Currently, we're finalizing trees and bushes for ARMA2. The biggest problem with vegetation is impact on game performance, so we develop a lot of new techniques on the side of the engine and on the side of LindaStudio as well. We make very deep analysis of performance problems in Armed assault and we find, that the main problem is overdraw in the first 20 meters of the scene. So it means, we needed to optimize the overall surface of trees and bushes and develop some more effective shaders and drawing techniques in the engine to reduce these aspects. So what did we do?

ARMA: Armed Assault has been officialy introduced as Game Of The Month featuring TripleHead2Go support on Matrox Surround Gaming website. You can also find there a small "sneak peek" at ARMA2 which supports TripleHead2Go as well. View great screenshots of ARMA and ARMA2 in wide Surround Gaming mode across three screens!

In this blog entry I would like to share with you some experiences of how new technology is being developed for computer games. I hope it will help you to understand the complex and interesting work which is needed for a new feature to be used to its full benefits.

Release of the beta patch 1.09

Firstly, most people are aware, but for those that aren't, we released a beta patch 1.09 a few days ago, this patch contains a number of bug fixes, performance fixes as well as anti-cheating improvements amongst other things, first indications are that the majority of ArmA users are having great success with this patch so that's obviously very pleasing to all of us. As this is a beta patch your feedback is really useful to us to make sure that the final version is as stable and complete as possible.

Here are a few links to visit:

• 1.09 patch page on the Community Wiki (download links, patch contents etc. etc.)
• Forum thread for discussing this new patch on the official forums
• Forum thread for troubleshooting issues related to the new patch