DICE just told us about an update for the beta of Bad Company 2 for the PC that will hit Steam tonight and has a whole bunch of updates mostly for network and gameplay performance.

This update is about performance and stability again. We are not doing any changes to the game’s datafiles.

Reduced input “lag”
On machines where the CPU would out-run the GPU, sometimes the GPU would queue up several frames’ worth of rendering commands.
This could lead to the game having a high framerate, but input still feeling very sluggish.

Now there’s a limiter on how many frames the CPU is allowed to be “ahead” of the GPU.
Control this setting via Settings.ini. Default setting: RenderAheadLimit=2

• Performance optimizations with biggest improvements on dual-core machines
• Fixed black “masks”
  • The soot on buildings with holes in them had a bugged renderpath. We switched that over to a more well-tested renderpath.
• Improved hit-detection
  • We’ve gone through the hit detection logic, and client+server will now give more consistent results.
• Fix for some “rubberbanding” issues
  • C4 should stay attached to vehicles and not rubberband around
• Reduced spikes/dips in framerate
• Various fixes for alt+tab related CTD on Dx9
• More fixes for random CTD on Dx9
• Fix for crash when you’re in a vehicle that gets destroyed

There was a race condition in the code;
System 1 thought “oh hey, you’re leaving vehicle X”
System 2 thought “the vehicle got destroyed, let’s remove it”

If system 2 ran before system 1, chaos would ensue.
This was actually fixed in the retail version since a month, but it was only when we got detailed crash reports from the community that we understood *why* the Beta was crashing.

Likely bugs in this build
I wouldn’t be surprised if it (still) has trouble remembering your settings between rounds. It would be nice to have that fixed too, but it’s better to get a patch out now, and look at the settings issues afterward.

–Steam Friends Team