How to increase FPS in big cities

[mogwaihawk 2]

It seems like a lot of you (including me) have pretty major FPS drops in cities, to the point where the game isn't playable anymore. I fiddled around with the ingame settings + resolution and was surprised that regardless of what settings I chose, I could not get the game to run above 30 fps. The only setting that really had an great impact on my FPS was "Object Detail", hence setting it to "very low" gave me a decent amount of additional frames. I also tried several startup parameters and increasing the priority of the task but nothing really gave me a big boost in performance.

Now here is the trick:

You can decrease Object Detail even further by editing your Arma II profile. In order to do that you have to search for a file on your computer named "<username>.ArmA2OAProfile". It should be located in your "My Documents" folder. Open that with an text editor and scroll down to the bottom. Search for "sceneComplexity" and change the value to something below 150k, because 150k seems to be the value of "very low" ingame.

Decreasing this number had a great effect on my fps.

I am not a 100 percent sure what this number represents but I think the higher the number is the more objects in your surrounding are displayed. Changing it to 1000 gives me 40+ fps in Cherno but there are only 20-30 buildings loaded around me. :)

Edit: So apparently sceneComplexity represents the max number of polygons that are rendered. By decreasing this number the engine will use a lower polygon model for an object and if necessary it will skip rendering objects that are far away. More info on that -> http://forums.bistud...rated-setting-! (thanks to Rogan!)

I have only tested this while standing in the middle of Cherno, I did not actually play so there might be a few major issues with this that I did not experience. Feedback and other solutions are welcome.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Mogwai

[Rogan (DayZ) 24]

Interesting, seemingly it sets max polygons per scene.

[aenima 4]

if you've played the arma2 shooting range training mission, you may have read about setting the "object detail" level to high or very high, in order to see a person far away without scope. I wonder, if it's a big disadvantage decreasing the value. imagine you don't see someone who can see you because his game settings allow him to have more objects rendered in the distance. thanks for your advice!

Edited July 20, 2012 by aenima

[Serova (DayZ) 174]

Couldnt this be tested in armory to see if it has a noticeable impact on the distance rendering?

Edited July 20, 2012 by Serova

[Irenicus (DayZ) 289]

Careful though, reducing object detail reduces how far you can see other players. I originally thought that view distance affected this, but it does not. Careful testing has proved this. I've personally had to go for a compromise and set obj detail to low, and can see players far enough. On low I would only see them when zooming in, at a certain distance (which is how I discovered the problem).