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

[Blurr]

Give us graphic options to enable this.

 

Firstly, allow us to always see our own character as high-res.

 

Secondly, give us a slider "Number of high-res characters to display", just like tree distance etc. If you have a low-spec PC, you'll have to set it low so you only see one or two high-res characters. If you have a high-spec PC, you can set it up so you see a dozen high-res characters.

 

This is what PC gaming is about: the option to tailor our graphics settings to our PC.

[carnac_fett]

A sensible comparison between promotional screenshots and actual in-game texture quality.

 

Exhibit A

---

PROMOTIONAL SCREENSHOT: http://cdn-www.swtor.com//sites/all/files/en/classes/trooper/62img/ss01_full.jpg

 

IN-GAME SCREENSHOT: http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/3186/firsti.jpg

 

Exhibit B

---

PROMOTIONAL SCREENSHOT: http://cdn-www.swtor.com/sites/all/files/en/trooper/images/ss1_1600x900.jpg

 

IN-GAME SCREENSHOT: http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/284/secondys.jpg

 

My character is a trooper so I used trooper screenshots. I tried to pose my character in the same way but Bioware appears to have posed their characters in special ways for the promotional screenshots, and the in-game camera appears to be more limited than whatever camera they used to capture their own promotional images.

 

Bioware's screenshots are not taking place during cutscenes.

[tcalusine]

This makes me sad. I am having fun with the game but the muddt textures need to be fixed. I have a $3k computer and i dont know what you guys are testing on but my comp can handle it... And if it cant handle it then its a problem with coding not my comp.

 

Sounds concieded but its true..

[Scyo]

I've attached screenshots below for comparison between what the game is rendering at standard "high" settings, and what the game renders with LOD bias forced below the standard threshold.

 

Standard LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_No_LOD.jpg

 

Forced LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_Forced_LOD.jpg

 

I should also mention that the change has made no impact on my FPS, and has if anything made the game run smoother for me.

Whoa, what the heck?

 

There's even more under the hood it seems. Is it possible to force this stuff with an AMD GPU?

[Caonimah]

Not true at all, but I agree that making random assertions is fun.

 

Dragons are real and they bring me apple pies.

 

Although he's wrong using an absolute term, the vast majority of MMOs have no reason to compress textures like this on their high setting. Because they believe that people are smart enough to chose the option that that suits them the best.

 

Right now, we have two option, bad and worst.

[DarthMacsimus]

Quoted from massively user Deliverator:

 

"THIS IS ALL CAUSED BY BIOWARE IMPLEMENTING REMOTE RENDERING AS A FORM OF COPY PROTECTION. THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING BETWEEN THE HIGH SETTINGS DURING BETA AND THE SETTINGS AVAILABLE NOW.

 

Massively - what you missed is that the High Rez textures worked fine in the Beta. For release, they implemented REMOTE RENDERING. What's actually happening is that they can't handle the network traffic generated by remotely rendering higher rez textures.

 

Let me repeat - High Rez doesn't work because of anti-piracy DRM shenanigans, not because they're concerned about players' machines. They're remote rendering so people who have purchased the game won't be able to dig through Lucas's precious artwork for their fan sites.

 

Again - they're remote rendering so you can't 'steal' what you bought already. Its copy protection and they're willing to go so far as to gimp the game and lie to cover it up.

 

Remote rendering is the cause of all of the frame drops and slow downs as well as advanced rendering features not working, We pay big money to buy the machines that have gigantic pipes between all of our components, especially to the GPUs. Internet throughput is nowhere near the bandwidth on your motherboard."

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/11/swtor-senior-community-manager-responds-to-high-res-texture-conc/4#comments

 

/Signed 10/10 Shame! SHAME!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Comar]

Not to feed the flames here... but I'm extremely disappointed by Bioware's decision on the matter, and I'm pretty confident that their decision to cater to the lowest common denominator and only that, will not work to their advantage.

 

This is the first time I have ever played an MMO where developers have decided to halve the texture quality not as an option but as a mandatory change across all clients. It's unforgivable, and the reasons behind it are ridiculous.

 

Until now, I've been tinkering a lot with the .ini as well as NvidiaInspector to try to force high res character textures.

Thinking it was an LOD bug, I forced the LOD bias to -3.00 and noticed something else happening instead. It seems we may not even be getting the best environment textures the game has to offer because the standard LOD refuses to render them.

 

I've attached screenshots below for comparison between what the game is rendering at standard "high" settings, and what the game renders with LOD bias forced below the standard threshold.

 

Standard LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_No_LOD.jpg

 

Forced LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_Forced_LOD.jpg

 

I should also mention that the change has made no impact on my FPS, and has if anything made the game run smoother for me.

 

ehm, how did you do htis exactly, can you write a guide or something please?

[Xreasonz]

This makes me sad. I am having fun with the game but the muddt textures need to be fixed. I have a $3k computer and i dont know what you guys are testing on but my comp can handle it... And if it cant handle it then its a problem with coding not my comp.

 

Sounds concieded but its true..

 

nah its not at all, i have a High end rig aswell running 580 sli and a i7 960 clocked at 3.8

on a Rampage 3 Extreme mobe, can run any game maxed and beyond yet for some reason Bioware deems my pc not capable of running this game

 

 

Roflolcakes mutch?

[Unruhe]

This is hilarious. The situation is very thoroughly spelled out by that dev, but people still whine like children having a tantrum.

 

MMORPGs have always had to deal with this 'don't know how many people will be on screen' limitation. It's inherent to the genre and isn't going away anytime soon. The problem is mathematical-- no amount of kicking and screaming and blubbering will change anything.

 

Seriously, I hope most of you are 12 or under, because this is just hilariously pathetic.

 

Every other current-gen and several previous-gen MMOs look and run better than The Blurry Republic. There's no damn excuse for the game looking this piss-poor when countless other developers have somehow managed to overcome the exact same hurdles, in some cases years ago.

[Gaucho]

This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

 

That is not bug. It is part of a project that BW does not have the time to finish.

 

This is like saying: There was never suppose be a caution light on a traffic street light. it was either stop or go. - That was a bug.

 

The people wanna the truth.

[Lemon_King]

Mother of God, look at the difference that makes. We might have struck gold if we can force these textures

 

Thats LOD control, more or less to keep it from being too shiny.

 

As for forcing the engine to stop using _d.tiny.dds and use _d.dds is taking a bit of work.

[Amarinth]

I've attached screenshots below for comparison between what the game is rendering at standard "high" settings, and what the game renders with LOD bias forced below the standard threshold.

 

Standard LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_No_LOD.jpg

 

Forced LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_Forced_LOD.jpg

 

I should also mention that the change has made no impact on my FPS, and has if anything made the game run smoother for me.

 

Hmm that's a very noticeable difference on the floor there. However it's very hard to make out the finer detaills when the screenshots have been downsized like that - I'm guessing Photobucket did that automatically because they were over the size limit.

 

Is there any chance you could upload the full-sized screenshots somewhere else sp we could look at them more closely? I'm really interested to see what other differences there might be.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Amarinth

[wewter]

Originally Posted by PellonSW

This was how they look during BETA up to the final weekends of testing.

 

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3...lmorra__9_.jpg

 

It was stated in the beta forums which are now gone that they were removing high-res textures in order to cut down the amount of data the players needed to download for the final weekends of test. After a number of player voiced their concerns over the suddenly lower textures in the game they stated that the final game will look much better and not to worry.

 

this is great proof of it all

 

I smell a class-action lawsuit coming on if this keeps up ~_~

 

Stupid EA and Bioware. Game looked good, and you ruined it.

 

That does classify as false advertising imo, as we all thought we were getting a *good looking* game. Instead, we got shat on.

[SausageAndWaffle]

This is ridiculous..."We can implement this awesome feature for people with $2,000 computers, but because we think that most of your computers wont be able to handle it, we will not allow ANYONE to use it." What kind of logic is that? At least make it something extra that you can download if you think your computer is up to the task. Isn't it the player's own decision to try to push their computer to the limit?

[Ommm]

This is sad. This is truly, truly sad.

 

I think it is about time each one of us issue a general consumer warning about the advertisment here, which is clearly deceiving.

 

Go to every media outlet and let them know what happens here.

Tell your friends what you have experienced.

 

I dont wish bioware bad, but apparently they got a defunct managment.

 

Also it would be bad if this practice would be adopted by someone else as a standard

in the industry. Clearly we cannot let this happen. There are rules and regulations in place

against this type of malicious advertisement for good reasons.

 

For the future it might be smart, if bioware attaches a note to each and all advertisment, that includes high resolution content, saying that it only works in cinematic mode.

This could be considered fair. Everything else as per law is not!

 

And if you ever again want business in the future: Give us a refund option.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Ommm

[xChiZx]

Whoa, what the heck?

 

There's even more under the hood it seems. Is it possible to force this stuff with an AMD GPU?

 

I don't know. I don't have an AMD GPU, but if you can force LOD bias somewhere in your AMD settings, you could try it. I can't vouch for stability or anything though.

 

ehm, how did you do htis exactly, can you write a guide or something please?

If you have Nvidia Inspector, you can go to your Star Wars: The Old Republic profile there and change settings on a driver level. I've changed LOD bias there to -3, as well as Triple Buffering and other texture filtering optimizations. I'm not keen on writing a guide as my experience is pretty limited and I'm not sure how well received it would be by Bioware here on their forums.

[PellonSW]

Again that first image was from a cut scene but there was no difference between the textures in game or on cut scenes during BETA. Below are in-game shots:

 

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg246/lawlatwow/7c5bafb1.png

 

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg246/lawlatwow/d6b9291a.png

 

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg246/lawlatwow/b4103f80.png

 

Towards the final weekend tests thats when we saw the difference in textures between in-game and cut scenes.

[IceDust]

Game looked awesome, played awesome in beta. I decided to buy it.

 

Now it looks like ****, plays like **** (low fps, ability delay) you aint getting my money anymore. Too bad I gave you 40 euros already.

[Nonameperson]

Not possible. It took less then 1 hour to figure out that FF XIV was gonna be an utter disaster

 

Yeh I know, in this case it only took almost a month to discover this

[Nitrius]

Nice that we got a answer, but i still don't understand why they can't just add an option for "Ultra" textures, and those that are able to run it can choose it if they want, those that can't run it just have to choose a lower settings, that's how it is with all PC games, you choose the settings that works for your rig.

[Blue-Reckloose]

First off, this isn't an "I'm quitting" post. I like the game, but there are lots of things bugging me, annoying me, and down right twerking me off.

 

I'm not sure if anyone has spent the time eviscerating SR's post, but I will, because it's just... it needs to be done.

 

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

 

The word investigation just smacks of "PR spin". Do not do that. Ever. PC gamers dislike having PR speak shot at them, alot. Admit mistakes, fallacies, and correct them as quickly as possible. PC Gamers have vastly more respect for developers that admit when they're wrong than developers that refuse to admit wrong-doing (remember the phrase "It's not a bug, it's a feature!")

 

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

 

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

 

That is quite the bug, actually. I'm more inclined to believe it was a mistake, not a bug. But whatever...

 

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

 

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

 

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

 

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

 

This mass of paragraphs annoys me. What SR means by "draw call", is: Loading textures from HD. You can try and spin this whichever which way you want, but that's what it all means. Let me rephrase what he said in simple terms:

 

With high res textures, some people have poor performance because their computer does not have sufficient hard drive speed to load all the textures, thusly resulting in poor performance.

 

The vast majority of those 4 paragraphs was used to defend a bad decision, not explain the technical details. Having atlassing is a good thing, forcing it on ALL USERS, is not.

 

In the real world, MMO players are well aware of the texture loading demands placed on their HD's due to the amount of textures that can appear on characters in a single location. There are methods and manners in which players use to fix this. The single most common manner? An SSD (duh!).

 

So, essentially, SR spent 4 paragraphs trying to defend forcing a performance option onto all SSD users who have no need of it, and spent money on SSD's so that they wouldn't have to use performance features such as atlassing.

 

The solution here is simple, add a checkbox in the graphics options to disable atlassing for anyone who wants to disable it. Or at least tell us how to tweak the ini file to turn it off. It really shouldn't take more than next weeks patch to give us this, we're not asking for brand new textures, we're not even asking for features, we want to turn something OFF. Since the screenies use the high res textures, we all know there is a way to turn them off. And since it was off during beta, we know the game can run without it turned on. So just let us turn it off.

 

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

 

This definitely explains why in group convos I tend to "wait for other players" for a good 10 seconds for about... 80% of the playerbase, even when not skipping dialogue. I have SSD's, I'm loading those textures many times faster than many other users, and being forced to wait for them to catch up. However, notice I did not say "I have to wait all the time". Because there is at least a chunk of the userbase with computers that load as fast as mine, meaning again, you've forced a performance option onto your users who spent money specifically so they would NEVER HAVE TO USE SUCH FEATURES.

 

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

 

The UI bug isn't what caused confusion. Having two clearly different sets of textures (convo and no convo) for high settings, is what caused the confusion. That and lack of communication from the dev team, since nobody told us we were having performance features forced onto us.

 

Also, I fiddle with my system to get the balance of performance and quality that I want. Bioware does not know what's in my rig, therefore, stop making decisions as to what my rig can handle. I'll figure that out, thanks.

 

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

 

Again, my system, my choice to how to optimize performance. And again, the fix is simple, let us turn off atlassing.

 

I know that the game performance is important to the devs, hence why having OPTIONS such as atlassing is nice. But again, many of us are well aware of the texture loading issue, and have rigs built to deal with it.

 

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

 

It should be changed within a week. Just let us turn the atlassing off. We all know the game doesn't have to have atlassing, we all know it CAN be turned off (look, the screenies the dev team takes).

 

There is absolutely no justification for the phrase "it's gonna take us awhile to figure out how to let users disable something we stuck in the game at the last minute, that we disable all the time to take high quality screenshots".

 

And to answer the question that seems implied by SR, NO! We do not want some "enhancement" to performance features that WE DO NOT WANT IN THE FIRST PLACE, we just want to turn it off.

[Pyrolight]

You'd actually have had a point if every other MMO I've played* didn't handle this exact same issue by allowing the end user to decide how much 'eye candy' to sacrifice in favor of performance. We simply are expecting the status quo, not a step backward.

 

* EverQuest, Shadowbane, Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Lineage 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, Star Wars: Galaxies, RIFT.

 

Hey we can't be too hard on Bioware, this is just another unique feature they added to the game so they can't be mistaken for a WoW clone.

[Caonimah]

Thats LOD control, more or less to keep it from being too shiny.

 

As for forcing the engine to stop using _d.tiny.dds and use _d.dds is taking a bit of work.

 

For the love of god Lemon, I know you are a wizard doing these things. You've made some of the most amazing UI mods I've ever seen. You'll be remembered not as the guy that made the funniest short lived addon in an MMO, but as the guy that un****** SWTORs textures.

[orion_eb]

I knew this was going to happen as soon as the initial reply was "give us a few days".

 

Hey Bioware/EA...keep taking away our choices and soon you'll only leave us with one choice...to unsub.

[Stalzy]

I understand the statement about, "The graphics don't make the game". But this is freaking 2012!! The graphics on charcters from Lineage II look even better! More detailed etc! Why are we being scaled back on a current generation MMO with Quad Core processsors and massive GPUS???

 

I'm so freaking mad over this. I never ever once thought I would quit this game, but this is absolute rubbish!