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Battlefield 3 Beta: Info and Meetups [Over]

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
DSN2K said:
Im going to guess my settings of choice already....

RES : 1080p
Textures : HIGH
Shadows : MEDIUM
EFFECTS : ULTRA
MESH : MEDIUM
TERRAIN : MEDIUM
TERRAIN DECORATION : MEDIUM
AA DEF : 2XMSAA
AA POST MEDIUM
MOTION BLUR : OFF
AF : 16x
AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS : OFF
What are your specs?

I'm going to be trying to push everything as high as possible and see what happens.
 

woober

Member
I'm going to put everything on Ultra even though my 6950 probably won't handle it just to see what it looks like.
 

Menelaus

Banned
Origin is still required with retail, and battlelog is browser based. Literally no reason to use Steam unfortunately =(
 

kitch9

Banned
OK EA, I've installed your shitty Origin as you've forced me to, I've even taken a brief look at your shitty store.

That is all you get from me, you can officially kiss my ass.

Please can I have my betas now?
 

Manager

Member
Mr. Snrub said:
I think zh1nt0 said that they've been working with various testing group who have (early early?) access.

battlefiled-3-beta.jpg


There was this image which looks like it's from someone's home a week ago or so. Think a lot of DICE dude's posted they were playing it home too.
 
So has there been anything like this on Origin/EAStore before, i mean bandwidth wise?

Im just expecting massive problems with so many people downloading at the same time tomorrow and on Thursday.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
Corky said:
Was just about to ask, I was under the impression that post AA was somekind of vaseliney pseudo AA when the game couldn't do good ol MSAA?

It's probably FXAA Low / Med / High.

You can use MSAA and/or FXAA. Use just FXAA if you can't afford the performance drop for MSAA. Use both if you want super AA.
 

Oozinator

Banned
Why are they delaying the sending of early access keys so much ‽ What is preventing them from sending the keys earlier ‽

Is just to keep up they hype ‽ ‽
 

Emily Chu

Banned
RES : 1080p or 720p
Textures : ULTRA or HIGH
Shadows : OFF/ LOW
EFFECTS : LOW
MESH : ULTRA
TERRAIN : LOW
TERRAIN DECORATION : LOW
AA DEF : 2XMSAA/ OFF
AA POST LOW/ OFF
MOTION BLUR : OFF
AF : 16x
AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS : OFF

Quad Core + 8800GT

90s gaming got me only caring about TEXTURES
 

LordCanti

Member
Oozinator said:
Why are they delaying the sending of early access keys so much ‽ What is preventing them from sending the keys earlier ‽

Is just to keep up they hype ‽ ‽

Clearly they want thousands of people trying to download the client at the same time. It will be a nice test for launch day.

(I was being sarcastic in the first sentence, but by the second sentence, I had convinced myself)
 

Spl1nter

Member
Nabs said:
I don't think Steam has the keys yet.

but i want it, so why cant i have it.

LordCanti said:
Clearly they want thousands of people trying to download the client at the same time. It will be a nice test for launch day.

(I was being sarcastic in the first sentence, but by the second sentence, I had convinced myself)

you DICE/EA trolled yourself.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
If they don't award Steam MoH purchasers their keys before Early Access beta starts, then that's incredibly shitty.

As for settings, I'll go with:

RES : 1080p
Textures : ULTRA
Shadows : HIGH
EFFECTS : HIGH
MESH : ULTRA
TERRAIN : HIGH
TERRAIN DECORATION : HIGH
AA DEF : 4XMSAA
AA POST OFF or HIGH (depending on how it affects IQ)
MOTION BLUR : OFF
AF : 16x
AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS : ON

I might turn a setting or two up to ULTRA, but I want to maintain 60fps above all else. I may need to sacrifice 4x MSAA and settle for POST...we'll see.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
Would it be realistic to expect my PC to run BF3 at 1080P at or just above PS3 image quality?

SPECS:

HD6850 (STOCK)
E5200 (3.0GHZ)
4GB RAM

Or should I just get the PS3 version? I'll be playing on a 40" LCD TV.
 

woober

Member
THE:MILKMAN said:
Would it be realistic to expect my PC to run BF3 at 1080P at or just above PS3 image quality?

SPECS:

HD6850 (STOCK)
E5200 (3.0GHZ)
4GB RAM

Or should I just get the PS3 version? I'll be playing on a 40" LCD TV.

Your PC is pretty decent and will probably run the game at a better image quality than the PS3. I'd get it for PC. Try out the open beta on both systems and see what you think.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
THE:MILKMAN said:
Would it be realistic to expect my PC to run BF3 at 1080P at or just above PS3 image quality?

SPECS:

HD6850 (STOCK)
E5200 (3.0GHZ)
4GB RAM

Or should I just get the PS3 version? I'll be playing on a 40" LCD TV.

It'll definitely run with far better IQ than PS3. Your CPU will limit the framerate a bit, but I'd think you should still be able to maintain higher than 30fps no problem. If you want to be sure, wait for beta impressions.
 

LordCanti

Member
THE:MILKMAN said:
Would it be realistic to expect my PC to run BF3 at 1080P at or just above PS3 image quality?

SPECS:

HD6850 (STOCK)
E5200 (3.0GHZ)
4GB RAM

Or should I just get the PS3 version? I'll be playing on a 40" LCD TV.

Try the beta, it's free. Looking at your specs, the CPU is going to be the bottleneck for sure though. 1080p may be a stretch.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
TheExodu5 said:
It's probably FXAA Low / Med / High.

You can use MSAA and/or FXAA. Use just FXAA if you can't afford the performance drop for MSAA. Use both if you want super AA.

Ok, I usually don't like fxaa / mlaa, I think it gets abit blurry but maybe that's me.
Now I kinda understand the whole you need sli 580s for ultra because there's quite alot on there that eats resources. Hopefully turning the following settings off/down will make "ultra" settings much more manageable.

HBAO/excessive motion blur/excessive AA/(maybe ssao)/(maybe tessellation)
 

LordCanti

Member
Corky said:
Ok, I usually don't like fxaa / mlaa, I think it gets abit blurry but maybe that's me.
Now I kinda understand the whole you need sli 580s for ultra because there's quite alot on there that eats resources. Hopefully turning the following settings off/down will make "ultra" settings much more manageable.

HBAO/excessive motion blur/excessive AA/(maybe ssao)/(maybe tessellation)

If this game runs well on my rig without HBAO and AA on, I'll call it a day and save the $400+ I would have spent at Microcenter tomorrow. I may be willing to give up tessellation as well, we'll see.
 
DSN2K said:
Im going to guess my settings of choice already....

RES : 1080p
Textures : HIGH
Shadows : MEDIUM
EFFECTS : ULTRA
MESH : MEDIUM
TERRAIN : MEDIUM
TERRAIN DECORATION : MEDIUM
AA DEF : 2XMSAA
AA POST MEDIUM
MOTION BLUR : OFF
AF : 16x
AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS : OFF


What is "AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS"? My guess is I'll be turning that off.

My Sys:

Win 7
AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1Ghz
4GB Sys ram
Geforce 460 GTX OC 1 GB
Samsung Syncmaster 206BW (1680x1050 native resolution)
 

TheExodu5

Banned
I'd give up Tesselation before I'd give up Ambient Occlusion, easily. AO is one of my favorite graphical effects in games.

soulassssns said:
What is "AMBIENT OCCLUSIONS"? Being that I only have a GTX 460 I'll be turning that off.

It simulates the way light refracts off objects by shading areas that would be less illuminated by these refractions. A good example would be the corners in a room. Look at the corner of the room you're in right now, and notice how it's darker than the rest of the wall. That's ambient occlusion.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
LordCanti said:
If this game runs well on my rig without HBAO and AA on, I'll call it a day and save the $400+ I would have spent at Microcenter tomorrow. I may be willing to give up tessellation as well, we'll see.

I must say that even with my current rig, which I don't know maybe I get anything inbetween 100-200 fps in bc2 with all settings on, I turn off HBAO because I literally can't see the difference outside of screenshots. That is I couldn't do a blindtest of the setting off/on while playing the game, in motion.

Here's hoping it's equally useless in bf3 >_<
 

Sethos

Banned
shagg_187 said:

It's not that apparent, there's still shadows but they are less defined without SSAO.

SSAO is fucking terrible and the FPS hit is IMMENSE, no wonder they keep advocating for SLI.
 

Sethos

Banned
shagg_187 said:
Look at the second example.. :p

Can't even see it there, just had to point out that front-end area, shadows don't disappear without SSAO, using completely barebone models is a bit so-so.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
Corky said:
I must say that even with my current rig, which I don't know maybe I get anything inbetween 100-200 fps in bc2 with all settings on, I turn off HBAO because I literally can't see the difference outside of screenshots. That is I couldn't do a blindtest of the setting off/on while playing the game, in motion.

Here's hoping it's equally useless in bf3 >_<

It's a subtle effect that really makes the scene look more 3 dimensional. It's easy to spot the difference, if you know where to look:

1) Look at corners of rooms and objects against walls. There should be some shadowing there as a result of AO.
2) Look where foliage meets the ground, there should be shadowing around the foliage with AO on.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
Thanks for the replies guys. I didn't realise it will be a open beta in 3 days...Should have read the OP more thoroughly.

I'll give the PC beta a go and report back.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
TheExodu5 said:
It's a subtle effect that really makes the scene look more 3 dimensional. It's easy to spot the difference, if you know where to look:

1) Look at corners of rooms and objects against walls. There should be some shadowing there as a result of AO.
2) Look where foliage meets the ground, there should be shadowing around the foliage with AO on.

No doubt, it's just that when shit's going down and there are effects/motion blur everywhere you ( I ) literally have to stop in the middle of everything, and stare at a static object like you say the corners of a room and such. I mean heck if it barely ate any resources I'd turn it on but in reality it is a hog.
 
Ambient Occlusion doesn't really eat that much performance nowadays. They optimized the hell out of it and now it's even present in most console games.
 

Sethos

Banned
Backfoggen said:
Ambient Occlusion doesn't really eat that much performance nowadays. They optimized the hell out of it and now it's even present in most console games.

What? Every single game I've played with SSAO it's a pretty massive hog, a minimum of 15FPS gone. The latest game I've tried was RO2 and even there it was a massive hog.
 

mr_nothin

Banned
Sethos said:
It's not that apparent, there's still shadows but they are less defined without SSAO.

SSAO is fucking terrible and the FPS hit is IMMENSE, no wonder they keep advocating for SLI.
WHAT?
SSAO makes a big difference. Even made a difference in the alpha
 
Sethos said:
What? Every single game I've played with SSAO it's a pretty massive hog, a minimum of 15FPS gone. The latest game I've tried was RO2 and even there it was a massive hog.
I haven't checked framerates or anything but every recent title I could enable SSAO on without losing much performance and that is on my old ass GTX275.

Also I still have the Alpha in my Origin client, lmao.
 
Sethos said:
What? Every single game I've played with SSAO it's a pretty massive hog, a minimum of 15FPS gone. The latest game I've tried was RO2 and even there it was a massive hog.

There's your problem? RO2 isn't well-optimized, at this point. Ambient Occlusion isn't too much of a killer except in certain games. I was pretty surprised when HBAO killed 15-20 fps in BC2.
 

Sethos

Banned
Mr. Snrub said:
There's your problem? RO2 isn't well-optimized, at this point. Ambient Occlusion isn't too much of a killer except in certain games. I was pretty surprised when HBAO killed 15-20 fps in BC2.

You do know that SSAO varies depending on what's its being rendered on, right? RO2 runs fine for me, 60FPS stable with Vsync, meaning there's a good overhead. RO2 is extremely detailed and has a lot of high LOD models all over the place, meaning there's much more SSAO to render in each scene, it's not about being unoptimized. So enabling SSAO in RO2 for me is a 20FPS+ hit in most scenes.

That goes for all games, it depends on your settings, resolution, texture quality etc. and it very much depends on the game. Running shitty low-medium settings takes much less of a toll than running everything on high, especially if those settings change the LOD on stuff, that means much more SSAO to render.

So it all depends on the game and to date I haven't seen a game that looks "Whoa!" with it and i sure as hell won't take the FPS hit like I do in every.single.game that is a tiny bit demanding.

HBAO is DICE's variation on SSAO and on my old hardware back then, enabling HBAO in BC2 took a MASSIVE hit and I remember everyone turning it off on lower end hardware. Back in the BC2 release days, I remember on some setups it was almost a 30FPS hit with HBAO enabled, for some added shadow depth ... tsk.
 
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