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

[Tiron_Raptor]

An interesting, well thought out post with a lot of detailed information, thankyou.

 

I understand that no one really has any answers for this at the moment but if this was the method in which Bioware were rendering some of the 3D models, this would cause a significant strain on bandwidth, correct?

 

Now hopefully I'm not coming across as "one of those guys" here but my brother who isn't really an online gamer but loves StarWars is playing this with me on a fairly equally specced system but using a budget option 2mb internet line whereas I'm using 50mb. Our computers pretty much handle the game identically - would this theory not suggest that he would have more issues than I do due to his line speed being significantly slower?

 

Secondly, and in the same vein. SWTOR opens up US and EU servers for anyone who wants to play on them despite them being physically located in different parts of the world. I'm from the EU but my gameplay experience (minus a slight hitch in latency) is no different when I opt to play on a US server - wouldn't such a system have a harder time downloading and the rendering the data from the other side of the Atlantic?

 

Just thoughts. Keep up the discussion!

 

Depends on how it works, exactly. If it's just sending the assets from the server, it wouldn't cause all that much of a bandwidth hit, and this is far more likely to be the case as a result. It costs them a LOT less to have your system do the 'remote rendering' in that second process using assets streamed from the server, since they don't need the power to do the rendering or the bandwidth to send fully rendered video streams.

 

Or something like that at any rate.

[Loqe]

/subbed

[United_Strafes]

Lucas don't want nobody making mini Star Wars movies for youtube.

[miliways]

As a software developer I would just like to throw in my 2 cents:

 

The concept that all animations being rendered on your computer are being streamed from TOR servers is LUDICROUS. BEYOND IMPOSSIBLE. You guys have taken a little bit of information and just ran with it, snowballed into something completely absurd.

 

Textures are not being streamed. High-res textures are on your hard-drive and are constantly available; they are used during conversations. Go click on your intercom; for a second everything gets higher resolution and bump mapping turns on. There is *no* way this much data is being downloaded in the tenth of a second between my clicking the intercom button and seeing the response.

 

Animations are most certainly NOT being streamed. Do you know how big animation data is? You're suggesting that Bioware's servers are doing ALL the rendering for EVERY client? Are you MAD? Do you have ANY, ANY idea of the SCALE of what you are describing, WHATSOEVER?

 

First, this is just infeasible on the scale of the number of users. There are a million plus subs to TOR right now. Concurrent of up to 350,000+ users. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND. Do you have any concept of how many servers it would take to render all those animations constantly over the wire???!?!?!?

 

NEXT, lets consider latency. If the server were rendering every animation for you, the amount of time it would take to see a response would be MUCH, MUCH longer. You guys have taken a small problem with ability queuing and animation delay and have somehow assumed that those animations are being DOWNLOADED? Uh, noooooo. No. nononono. There's no freaking way.

 

I don't think Google's servers could handle 350,000+ concurrent downloads of animation data in real time.

 

This suggestion is absolutely bonkers, and any of you who are giving it any credence need to go learn some computer science.

 

Animation data is exponentially larger than texture data. This just isn't possible, guys.

 

 

EDIT: Also, this does nothing to stop people from recording youtube videos, as A ) it would be about the source models and textures, not the resultant rendered image, B ) there are already videos on youtube of SWTOR...

 

PLEASE THINK, people! Uggh. I feel like this whole thread is trolling.

Edited January 11, 2012 by miliways

[PopPunkRocker]

/subbed

 

ok, how do you subscribe to a thread, havent figured this one out yet

[Doel]

very interesting read.

 

I know about the 2nd swtor.exe, found it by accident and wondered what this is about. Also, I have noticed the heatspike. Not as bad, but tor causes around 5°C more on my graphic card than the other games I'm playing.

 

Very interesting indeed.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Just because it's called "remoterenderer" it doesn't mean that it's rendering running on the server side. It seems more like a different process on the same machine. The term "remote" is often used to refer to communicating with a different process running on the same machine.

 

Even if some (or all) rendering is done by a separate process it doesn't mean that a lot of data is being exchanged between the client and that process. I've been looking at RemoteRenderer.dll in a disassembler and judging by the function it exports, it directly initializes a directx renderer in a provided window handle.

 

Still it is unclear what role that remoterenderer.dll plays in the client, and it is still difficult to believe that the overhead of involving inter process communication in the rendering wouldn't have some significant performance cost.

 

There's also a remoterendererclient.dll and Remoterendererserver.icb, the last of which based on that other thread appears to be related to the second swtor.exe process.

 

It's far more likely that SOME of the assets are streamed from the server and rendered via the second process, possibly using software rendering (which would be terrible).

 

I did update the OP to try to make that clearer too...

[Myshella]

If this is true it is outrageous i dunno what to say the Origin affair with Bf3 was bad enough but this is on a whole new level.

[Granrick]

Depends on how it works, exactly. If it's just sending the assets from the server, it wouldn't cause all that much of a bandwidth hit, and this is far more likely to be the case as a result. It costs them a LOT less to have your system do the 'remote rendering' in that second process using assets streamed from the server, since they don't need the power to do the rendering or the bandwidth to send fully rendered video streams.

 

Or something like that at any rate.

 

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do ANY rendering on the game server. That would be ridiculous by any standards. not just because of increases bandwidth, but because of increases server CPU cycles to actually have to render something rather than just server out information about where things are located and what they are doing. Though they may hold the data needed to render full models on the server, and transfer that to the client as needed, in a secure way. But even this is only a guess unless confirmed.

[KerinKor]

PLEASE THINK, people! Uggh. I feel like this whole thread is trolling.

While everything you said is true, that's not what is being theorised.

 

Read the paper that guy dug up, it's clear that only a small part would need to be subject to this 'remoting' to achieve the 'protection' being talked about, yet big enough to cause the huge FPS and lag problems prople are seeing.

[Dezzi]

In the unlikely event that this is true, I'd put my money on this being something directed by Lucas and company. Their iron grip on their intellectual property makes my own knuckles white.

[DigitalPrime]

This is one post I would LOVE a memeber of the dev team come in here and explain or answer a few of the questions.

[Tiron_Raptor]

While everything you said is true, that's not what is being theorised.

 

Read the paper that guy dug up, it's clear that only a small part would need to be subject to this 'remoting' to achieve the 'protection' being talked about, yet big enough to cause the huge FPS and lag problems prople are seeing.

 

If true you'd get a hit from network latency, from rendering time, and then from the time to zip it into the rest of the (normally rendered) scene, any of which could be substantial, or perhaps only all of them together.

 

This is one post I would LOVE a memeber of the dev team come in here and explain or answer a few of the questions.

 

You and me both.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[myrmexaw]

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.

[themacr]

As a software developer I would just like to throw in my 2 cents:

 

The concept that all animations being rendered on your computer are being streamed from TOR servers is LUDICROUS. BEYOND IMPOSSIBLE. You guys have taken a little bit of information and just ran with it, snowballed into something completely absurd.

 

Textures are not being streamed. High-res textures are on your hard-drive and are constantly available; they are used during conversations. Go click on your intercom; for a second everything gets higher resolution and bump mapping turns on. There is *no* way this much data is being downloaded in the tenth of a second between my clicking the intercom button and seeing the response.

 

Animations are most certainly NOT being streamed. Do you know how big animation data is? You're suggesting that Bioware's servers are doing ALL the rendering for EVERY client? Are you MAD? Do you have ANY, ANY idea of the SCALE of what you are describing, WHATSOEVER?

 

First, this is just infeasible on the scale of the number of users. There are a million plus subs to TOR right now. Concurrent of up to 350,000+ users. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND. Do you have any concept of how many servers it would take to render all those animations constantly over the wire???!?!?!?

 

NEXT, lets consider latency. If the server were rendering every animation for you, the amount of time it would take to see a response would be MUCH, MUCH longer. You guys have taken a small problem with ability queuing and animation delay and have somehow assumed that those animations are being DOWNLOADED? Uh, noooooo. No. nononono. There's no freaking way.

 

I don't think Google's servers could handle 350,000+ concurrent downloads of animation data in real time.

 

This suggestion is absolutely bonkers, and any of you who are giving it any credence need to go learn some computer science.

 

Animation data is exponentially larger than texture data. This just isn't possible, guys.

 

 

EDIT: Also, this does nothing to stop people from recording youtube videos, as A ) it would be about the source models and textures, not the resultant rendered image, B ) there are already videos on youtube of SWTOR...

 

PLEASE THINK, people! Uggh. I feel like this whole thread is trolling.

 

Isn't this EXCACTLY what Onlive is doing?

 

anywho, I agree with you that rendering ALL graphics, ALL models and ALL animations would seem very implausible because of the reasons you mention. It would not be worth doing considering the immense costs you'd have to make.

 

BUT, rendering only character models for instance? Or only certain key quest givers to prevent pirate server? I'm no expert but wouldn't it be possible?

[Cioffaz]

This is one post I would LOVE a memeber of the dev team come in here and explain or answer a few of the questions.

 

Would be awesome, and it'll contribute to relax the situation...

[Tiron_Raptor]

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.

 

The thing being discussed is used to protect MODELS. Not animations, not textures. The delays possibly introduced with regard to animations, and the quality issues with textures, are side effects ONLY at worst.

[Arkerus]

By having to load textures from an alternate source (outside the client) would be an extreme risk and it would take a long time on many planets. The game stuttering issues are most likely not due to remote downloading.

 

Think about it. If that service would ever go down, the entire game would be at risk. Not to mention the slop that would come with download files every single time. The files are local but it may be doing something else with the connection.

[sdream]

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

 

Good thing my wife doesn't play the game, coz she would've sued BioWare already (she's a trial lawyer), because the quality of the media screenshots is much higher then the final product

 

The entire thread is pure speculation unless somebody does tracing and debugging to prove or to disprove that the problem exists.

 

However, what this thread displays clearly is the lack of any sort of meaningful communication from development and CSR teams. Mr. Reid, communicating with your paying customers in 140 characters on Twitter just doesn't cut it.

[Granrick]

Onlive is basically streaming you a video of the screen. If SWTOR was doing this we'd all know. You can tell by looking at it.

[Cioffaz]

Onlive is basically streaming you a video of the screen. If SWTOR was doing this we'd all know. You can tell by looking at it.

 

Maybe Gaikai is a better example?

[Tiron_Raptor]

The entire thread is pure speculation unless somebody does tracing and debugging to prove or to disprove that the problem exists.

 

Yup. I'm sitting here quietly hoping someone will, and wishing I had a clue how to go about it. Unfortunately I'm Computer Systems Support (Tech), not CIS (Programmer), so I don't know that much.

However, what this thread displays clearly is the lack of any sort of meaningful communication from development and CSR teams. Mr. Reid, communicating with your paying customers in 140 characters on Twitter just doesn't cut it.

 

To be fair, it's only been two and a half hours. It's already explosive and heading for 'Threadnaught' levels at a record pace, so I'd wager someone over there is panicking appropriately.

[Zlodo]

There's also a remoterendererclient.dll and Remoterendererserver.icb, the last of which based on that other thread appears to be related to the second swtor.exe process.

 

It's far more likely that SOME of the assets are streamed from the server and rendered via the second process, possibly using software rendering (which would be terrible).

"streaming assets from the server", if it does happen, is not something that requires a second process, or to be rendered separately from assets loaded from the hard disk.

 

There's absolutely no reason to believe that any software rendering is involved anywhere.

 

All we possibly know is that there is a separate process (running locally) that might be doing some rendering.

[Fujitasix]

ability delay is adjustable in game ,0,250,500 (ms)etc

 

The ability QUEUE is adjustable, the ability delay you experience in game most definitely is not.

[PjPablo]

Come on bioware we all want a answer to this!... (Im going to go and play this awesome game thats going to ruin wow now its called SWTOR honestly most of all these problems people post are THERE own issue wether internet or computer probs you cant blame it on bioware)

 

THANK YOU BIOWARE FOR THIS GAME WE WOULDNT OF HAD WITHOUT YOU!

 

seriously bioware gave us a gift lets be careful not to spit in there face....

 

Seriously? Jeez it's bad around here.