Why is there a copy protection system in the graphics, and is it crippling the game?

[Tiron_Raptor]

Is there any actual link between swtor and that paper besides finding it by googling "remote rendering"?

 

I didn't find it by googling remote rendering, I found it by googling a bit of what this guy had posted about the remote rendering system in the high res textures thread. I don't know how he found it, but what he had matched the intro of the paper very precisely, so he might've found it himself. I really don't know.

 

I've yet to find a better explanation though, or even another one at all, plausible or otherwise for what the three 'remoterendering' files do. The possible side effects of such a system also mesh far too well with many of the popularly complained about 'problems'.

 

I'd love for someone to provide us with an alternate explanation. I'd like nothing better than to be wrong, because this is beyond terrible if it's true.

 

But so far? I haven't seen any alternatives, almost no evidence, and no official response at all.

 

Trust me, I'll change my mind if someone can provide something concrete to base it on.

 

All I've got is speculation: it'd be mad to ignore something concrete to stick with it.

 

The more I look into this, the more I doubt it's being done.

 

It's more likely that lag from multiple users is simply poor optimization. Any game will lage at some point if you keep adding models to the viewport, what point that happens depends on the machine's capability and the optimization of the software. As others have stated, running a second process to do something, possibly rendering, does not prove in any way that DRM or downloading of resources is occuring, however a bottleneck could occur from the interaction of these processes, and possibly only on certain machines - causing overheating and high CPU usage as things hang.

 

True, it's equally possible that at least some of the resources are encrypted, and the second process is decrypting them and possibly rendering them.

 

This'd exhibit all the same symptoms, more or less, but doesn't explain the 10GB size reduction late in the beta... normally I'd just say optimization, but...er...that'd be one heck of an optimization pass.

[PjPablo]

Nope and the idea that SWTOR is using software rendering is false; I can force AA in the nvidia control manager. So I KNOW FOR A FACT it is using hardware rendering, and I KNOW FOR A FACT it is running that rendering on my local machine.

 

PROOF THIS IS ALL POPPYCOCK. THE GAME IS RENDERING IN REAL TIME.

 

CAN EVERYBODY PLEASE SHUT UP NOW?

 

/thread closed

 

That "remote renderer" you guys are freaking out about is probably just the Hero Engine subroutine for rendering graphics. SWTOR uses the Hero Engine, a 3rd party engine, in much the same way that an FPS game might use the Source engine for rendering and stuff.

 

 

THIS IS SO BONKERS. PEOPLE WHO ARE WRONG PLEASE STOP MAKING NOISE AND FREAKING EVERYBODY OUT!!!

 

If anyone seems to be freaking out it's you. No need to talk down to people and tell them to 'shut up'. Better ways to make a persuasive argument as to why they may be wrong than that.

[miliways]

Every one of your posts I feel like you think you know more than you actually do. You know some buzzwords but almost everything you're saying is wrong.

 

>being pretentious and using "LOL" in an argument while not being a 14 year old girl.

>2012

>ISHYGDDT

 

What did I say that is wrong?

 

I have a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas. I've studied computer graphics, software rendering and artificial intelligence. I've worked on video games, including an MMORPG (which sadly was not completed). I currently work as a software programmer.

 

I would be happy to answer any technical problems anybody has, but I feel like people have already turned this into a flamewar and are possibly just trolling. I have very little patience for trolls. I didn't swear and I didn't target anybody in particular, just asking that everybody please stop with this nonsense. Its fearmongering!

 

Sorry, I'll try to be more patient. But people need to stop jumping the gun and assuming the worst.

Edited January 11, 2012 by miliways

[Granrick]

Every one of your posts I feel like you think you know more than you actually do. You know some buzzwords but almost everything you're saying is wrong.

 

>being pretentious and using "LOL" in an argument while not being a 14 year old girl.

>2012

>ISHYGDDT

 

What he said is actually 100% correct

[Ganix_tx]

It may not be that the images are rendering on a remote server... It very possibly could be that the client creates an RSA key or something to that effect and sends it to a remote server which in turn sends back another key to decrypt the models on the local client. This would still cause enough delay to cause problems. Just a thought.

[Khrusky]

Every one of your posts I feel like you think you know more than you actually do. You know some buzzwords but almost everything you're saying is wrong.

 

>being pretentious and using "LOL" in an argument while not being a 14 year old girl.

>2012

>ISHYGDDT

 

However, I did what he suggested and it stopped my issues with the screen taking time to reload.

 

It might be worth checking to see if someone is correct before making yourself look like a fool in the future.

[miliways]

It may not be that the images are rendering on a remote server... It very possibly could be that the client creates an RSA key or something to that effect and sends it to a remote server which in turn sends back another key to decrypt the models on the local client. This would still cause enough delay to cause problems. Just a thought.

 

At least you're thinking. Nice try. Unfortunately no, it wouldn't work that way.

 

I see where you're going, and this would indeed be the most logical way to do security on art assets (if that was a thing).

 

However, were that the case, you would get the RSA Key when you logged in, and it would decrypt the files while you "loaded" the planet. You would still have the model and texture and animation data either held in RAM or cached to HDD. Either way, if you want to be able to render in real time at all, you've gotta have those things decrypted. Trying to decrypt 3D models as you view them wouldn't be feasible, your frame rate would be like 1 frame every 3 seconds. Its just too slow. And there'd be no reason to decrypt each file over and over again as you rendered it. It takes too long to decrypt, so it'd have to be done at load-time. So this isn't the problem people are having.

 

The video card needs all its data to be stored in VRAM to do rendering. Decrpyting as go would reduce the game to a software renderer, pretty much, which would be too slow. Add decryption on top, and it'd be way too slow.

Edited January 11, 2012 by miliways

[Bluebpy]

To everyone saying its the hardware that causes FPS problems is a fool. Most people posting about bad performance who post specs have pretty decent rigs. This doesnt include the people who are running low low end systems.......

 

anyways

 

There are people in here (myself included) that should be able to run 5+ instances of this game without any issues and have good fps.

 

I-7 920 overclocked to 4.3ghz

16 gigs of ram

2 460's overclocked in sli

 

run battlefield 3 maxed out at over 70 fps and swtor runs at 20 fps in the fleet and in open world goes from 100 fps to 30 and chugs along for 15 seconds then back up? hardware? don't think so

 

It's a joke. as for people saying "there are high res textures in the game right now, on your ship in cut scenes and intercom" if you knew anything about this game you would know that in the early beta there were high res textures in the entire game and not cut scenes. the game looked better... night and day difference. So now they only include them in the cuts cenes only? why? what purpose does that have?

 

There is ZERO reason to disable high res textures. if the end user cant run "high" settings then they lower it. Forcing high res off and then in the PTR erasing the high option and making med to high says a lot.......

 

open your eyes ppl..... there is something going on and OP has found SOMETHING that may explain some things. OP has found the smoking gun that will lead to the REAL reason why high res textures are off and why performance is terrible.

 

Now lets see if Bioware actually gives as a proper answer or if its BS

Edited January 11, 2012 by Bluebpy

[Tiron_Raptor]

What did I say that is wrong?

 

I have a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas. I've studied computer graphics, software rendering and artificial intelligence. I've worked on video games, including an MMORPG (which sadly was not completed). I currently work as a software programmer.

 

I would be happy to answer any technical problems anybody has, but I feel like people have already turned this into a flamewar and are possibly just trolling. I have very little patience for trolls. I didn't swear and I didn't target anybody in particular, just asking that everybody please stop with this nonsense. Its fearmongering!

 

Sorry, I'll try to be more patient. But people need to stop jumping the gun and assuming the worst.

 

Well, I'd been not-responding to your posts because they were a lot of yelling and other unhelpfulness, but this is much better so here I will.

 

It's not so much 'jumping to the worst', as it's literally the only thing I can think of that fits all the facts. I'd be more than happy to find a plausible explanation for what the remoterenderer does that isn't heinous, but I've yet to see one.

 

The near-complete absence of hard data backing anything up isn't helping: We know that the second process, possibly the renderer, doesn't communicate directly with the server. We know that the hitch on loading screens coincides with a huge spike in bandwidth use.

 

Everything else is speculation and tenuously linked at best.

 

It's out here to get more research done on it and try to come up with a plausible explanation, preferably one that I've missed.

 

If you want to help with that you're welcome to try, and I'm willing to listen.

 

But not if you're just shouting 'NO NO YOU'RE WRONG LOL.'

 

Right now, it's the totality of circumstances that's caused me to wonder(not believe, wonder), if this is what the remoterenderer is doing. I'm not satisfied just wondering.

[Karrayabe]

Wanting to have a dev. address constant speculation on unlikely things is like having NASA have to prove to you that the world won't end in 2012. Wouldn't you rather have them work on bugs?

 

The burden of proof is on the accuser and all you have right now is a series of speculative items and your own conspiracy theories.

[Blackfriar]

It's bad if the OP is in fact correct. I think the OP was right to ask the question, but I'm not sure we should be taking this as fact.

 

I'm not bashing the OP here, I think this is definitely something that requires more exploration or indeed a response from BioWare.

 

I'm not too au fait with all these things but surely if this was true, wouldn't everyone be experiencing the issues that some are talking about? Or, what could cause some people to experience the issues whilst others don't?

 

It's like this, it just might because of different play styles. That some people don't notice the skill lag.

 

For example, I push myself to my gaming limits, even in MMOs... So when you're always pushing to the limits... You can reach failure points where little things make big differences and a small failure/lag can have disasterous consequences.

 

Losing to a 31 boss because you're a minimum level to accept the quest and you're waiting till the right time to fire a skill, you fire it and you get a big-fat-nothing is noticeable. That happened to me last night. Being 10%, 20% underpowered means you better be good because there is no margin for failure in your stratagy and tactics.

 

And even then it was so close... Corso was dead. I was down to a few percentage points and I almost got him as he was down to a few points, too. But my cover failed to fire on the "F" press and I couldn't get my '100% immediate on cover quick Charged shot' in and that was that...

 

OTOH I have fought that boss fight with multiple other properly leveled characters. Where I didn't skip a lot of side quests... Some of which are, frankly, some of BioWare's more defective character builds/concepts...

 

Now, if you're running into a 31-boss fight properly leveled for the encounter (ie level 30, 31, 32...), these issues wouldn't be noticeable because of game design. SWTOR is, effectively, a co-op CRPG and the boss fights are scaled to be just hard enough to be slightly interesting, the occassional death if things go horribly wrong, but you otherwise win with 50% HP, or more, remaining after a lot of flash/bang/sparkly eye-candy.

 

It's all designed by the game designer to make you feel like you've accomplished something... When, in fact, you'd have to work hard to fail...

[verrater]

As an Aggie, I was admittedly tempted to post some stupid comment about the University of Texas, etc etc, and the best I could do was to post this sort of apology. Gig'em Aggies.

[gabrielhead]

This is BORDERLINE class action lawsuit if this is true...

 

I've had 2 6870's Crossfire.. running perfectly.. NEVER had a problem with my cards... and when i started playing SWTOR one of my cards went bad since i started playing..

 

Coincidence? i just recently had to replace my card.. ;(

 

 

I keep hearing other input from the community about the game running SO HOT... if this is true, if it hasn't damaged your systems yet? it's probably doing it RIGHT now over time.. i was just an unlucky one and my cards gave up on my first before others...

 

I hand built my system. All cables run under the MB tray in my full tower rig. My PS is walled off to vent its own heat as well as all drives.2 High rpm server fans in the front, Huge exaust fan. My coolmaster tower has 2 120 mill fans, one pulling one pushing. My comp is a beast. and the temp it runs for SWTOR is just unacceptable for a game with mostly low res textures and blocky shadows. i have watched the temp with all settings off or set to low... with default driver settings and with the driver overriding SWTOR both high and to low. No setting changes the heat the game is causing. That is not normal. I want to know why.

[Jonlinar]

Ok listen the game isn't downloading any texture or streaming any animation to you because the game never takes more than 55k/sec of bandwidth during loading and rarely over 10k/sec during playing ... For consideration 7.5k/sec is the usual upload+download of a fps game such as bf3.

 

So no they are not copyrighting their texture and letting you download on the fly what you see ... But there is definitely something going on during loading where the bar stop at 25-30% and simply stand there while the date spike to 55k/sec for the reminder of the loading bar .

 

also during loading bar the 2nd process seem to process more than usual and suggest that the remote renderer is simply what we all tought ... Hero engine gimmicks multi core support by directing more data thread to another process who then use the other avalaible core.

 

Most likely what's happening during that first 30% is that the game is queuing up and putting any relevant scene assets in memory and then, during the last 70%, coordinating with BW servers for actor/quest data. This would explain why the HDD would show little activity because the assets are in memory and not on disk at that point.

[miliways]

@Tiron_Raptor I can force AA settings in the Nvidia control manager. This proves local rendering on my hardware is being done.

 

Also, You can monitor your bandwidth as you play the game, and if all assets including textures and animations were being streamed, you would see a constant 3Mb/s. But it is much lower than this, because it is only communicating standard game information (position, chat, actions... game state stuff, not rendering information, which is powers of 100 larger).

 

As someone already suggested, the remote renderer or the remote process you're so worried about is likely to do with the Hero engine's capabilities. It is a brand new engine with lots of features to assist development, like the ability for multiple artists to work on the same level concurrently, or the ability for someone to play the level and test it while someone else is modifying it.

 

This does not in any way imply that animations are being streamed.

[PjPablo]

Wanting to have a dev. address constant speculation on unlikely things is like having NASA have to prove to you that the world won't end in 2012. Wouldn't you rather have them work on bugs?

 

The burden of proof is on the accuser and all you have right now is a series of speculative items and your own conspiracy theories.

 

'cuz this is just like that, right?

 

/sigh

 

Big difference there is these are customers of BW/EA and if they do not want to lose customers over something that may not even be true than it behooves them to explain. Failure to do so only allows rampant, potentially inaccurate, speculation to continue.

 

That said, I have no doubts they will address this with comment.

[Mangosta]

Maybe this will explain (when someone figures what is really going on) why the game looks very good on one of my computers and horrible on the other.

 

Have High settings on both and the game runs smooth too. This had me puzzled until I read this thread.

[miliways]

As an Aggie, I was admittedly tempted to post some stupid comment about the University of Texas, etc etc, and the best I could do was to post this sort of apology. Gig'em Aggies.

 

The rivalry is over! I don't know what to think anymore.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Most likely what's happening during that first 30% is that the game is queuing up and putting any relevant scene assets in memory and then, during the last 70%, coordinating with BW servers for actor/quest data. This would explain why the HDD would show little activity because the assets are in memory and not on disk at that point.

 

At some point in the process it also has to start loading characters and their various assets, as well as their locations (which are continuously updated once initialized).

 

It's a perfectly plausible explanation for the bandwidth spike, I have to admit.

[archifikoss]

What did I say that is wrong?

 

I have a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas. I've studied computer graphics, software rendering and artificial intelligence. I've worked on video games, including an MMORPG (which sadly was not completed). I currently work as a software programmer.

 

I would be happy to answer any technical problems anybody has, but I feel like people have already turned this into a flamewar and are possibly just trolling. I have very little patience for trolls. I didn't swear and I didn't target anybody in particular, just asking that everybody please stop with this nonsense. Its fearmongering!

 

Sorry, I'll try to be more patient. But people need to stop jumping the gun and assuming the worst.

 

Since you seem knowledgeable about such things, I'd like to be educated... Would you be kind enough (assuming you have the time and patience) to lay out a synopsis of the OP in layman's terms, and sort of shoot down the argument from there? I think it would help the thread quite a bit.

 

Also... Could this supposed "copy protection" not actually stream hi-res textures, but run some script or other that blocks them from working for the client?

 

Don't flame me too hard as I'm not computer savvy I'm looking to be educated on this, and too much technical stuff will go over my head!

Edited January 11, 2012 by archifikoss

[Granrick]

At some point in the process it also has to start loading characters and their various assets, as well as their locations (which are continuously updated once initialized).

 

It's a perfectly plausible explanation for the bandwidth spike, I have to admit.

 

And much more likely.

[Your_dominus]

It's a joke. as for people saying "there are high res textures in the game right now, on your ship in cut scenes and intercom" if you knew anything about this game you would know that in the early beta there were high res textures in the entire game and not cut scenes. the game looked better... night and day difference. So now they only include them in the cuts cenes only? why? what purpose does that have?

 

There is ZERO reason to disable high res textures. if the end user cant run "high" settings then they lower it. Forcing high res off and then in the PTR erasing the high option and making med to high says a lot.......

Truth

open your eyes ppl..... there is something going on and OP has found SOMETHING that may explain some things. OP has found the smoking gun that will lead to the REAL reason why high res textures are off and why performance is terrible.

Possibly, and I agree.

Now lets see if Bioware actually gives as a proper answer or if its BS

Doubt it. They never do.

[Gurluas]

Its odd, but it explains why the game does not seem to have a cache.

[Karrayabe]

'cuz this is just like that, right?

 

/sigh

 

Big difference there is these are customers of BW/EA and if they do not want to lose customers over something that may not even be true than it behooves them to explain. Failure to do so only allows rampant, potentially inaccurate, speculation to continue.

 

That said, I have no doubts they will address this with comment.

 

I see your distinction and agree about it behooving them to explain but also could see why they wouldn't want to. If it's not this, it will always be something else. I mean I'm curious as well but I'm not condemning anyone until I actually have facts.

 

The parallel I was trying to draw was simply to point out the conspiratorial nature of some of these comments and about where the burden of proof is placed.

[Tiron_Raptor]

@Tiron_Raptor I can force AA settings in the Nvidia control manager. This proves local rendering on my hardware is being done.

 

Also, You can monitor your bandwidth as you play the game, and if all assets including textures and animations were being streamed, you would see a constant 3Mb/s. But it is much lower than this, because it is only communicating standard game information (position, chat, actions... game state stuff, not rendering information, which is powers of 100 larger).

 

As someone already suggested, the remote renderer or the remote process you're so worried about is likely to do with the Hero engine's capabilities. It is a brand new engine with lots of features to assist development, like the ability for multiple artists to work on the same level concurrently, or the ability for someone to play the level and test it while someone else is modifying it.

 

This does not in any way imply that animations are being streamed.

 

We're not talking about animations being streamed, or textures. MAYBE the models. Even then probably only some of them.

 

We're not talking about an entire scene being pre-rendered or ALL the assets streamed: we're talking about a relatively small portion of it being streamed, or something, and holding up things waiting on it.

 

At most we're talking about a portion of the models being streamed: there's some evidence to suggest character models in particular may have been singled out.

 

In any case, most of the scene at least is clearly rendered locally, and final rendering is extremely obviously local for just the reasons you stated.

 

What we THINK might be happening is that, say, characters are being pre-rendered by the second process and zipped into the environment as rendered by the primary client.

 

Most of the effects I mention would be side effects of this process.