Battlefield 3

Optimal Settings

Option	Notes
Textures	Medium/High - At high settings you won't notice textures popping in. Ultra textures are loaded when you are up close to an object. GPUs with less than 1GB of VRAM may have stuttering issues on Ultra textures, due to thrashing.
Shadows	Medium - Even at low settings everything in the game casts a dynamic shadow. Raising the setting makes the shadow look softer.
Effects	Low - As the article states "Being honest, we struggled to find a difference between the lowest and highest settings in the Effects Quality settings;..."
Mesh	Ultra - Mesh has a big effect on the overall visuals.(The higher setting it is, the range at which you can spot enemies is increased)
Terrain	Low - Similar to Effects, not much difference between low and ultra.
Anti-Aliasing Deferred	2xMSAA - Smooths edges, while not as well as 4x, you save yourself some FPS.
AA Post	Low - Minimal performance difference between Low and Ultra so if you can, go Ultra.
Motion Blur	This is a matter of personal preference and GPU capability. Some like it off, some like it on. If you like it on and you can afford the drop in FPS associated with it then turn it on. If not I suggest disabling it.
Anisotropic Filter	16xAF - Minimum performance hit and it give a significant visual improvement.
Ambient Occlusion	HBAO - More modern than SSAO and doesn't require as many resources as it did in BC2.

Performance can also be increased by lowering the resolution, however, LCD screens perform optimally at their native resolution. NVIDIA's GeForce website has an optimal settings guide showing what each settings does visually and benchmarks their performance impact. You can also use NVIDIA's Optimal Playable Settings (OPS) finder for GeForce GPUs which will find settings that are optimal for gameplay running at least 30 FPS among various resolutions.

Issues and Fixes

Realtek Audio Bug

1. Rigth Click on the Speaker icon.
2. Right click "Speakers" and select properties.
3. Advanced tab (far right)
4. Uncheck "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device".

Nvidia 560/570 Freezing / Graphics Issues Fix

1. Update to LATEST Nvidia Drivers
2. Turn OFF - AA - DEFERED
3. Turn OFF - VSYNC
4. Turn OFF - Motion Blur

ASUS Cards - End of round crash issue

If you own an ASUS card (ATi or NV) and you installed the 'Smart Doctor' and/or 'ASUS Gamer' software then this is what's VERY likely causing you end of round crashes. All you need to do is uninstall Smart Doctor and ASUS Gamer, restart your computer and reinstall your video card drivers - that's it!!!

ASUS XONAR Audio Cards - Sound Loop on Game Crash

If you own an ASUS XONAR Audio card disable "GX" Mode in the Xonar Audio Center to fix the Game crash with the sound loop in background.

Black screen issues

Firstly try to update your graphics drivers

If that fails try this:

Nvidia Users:

• Revert to driver used during BF3 beta.

ATI users:

1. Go to C:\Users\your user name\Documents\Battlefield 3\settings
2. Open PROF_SAVE_profile in wordpad
   
3. Change GstRender.FullscreenEnabled 0
4. Change GstRender.FullscreenScreen 1
5. Save and set file as read only
6. Launch BF3, it should start in windowed mode
7. Go to options > video and change undefined monitor number to "1"
8. Adjust screen resolution to a resolution LOWER than your default Eyefinity resolution (The one that works for me is 2760x1600) [default is 3308x1920]
9. Select full screen and click apply

Crash Upon Launch

1. Repair your Battlefield 3 installation. To do this, go into your Origin Client, right-click Battlefield 3, and finally click “Repair Install”.
2. Remove all graphics card drivers and folders. Re-install driver. When updating driver, manually un-install previous version before installing new versions
3. Disable SLI or Crossfire (I know you arent going to like that !)
4. Disable anti-aliasing and filtering
5. Disable V-sync
6. Disable background apps, and turn off your anti-virus software
7. If possible, install the game directly from physical media as opposed to downloading and installing from Origin

Origin Fix - "Could Not Activate"

• Possible workaround is to delete the BF3 license file to to force a license update.

1. Exit Origin completely. You can do this by right-clicking Origin in your system tray (near the clock) and selecting "Exit"
2. Open Internet Explorer (this will only work with Internet Explorer, not other browsers). Enter the following address into your address bar and press "Enter/Return"

C:\ProgramData\Electronic Arts\EA Services\License

1. Delete the file named either 71067.dlf or 70619 or 71069.dlf
2. Restart your machine.
3. Launch Origin and login to your Origin account.
4. Attempt to launch Battlefield 3

• Second Workaround

1. Exit Origin completely. You can do this by right-clicking Origin in your system tray (near the clock) and selecting "Exit"
2. Open Internet Explorer (this will only work with Internet Explorer, not other browsers). Enter the following address into your address bar and press "Enter/Return"

C:\ProgramData\Origin\DownloadCache

1. Delete the files in this directory
2. Restart your machine.
3. Launch Origin and login to your Origin account.
4. Attempt to launch Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 Install Error: “Battlefield 3 (BF3) Install Fails, Cannot Install”

Uninstall both instances (if present)of Micrsoft C++ files on your system. Reinstall after BF3 has been installed.

Origin Fix - "Problem with your games setup, please reinstall"

This error is shown by Origin when attempting to load the game, it is likely caused by out of date drivers and not the games files. Update your graphics drivers to at least version 11.7 for AMD/ATI cards or version 285.27 for Nvidia cards, it is reccommended to use the latest version of the drivers compatible with your card (Usually improves performance and stability). If the error persists after correctly updating your graphics drivers, then you will likely have to reinstall the game.

Origin Fix - Says game is not downloaded or installed even though you have all the files

This is caused by incorrect registry entries for the game, and Origin doesn't know where to find it, even if it is in the default directory (e.g C:\Program Files(x86)\Origin Games\). Incorrect registry entries can be caused by:

• Incomplete installation or errors during installation, in this case you will likely need to reinstall the entire game if the error happened before all files were copied.
• Installing the game on one user account and attempting to run it on another could possibly be a problem (depends on users permission settings).
• Other programs or users modifying the registry entries depended on by Origin.
• Moving the games files from one location to another (e.g to a different folder/drive or copying the game from a different computer to avoid installation and downloading patches)

This problem can be fixed by following these steps:

1. Completely exit Origin (click exit on its tray icon or kill the process).
2. Navigate to the game folder that you want Origin to recognise as being installed (default C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\).
3. Find the __Installer folder (two underscores), right click on Touchup.exe and Send to->Desktop(create shortcut).
4. Find the new shortcut on your desktop and right click on it and go Properties.
5. In the textbox named Target: should be the location of Touchup.exe in between quotes. Add the following after the quotes (you may have to scroll the textbox to see the end):

6. install -locale en_US -installPath "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\" -autologging

7. If your game files are not in C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\ you must change that part of the code to your location.
8. Click Ok and Double click your shortcut to run it, (it won't show a window, it's running in the background). This program takes a minute or so to update all the needed registry entries for Origin to detect the game.
9. Open Origin and the game should be detected as installed, although it may not be up to date, if not, make sure you followed these steps correctly and replaced the location if you needed to.

If your installation of Battlefield 3 is not english, you must replace the en_US in the shortcut with your locale (language) code before running the shortcut.

• zh_TW - Traditional Chinese
• fr_FR - French
• ko_KR - Korean
• it_IT - Italian
• cs_CZ - Czech
• ja_JP - Japanese
• de_DE - German
• es_ES - Spanish
• pl_PL - Polish

Constant Crashing - 32 bit fix

A lot of people using 32bit Operating Systems have issues like the game crashing after a couple of minutes of playing. This is sometimes caused by the game using more memory than windows allows it to do. If you experience those or similar issues you can try the 32bit fix:

for windows XP 32bit

• Find your Boot.ini located usually on the C:.(If you cannot see it, you probably have system files hidden, then follow these instructions at microsoft (also uncheck "hide protected operating system files")
• Right click on the boot.ini and choose properties. Uncheck "read only"
• Open the boot.ini by double clicking it.
• Under the section called find the line that says "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional...". Yours may look a bit different. We are going to make a duplicate, so that if you make a mistake you will not harm yourself from booting into your computer. Drag you're mouse across the entire line, right click and choose copy. Then right below the line you just copied right click your mouse and choose paste. You should now have two lines one after another that are exact duplicates.
• Change the bottom line that you just copied with the following addition on the end. Add a space at the end of the line and then this without the quotes "/3GB /USERVA=2500"
• In that lower boot entry you just made, find the name of the operating system in quotes and change it to something like "Windows XP 3GB", so you can differentiate at boot up.
• Close and save the boot.ini.
• Right click on the boot.ini, hit properties, check read only.

for Windows 7/Windows Vista

• In Windows 7/Vista go to Start menu. Go to Accessories. Locate the command prompt shortcut and hover mouse over it. Right Click on the shortcut then select Run as Administrator.
• In the command prompt type this exactly: bcdedit /set increaseuserva 2500.(or 3000) Then hit enter.
• Make sure you get a message back confirming the change was made. To verify the entry is there you can type just bcdedit, hit enter, and you should see the entry now listed.
• Then close the command prompt. You just told Vista to increase user virtual address (userva) space to 2500MB.
• Changes take effect on reboot but don't reboot yet.

Predictive Crosshairs on Helicopters

As of February 2012, there's a bug where using a weapon that does not have predictive crosshairs (heatseekers in attack helis, air-to-ground missile on scout helis) will cause the predictive crosshairs on the missiles (attack heli) or main gun (scout heli) to bug out. To fix this, just switch to third person view and back.

Possible fix for getting stuck on a black screen upon map change

• Alt-tab out of the game while the scoreboard for the previous round is showing.
• Make sure you give your computer enough time, so don't do it at the last second.
• Once out, open the task manager and watch your processor usage.
• It should go down for a while and then come back up when the map is loaded and you're in game.
• Alt-tab back into the game.

This solution does not always work for everyone. Give it a try and see if it improves your chances of getting into the next map. More information here.

Temporary black screen when spawning

This is intended behavior to cover up the engine loading textures. The duration will supposedly be decreased in an upcoming patch (as of 2012-03-03).

Enable Steam overlay in-game

To enable the Steam overlay, first you should disable the Origin overlay:

• Open Origin
• Click the gear symbol in the top right, settings
• Click the in game tab
• Uncheck the box next to "Enable Origin In Game"
• Click Done
• Quit Origin

Now, you will add a shortcut to Origin.exe in Steam.

• Open Steam
• Click "Add a Game" in the bottom left, then "Add a Non-Steam Game"
• Browse to your Origin.exe file (default is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin\Origin.exe")
• After selecting Origin.exe, select "Add Selected Programs"

There will now be a game in your Steam Library called Origin, you can change the name and icon by right clicking on Origin in your library and selecting Properties.

Start the Origin.exe shortcut in your Steam Library, and join a game in Battlefield 3 as you normally would. When you are in-game, you will have the Steam Overlay by pressing Shift+Tab (default). In order to stop showing up in-game on Steam, you have to close your browser and exit Origin.

Game disconnected: something went wrong

If you keep getting this error after loading a Campaign game, you will need to re-start that mission from the beginning.

• Select "Replay Missions" in the menu after the game loads.
• Select the mission you would like to play. This will overwrite your checkpoint save.

Network

Ports

TCP: 80, 443, 9988, 20000-29999, 22990, 17502, 42127
UDP: 3659, 14000-14016, 22990-23006, 25200-25300 Taken from here.

Punkbuster errors

Updating punkbuster using PBSetup usually works

• Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager.
• Go to the Processes tab and click "Show processes from all users".
• Find PnkBstrA.exe and / or PnkBstrB.exe and click End Process on both of them if they're running.
• Download PBSVC.exe and run it as Administrator. Follow the wizard and close the program when done.
• Download PBSetup and run it as Administrator.
• Add all the games you have installed to the list and click check for updates.
• Close PBSetup and log in to Battlelog and connect to a server of your choice.

Ingame Commands & Helpful Keystrokes

View FPS

Type in the console using the Tilde (~) key found under the escape button and type the following: Render.DrawFps 1

External links

Symthic is a website which has statistics of all the weapons, vehicles and attachments that are present in game. It allows you to see which setup fits your playing style the best, and allows you to see equipment before you unlock it in game.

Battlefield 3 on Origin Store