I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced significantly better performance from Daggerfall than Arena... even after messing with the cycles and everything in DOSBox's configuration. The detail in Arena's options are what seem to be responsible, mostly. Turning it up turns Arena into an uncomfortable, laggy experience, for me. On the other hand, the inherently better-looking Daggerfall runs perfectly smooth with even the detail turned all the way up (and then some, thanks to Eye of Argonia). They both demand the same operating system and by all logic, the technologically superior Daggerfall should be more demanding than Arena, but could Arena be that unoptimized or what's going on? This computer can handle both Morrowind and Daggerfall on max settings (though not Oblivion), so theoretically, especially thanks to running the more advanced DOS game known as Daggerfall just fine, shouldn't Arena run just as smoothly, if not more smoothly, at the very least? What's going on? This isn't a help thread (although tips to correct what may be being done wrong would be appreciated), but just a thread asking for a meticulous answer for a curious mind.

I would guess that Arena runs worse than Daggerfall because even though your running DOS, its further away in compatibility to your modern pc specs than Daggerfall. Basically, its just way too old.

I understand how that could be the case, to a degree, but there are only two years separating Arena and Daggerfall. Of course, the transition to 3D that continued to take place between them is a big leap, but if both are running on DOS and if both are only two years apart, I don't understand how their performance could be that drastically different. I guess Arena could be a textbook example of how a lack of optimization for a given platform can be incredibly debilitating, eh?