From Bohemia Interactive Community
Arma 3 performance has always been a great interrogation topic. This page brings light on some aspects of the Video Settings.
General Guidelines
- use auto-detection as a base for other settings - the autodetect button knows best, most of the time
- an exception to that being that auto-detection will set the render sampling to at least 100% - this is not ideal if one wants to play e.g in 1920×1080 on a 3840×2160 screen.
- in order to bring some relief to the CPU, play with (terrain/object) view distance
- to alleviate pressure on the GPU, lower PiP settings and reduce 3D Sampling
- to reduce stutter and greatly improve loading times, it is highly recommended to install Arma 3 on a Solid State Drive (SSD)
⚠
- Run tests on a Vanilla (no mods) Arma 3! Some ill-conceived mods can bring performance down.
- Run tests in a Single Player environment. If performances in multiplayer are worse than in single player, the server/connection/mission is at fault; nothing can be done on Settings' side.
Video Options
Settings Impacts
General
| Category |
Setting |
CPU |
GPU |
Additional Details
|
Quality
|
Sampling |
|
|
Defines the game's 3D resolution based on Display's Resolution setting (in %) - e.g 50% of 3840×2160 results in a 3D resolution of 1920×1080 (1/4 of the original resolution)
|
| Texture |
|
|
Defines textures' quality - dependent on the GPU's memory
|
| Objects |
|
|
Defines object's details and LOD thresholds
|
| Terrain |
|
|
Defines terrain's geometry details at medium long range (does not affect textures)
|
| Shadow |
|
|
Defines shadow precision
|
| Particles |
|
|
Defines quality and the amount of particles (smoke, fire, dust, etc) visible on screen.
|
| Cloud |
|
|
Defines if Cloud Simulation should be used and at which level of detail
|
| PIP |
|
|
Adds (doubles?) the strain on the CPU - another scene has to be calculated in order to do the render. Quality here means PIP drawing distance
|
Visibility
|
Overall |
|
|
Terrain's view distance
|
| Object |
|
|
Object's view distance - The CPU killer. Set to about 1/3 to 1/2 of terrain's view distance
|
| Shadow |
|
|
Shadows' draw distance - range 50..200m
|
Lighting
|
HDR |
|
|
Sets HDR quality, 8 or 16 bits
|
| Dynamic Lights |
|
|
Sets the maximum number of dynamic lights (light sources that are not the sun or the moon) in the scene
|
| Water Reflections |
|
|
Defines quality of water surface reflection
|
Display
| Category |
Setting |
CPU |
GPU |
Additional Details
|
General
|
Display Mode |
|
|
Full Screen can solve some issues, Full Screen Window can fix some others. Windowed is useful for debug purposes
|
| Resolution |
|
|
Should be set to the screen's native resolution and use Sampling to lower the 3D resolution if needed
|
| Aspect Ratio |
|
|
Set to auto or to the screen's aspect ratio. No impact on performance
|
| VSync |
|
|
Vertical Synchronisation
|
| Interface Size |
|
|
No impact on performance
|
| Brightness |
|
|
No impact on performance
|
| Gamma |
|
|
No impact on performance
|
AA & PP
| Category |
Setting |
CPU |
GPU |
Additional Details
|
PostProcesses
|
Bloom |
|
|
|
| Radial Blur |
|
|
Adds "speed" blur to the border of the screen
|
| Rotation Blur |
|
|
Adds screen blur on fast camera movement
|
| Depth of Field |
|
|
Adds blur to non-focused background
|
| Sharpen Filter |
|
|
Makes the image sharper, but can also make it more grainy or too outlined
|
| AO |
|
|
(Screen Space) Ambient Occlusion. HBAO stands for Horizon-Based AO (Nvidia), whereas HDAO stands for High Definition AO (AMD).
|
| Caustics |
|
|
Water surface reflection on the ocean floor
|
PostProcess
Color Corrections
|
Color Preset |
|
|
|
| Brightness |
|
|
Post-process image brightness
|
| Contrast |
|
|
Post-process image contrast
|
| Saturation |
|
|
Colour saturation - the higher the more colours, the lower the more black & white
|
AntiAliasing
|
FSAA |
|
|
Full Screen Anti-Aliasing
|
| AtoC |
|
|
Alpha to Coverage. Requires FSAA
|
| PPAA |
|
|
Post-Processing Anti-Aliasing. Less taxing than FSAA, with very minor graphical glitches
|
| Aniso. Filtering |
|
|
Anisotropic filtering
|
See Also
External Links
