If the Mods rather wanna see this under the category "performance" change it :)
I was not quite sure

It's more likely related to the VIEWDISTANCE.
Higher terrain settings renders more detailed far terrain too.

I myself don't have any FPS hit by looking on my feet and changing the terrain details because you don't render the far away stuff (more detailed as said above).

Lower a bit the viewdistance (overall) and you should be good.

Running ULTRA with VD 2.5K

Ditto with what Kid18120 stated. Further reduce your graphics settings.

In theory, it just won't look as nice. Enemy should still blend into the ground if their within grassy terrain, and likely won't give the advantage to somebody reducing all their graphics settings in order to see enemy without the grassy terrain being used as camouflage. (I have yet to verify this completely, and just assume it from my present settings.)

@rogerx
i can confirm your "theory" about the enemies sinking in the ground to allow them to hide in non-rendered grass.
ArmA3 is currently using the same feature as ArmA2 and works exactly the same (for now atleast)

I'm not complaining about bad FPS, I'm saying that way too much resources (FPS) are used for rendering gras (that's one reason I hesitated to post it under "performance")

Yeah i got your point but it's (partly) wrong :)
When you change the "terrain detail" option, you are not only rendering more grass, you are also rendering a lot more details in the nearby terrain and a bit more details in the far (and this comprhends shadow textures on the far landscape).
The grass is (at the moment) the best optimized part of the terrain layer IMO (refer to the example of looking on your feet and change the details that i wrote in my previous comment)

Separate terrain and grass slider would be best.

But I noticed with a lower end video card the latest patch lags heavy around Agia Marina, during night time near light sources and when looking through scope. Especially also when looking into vegetation/grass. This was not present in the first build where the performance even on lower end cards (system req or a bit above) was very impressive.

Maybe something in the new patch is broken regarding performance or it might even be the new shadow update.

Point being in the previous patches I didn't notice much lag even in the grass, but do now.

Grass and the detailed AI units drops the fps a lot.

in arma it is almost absolutely necessary to use very high setting for terrain, not to do with the grass, but how terrain objects are rendered in distance, this goes for objects quality too, if you have anything lower than very high, you are likely to have alot of popping effects (transition of LOD's) at mid range, which is where most of the battles happen, at mid range, and having popping objects just really distracts one. and this is why more optimization is required for terrain rendering.

I think if BIS could come up with a new hardly noticable transition effect for the transition between objects and terrain objects, instead of instant popping, it would make scaling down to high setting much more useable for performance, and still look fairly good.

I think a lot a of people can barely play ArmA as it is, so low settings is mandatory for a lot of people (not everyone has a money tree in their backyard). I never complain about optimization etcetera, but still, if I play any other game and look at detailed AI models they do not drop the fps (not talking about CPU resources for pathing etc), 2 ArmA units drops the fps already. In my ideal world the devs would have stayed with armA 2 visual quality and mainly focus on making that optimized and lighter to use before they make the already lagging world and AI even more detailed and laggy. It seems that there is an 'arms race' going on between all the game companies that makes them think that every game they release needs to be even more graphically awesome, and the customers that thus have to buy a new pc every other year just to play these games.

B00tsy: I just recently upgraded from a 2x750 P3 w/ 1G RAM (x86) to a 64 bit platform, so I agree with your analogy of games having low settings for older hardware. Especially when a lot of people are not rich, and require their money for housing and food items. This is another reason for liking Linux. Linux doesn't require newer or faster hardware upon upgrading the kernel or more Linux related software.

However, even my i7 4x3.5Ghz 32G RAM w/ NVidia 670, upon automatic video detection, sets settings to Low! I usually have to go into the Video settings and increase to the next level below Ultra. I'm guessing they're also decreasing settings for handling maximum smoke/explosion effects, but settings are quite low even on even my hardware.

ARMA is the first game I've seen being a little more friendly with people with older hardware, albeit requiring DirectX 10/11 (or >= Windows 7). You are correct B00tsy, companies are in the business to make money. Nothing much we can do about it but encourage Linux or Open Source, or try not buying such applications. I'll admit, it's a tough battle for which I just recently gave in and bought a 64 bit platform. Should be able to disable all eye-candy to be able to play this game on i586 platforms.

"However, even my i7 4x3.5Ghz 32G RAM w/ NVidia 670, upon automatic video detection, sets settings to Low! I usually have to go into the Video settings and increase to the next level below Ultra."

Thats odd, I have an i5 3570K at 4.3Ghz and GTX660 (non-Ti) and my auto detect gives me Ultra settings, which my rig can handle around 30fps just fine. Thats Odd lol.

Anyhow, still feel they could cut down some stuff in order to have it run much like arm2, i have a mate who can run arma2 just about fine and looking great, only arma 3 he has to pretty much disable everything and run at low, not even normal. That doesnt seem to make much sense, arma 2 should be like what the game should look like on a mid range rig, which still looks pretty decent compared to todays standards.

Issue closed as obsolete. If you encounter this problem again, please create another ticket. Thank you.