[Official High Resolution Textures Post] Can we get a clarification on this?

[Kraylessa]

I think a lot of you are going to be disappointed when we get a response from Stephen, because what this thread is asking for and what YOU are asking for are two completely different things. This thread was created when 1.1 went up on the PTR and people discovered that the "Medium" texture option had been removed from the game. Instead, 1.1 now has the old medium textures labeled as "High" and there are now only two texture options (Low and "High"). The OP of this thread and most of the initial respondents wanted an explanation as to why this change was made and why it was not included in the patch notes. THIS is what I am expecting a response about tomorrow. People who want to read/hear when specifically high res textures will be added to the game will likely be disappointed when Stephen answers a different question than the one you are asking.

[fenlock]

Pretty much confirms what I expected, they are readying a political answer.

 

Basically guys the engine doesn't run well with the high res textures enabled. That's why they have been reduced to poor quality outside of cut scenes. It's not a bug, it's a quick and dirty fix to a much bigger problem. If high res textures are on, over time the client likely becomes very unstable with memory leaks and bad performance, and/or possibly causes lag for other local players.

 

Chances are this wasnt discovered until fairly late in the development / stress testing. That would also explain why high textures and AA were all enabled early on in the betas.

 

There will be 2 options on the table behind the scenes. Either spend a significant amount of time optimising / rewriting the engine to compensate (bioware won't do this) or carry on with a stable engine and poor textures. Naturally for bioware the awsner is option 2, but they know that the player base won't like this - so now they have to word it very carefully to avoid as much back lash as possible.

 

My guess would be that the next official response will include lines such as "making the game stable is our number one priority" and "we will be working on adding new and exciting graphical updates in the future".

 

I will happily eat humble pie if I'm wrong, but some how I feel the force with me on this one and trust my instincts.

[Tartilus]

I did read thoroughly. Maybe you, along with Ohlen, should actually read the forums more thoroughly. Most people posting about performance issues are doing so because they have a low spec PC and are getting lower performance than they expect? Bull. Most are posting because they have a high spec PC and are getting ridiculously low performance. This is entirely aside from the texture issues.

 

So it's your suggestion that:

 

A. You have an accurate understanding of the breakdown of individuals posting on the forums (that is, the portion of them who have have high-end computers, the portion who are incorrectly claiming that they have high-end computers, and the portion who have low-end computers.)

 

B. That individuals who choose to post on the forums represent - in what could only be called a miracle of statistics - an accurate sample of individuals with FPS issues.

 

C. That you have deduced (I presume through some sort of force-like psychic ability) that of those individuals who claim to have both high-end rigs and FPS issues, the root cause of their problems are the fault of the engine and not one of the literally hundreds of player-side issues that could result in such a drop (old drivers, bogged down computer, overheating, bad OCs, etc.)

 

D. That Bioware is lying, against their own monetary self interest, or is otherwise ignoring all the data they have access to.

 

E. That you have revealed this most foul conspiracy, based on the aforementioned sampling and your own anecdote, and are accordingly qualified to call 'bull.'

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tartilus

[wifeaggro]

As Han Solo said, "I have a bad feeling about this".

 

Me too Han me too. I remember a dev interview form 2009 stating they had to rewrite hero a year into deveolpment because it would not support all the users they had working on TOR , they also said they could not longer get updates for the engine because it was completely ripped apart and put back together. The hero engine form 2007 is not that great hero today is a decent engine though it was meant to be able to be patched and updated fast. it lacked a lot of other features a Big AAA title would want for a persistent game world. I dont think we will see any graphical features added for TOR until at least late summer. it will take them at least that long to code all the fixes and additions them selves instead of accepting Hero's updates.

[Cicatrize]

Get ready for a response explaining why they took out the global character high res textures and why it won't be put in anytime soon. That's why they are making sure the response is approved. This is how PR people professionally make the best out of a ****** situation. Edited January 11, 2012 by Cicatrize

[sessava]

To be honest, and I hate being the typical annoying SWTOR forum poster here, I don't understand what has happened in the months since beta. I played for a few weeks and then stopped as to not spoil the experience, and the game back then was overall much better than the game I am playing now. There was a lot more armor variety, you really felt like a Sith or a Bounty Hunter, whatever, and the game looked really good graphically I felt. I understood it's not a fantastic looking MMO due to the poor technical specs of people that BioWare wants to tap into, but it sort of had that WoW-vibe of looking really good because of the work and detail and love put into the environment, armor, and characters.

 

I very much enjoyed my time in beta. There have been many things that they have fixed and improved, including polishing combat a lot, but really, given the choice, I would rather be playing the game in its beta state versus the state it is in right now. I just don't see how BioWare made so many mistakes and poor decisions since, and how the game now has so many flaws and problems that didn't exist at all in beta. Great features such as 'match colour to chestpiece' are gone, and why? What is their justification for removing things like that? I don't understand BioWare at all and really it makes me really worried for the future of this MMO, because clearly BioWare is out of touch with what their consumers want.

 

I'm not going to threaten to quit playing, because I view that as childish, but really, I think a lot of people are looking at whatever BioWare's response to this high-texture issue will be and BioWare needs to realize that. If your response is that you can't fix it, justified by a bunch of things that most people won't understand, that's not really acceptable. You do the impossible if it's impossible, and you fix it, because that will impress people. Doing the opposite will drive people away.

 

There needs to be a lot more developer posts than there currently are, talking and responding to the issues that people are having and discussing the plans that are in place to tackle those issues. Because these issues DO exist, BioWare, and you will lose customers if you just ignore them or give phoned in, lazy answers to them. I'm not going to echo the sentiments of the people in this thread and mock you for getting a nice, well-developed technical answer from your staff, but this answer should've been out weeks ago, and you should have already fixed whatever the problem is with high-textures.

 

Lots of people may say it's just a game and there's no need to take it seriously, but this is a big investment for some people, and for some people this is what they do when they come home to relax from work, or school, it's their hobby and it should be respected. If people are paying for something, their views best be respected by the developers. Those MMO's that ignore their customers and do not try as hard as they can to please them, those MMO's are the ones that fail.

 

Don't let this become another Warhammer.

[Zorvan]

Hey all, I am here to apologize again... the good news is we have a draft of our response (you might be able to guess it's not a sentence or two) but I am circulating it internally to ensure my technical details are correct.

 

To give you an insight into our process here... as the Community team does with most big replies, I tracked down a variety of people on our client and art teams to get the facts on how the game works before putting the post together. As I'm representing those teams publicly, I want to ensure they're happy with what I'm saying on their behalf before I post it. They're busy people, so I'm just waiting on their sign-off right now.

 

I appreciate your patience and assuming we have sign-off this evening, you'll get our response tomorrow. If not, I accept the incoming rotten eggs.

 

Well, the first "tomorrow" came and went as it became known as "today".

 

So, will the new "tomorrow" find us waiting until the following "tomorrow" because noone could find a pen to "sign off" on the "early draft" "today"?

Edited January 11, 2012 by Zorvan

[Freadren]

What i meant to say;

 

Anisotropic filteringCan help with textures.(My bad, fixed)

 

But it basically takes samples (of which you can change the multipliter) of pixels and aggregates colour values to smooth them out.

 

High levels of AF can make things look very blurry.

 

So with AF enabled your bad textures will just look like blurry bad textures.

 

Just to clear this up, AF results in the opposite of what you're saying in practice and reduces blurring. Anisotropic Filtering results in preservation of texture detail as the plane the texture is on is tilted towards being parallel to the line of sight of the observer. With normal Bi/Trilinear filtering, you'll notice a textured plane looks really blurry as the plane gets more edge-on to the observer whereas AF allows these tilted textures to retain their sharpness (easiest way to see this in practice is how the sharpness of a floor texture varies as you look into the distance) progressively higher AF sampling rates allow more retention of sharpness at smaller angles from parallel with some performance penalty (in the previous example, the ground texture would seem sharper out to a further distance from the observer)

[CarverX]

Well here is basically the deal after posting in this thread and the others for the last few days.

 

When the first scenes from this game were introduced, people thought they were rather cartoonish but probably fun. Now can we at least get the cartoonish???

 

Here is the most glaring example of what has happened to anyone who has been a sith:

 

http://www.swtor.com/media/screens/sith-inquisitor-2

 

Check the date. That's an actual gameplay photo, and any sith inquisitor knows that armor looks NOTHING like that in game.

 

Yet, that is what you advertised, this is a problem we reported since beta and buying the game we assumed would be fixed.

[Tartilus]

Well, the first "tomorrow" came and went as it became known as "today".

 

So, will the new "tomorrow" find us waiting until the following "tomorrow" because noone could find a pen to "sign off" on the "early draft" "today"?

 

Is this a question, or whining? Because it doesn't look like a question.

[Zorvan]

I think a lot of you are going to be disappointed when we get a response from Stephen, because what this thread is asking for and what YOU are asking for are two completely different things. This thread was created when 1.1 went up on the PTR and people discovered that the "Medium" texture option had been removed from the game. Instead, 1.1 now has the old medium textures labeled as "High" and there are now only two texture options (Low and "High"). The OP of this thread and most of the initial respondents wanted an explanation as to why this change was made and why it was not included in the patch notes. THIS is what I am expecting a response about tomorrow. People who want to read/hear when specifically high res textures will be added to the game will likely be disappointed when Stephen answers a different question than the one you are asking.

 

You've had it explained to you before that both issues are intertwined in this thread, as one issue does not exist without the other.

 

It is unfortunate that you not only can't understand simple logic and reasoning, but that you also think YOU determine what this thread, not started by you, is about.

[Zorvan]

Is this a question, or whining? Because it doesn't look like a question.

 

Oh, it's indeed a question.

 

Let me simplify it for those sitting in the peanut gallery.

 

We got stalled yesterday with an answer that said we would be told today. We have now been stonewalled by an answer that says we'll be told tomorrow. So will tomorrow be a "real" answer, or more stonewalling?

 

There, got it now?

[eXPOSITUS]

Considering how long it takes to make a single post it's a truely amazing feat that this game even got made. The bureaucracy is staggering.

[Ommm]

Considering how long it takes to make a single post it's a truely amazing feat that this game even got made. The bureaucracy is staggering.

Austin:

Edited January 11, 2012 by Ommm

[Rophez]

Honestly think this problem needs to be made a bit more high profile. How are game sites giving this a 9/10 when the graphics look like blurry garbage up close? No folks, I'm not talking about the environment background graphics - those are lovely. I'm talking about anything you can zoom in on. We are supposed to immerse ourselves into this world, and to me having blurry armor and clothes on everyone just spoils it.

 

Maybe I should get rid of my nice monitor and play at a low resolution... Does this make it look better or something?

[Tartilus]

so now they have to word it very carefully to avoid as much back lash as possible.

 

So now the Art team are PR folks who sign off on 'avoiding backlash?'

 

So, to be clear, the responses I'm seeing either proffer that Mr. Reid is some sort of repository of knowledge who should not need to check off with developers on an article about game development without some sort of nefarious secondary motive, or the art team are shadowy PR folks who are going to use their illusionary powers to keep us all from getting mad. Maybe they'll draw a smiley face in the corner or something.

 

Do you people even listen to yourselves? This level of childishness is honestly heartbreaking.

[SpeeDeh]

So it's your suggestion that:

 

A. You have an accurate understanding of the breakdown of individuals posting on the forums (that is, the portion of them who have have high-end computers, the portion who are incorrectly claiming that they have high-end computers, and the portion who have low-end computers.)

 

B. That individuals who choose to post on the forums represent - in what could only be called a miracle of statistics - an accurate sample of individuals with FPS issues.

 

C. That you have deduced (I presume through some sort of force-like psychic ability) that of those individuals who claim to have both high-end rigs and FPS issues, the root cause of their problems are the fault of the engine and not one of the literally hundreds of player-side issues that could result in such a drop (old drivers, bogged down computer, overheating, bad OCs, etc.)

 

D. That Bioware is lying, against their own monetary self interest, or is otherwise ignoring all the data they have access to.

 

E. That you have revealed this most foul conspiracy, based on the aforementioned sampling and your own anecdote, and are accordingly qualified to call 'bull.'

 

Comedy gold. Plus, I agree.

 

+1 internets

[Hammerholm]

To put this in a extreme simple manner: Heroengine simply doesn't cut it for an MMO, just walk around in the combat section of IF and you'll see how badly the game handles large group of people.

Now compare this to IF of WoW (Don't you dare start to flame about the WoW example, I could go all the way back to Anarchy Online & ICC) you'll soon notice that while those MMO's ran smooth with the ridicolous amount of people, SWTOR can barely handle 50-100 in the same vicinity, which is a shame, I'm so sad, because for years and years I looked forward to SWTOR. I won't stop playing, no way, but this game... argh Bioware =(

[Unruhe]

Well, judging from that ominous "I need the PR guys to approve of this, and the tech guys to make sure I used the right words" non-update, I'm fully prepared for the worst.

 

I guess I'll just cancel my sub, and I'll consider coming back when the game looks as good as a 60$ game with a 15$/month sub fee should look in 2012, because I can get better graphics with F2P or resubbing to significantly older games.

 

It's a shame that a game that cost as much as TOR did to develop, and retails for the full going rate for a MMO in 2012, looks like utter trash unless you zoom to max camera distance.

[Aisar]

Yeah right.

 

I'm running a Core i5 750 @ 3.33 ghz, 12 gb ram and a 6950 2gb card and with everything maxxed out i'm getting HUGE framedrops and framespikes. and at the strangest moments , too. like when walking under a (ugly, not to mention) waterfall or looking at a bloomed object at close range. or when running through a station, it'll run fine one moment and then drop to 20 fps for NO reason , only to go back up again to 45-60 in 10 seconds..

 

Anyhow. i'm FAR beyond recommended specs and at some points, the performance is absolutely sub-par. I cant even remember running a game that ran this bad. and this is actually on a FRESH windows installation with the very latest drivers, application profiles and what not..

 

And then I havent even mentioned that all my other games run perfectly smooth, including one of today's heaviest games, Battlefield 3 (No framelag @ caspian border with 64 players) and that game looks a lot better (for comparison only) .

 

And that's what their big statement is going to be. Most people dont have the problem, so just update your drivers and stop whining. Be assured that the matter is kept under close watch. wait for another patch. We are looking into it.. same ****, different day.

 

I really LOVE the game, and that's what makes me so angry. that , even IF we are a minority, which I seriously doubt (my friends have similar pc's and none of their copy's is running good , at some points yes, but mostly mediocre) , we still have a right to get a decent explenation and a fix , because we are paying YOU , bioware. not the other way around.

 

Another thing.. What do you think this is ? some kind of joke, Bioware? people posting for days and days on end because they hate you? or dont like the game? we love it , that's what makes us post here.. we wouldnt if we thought the game was crap...

 

Well said and good points (my situation mirrors this one).

[Tartilus]

We got stalled yesterday with an answer that said we would be told today. We have now been stonewalled by an answer that says we'll be told tomorrow. So will tomorrow be a "real" answer, or more stonewalling?

 

I would offer that it's not a question, it's a tantrum. If it was a question, it would permit of a reasonable and adult answer, but instead you've wrapped a complaint that you didn't get what you wanted (or more specifically, that you didn't get what you wanted right at the very instant that you wanted it) inside an unsupported insinuation that these delays are predictable events caused by predictable occurrences.

 

Indeed, it could be accurately summed up as: "You promised! You promised! You promised!" Complete with the stomping of booty-clad feet.

 

I invite you to consider that there are complexities involved in managing Community Relations with a game this size such that a delay - even two in a row - is not some conspiratorial insult against your person.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Just to clear this up, AF results in the opposite of what you're saying in practice and reduces blurring. Anisotropic Filtering results in preservation of texture detail as the plane the texture is on is tilted towards being parallel to the line of sight of the observer. With normal Bi/Trilinear filtering, you'll notice a textured plane looks really blurry as the plane gets more edge-on to the observer whereas AF allows these tilted textures to retain their sharpness (easiest way to see this in practice is how the sharpness of a floor texture varies as you look into the distance) progressively higher AF sampling rates allow more retention of sharpness at smaller angles from parallel with some performance penalty (in the previous example, the ground texture would seem sharper out to a further distance from the observer)

 

It does that by taking a series of samples in a given area from the base texture, using a specified pattern: the 'Anisotropic' means the pattern used isn't the same size in all directions, more or less. Trilinear and Bilinear both used 'square' sampling patterns(Trilinear's innovation was that it could also filter across mipmap boundaries) , whereas anisotropic generally tries to match it according to what angle the texture's going to appear at. These samples are then averaged together to give the result that is displayed in a single pixel.

 

This does, indeed, blur the result.

 

The most accurate way to represent a texture is plain-old point sampling: it takes one sample located where the center of the pixel appears on the texture and just displays that. The problem with this is that it only works well for still images: when you use it in a scene that's in motion, it creates a lot of noise in the image as pixels rapidly and suddenly shift colors as they move about the texture.

 

Blurring it slightly by averaging samples together results in a better image in motion. More samples improves the overall quality by improving accuracy of the result.

 

From a technical standpoint, most of AF's visual improvements come from the fact that it can use dramatically more samples than trilinear filtering did: The only real benefits specifically from the anisotropy appear only when the texture is seen from a low angle. The opening scroll from Star Wars is a good example of this: instead of seeing them from directly 'above', you see it from low down, looking more 'across' it than directly at it.

 

It does not, however, in any way improve the base quality of a texture: it simply smooths the inaccuracies in how it's displayed.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[eskachig]

I'm not talking about the environment background graphics - those are lovely.

Many environmental textures could also use a little (a lot) of work.

 

http://i.imgur.com/F0bCh.jpg

[Xarcy]

I really hope that the graphics are upgraded. I am loving the gameplay in Star Wars at the moment but the graphics are decidedly average for a 2011/2012 game, especially compared to World of Warcraft, a game that is 7 years old. The armour models in particular look dreadful, again compared to WoW where they are quite detailed and crisp.

 

I wish that more of the budget was spent on graphics and less on the voice overs for quests, which most people space bar through anyway.

[Vehlin]

What we have on our hands is a bit of an "Oh Crap" moment.

 

TPTB chose HeroEngine for the project because despite it not being either a mature nor proven engine it offered the holy grail of developer collaboration when it came to adding items to the world. Unfortunately (and this can be verified through a number of interviews on the web) the engine wasn't really designed for 80+ developers trying to simultaneously add content to the world. Very quickly the main driving reason behind choosing this engine (along with the, frankly, unjustified praise it got at the awards) meant that it became a noose around the dev's neck.

 

I can't speak for the engine as it stands but everything I'm seeing smacks of poor optimisation and a lack of fundamental understanding on the part of the engine developers when it came to the responsiveness expected by the playerbase and required for PvP.

 

The Highres textures are not in the game, they are not in the game because they were removed during beta for one reason or another. However, you don't remove something because it's working. They are either breaking something on their own or exacerbating an already existing problem. If we were seeing lots of reports of otherwise decent hardware having issues I'd give credence to the latter....oh wait...

 

My money is on this. BW have an albatross around their neck called HeroEngine. It's currently being stretched to the very limit of what works and anything further added simply breaks it, regardless of the spec of your machine. A developer doesn't remove options they have spent time making because they feel like it; something, somewhere, is broken.

 

Don't expect to get an answer confirming the above; BW and EA are both beholden to shareholders who will get very jumpy if this big investment turns into a white elephant. However there is something fundamentally wrong here.