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Arma 3 Available For Linux In A Beta

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Arma 3 is now downloadable and playable on Linux, but be warned it's early days for the port, and the port may not graduate to official status.

You can find more information on their official port page here. This page will detail limitations and such, and is an important read.

Early reports are encouraging though, with one user noting they are getting a solid 60FPS at 1440p resolution on a 970.

I ordered a copy to play around with, as I was too impatient to wait to see if we could get a key. During my livestream of it I played over an hour, and everything pretty much worked as expected. I was able to get a good solid framerate, and most importantly smooth gameplay on Very High settings on my Nvidia 970.

The game is very CPU heavy, so it's really not for lower-end users, please remember that. It's a hog even on Windows.

Find Arma 3 on Steam, but only buy it if you're prepare to lose access to it on Linux if it doesn't get promoted to stable in future. I hope it works out for both VP and the Arma developers, as it would be a great game to have officially on Linux.

Specifications
MINIMUM
OS - Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS 64-bit or Mint 17.1 64-bit or similar Linux distribution
PROCESSOR - Intel Core i5 2.8 GHz or AMD FX 8350 4 GHz
GRAPHICS - OpenGL 4.1 compliant graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 or AMD HD 7850)
GPU MEMORY - 1 GB
RAM - 4 GB
HARD DRIVE - 15 GB free space

Thanks to a regular Arma 3 player, I was linked to this benchmark mission pack. It gives you two levels to run, and gives you an average at the end. You need to extract them into the Missions folder inside the Arma 3 install directory. From there you can select from from the Scenarios section.

Benchmark #1 Very High preset
Intel i5 4670K, Nvidia 970 (352.41), 16GB DDR3

Resolution: 1920x1080
Sampling: 100 per cent
View Distance: 2000
Object view distance: 1286
Shadow: 100
Bloom: 0
Radial blur: 0
Rotation blur: 0
Depth of field & Sharpen filter set to 100 (default)
Vsync disabled.
FSAA 4X.

Stratis: Average: 67FPS
Altis: Average: 68FPS

Benchmark #2 Very High preset
Intel i5 4670K, Nvidia 970 (352.41), 16GB DDR3

Resolution: 1920x1080
Sampling: 100 per cent
View Distance: 2579
Object view distance: 1547
Shadow: 100
Bloom: 0
Radial blur: 0
Rotation blur: 0
Depth of field & Sharpen filter set to 100 (default)
Vsync disabled.
FSAA 6X.

Stratis: Average: 58FPS
Altis: Average: 59FPS

I will be very interested to see your results. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Action, FPS, Steam
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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49 comments
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Liam Dawe Aug 31, 2015
I am going to try streaming it here soon: http://www.twitch.tv/linuxwithliam
wolfyrion Aug 31, 2015
Quoting: liamdawe
Quote--eon_force_display=0
Use that in Steam's launch options, fixes both issues for me.

ah Thanks is playable now... :D

After some mins of playing I have checked the temperature monitor of my CPU...

All Cores were like from 70 - 75 Celcious.......... HOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

I quited since I saw that.... but from 40 to 75 Celcious.... in a game :o?

(I will restart my PC and check it again though , maybe something went wrong)
Orkultus Aug 31, 2015
My System Specs.

Linux Mint 17.2 64Bit Cinnamon Edition
Intel Core i5-4690K CPU @ 3.50GHZ x 4
G-Skill 16GB DDR3 PCI 1600
Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 4GB (Nvidia Driver ver. 355.06) Single Monitor.

Settings on Very High.

The menu runs at 60FPS, all menu features work well. The prologue with the Virtual Simulator ran at 60FPS with no hiccups. When i got into the game with the real map loaded, my FPS shot down to it's lowest of 37FPS, but usually stayed around 46 - 55 FPS. There were some slight stutters while turning to look in different directions, but they eventually cleared up. Sound worked very well. Had no real issues with it. Seem's perfectly playable on my system at least. I have not been in any big fire fights yet, so i dont know how the performance will be during that.

-MintyLinux-
Orkultus Aug 31, 2015
Quoting: earthmover
Quoting: earthmoverI bought it back in alfa and played it for over 100 hours. Downloading....

Downloaded it. I'm getting 5 seconds of black screen and bugtrap :(

[thread 00000004][W][17943]: Game wants to disable DXGI reacting to window changes (monitoring app message queue) for window 0xf1d707a8. Ignoring.
[thread 00000004][W][17943]: Game wants to disable DXGI reacting to Alt-Enter fullscreen toggle.
[thread 00000011][I][18245]: Precompiled shader cache loaded: binary shaders: 8, GLSL shaders: 291, GLSL pipelines: 23
[thread 00000004][W][19030]: REGISTRY OPERATION: RegOpenKeyExW() returns ERROR_NOT_FOUND (subkey not found) key = HKEY_CURRENT_USER, subkey = Software\Microsoft\Direct3D
[thread 00000004][W][19630]: eON_LoadLibraryExA() for 'PhysX3Common_x86.dll' has non-zero flags ( 0x1 ), probably unhandled functionality!
[thread 00000004][W][19630]: Refreshing folder '/tmp/arma3sTZsjo/', temp folder is 'C:\tmp\arma3sTZsjo\'.
[thread 00000004][W][19630]: eON_LoadLibraryExA() for 'PhysX3Common_x86.dll' has non-zero flags ( 0x1 ), probably unhandled functionality!

[thread 00000004][I][24191]: eON_WindowEvent: SetFullscreenState true 0xf1d68e90
[thread 00000004][I][24192]: Game stdout/err: SkyKeyframer::ChangedTbb - Can't use Threading Building Blocks with Static Runtimes (MT, MTd)
[thread 00000004][I][24192]: Game stdout/err: 

[thread 00000004][I][24197]: Game stdout/err: CellularCloudGrid::ChangedTbb - Can't use Threading Building Blocks with Static Runtimes (MT, MTd)
[thread 00000004][I][24197]: Game stdout/err: 

[thread 00000004][I][24197]: Game stdout/err: CellularCloudGrid::ChangedTbb - Can't use Threading Building Blocks with Static Runtimes (MT, MTd)
[thread 00000004][I][24197]: Game stdout/err: 

[thread 00000011][I][25950]: No OpenGL commands for full second. Flushing GL to make sure it hasn't deadlocked.
[thread 00000004][I][30515]: ===enforcing log flush===

What kind of GPU are you using, and what is the driver version?
earthmover Aug 31, 2015
Quoting: OrkultusWhat kind of GPU are you using, and what is the driver version?
GTX970, driver 352.41
gojul Aug 31, 2015
Works damn good for me, played half an hour. Eon ports become pretty good.

For those of you who have XBox 360 gamepad issues like me in Dirt Showdown, just press left joystick bottom and right joystick up and it fixes thing.

TW2 still keeps crashing for me, but no problem with Stronghold 3 nor Dirt Showdown. Some crashes with Bioshock Infinite and did not test SpecOps The Line

Orkultus -> your driver is still beta. Stable branch is 352.xx with NVidia


Last edited by gojul on 31 August 2015 at 7:51 pm UTC
wolfyrion Aug 31, 2015
I have been in the Army for like 2 years and this is my first time playing ARMA 3 for obvious reasons...

OMG I feel almost the same as I was in the ARMY , I mean the way you drive the truck , the shootings , to take cover, the heavy breath , the stress, the panic if you gonna die etc ....
well it brings me bad memories as well as good memories but I am quite impressed from this game so far !!!

Is like a hardcore simulation ^_^

Lets hope for further optimizations so far is great except that my pc is getting a bit hot .. :S:
Samsai Aug 31, 2015
The game works on AMD with Catalyst 15.3. 15.7 is still not working on Ubuntu 15.04 so I was not able to test on that. Performance is low-ish at around 30 on medium graphical details and going higher than that will result in the grass turning blue. The game requires GL4.1 minimum so I was not able to run tests on Mesa.
pete910 Aug 31, 2015
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Quoting: SamsaiThe game works on AMD with Catalyst 15.3. 15.7 is still not working on Ubuntu 15.04 so I was not able to test on that. Performance is low-ish at around 30 on medium graphical details and going higher than that will result in the grass turning blue. The game requires GL4.1 minimum so I was not able to run tests on Mesa.

What card?

try 15.5's?

The 15.5's and 7's is where i'd seen big improvements with my 290x
Orkultus Aug 31, 2015
Quoting: earthmover
Quoting: OrkultusWhat kind of GPU are you using, and what is the driver version?
GTX970, driver 352.41

Possibly upgrade your driver to the lastest?
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