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

[Tiron_Raptor]

 

You've created a post with a very conspiratorial tone, and already made your judgement based on questionable evidence at best. You then try to add an 'edit' line to backtrack and seem impartial. You can't have it both ways, OP. You can't 'unflame' a thread, much like you can't unhear a sound, or unsee a sight.

 

Sorry, but this thread is a waste of forum space. The Ability Delay crew must be looking for something new promote.

 

Given the massive fights I had with xcore last week, I'm the LAST person they'd want to be pushing something for them.

 

And frankly, of the three companies involved, one has pulled stupid DRM before, and another has a habit of wrecking games of dictatorial edicts: Some exec that doesn't know what they're doing, at either or both companies, mandating a stupid 'protection' system be added to 'help the bottom line' is more than a little plausible.

 

Editing the post is intended to help make sure that newcomers don't get the wrong idea, and fix some of the misinterpretations.

 

And I'm all ears if you've got a better idea that fits all the facts...

 

The key one being what this 'remote renderer' thing actually DOES.

[Granrick]

While Miliways may have come off a little brash at first, his points are all 100% correct.

 

An MMO is a different beast than a single player game. There's a lot going on in a MMO besides graphics that can slow things down.

[Karrayabe]

Sent it over to kotaku and other sites. Hopefully they run something on this as they and joystix have made posts about swtor performance

 

they more this gets out there the better.

 

If they did they would be bad journalists. Performance issues are a fact, this as a cause for performance or left out textures is speculation.

[LexonLightsaber]

 

You've created a post with a very conspiratorial tone, and already made your judgement based on questionable evidence at best. You then try to add an 'edit' line to backtrack and seem impartial. You can't have it both ways, OP. You can't 'unflame' a thread, much like you can't unhear a sound, or unsee a sight.

 

Sorry, but this thread is a waste of forum space. The Ability Delay crew must be looking for something new promote.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to assume anything. If you look at the replies, very few of them have stated this as fact. Most say that this has to be at least looked into. I would rather this information be posted then in someone head and never read. It at least deserves some explanation either way.

[Zannis]

I see a lot of speculation, and a lot of people debunking that. I would like those debunkers to explain what the second SWTOR.exe is doing with a sustained 100% of one of my cores.

 

We don't know the answer to that. That does not, however, prove that the lack of high res textures is a copyright protection conspiracy.

[Bluejayoo]

Man I can't wait until someone gets confirmation or debunks this. If this turns out to be why we are not getting hi-rez textures right now, it would be the most stupid thing Bioware has done to date... and they already have a long track record of incredibly stupid design decisions on this game so far.

[Baracca]

Whats your fragmentation like? Windows NTFS and FAT are notoriously terrible about managing fragmentation. Download SmartDefrag for free and run it on the drive with SWTOR on "deep optimize" and let it go all night (it'll take several hours). Fragmentation could absolutely cause slow loading performance, even on a very fast HDD.

 

It's a brand new SSD drive bought only for this game. Windows 7 pro 64 bit, office, and firefox are all that's used on this drive. My game does load faster than my non SSD friend's PC however those pauses and stutters leave me suspect.

[TheTurniipKing]

Minecraft

of course, the entire world is actually mutable in Minecraft, rather than being largely static meshes.

 

There's actually a lot of work in that, even if it looks like there shouldn't be.

Edited January 11, 2012 by TheTurniipKing

[LexonLightsaber]

the more and more we reduce what might be "sent from the server for DRM", the closer and closer we get to it just running like a normal MMO. You know.. the data of what's going on and who's doing what being sent by the server to our clients to render. Obviously, that can cause lag if your client isn't receiving the info in a timely manner. This is something that will always exist with MMOs.

 

You have posted many replies in the form of trying to sway this post to a certain conclusion. Might i suggest a wait and see approach, just to be safe.

[mcfabulous]

Haven't read past page 10 in replies yet, but im reading the pdf.

This would explain a lot of performance issues people are having.

I don't have "issues" at all, but I do have random performance behaviour, which I find odd.

A game shouldn't go from 20 to 80 to 34 to 110 to 46 to 27 etc fps every 5 seconds.

My connection shouldn't be shot in the foot just because I'm playing a game. I was able to run Netflix, Torrents, and WoW all at the same time while browsing things.

 

With swtor I can still browse but I can definitely tell my connection is suffering for some reason.

 

Also the way the program effects the cpu strikes me as odd and random. (as well as the dual processes taking place yet one being virtual free of a connection)

[Ossos]

Check out Massively.com (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/10/bioware-responds-to-the-old-republic-performance-issues/)

 

They've already responded. They said it's us, not them. I suspect that THAT'S the end of the story.

 

Sure they didn't go the way of "Shut up and give me your sub. money!" like the lead Dev. for EQ did, but it doesn't seem to help anything.

 

We'll see what happens on the 20th.

[Paganini]

I love how people can't believe that a company like EA would put crippling DRM in their game. Edited January 11, 2012 by Paganini

[Jonlinar]

Someone should hook a debugger up to the client and just dump the data to a file.

 

Run game

Attach debugger

Zone to new place

Detach debugger

 

It'd take a while to sort though to make sense of anything but it would be almost conclusive.

[Tiron_Raptor]

It very well could be related to asset management. However, if it's not hitting the web then the streaming idea is jacked. Just because it's processing data doesn't mean it's streaming that data from the internet.

 

Yeah, It's entirely possible it's decrypting stuff out of the client files. The problem with that is that 10gb of the game files vanished between one week and the next very late in the beta, around the same time NDA was lifted, and from what I've heard, that the high res textures were disabled.

 

Performance in the beta, even with the high res textures on, has also been reported a few times to have been higher than it is now with medium textures.

 

Taken together it suggests a big change in the client at most two months before launch.

 

A bunch of models being moved to the server, plus some optimization, and the remote rendering system being added but not being able to handle the high res textures explains it all far too nicely for my own liking.

 

The other problem, is that it could very feasibly be pulling data through the other process, the actual client, rather than open a second port and connection just for the assets.

[ObiWonCanolli]

So this is whats killing my framerate? this copy protection system is just absurd, bioware can always sue anyone who copies their 3D models.

 

Oh great, the "tin foil hat" theorists just got a heavy diet to feed their performance bashing.

 

Folks, it's all speculation. Connecting a research paper at Standford to being used in game is an HUGE and BLIND leap.

[miliways]

of course, the entire world is actually mutable in Minecraft, rather than being largely static meshes.

 

There's actually a lot of work in that, even if it looks like there shouldn't be.

 

Its true that things are lower resolution in Minecraft because it uses a somewhat voxel based engine (using bits for things so you can break them up rather than single polygon meshes) the number of blocks is still trivial next to the number of polys in Crysis, so the point about Java vs C++ performance still stands.

 

We're talking about rendering here. For other things, sure, but that's not relevant.

[Granrick]

You have posted many replies in the form of trying to sway this post to a certain conclusion. Might i suggest a wait and see approach, just to be safe.

 

*nods* I'm waiting to see.

 

I'm just also stating what I think is most likely in the discussion that is ongoing. I hope to calm some people who seem to be freaking out a little or jumping to conclusions that have no support yet.

 

I want to state right now that I do not know exactly what's going on under the hood, and there's no way I can, but I'm posting what seems most logical as a counterpoint to some of the more wild theories.

[Truga]

Whats your fragmentation like? Windows NTFS and FAT are notoriously terrible about managing fragmentation. Download SmartDefrag for free and run it on the drive with SWTOR on "deep optimize" and let it go all night (it'll take several hours). Fragmentation could absolutely cause slow loading performance, even on a very fast HDD.

 

Fragmentation on an SSD? Surely, you are joking?

[gabrielhead]

It very well could be related to asset management. However, if it's not hitting the web then the streaming idea is jacked. Just because it's processing data doesn't mean it's streaming that data from the internet.

 

I have no consern about it "hitting the web", I dont care if it is or isnt streaming anything. I care that its running on only one core and its running so hard that my comp wants to shutdown. I want to know what SWTOR.exe number 2 is. and why its not multi core optimized. why it cant seem to play nice with anything.

 

I also want to know if it is responsible for the GPU fan to be running at 100% constantly, and barely being able to keep up. When neither heat issues pop up in anything else... Games, Video rendering with the GPU... nothing runs this hot... Id like to know why.

 

Im thankful you are hear to keep the thread from running of to crazy land. and i know you can only speek to the issues you know. I trust you are correct on the network/remote rendering issue. But who cares when the game is frying eggs.

[Bluebpy]

Sigh.. let me take the time to respond to you, and explain. Hopefully you'll take the time to read this, and it won't get buried under other pages.

 

 

Yes, your computer runs Crysis well, I'm sure it does. This does not mean your computer can handle 5+ versions of TOR running at the same time.

 

It ends up computers are kinda complicated!!

 

For instance, lets take Minecraft. Really, REALLY simple game, right? The textures are low-res, the models are just BLOCKS, literally just cubes. So your computer should be able to run about 1,000,000+ versions of Minecraft at the same time, since it can handle Crysis, right?

 

Well, yes and no. You're right that Crysis is 100x as detailed in models as Minecraft. The models are in the thousands of polys / tris and minecraft is in the tens of polys.

 

However, Crysis has its own efficient, ground-up C++ engine, which handles those assets as well as possible, uses the DirectX game library for low-level asset management and rendering, and other technologies. In short: lots and lots and lots of people have worked for a long time to make it as efficient as bloody possible.

 

Minecraft, on the other hand, runs on Java, which is a virtual machine which has to run on top of your computer. The code does not run natively (which is to say, as machine code, in the language of your processor. You see, different processors have different architectures, which require the program to be compiled again in that language. To avoid having to recompile, java runs as an interpreted language where a program called an interpreter, java, translates the minecraft java code into code your machine can run, but it does this as it goes, so it is much slower than native C++ code. Java's been worked on for years, so it is much faster now, much faster than it used to be, but the overhead is such that it is still much, much slower than C++. You could *never* run Crysis in Java. It would run too slow. )

 

You could have a machine that is liquid nitrogen cooled up to 5GHz or something stupid and you still couldn't run Crysis level games in a Java environment.

 

See what I'm getting at?

 

My computer can run Crysis 2 smooth, but sometimes Minecraft runs slow. Its the same computer. And minecraft is not, I assure you, sending textures or animations over the internet. lol.

 

There ARE high res textures in the game right now, if you put your settings on HIGH then during cutscenes you can see a difference in quality, bump mapping is present where it is not on the medium level textures. Go to your ship and click the intercom, it'll flash to high res and right back to medium, this should be obvious and dramatic if you look closely.

 

Why high resolution textures aren't available in the main game when the texture assets are there is anybody's guess. There has to be some bug the developers are working on. I agree with you, if it was just a performance issue, they should allow it, and some people could handle it and some people would have to turn down to medium.

 

This is indeed an area of concern and people are attempting to get information from the devs about it. The community leaders have said they are speaking with the development team to make sure they don't give us the wrong information.

 

Again, I can force AntiAliasing on my computer locally using the Nvidia Control Manager for my Graphics Card. If you can do that, it means the video you're seeing is being rendered from my graphics card, locally. It would not apply it to a random video stream, only things that are being sent through the DirectX pipeline.

 

There are lots of other reasons why we can verify this is NOT happening, as I've stated on other posts. I won't repeat them.

 

I'm a systems admin and an avid gamer... i understand the technical side of it. Not a programmer.......... i appreciate you trying to explain.

 

I read your past posts in this thread and i somewhat agree with you only on some points. I agree... there is noway everything is done server side... it would not be possible, in fact its ludicrous.

 

Having said that... there seems to be something in regards the models being done... We don't have the answers obviously but i mean.. when there's LOTS of smoke.. chances are it's a fire. Something is going on server side that is causing these problems. All speculation but it does explain ability delay, lag with lots of players around, Maps disappearing..( i mean if assets are loaded on memory there is zero reason for map contents to disappear when i hit M)

 

For all we know its just a very inefficient code....

 

All I'm saying is what OP has found is probably the smoking gun relating to high res texture issues and performance issues

 

The textures............ in the early beta( PLEASE EARLY BETA PPL SPEAK UP ABOUT THIS) high res textures were in the entire game... not just cut scenes..... they then disabled this... and made it possible only on cut scenes. There is Zero reason for this, really. think about it...... there is no reason

Edited January 11, 2012 by Bluebpy

[GundamDouble-O]

Thanks for the post and the explanation as to why the gear in this game is undoubtedly stuck at low rez textures. Almost everything in the game looks better than the armor. If this is true, it makes perfect sense that high rez gear would drastically decrease performance. Edited January 11, 2012 by GundamDouble-O

[Tiron_Raptor]

 

We don't know the answer to that. That does not, however, prove that the lack of high res textures is a copyright protection conspiracy.

 

Actually the speculation is that the lack of high res textures is one of several side effects of the copyright protection conspiracy. Also that it's probably an Unlicensed Competitive Server Operation Prevention conspiracy rather than copyright.

 

Oh great, the "tin foil hat" theorists just got a heavy diet to feed their performance bashing.

 

Folks, it's all speculation. Connecting a research paper at Standford to being used in game is an HUGE and BLIND leap.

 

Mostly blind. A lot of the other things that have been being bandied about on the forums fit together nicely if this is going on, which is what has me wondering.

 

Just wondering and suggesting, and wishing aloud that there was more hard data to use in drawing a conclusion.

 

If the truth ends up coming out as a result of this, I'll be happy, no matter what that truth is. ESPECIALLY if I'm wrong.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[bbbmmmlll]

The RemoteRender is the HeroEngine render. It runs as a separate process and is therefore 'remote' to the main process. I think in earlier versions of the game the DLL was actually named 'HeroEngine'.

[hulduet]

That would explain a lot...

[miliways]

Yeah, It's entirely possible it's decrypting stuff out of the client files. The problem with that is that 10gb of the game files vanished between one week and the next very late in the beta, around the same time NDA was lifted, and from what I've heard, that the high res textures were disabled.

 

Performance in the beta, even with the high res textures on, has also been reported a few times to have been higher than it is now with medium textures.

 

Taken together it suggests a big change in the client at most two months before launch.

 

A bunch of models being moved to the server, plus some optimization, and the remote rendering system being added but not being able to handle the high res textures explains it all far too nicely for my own liking.

 

The other problem, is that it could very feasibly be pulling data through the other process, the actual client, rather than open a second port and connection just for the assets.

 

No, it doesn't! See, you're still drawing lots of conclusions without knowing enough of what you're talking about, so that leads to all kinds of misconceptions.

 

A "remote rendering" system was not added in the last second. There's no way in hell they changed the base rendering for the game in the last week of development, that would take months of redesign. Not to mention, as I've pointed out, this game runs on a 3rd party engine, the Hero Engine. Please go research it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroEngine

 

As others have pointed out, the second process is likely either a WoW Warden style security application to prevent people from running hacks, (think PunkBuster) or it is part of the Hero Engine's ability to run the game on a level which is in progress, edited by artists. Or its just part of the game engine in some other complicated way, maybe they're using some kind of reflection for updates or for who knows what.

 

Software development is just so mind mindbogglingly complicated.

 

There IS a problem with high-resolution textures, and we'll be getting a response. Other threads have discussed it, and the developers are putting together a response. But the problem doesn't have anything to do with streaming animations, nor attempting to keep models or textures secret. Its just infeasible.