's (1 GB recommended) and local (2 GB recommended) Other options depend on this setting. Affects graphic card RAM the most.
Video memory - Aka game "pagefile" except that this one is for your local RAM memory sticks. The lower setting uses 256MB of RAM, while Very High uses up to 2 GB. Default setting uses custom values defined in cfg settings file. Refer to Memory Tweaks section for more detail. Lower setting is recommended if you have less RAM memory installed but a fast processor, while higher setting is recommended if you have more RAM memory but slower processor.
Anisotropic filtering - This is what makes everything look crisper because this setting loads more textures further. However do note that the higher values will affect your performance. Lower values best used when your processor is slower and when you are using lower texture setting, while High is recommended for faster processors (GPU's with more RAM memory as well) and higher texture/memory values. Recommended Medium or Disabled (no difference between low and Disabled, however Low will in fact affect performance) for performance gain.
Antialiasing - This is what makes 3D object edges look less pixelated, this is also what will eat a lot of resources. Don't use antialiasing unless you have a high-end system.
ATOC (A2:OA Only) - Antialiasing on certain objects such as foliage. Refer to BI's ATOC wiki page for more detail. It is recommended to use ATOC instead of Antialiasing highest setting.
Terrain detail - How many objects are loaded on terrain scene, very low will add grass, while higher value will more density and complexity to 3D objects. Best recommended for performance gain are Low and Normal values, use Very Low if you don't want grass.
Object detail - Defines how many objects will be loaded on a scene. The higher this value is the more objects you will see further in distance, best combined with view distance. This setting also affects how far you can see enemy targets, so while lowest setting may remove enemies from under 600m Normal and Higher settings will display them above 1000 thus I recommend Normal for Chernarus and Utes while High for Takistan, Zargrabad and any other large scale desert terrain. Objects are loaded in local RAM memory.
Shadow detail - Adds shadows. Disabled setting removes shadows, however, interestingly, in come cases there's no performance difference between Disabled and Low settings as it seems that A2 engine pre-renders shadows anyway regardless of what you choose, so Very Low/Low setting is recommended anyway however do mind that this setting will make some object shadows blocky. High and Very High setting add smoother shadows but greatly impact performance, they also draw shadows on objects further in distance.
HDR quality (A2:OA only, however A2 and A2Free have this in cfg settings and can be used) - Often misunderstood, HDR has huge effect on performance and even quality. Most people wonder what it does and can't notice anything, that's because most pay attention to wrong details. What HDR quality setting does is define bit depth for lightning effects such as sky, muzzleflashes, reflections and even night/heat vision. Normal uses 8bits High uses 16 bits while Very High uses 32 bits. A difference between 8 bit and 16 bit quality is easy to spot. With Normal setting sky looks somewhat sliced, as if someone painted it with different brushes while on High it looks smother and has more natural colors. Normal setting makes terrains darker and more pale, specially in Dusk/Morning while High setting adds more realistic nights and colorful environment. Normal setting for night/heat vision has huge impact, for night vision it uses only green and black, heat uses grey and white or grey and black while High setting uses green, white and black colors for night vision making it a lot more realistic and black, grey and white or black for heat signatures (BAF scopes use red and orange for thermal on Normal while red, orange and yellow for thermals on High). What I suggest is to use High setting, unless you really need to gain on performance. Very High setting should be used only with 64 bit systems because there's no big difference between High and Very high for 32 bit systems where difference isn't significant.
PPAA/FXAA (A2:OA only) - Is antialiasing via post processing. Don't try to understand how it works, look at it like antialiasing for effects. Refer to this link for more detail - community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg
After several tests, I came to a conclusion that PPAA is safe to use on any system as it doesn't impact performance like default AA but does indeed smothen scenery. FXAA shown the best results, recommended Low to Medium, while FXAA is perfect for large screens with bigger resolutions as it sharpens scenery and makes everything look more realistic. SMAA on the other hand smothened edges but did impact performance, what's more even it blurred objects in distance even on Very High.
Post process effects - What makes lightning look more natural. Disabled uses no effects whatsoever. very Low uses bloom and adds night vision flicker, Low uses all that and adds motion blur with bloom, Medium/Normal adds higher bloom and depth of field (blurs things in distance) High adds SSAO (A2:OA only) while Very High adds more SSAO (A2:OA only) in ArmA 2 High and Very High add more bloom and better night vision. This setting depends on HDR quality setting.
Interface size - User interface, aka boxes, buttons, texts size. use larger values for larger resolutions, Normal is recommended. Can be customized in cfg files.
Aspect ratio - 4:3 is standard, any other aspect ratio is either widescreen, multiscreen or custom preference. Can be customized in cfg settings beyond presets in game options.
Vsync - Just don't use it. Unless your system is a beast and you wear immerse goggles, headtracker, have DIY simulator hardware and want to experience war without going to the battlefield and dying. Basically, Vsync stops screen tearing, making everything surreal but ONLY when your system can render everything on highest at 60fps.
