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

[Arkulin]

Oh so it is a copy protection thing.

 

Maybe they are saving bandwidth They already said that there will be no server forums because they would need to employ extra staff for moding them

Edited January 11, 2012 by Arkulin

[Fetchem]

So has anyone re-installed the game after Jan 4, 2012 to see if they actually have High Rez textures now? I only read half the posts, but I'm guessing that was just to passify us and doesn't work or are we still waiting for an official response to this?

[CriDaDimon]

As the wikipedia quote indicates, the Uncanny Valley is the effect whereby something that appears almost human is generally perceived as looking worse than something that looks less realistic.

 

The theory posits that the more human-looking you make a robot/3D Model, the more positive the response to its appearance will be...until you hit a point, just before fully realistic, where it suddenly looks much, much worse, particularly if it's in motion.

 

If charted on a graph, the response curve exhibits a sharp negative dip before climbing back up to its highest level, which is a fully realistic human appearance. This dip is what is known as the 'Uncanny Valley', because it looks like a steep valley in the middle of the graph, and the 'Uncanny' appearance of the object/model is what creates the valley.

 

The general suspicion is that this is an instinctual effect that is also at least partially responsible for the general revulsion towards the sight of a human corpse, which is thought to key specifically on all the ways a corpse doesn't quite look like a normal, healthy human being.

 

Examples include 'The King' from those Burger King commercials, the dancing old guy from a Six Flags commercial some years back, and an Infamous Orville Redenbacher commercial that used a digital overlay to try to make an actor look like Orville. Additionally, Zombies are generally considered to be at the lowest point of the 'in motion' graph(with corpses at the same point on the 'still' graph).

 

It has nothing to do with morality, killing people, censorship, or bikinis....so I'm not sure where that came from.

 

This bears on SWTOR's Graphics because the uncanny valley is frequently cited as a reason for having less-realistic looking characters in computer games. The idea is that unless you can make them almost perfectly realistic, they'll look better to most people if you deliberately stop short.

 

To stay on topic since u want to bring this particular thing into play, yep exactly we have a very uncanny valley in your terms right now on our characters lol thats the point of this post and why people want high res textures back and , what in the world is going on with the test server acting like medium is high, personally even high is this uncanny valley for me atm my personal artistic veiw lol, now please please get off my case lol seriously, wheres my blaster can i make sure i blow my head clean off so i dont feel it lol

 

on topic, i do not believe it is a performance issue, unless as was just posted somethign is wrong with the dll causing it beyond what it was in beta, but in beta there was no performance issue on it, and i do not believe there is a conspiracy by bioware to take them out to be used later as some omg look an update to the game.

[CriDaDimon]

So has anyone re-installed the game after Jan 4, 2012 to see if they actually have High Rez textures now? I only read half the posts, but I'm guessing that was just to passify us and doesn't work or are we still waiting for an official response to this?

 

yes i did 2 times almost a third, but no change at all, i would have done it a third until i saw an actual bioware response saying ok ya its still an issue, from the jan 4th read i thought ok maybe im not cleaning the install off good enough etc type

[Arkulin]

So has anyone re-installed the game after Jan 4, 2012 to see if they actually have High Rez textures now? I only read half the posts, but I'm guessing that was just to passify us and doesn't work or are we still waiting for an official response to this?

 

Yesterday I have reinstalled whole system and pop fresh game installation , and no improvements whatsoever.

[dionaea]

I am fine with the graphics as they are today but would like to know that at some point I can have High Textures. Too bad this is coming to a head just before many folks will decide if they renew subs on the 20th.

 

I'm really happy this is coming to a head right before subscription renewals, money talks and Bioware should be worried about losing subscriptions. There is no valid excuse as to why the textures aren't enabled, considering they worked during beta, i don't care what the Bioware spindoctors come back with.

Edited January 11, 2012 by dionaea

[Fetchem]

Thanks for the responses. Saved me a time wasted re-install!

[Tiron_Raptor]

I have also mentioned yesterday in this post and I quote:" Maybe the problem is with Remote Rendering Client-Server.

 

As you can see on picture, we have some RRC-S,dll

 

http://imgur.com/Gw6b7

 

according to this documentation it says:"The system consists of a 3D viewer client that includes low-resolution versions of the 3D models, and a rendering server that renders and returns images of high-resolution models according to client requests. The server implements a number of defenses to guard against 3D reconstruction attacks, such as monitoring and limiting request streams, and slightly perturbing and distorting the rendered images. "

 

Fingers crossed for today positive reply!

 

This Documentation?

 

Yeah, sounds like it's intended as a copy protection thing, which I really don't see the point of on a game. The only real effect of it is to make it impossible to extract the models, which would block most attempts at modification.

 

If it's found to be impacting performance in any way at all, no matter how minutely, it needs to go. It isn't right to punish legitimate, paying customers who have done no wrong because a small minority of them MIGHT do something wrong in the future.

 

In the beta it would've made sense as a partial enforcement of the NDA terms, but at this point it's more than a little overkill.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[CriDaDimon]

I have also mentioned yesterday in this post and I quote:" Maybe the problem is with Remote Rendering Client-Server.

 

As you can see on picture, we have some RRC-S,dll

 

http://imgur.com/Gw6b7

 

according to this documentation it says:"The system consists of a 3D viewer client that includes low-resolution versions of the 3D models, and a rendering server that renders and returns images of high-resolution models according to client requests. The server implements a number of defenses to guard against 3D reconstruction attacks, such as monitoring and limiting request streams, and slightly perturbing and distorting the rendered images. "

 

Fingers crossed for today positive reply!

 

Yes that could explain the issues, performance would not, ty for the post and makes more sense now why they are having difficulties. Copy right issues are like, omg really ur trying to hack starwars for their game data, get a life:P

 

I still would personally like to see photorealistic textures and fully defined mesh added since it should already be made, these we have and high would be the optimized forms of them; at least on our actual characters. I understand going through the entire game would be a hassle not worth doing yet, but for base characters and maybe even purple and orange gear it shouldnt be more of a hassle then it would be beneficial to renewing and creating more subscribers, alot more customization also instead of just 4 body shapes and a few facial features would help immensly for me to get some of our female players on the game as well. But thats off topic techncially, though a forum on high res textures and what happened to them and why is it taken out on the test server seemed appropriate enough to at least get the idea out there.

[HothBase]

Just chiming in here to say that I find this topic interesting.

[CriDaDimon]

according to this documentation it says:"The system consists of a 3D viewer client that includes low-resolution versions of the 3D models, and a rendering server that renders and returns images of high-resolution models according to client requests. The server implements a number of defenses to guard against 3D reconstruction attacks, such as monitoring and limiting request streams, and slightly perturbing and distorting the rendered images. "

 

i would rather have large encrypted files on my machine personally with the real textures and models, would increase view quality and performance as well and just add alot of data tot he game, this looks like why the game data dropped so substantially as well, they are tryign to hide their models and textures from the game data and make u request them, and tbh only hurts everything all around, and as was just stated, why hurt paying customers because of paranoia, that will only lead to lack of renewals, who cares if somebody gets your textures, and models, u have the game, get more hype going, get people tryign to copy it its so good, they will never be able to compete, if they are goign to take the time to hack encrypted files, they will take the time to just stream them and do the same thing, and i bet this is why i have to keep deleteing diskcache arena and why all the sudden the game is causing a memory hog leak sometimes.

 

That post finally made it all clear. and now I know, bioware is paranoid as lucas has always been lol.

 

So to the devs reading this post, u guys want ur stuff out there trust me u want the hype, u want the hack websites going, u want the word of mouth starwars is so good peopel are tryign to mimic it, let the extra websites get made it only ads to your popularity, like a celebrity sex tape lol, all it will do is generate more interest, heck u might even have people paying u so they can try

 

I find it hard to believe we are not getting to play the game we paid for because they are worried it will get stolen if they let the public have it, omg really? and lol and omg again

 

We paid for the game give it to us lol, and in that light, give us more and give us better since u have it and let us enjoy what we are payign for

[Ommm]

this looks like why the game data dropped so substantially as well, they are tryign to hide their models and textures from the game data and make u request them, and tbh only hurts everything all around, and as was just stated, why hurt paying customers because of paranoia,

 

Right, they better explain themselfs and their sh+t.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Ommm

[CriDaDimon]

The server implements a number of defenses to guard against 3D reconstruction attacks, such as monitoring and limiting request streams, and slightly perturbing and distorting the rendered images.

 

So when we finally do get high, its going to look as bad or worse as it does now?

 

this whole server rendering b4 sending to the client idea is why i started getting skippy parts and such after beta, this is the performance issue many have claimed to have, this is why it gets so laggy at fleet etc, this is the problem, paranoia, not willign to release the actual data for the game we all paid for, omg i cant believe this is really happening, no frickin wonder the game is degrading so bad lol, man this is goign to cost some subscription because even when we do get the high textures now they will be slightly distorted anyways omg, i cant say it enough, omg

 

ok no reason to follow this post anymore, even if and when they can figure out hwo to basically serve the entire game, it wont matter itll look the same distorted and blurry

 

so i guess the answer to when will we get some better quality is never, not as long as they are to paranoid to let us actually install the data so it performs

[KerinKor]

So a 64 bit client would still probably run better on 64 bit OS than the 32 bit client does...how much I'm not 100% sure.

Indeed, the description you gave is correct but the performance 'hit' is so small that it won't make any difference to the problems some are having.

 

Now, if it is the case that the TOR client is a humungous memory hog and hitting the 32-bit process ceiling Windoze enforces, then certainly a 64-bit client would likely be better.

[CriDaDimon]

have fun guys, i got my answer, ima go play with last decades graphics quality and do some arena on wow with just as good of textures prolly later lol, omg , back to second life for the best quality 3d mmo type possible

 

Lucas! seriously stop being so paranoid, i know this isnt a bioware problem lol ur going to ruin the game, i cant believe what i just read still, omg again

 

people are so frickin paranoid now adays , so bad we cant even have performance video games with exceptional graphics that have been around for a years, much less the photorealistic options i hoped for, nothing will look photographic as long as the server is purposefully distorting the images so they cant be copied, ****!

 

cya

[Ommm]

Now we might know why things sometimes pop up very close as we move around. It could be the remote renderer copy protection server side thingie. Edited January 11, 2012 by Ommm

[Tiron_Raptor]

Now we also know why things sometimes pop up very close as we move around. It is probably because of the copy protection server thingie.

 

Quite possibly. With all the people complaining about poor performance and poor graphics, Bioware are gonna have to lot of hard questions to answer about why there's apparently a pointless copy protection mechanism tied into the graphics system.

 

Rendering any of the graphics on the server doesn't really make sense, though. It'd require massively more powerful servers, or at least much larger clusters, and an ENORMOUS amount of extra bandwidth. Deploying that on a MMO would cost them a ludicrous amount of money, especially to maintain it over time.

 

It would explain the removal of the high res textures option, however: if they're being sent from the server it'd take massively more processing power and bandwidth to put out the higher res textures.

 

Frankly, the whole 'copy protected graphics system' thing only really makes sense in the context of a pre-release game they're trying to prevent leaks out of. Putting it in the retail client shouldn't've even been contemplated, let alone happened.

 

If the reduction in filesize is due to assets being removed to the server, it's also pretty moot: it's extremely likely there's someone out there somewhere that still has the old beta assets laying around on their hard drive. Maybe even quite a few of them. On the other hand it COULD just be optimization, Beta software isn't known for its efficiency, and there's a reason for that.

 

This needs much more explaining than the high res textures thing ever did, and if the answers aren't just right and not able to be refuted by independent testing, it's going to turn into a firestorm that could make the Spore SecuROM debacle look small.

 

Edit: We need to hear one of two things, and fast: either what benefit the remote renderer directly and immediately provides us as customers, in terms of a better experience or increased performance... or when it is being removed from the client.

 

If it's reducing performance or the appearance of the game in the slightest way, it is a detriment to the game and the user experience, regardless of what other benefits someone in a suit thinks it provides.

 

Edit2: I found an interesting thread relating to UAC that claims that the second SWTOR process is somehow related to the remoterenderingserver.icb .

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=143859&page=3

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[RachelAnne]

So does this then also explain why people like me got 100 fps and 60-70 at pvp and others 10 fps at fleet and pvp, even tho the PC might not be that horrible? But their connection is maybe or their server, something like that?

 

This would totally turn the tide somehow, as now its not a hardware problem only but also a server / ms problem?

 

While fixing the own hardware is possible, how to fix the official servers? What kind of connection do people need now to play without fps lags? Do now mainboards with improved ms speed like mine make the difference?

 

 

Questions, maybe someone is able to answer them - my wisdom at internet speed or server stuff is limited

[Tiron_Raptor]

So does this then also explain why people like me got 100 fps and 60-70 at pvp and others 10 fps at fleet and pvp, even tho the PC might not be that horrible? But their connection is maybe or their server, something like that?

 

This would totally turn the tide somehow, as now its not a hardware problem only but also a server / ms problem?

 

While fixing the own hardware is possible, how to fix the official servers? What kind of connection do people need now to play without fps lags? Do now mainboards with improved ms speed like mine make the difference?

 

 

Questions, maybe someone is able to answer them - my wisdom at internet speed or server stuff is limited

 

It could be, given what was posted in the OP it seems the remote rendering is primarily/entirely used for the character models, which would cause any performance hit it incurs to be more severe in any environment with many players in it.

 

I can tell you flat out that a 20mbit connection isn't enough to improve it, and that were it not for the fact that I have 8gb of RAM, the symptoms of the lag induced by many people being present acts very similar to what happens when you run out of physical memory.

 

It could go a VERY long way to explaining some or all of the performance issues people have been reporting, and if that turns out to be the case, it could flat out kill SWTOR if the response isn't swift and decisive.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Arkulin]

Originally Posted by Arkulin

I have also mentioned yesterday in this post and I quote:" Maybe the problem is with Remote Rendering Client-Server.

 

As you can see on picture, we have some RRC-S,dll

 

http://imgur.com/Gw6b7

 

according to this documentation it says:"The system consists of a 3D viewer client that includes low-resolution versions of the 3D models, and a rendering server that renders and returns images of high-resolution models according to client requests. The server implements a number of defenses to guard against 3D reconstruction attacks, such as monitoring and limiting request streams, and slightly perturbing and distorting the rendered images. "

 

Fingers crossed for today positive reply!

Yes that could explain the issues, performance would not, ty for the post and makes more sense now why they are having difficulties. Copy right issues are like, omg really ur trying to hack starwars for their game data, get a life:P

 

Oh, but it will hit performance too, because every time it has to pull textures from remote server.

 

Look and observe, when you start to talk with NPC, first it has medium or worse textures, then, after sec or two and stutter or two, you have them MOSTLY in all their glory.

 

In beta, our client was acting like server and we had 10GB of extra data, beautiful textures, no stuttering and we have seen that it looks great and our machines are not struggling to run it, and on release, they suddenly vanish, and we got what we have now, I guess

Edited January 11, 2012 by Arkulin

[Armalas]

I didn't quite get why the textures were moved to a remote location, anyone care to fill me in on this?

[Tiron_Raptor]

I didn't quite get why the textures were moved to a remote location, anyone care to fill me in on this?

 

If true...copy protection. The system appears to be designed to prevent people from copying the models.

[Darth_Sookie]

I didn't quite get why the textures were moved to a remote location, anyone care to fill me in on this?

 

Surely none of this can be true? It just can't be true. Remote rendering? ***? Is this some kind of research project or something? It must be because i cannot find another feasable reason to why they would implement such a system.

 

Maybe Lucas Arts forced them to do some kind of convoluted system to protect it's assets or something? It's all very strange to me.

[-sasori]

Remote Renderer does not necessary mean it's outside your game client (PC).

 

Aside from that people already did partially reconstructed the file headers and did filelists of said containers. The textures are there on your drive.

 

Remote checking if you should see the better quality seems pointless and dumb. After all you are seeing the full model and low-scaled texture already.

 

 

After all this could be just another handler / subprocess to detach rendering from other processes. Which would be actual ...smart. Given how many other games choke when faced with streaming high rez textures because the engine wasn't designed for that amount of data.

Edited January 11, 2012 by -sasori

[Bolthus]

Surely none of this can be true? It just can't be true. Remote rendering? ***? Is this some kind of research project or something? It must be because i cannot find another feasable reason to why they would implement such a system.

 

Maybe Lucas Arts forced them to do some kind of convoluted system to protect it's assets or something? It's all very strange to me.

 

That will explain ALL.

 

Not only the lack of hi-res textures, but the fact that 2 years old computer are running the game as smooth as my 6 month old one.