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

[Ashke]

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.

 

So... They know that we want it. They are worried about our machines not being able to run it, which is legitimate. Why not implement and option to toggle 'atlassed textures' on or off? You could put in a medium texture option, and have it be the current high option. Then you could change the high option to the textures that were advertised.

 

They are half-way there. They understand the passion and desire that people have about the product that they've created. Now they just have to deliver it.

 

This game is so close to amazing, keep going Bioware.

[Exponentially]

Also, I am laughing SO hard at "PR disaster".

 

There is absolutely no mention of this issue outside of ONE lesser known news site, NeoGAF, and Reddit.

 

You are the only ones that care.

[Dosblade]

I really think its something else. Well who said "95% are not having performance problems"?

 

World of Warcraft up'd there graphics and still MILLIONS still play. You could enable it or not.

 

And what are they talking about with more people on the screen? The most I have ever seen is PVP and it flys now...

 

Its ok in the end they lose no matter what. As you can see there are ALLOT of people that want this and to just keep putting them off .. more will leave.. not that many but..

[Paganini]

No, that's clearly not what he was saying, if you bother to read the post as it's written.

 

What's his point then?

 

Because my point was that the picture on the left looks better than the picture on the right.

 

If that's not what he's saying then my point stands.

[DiscordDecorum]

Good post and read man. I am not a techie person, but someone mentioned that the game is running in 32bit mode and therefore can only access 2gb of Ram. Can this be one of hte reasons for the performance hit. Hi res textures on players characters and companions would eat up memory, add in other characters and you could run into memory issues due to the game only using 32bit. Again, not a techie person, just retyping what I read in an earlier post in this thread.

 

32 bit programs can address 2^32 bytes (or 4 gigabytes, not 2) of ram. Windows usually limits programs to only seeing 2 gigs of ram on 64 bit systems unless the program is flagged as large address aware (I haven't checked, but god I hope Bioware flagged it for that) really good graphics cards have 1-1.5 gigs of ram on them, leaving 2.5-3 gigs of ram left to address with the system ram. All of the programs running on your computer eat into this quantity, however.

 

As a comparative note, Skyrim uses around 1.6-1.8 gigs of ram max during execution, even if SWTOR uses an extra 50% ram (It doesn't) that would still be around 2.5 gigs of ram, leaving 1.5 gigs available for everything else. It is important to not that lower end systems will use their pagefile much more frequently, which is an area on your hard drive used as ram storage, except it is much slower to access (Much slower may be a severe understatement, ram accesses in tens of nanoseconds, hard drives access in milliseconds. 1 millisecond = 1 million nanoseconds. If you don't have 4 gigs of ram, get 4 gigs. Hitting your pagefile is a performance killer.

Edited January 12, 2012 by DiscordDecorum

[shakunetsu]

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

A lot of people aren't going to like this. I bought the CE. Now I regret it. I'm going to destroy my box. And that art book will be burned. I'll rip the soundtrack and import it to iTunes. Then I'll just leave it outside the case so it can get scratches. And that statue? You don't want to know what I'm going to do to that statue.

 

Well the important thing is they're going to improve graphics

[PjPablo]

Also, I am laughing SO hard at "PR disaster".

 

There is absolutely no mention of this issue outside of ONE lesser known news site, NeoGAF, and Reddit.

 

You are the only ones that care.

 

Question is why do you care if they care? You downplay all these posters concerns yet keep coming back to add zero to the conversation.

[United_Strafes]

So you think the ingame settings on high are comparable to the one on the left? Is that what you're saying?

 

No but obviously the comparason picture is not in high settings.

[Khechari]

The ********** continues.

 

Perhaps some of you haven't seen this?

 

 

 

You've been listened to. It's being worked on. They get it.

 

What exactly does "greater visual fidelity" mean? And if it means 'restore high resolution textures', then why don't they just say that?

 

BW, has been shady on this issue, and has not earned the benefit of the doubt.

[Exponentially]

So little content in posts are being read, I feel like condensing it into chunks.

 

 

They are aware. Fixing it. Game update 1.2. Before March 31, 2012.

[jadel]

I don't know. If you take what they've been saying to the logical extreme, you could say- PS3 has better graphics than NES." Then they would reply "that's, like, your opinion man".

 

I have a feeling they are confusing model/texture-art with graphics, because your arguments were about as solid of a case as you can make. Requiring anything more is just a blatant attempt to make "better" an impossibility, which for sake of argument, is really hypocritical and unfair.

 

lol Theres got to be something slightly wrong with you two. This is the well thought out irrefutable argument containing only facts...

 

 

Originally Posted by Your_dominus

Fact isn't subjective.

Conan, Aion or LOTRO have superior graphics, in every concievable way.

Every. Single. Way.

 

If you think TOR is the new best thing, you are the one who's blind, not to mention easily amused.

 

 

Also you think that we are "confusing model/texture-art with graphics" um ..wth.

 

The only way your argument becomes valid is if you were to say

 

Fact isn't subjective.

Conan, Aion or LOTRO have higher resolution textures.

 

 

This whole argument misses the point of this thread though. Almost everyone agrees that it sux that BW chose to disable the higher res textures for performance reasons.

[United_Strafes]

So little content in posts are being read, I feel like condensing it into chunks.

 

 

They are aware. Fixing it. Game update 1.2. Before March 31, 2012.

 

I'll condense all your posts into 1:

 

I don't know what I'm reading.

[Khechari]

What's his point then?

 

Because my point was that the picture on the left looks better than the picture on the right.

 

If that's not what he's saying then my point stands.

 

He's saying that your picture is an unfair way to compare the picture on the left to the graphics in the game, because the picture on the right is an unfair representation of the graphics in the game.

 

If you don't care about the graphics in the game, and only care about what the picture on the right looks like, then hats off to you for creative trolling.

[Exponentially]

What exactly does "greater visual fidelity" mean? And if it means 'restore high resolution textures', then why don't they just say that?

 

BW, has been shady on this issue, and has not earned the benefit of the doubt.

 

"greater visual fidelity"=look better.

 

Shady is telling you they're fixing it, giving you a time frame, and telling they read through sll of the frankly insulting and downright rude posts to find the actual comments?

 

 

Shady would be "There's no graphic problems. Closing this thread now, no fix."

[Rekyo]

Also, I am laughing SO hard at "PR disaster".

 

There is absolutely no mention of this issue outside of ONE lesser known news site, NeoGAF, and Reddit.

 

You are the only ones that care.

 

Wrong, Gamefront is one of them. It's not a PR disaster but it's bigger than you think.

[Your_dominus]

lol Theres got to be something slightly wrong with you two. This is the well thought out irrefutable argument containing only facts...

 

 

Originally Posted by Your_dominus

Fact isn't subjective.

Conan, Aion or LOTRO have superior graphics, in every concievable way.

Every. Single. Way.

 

If you think TOR is the new best thing, you are the one who's blind, not to mention easily amused.

 

 

Also you think that we are "confusing model/texture-art with graphics" um ..wth.

 

The only way your argument becomes valid is if you were to say

 

Fact isn't subjective.

Conan, Aion or LOTRO have higher resolution textures.

 

 

This whole argument misses the point of this thread though. Almost everyone agrees that it sux that BW chose to disable the higher res textures for performance reasons.

 

Yes, if you think TOR looks better than those listed games, you must be confusing art style with graphics quality.

But as to which one pleases you more? That is subjective. I would think that's a given. but common sense isn't so common.

 

Many mmorpg's are graphically superior to TOR. from every technological standpoint.

I'm not even sure what you're saying.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Your_dominus

[areto]

Just thought I'd chime in and say this is all hilarious.

 

I don't mind the textures although they are much worse then I was expecting.

 

The way they had much better quality textures and an option to see them in game in the beta and now they don't and they tell us, "No we disabled the option for you see, so the game runs better, even though it was fine on your computer during beta, we don't think providing you with the option to accidentally lower your FPS is a good idea, do you?" ... it's all crazy funny.

 

And they're even calling having a 'medium' option a UI bug! a bug! LOL!

 

Jesus this has to be one of the top dumbest mistakes and lamest cover-ups I've ever seen in an MMO.

Edited January 12, 2012 by areto

[mcfabulous]

So little content in posts are being read, I feel like condensing it into chunks.

 

 

They are aware. Fixing it. Game update 1.2. Before March 31, 2012.

 

Thats very observant of you, now please play back to me the part where he said it would be a decently sized overhaul not just oh now instead of runescape it looks like swg.

 

No one is trusting anything said for very valid reasons. Enjoy being bored and playing something from 2006.

[Blue-Reckloose]

I'm well aware.

 

The situation: With high-res textures enabled, even those with High-end PCs were crashing in high-pop areas. BW had two options (well three, but I'll get to the third in a sec):

 

1) Release with high-res textures and create even more problems than they have now (people would still be ***** ing about the textures, but they'd also be QQing about crashing and having to re-queue for hours).

 

2) Release with the high res textures only in cutscenes. They still get the flak for the low res textures, but at least they avoid the disaster with crashing and re-queuing.

 

 

Now, BW did have a third option that they either didn't think of or just had a "DURR" moment on:

 

3) Release with a "Limited high-res texture" option. It would only apply to your character and your party members, and maybe about the first 20-ish character models to be rendered on your screen.

 

 

Option 3, while not perfect, would have been the best solution. I'm frankly appalled they didn't think of it. But Option 2 was the next best thing.

 

Ah, nope nope nope.

 

Let's assume that: There isn't enough time to fix for release. Ok? We'll go with that.

 

So, high res textures can crash some systems (until the high res textures are enabled for us, we will not know the truth of this), and release is soon, and there isn't enough time to fix this particular bug.

 

What do you do? You explain to users, "there is this bug, it's pretty big, so we're taking out the option for launch while we dilligently work on a fix. And here are said details for the bug. Oh, we launched, and we have the test server, problematic setting is available on test server, help us fix it".

 

That, is the ONLY acceptable solution, period, at all, ever.

 

Instead, we got this:

 

Bioware: "....."

Users: "The high res textures aren't working"

Bioware: "It is a bug, we are resolving"

Users: "Any ETA on fixing the high res textures?"

Bioware: "We fixed the high res textures by disabling them"

Users: "... what?"

Bioware: "It is a performance tuning issue, everyone now has fantastic performance!"

Users: "No we don't, and we don't have high res textures either"

Bioware: "In the coming months we will enhance fidelity!"

Users: "What does that even mean?"

 

Do you see the startling difference? Bioware has not acknowledged that high res textures crash clients, it's not mentioned by bioware at all. The answer is high res textures were disabled for "performance", with no option to turn them on if our system can handle it. Bioware has not said "it can cause crashes", they said "some systems have performance issues". And the "fix" now, is some hogwash PR term of "enhancing fidelity".

 

Come on Bioware. Be honest, be upfront, engage the user base, and LET US HELP FIX THE GAME.

[Paganini]

He's saying that your picture is an unfair way to compare the picture on the left to the graphics in the game, because the picture on the right is an unfair representation of the graphics in the game.

 

If you don't care about the graphics in the game, and only care about what the picture on the right looks like, then hats off to you for creative trolling.

 

The degree of difference doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that there is one.

[Sunkisttuna]

Shady would be "There's no graphic problems. Closing this thread now, no fix."

 

 

if im not mistaken, isn't that almost exactly what they said?

as in

 

"oh woops, we put in a high-res option that wasn't supposed to be there, so it was a bug but we fixed it by calling medium settings high. /thread"

[United_Strafes]

Wrong, Gamefront is one of them. It's not a PR disaster but it's bigger than you think.

 

Just did a google search and there's a bunch of smaller MMO sites picking it up, which as anyone will play games knows this is where the actual players go not to IGN or something like that.

 

I write for GameReplays.com and were mostly a hardcore RTS site but I'm thinking about doing a writeup on this.

[Exponentially]

I just don't get what more there is to do. They won't fix this to your liking right away, making the game ACTUALLY RUN for people is way more important than texture resolution. READ THE DEV TRACKER.

 

There are error 9000s, CTDs, broken WZs, balance fixes, level 50 bracket for WZs, and new content to push out for a whole other group of complainers.

 

This isn't an overnight fix. If it were, they would fix it. Do you not get that? It's so plain to see.

[Exponentially]

if im not mistaken, isn't that almost exactly what they said?

as in

 

"oh woops, we put in a high-res option that wasn't supposed to be there, so it was a bug but we fixed it by calling medium settings high. /thread"

 

Again:

 

"We know about it. It is being addressed. Patch 1.2. before March 31st, 2012."

[Grephus]

Want to make me happy? Make it so high-rez textures only apply to my character.

I don't care how ugly everybody else looks. Lol.