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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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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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MADDSNIPER Sep 1, 2015
Its probably worth pointing out that to play on most multiplayer servers you need to install battleye which is essentially a rootkit giving a third party control over most of your system. They can monitor all the files you have on each drive, upload and download anything they want and you must agree to this to use most online servers for arma 2 / arma 3 / dayz etc.
mao_dze_dun Sep 2, 2015
Quoting: MADDSNIPERIts probably worth pointing out that to play on most multiplayer servers you need to install battleye which is essentially a rootkit giving a third party control over most of your system. They can monitor all the files you have on each drive, upload and download anything they want and you must agree to this to use most online servers for arma 2 / arma 3 / dayz etc.

Welcome to the world of AAA gaming :).
musojon74 Sep 2, 2015
Runs nice for me on my 970. Can't set texture above normal though which is unfortunate, needs resolving to really make it look nice. Great port so far though it seems. Needs to be made official, if it's this good at the first attempt.
supashang Sep 2, 2015
NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case
Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-PRO GAMER (SOCKET 1150)
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB Dual-Channel DDR3
4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 OC STRIX (ASUS)
120GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO
500GB Seagate Momentus XT x2
500GB Western Digital Blue x 2

OS: Linux Mint 17.2 "Rafaela" 64bit, Cinnamon.
Kernel: 4.1.3-040103-generic
NVIDIA Drivers: version 355.06-0ubuntu0~xedgers14.04.1

With out of the box settings (Very High) with VSync on I get 60FPS.
With VSync off and depending where I am on the map I get between 57 - 117 FPS.
For this quick test I used Steams built-in FPS counter in settings.
salsadoom Sep 3, 2015
Eh... I kinda am interested in this, but the whole "maybe Linux" thing puts me off. But then they complicate the whole issue by saying "It is not guaranteed these ports will ever graduate from their experimental betas. We will be evaluating the popularity of the betas and any issues they may reveal." especially the last part.

They are literally expecting me to purchase a game that I may not be able to play, then expect to use that as a method to evaluate if the game is popular enough. That makes absolutely no sense, wtf are they thinking?? That is quite possibly the most retarded statement I've ever heard from a developer.

I really hate this, if you expect me to pay full price for a game then I don't want to be treated as a second class customer -- and these guys are actually taking it a step further by saying that will just take my money and maybe give me something. Screw that.

This has nothing to do with VP, btw. This is all on the Arma 3 guys who clearly have their heads up their asses if they are using this beta as a way to evaluate popularity.
Nyamiou Sep 3, 2015
I do expect they take it to the next level (release date), until then I don't want to buy the game for a beta with potentials bugs that may never be fixed.
evergreen Sep 4, 2015
They wrote the game could remain on beta, but they still update every day arma 3. You can see it on steamdb.info/linux. Sometimes they stop at week end.
IMO it's impossible that such intelligent people from bistudio would spend so much money for a broken projekt. And I don't think they have so much money to put it in an unfinished game.
So I play it every day, bought DLC's and have much fun.
melrief Sep 6, 2015
I've just completed the game under Linux! It is perfectly playable with a GTX 970 with some minor issues, mainly low FPS, in certain areas. But I can't complain because there are similar issues with Windows and one of the main critics to the game is indeed the frame drop in some areas. Overall I loved by the game and the port, probably the best game I have player under Linux since forever! I hope they will decide to maintain it and maybe exit the beta for Linux :).
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