Check your aa3game/logs folder and look at the aa3launch.log:
One of our members has this error:
Critical: appError called: Device does not support 1x32 FP render target format. Critical: Windows GetLastError: The operation completed successfully. (0) Log: === Critical error: === Device does not support 1x32 FP render target format.
Doing a bit of googling i found these possible fixes.
1st: Try installing an older video card driver. Many people have fixed this problem by going back to older video driver, nvidia version 178.24 Get it at http://www.guru3d.com
2nd: If you are using any video card tweaking applications like nhancer for geforce, try switching between a few different profiles like default, high performance, high quality etc...
Vista has this thing called the Data Execution Prevention. It stops new executable programs from starting if they take large processing space. Here's what you do. Right click on Computer and click Properties. Then click "Advanced System Settings". After that, click Settings under Performance in System Properties under the Advanced tab. Then click the "Data Execution Prevention" tab. From there, add AA3Game.exe to the list by selecting the Add button and finding it.
Extract it to a folder anywhere, run pbsetup.exe and click "Add a Game" to add your AA3 game exe's. Then click "Check for updates" on each one you have.
Here is what i ended up with under Vista64. Your paths may be slightly different. I have both steam and deploy versions installed.
Please notice that the AA3 pb folder is NOT in \system as it was in AA2, it is in \Binaries
These requirements are subject to change. Please check back frequently.
REQUIREMENTS
Category
AA3 Requirement
Operating System (OS)
* Microsoft Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) * Microsoft Windows Vista
Processor (CPU)
* 3.0+ GHz Single Core CPU (Minimum) * 2.4+ GHz Dual/Quad Core CPU (Recommended)
Memory (RAM)
* 1GB RAM (Minimum) * 2GB RAM (Recommended)
Video Card
* Direct X 9.0c compliant, Shader 3.0 enabled video card with 256MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better) (Minimum) * Direct X 9.0c compliant, Shader 3.0 enabled video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA 7950 or better/ATI X1950 or better) (Recommended)
Sound Card
* Direct X 9.0c compliant sound card (Minimum) * Creative EAX 4.0 compliant sound card (Audigy 2, X-Fi series) (Recommended)