Battlefield 3 - Official Thread

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Plague_Injected said:
Recons who can get close to tanks without being detected and killed, C4 will make short work of them.
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in my experience this is the easiest way to bring down a tank. you get quite a rush from doing this too. i always get too excited like a child and detonate the C4 before i've backed away a safe distance. partly because i can't wait for things to go BOOM, and partly because there have been too many times when i've planted the C4 and backed away only to be dropped by an enemy ground soldier before i could pull the trigger. i'd rather get two kills and a vehicle destroy bonus and a suicide than nothing at all :D

dioxholster said:
its been confirmed that the big buildings falling in SP will also be in MP.

I found this part of the interview interesting about audio tech:

"PB: Well, there's a lot you should know but I can't tell you (Laughs).
Audio is something that we are extremely proud of. Since we more or less invented what we call HDR audio system, which gives us a more vivid sound scape than in any other shooter. It's not only me, we're getting a lot of awards for it. Just compare any shooter with us and you will actually hear the difference. And the cool thing with the core of that system is that, like HDR lighting where you can only see a certain amount of light at one time. You have the really dark areas and you have the really bright areas and depending on where you look, your eyes will adapt to the situation.
That's the exact same thinking with the audio system where we [have] decibel zero and decibel 200, and we have a sliding scale of what you can hear at one certain time. So if everything is completely silent you can hear a pin drop, but if someone blows a grenade next to you then the decibel on that grenade is so much higher so then the whole scale moves up to a higher end on the spectrum and you can only hear the loud noises. That creates a very dynamic world and it also gives our sound designers freedom to design the world based on what it actually sounds like. So you don't have to spend time changing volumes dynamically as you play, because the game will do that automatically. [The sound designers] can spend more time with the creative stuff, creating the sounds or adding more artistic layers of music or video that everyone should hear that should be center speaker /mid-range for instance. So there's a lot of cool tricks we're doing that no one else is really trying to do...yet, which is weird because we've been doing it for quite some time now and we are getting credit for it, but no one is—I think the problem is no one is rewriting stuff. Because they are building on the old stuff, you can't do these things.
We are just setting all these values and you create a very natural and dynamic environment, so we are just doing the obvious I would say. "
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interesting. the audio in BC2 is excellent, i'm sure it will be great in BF3 too.
 
RoffleCopter said:
I enjoyed going spec ops and going all the way to the enemy base. Strap some C4 on the fighter jet, then wait til the jet gets to the end of the runway before blowing it up. What made it sweeter was knowing the poor scrub was waiting for that jet for at least 5 minutes along with 10 other teammates, and probably TKed half of them just to get the jet.
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Protip: blowup one, steal the other.

Volkum said:
Without a commander position, I wonder if there will even be a spec ops class or C4 assuming there may not be any commander assets to blow up...
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True true... And usually the commander stays behind to repair as well. Meaning he has to stop commanding for a time to do the repairs, an additional tactical advantage.
 
dioxholster said:
its been confirmed that the big buildings falling in SP will also be in MP.

I found this part of the interview interesting about audio tech:

"PB: Well, there's a lot you should know but I can't tell you (Laughs).
Audio is something that we are extremely proud of. Since we more or less invented what we call HDR audio system, which gives us a more vivid sound scape than in any other shooter. It's not only me, we're getting a lot of awards for it. Just compare any shooter with us and you will actually hear the difference. And the cool thing with the core of that system is that, like HDR lighting where you can only see a certain amount of light at one time. You have the really dark areas and you have the really bright areas and depending on where you look, your eyes will adapt to the situation.
That's the exact same thinking with the audio system where we [have] decibel zero and decibel 200, and we have a sliding scale of what you can hear at one certain time. So if everything is completely silent you can hear a pin drop, but if someone blows a grenade next to you then the decibel on that grenade is so much higher so then the whole scale moves up to a higher end on the spectrum and you can only hear the loud noises. That creates a very dynamic world and it also gives our sound designers freedom to design the world based on what it actually sounds like. So you don't have to spend time changing volumes dynamically as you play, because the game will do that automatically. [The sound designers] can spend more time with the creative stuff, creating the sounds or adding more artistic layers of music or video that everyone should hear that should be center speaker /mid-range for instance. So there's a lot of cool tricks we're doing that no one else is really trying to do...yet, which is weird because we've been doing it for quite some time now and we are getting credit for it, but no one is—I think the problem is no one is rewriting stuff. Because they are building on the old stuff, you can't do these things.
We are just setting all these values and you create a very natural and dynamic environment, so we are just doing the obvious I would say. "
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Could the way they did the audio be because of this?:

"We knew we could do better stuff with audio, we needed a core streaming system for the whole game," said Bach. "Everything from animations to objects to textures to audio we can stream. If you look at the consoles today they still have the same amount of memory, so how do you make a denser experience with the same amount of memory? You need to be able to flush things in and out of that memory that you have. Frostbite 2 was more or less a necessity for us to be able to build Battlefield 3. If we didn't build the engine we couldn't build the game because then it would just be an iteration instead of a big step forward."


but i cant wait to see it for myself.
 
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Just watched an interview with producer Patrick Bach on GameTrailers. It seems DICE has taken the right approach for Frostbite 2: Build a game engine that scales DOWN to perform respectably on consoles.

This is a trend I would like to see other studios follow.
 
Porter_ said:
a dedicated sound card will provide much better sound quality, as they typically use higher quality DAC's.
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What about if you are using m/board optical?

And this is what DICE have recently said about add-in cards:

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/...yable-sound-cards-not-cpu-3.html#post19023996

Supporting hardware 3D audio would be major step backwards for quality and time consuming to implement and scale down, so will not happen, end of story.

Save your money and don't buy expensive sound cards for hardware acceleration, put that money to use for a better CPU or GPU instead.
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Having that in mind, would it still be worth getting a sound card?
 
defiant007 said:
What about if you are using m/board optical?

And this is what DICE have recently said about add-in cards:

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/...yable-sound-cards-not-cpu-3.html#post19023996



Having that in mind, would it still be worth getting a sound card?
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Taking into effect that if you use quality headphones a high quality audio add-in card beats the fuck out of the motherboard solution with the right setup , then yes.

My HD650 (and you don't even have to spend more than hundred on decent cans) running along with a Xonar Essence STX is worlds apart from HD650 + motherboard sound solutions.

Plus it offers 7.1 virtualzation that sound incredible in BC2. Something my on-board mobo sound card completely sucks at.


The point is if you spend the money on the right product with decent headphones the money is well spent. If Frostbite 2.0 sounds anything like Frostbite 1.0 than I'll be a very happy camper with my setup.
 
deff said:
Just watched an interview with producer Patrick Bach on GameTrailers. It seems DICE has taken the right approach for Frostbite 2: Build a game engine that scales DOWN to perform respectably on consoles.

This is a trend I would like to see other studios follow.
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Yup, why can't more developers do this??? I, too, would like to see other studios follow suit.
 
Godmachine said:
Taking into effect that if you use quality headphones a high quality audio add-in card beats the fuck out of the motherboard solution with the right setup , then yes.

My HD650 (and you don't even have to spend more than hundred on decent cans) running along with a Xonar Essence STX is worlds apart from HD650 + motherboard sound solutions.

Plus it offers 7.1 virtualzation that sound incredible in BC2. Something my on-board mobo sound card completely sucks at.


The point is if you spend the money on the right product with decent headphones the money is well spent. If Frostbite 2.0 sounds anything like Frostbite 1.0 than I'll be a very happy camper with my setup.
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I have a set of Z-5500's, don't really use my headphones (HD570) for PC gaming much.
 
defiant007 said:
What about if you are using m/board optical?

And this is what DICE have recently said about add-in cards:

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/...yable-sound-cards-not-cpu-3.html#post19023996

Having that in mind, would it still be worth getting a sound card?
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defiant007 said:
I have a set of Z-5500's, don't really use my headphones (HD570) for PC gaming much.
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i'm nowhere near an expert when it comes to audio but i noticed a big difference going from on-board to an X-Fi while using HD280 headphones. BC2 showed the biggest improvement. the sound processing is done via software but that signal still needs to be converted from digital to analog. i think this is where i'm seeing an increase in quality over my previous on-board sound card. everything sounds cleaner and more clear, less muted and less flat. i believe optical-out is digital so i don't think a dedicated sound card would have an effect on that signal. not 100% sure of that though, i don't use optical-out.

i can't answer if it's worth it to get a sound card for your setup. some people don't notice a difference. and i've read around the web that people using speakers to game instead of headphones really don't notice a difference. might be something you need to try out for yourself.
 
Porter_ said:
i'm nowhere near an expert when it comes to audio but i noticed a big difference going from on-board to an X-Fi while using HD280 headphones. BC2 showed the biggest improvement. the sound processing is done via software but that signal still needs to be converted from digital to analog. i think this is where i'm seeing an increase in quality over my previous on-board sound card. everything sounds cleaner and more clear, less muted and less flat. i believe optical-out is digital so i don't think a dedicated sound card would have an effect on that signal. not 100% sure of that though, i don't use optical-out.

i can't answer if it's worth it to get a sound card for your setup. some people don't notice a difference. and i've read around the web that people using speakers to game instead of headphones really don't notice a difference. might be something you need to try out for yourself.
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This guys speaks the truth. I had the same experience... The thing is, many are using cheap speakers that will not produce the sound that can be distinguishable to their ears b/w onboard and a good sound card... better speakers or good headphones and the difference is quite clear.
 
Yes even though the technical people say there are no gains from Sound cards, i noticed a big difference. Technically onboard are okay and are able to do the same thing but for some reason sound cards are so much better, would like to know why.
 
Higher quality components I'm sure. Think about it, you spend 150 bucks on a motherboard with 8 channel sound and then go spend 100 bucks on an xfi...I doubt 2 3rds of a motherboards price comes from the audio hardware on the board.
 
Godmachine said:
Taking into effect that if you use quality headphones a high quality audio add-in card beats the fuck out of the motherboard solution with the right setup , then yes.

My HD650 (and you don't even have to spend more than hundred on decent cans) running along with a Xonar Essence STX is worlds apart from HD650 + motherboard sound solutions.

Plus it offers 7.1 virtualzation that sound incredible in BC2. Something my on-board mobo sound card completely sucks at.


The point is if you spend the money on the right product with decent headphones the money is well spent. If Frostbite 2.0 sounds anything like Frostbite 1.0 than I'll be a very happy camper with my setup.
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A motherboard with SP/DIF and a good external DAC are a better option, really...beats the snot out of any internal consumer sound card.

Also, BC2 is Frostbite 1.5
 
deff said:
Just watched an interview with producer Patrick Bach on GameTrailers. It seems DICE has taken the right approach for Frostbite 2: Build a game engine that scales DOWN to perform respectably on consoles.

This is a trend I would like to see other studios follow.
Click to expand...

Isn't the new unreal engine like that? Max perf all the way down to mobile?
 
Hoping a i7 2600k (4.4GHz) and two HD 5870 2GB in Crossfire will be enough to max this game out at 4320x900 with respectable FPS.
 
1st Sgt. Burke said:
Do we know min specs yet?
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I'm going to take a guess based on a couple things we know about BF3 so far and the minimum requirements for BC2. This is complete speculation on my part, but I'm willing to bet I'm not too far off the mark. All I did was extrapolate from BC2 specs and my own experience with BC2 and that we know BF3 will be more intensive than BC2 for several reasons such as double the player count in multiplayer.

Minimum specs:
OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7 32bit or 64bit (already confirmed it will be DX10/11 only)
Processor: Intel Core i3 or Core 2 DUO @ 2.5 - 3.0 GHz, AMD Athlon II 3.0ghz or faster
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space. (BC2 was 15GB)
Video Card: DX10 capable card, Nvidia GTS250 or ATI 4770 and higher with 512MB of VRAM minimum
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 10

Recommended Specs:
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Processor: Any Quad-Core 2.4ghz or higher
Memory: 4GB or higher
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space
Video Card: DX11 capable card, GTX460 or ATI 6850 with 1GB of VRAM
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 11

Maxed out at 1920x1080p resolution 4xAA and 16xAF specs in multiplayer (please note that this is a guess from the confirmed report that the GDC demo was running on one GTX580):
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Processor: Core2 Quad-core or AMD Phenom II Quad-core over 3ghz, i7 or i5 Quad-Core 2.5ghz or higher
Memory: 4GB or higher
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space
Video Card: DX11 capable card, GTX580 or ATI 6970 with 1.5GB of VRAM or more
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 11
 
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CaptNumbNutz said:
I'm going to take a guess based on a couple things we know about BF3 so far and the minimum requirements for BC2. This is complete speculation on my part, but I'm willing to bet I'm not too far off the mark. All I did was extrapolate from BC2 specs and my own experience with BC2 and that we know BF3 will be more intensive than BC2 for several reasons such as double the player count in multiplayer.

Minimum specs:
OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7 32bit or 64bit (already confirmed it will be DX10/11 only)
Processor: Intel Core i3 or Core 2 DUO @ 2.5 - 3.0 GHz, AMD Athlon II 3.0ghz or faster
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space. (BC2 was 15GB)
Video Card: DX10 capable card, Nvidia GTS250 or ATI 4770 and higher with 512MB of VRAM minimum
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 10

Recommended Specs:
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Processor: Any Quad-Core 2.4ghz or higher
Memory: 4GB or higher
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space
Video Card: DX11 capable card, GTX460 or ATI 6850 with 1GB of VRAM
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 11

Maxed out at 1920x1080p resolution 4xAA and 16xAF specs in multiplayer (please note that this is a guess from the confirmed report that the GDC demo was running on one GTX580):
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Processor: Core2 Quad-core or AMD Phenom II Quad-core over 3ghz, i7 or i5 Quad-Core 2.5ghz or higher
Memory: 4GB or higher
Hard Drive: 20GB of free space
Video Card: DX11 capable card, GTX580 or ATI 6970 with 2GB of VRAM
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 11
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Lets hope this thing runs smooth maxed out on 6970CF/580SLI....though if your requirements are close then that probably wont be the case.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Lets hope this thing runs smooth maxed out on 6970CF/580SLI....though if your requirements are close then that probably wont be the case.
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Based on your rig in your sig, you shouldn't have any probs maxing it out on one monitor. A DICE rep said they used ONE GTX580 for the demonstration, I'm betting it was a slight overkill... I bet a GTX470/6950 will be sufficient for same settings maxed on one monitor. I'm guessing an overclocked GTX460 or ATI 6870 might be able to do it too, but the fps might be too close to 30 unless you lowered the AA and AF settings.

Quick question though...Can you max BC2 on all 3 of your monitors with your current setup and single 6970? If you can't do that now, you most likely will need a 2nd card to max out BF3 on 3 monitors. If you can already do this, I might have to edit my configs a little.

Edit...I should change the maxed out settings to 1.5GB of VRAM or more...forgot the GTX580 only ships with 1.5GB.
 
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If one 580 could run that demo with all that jazzy graphics then I dont see why you'd need 2-SLI or 3-SLI to max out at 1920x1080. That's a res even a 460GTX can max visuals at.

Those crazy specs would be more for 2560x1600 or larger or Multi-display setups IMO
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Based on your rig in your sig, you shouldn't have any probs maxing it out on one monitor. A DICE rep said they used ONE GTX580 for the demonstration, I'm betting it was a slight overkill... I bet a GTX470/6950 will be sufficient for same settings maxed on one monitor. I'm guessing an overclocked GTX460 or ATI 6870 might be able to do it too, but the fps might be too close to 30 unless you lowered the AA and AF settings.

Quick question though...Can you max BC2 on all 3 of your monitors with your current setup and single 6970? If you can't do that now, you most likely will need a 2nd card to max out BF3 on 3 monitors. If you can already do this, I might have to edit my configs a little.

Edit...I should change the maxed out settings to 1.5GB of VRAM or more...forgot the GTX580 only ships with 1.5GB.
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Never ran with a single 6970 but with 2 I can max everything cept AA and HBAO across 3 monitors and run around 30-40fps when shit hits the fan.
 
Doesn anyone else think BF3's graphics look better than Crysis 2? Honestly that's how I feel...maybe it's just the gritty wartorn look against the alienisms of Crysis 2 but the BF3 graphics just impress me so.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Doesn anyone else think BF3's graphics look better than Crysis 2? Honestly that's how I feel...maybe it's just the gritty wartorn look against the alienisms of Crysis 2 but the BF3 graphics just impress me so.
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I do, I wonder if Frostbite 2 will enable to have more things destructible?
 
Guys seriously, there's no way they are gonna make a game this popular need to have sli gtx 580's to max it out. Think about it. Not gonna happen these days for alot of reasons but mostly because this still has to run on the consoles too. Scalability can only go so far.
 
Savoy said:
Guys seriously, there's no way they are gonna make a game this popular need to have sli gtx 580's to max it out. Think about it. Not gonna happen these days for alot of reasons but mostly because this still has to run on the consoles too. Scalability can only go so far.
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Looked pretty maxed out (idk bout resolution) in the trailers... single 580 I think. And that's before optimizations and other good stuff.
 
Savoy said:
Guys seriously, there's no way they are gonna make a game this popular need to have sli gtx 580's to max it out. Think about it. Not gonna happen these days for alot of reasons but mostly because this still has to run on the consoles too. Scalability can only go so far.
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It's called BANKAI!!
 
At this point, about the only thing I'm hoping they deliver on, is 64 player matches, and with that, appropriately sized maps. Oh, I'd also like a hardcore mode like in BC2.
 
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