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

[Corpeus]

Found this advertisement for content patch 1.1 coming up on the 17th. This just pissed me off! Look at the in game footage all in f%#k'en High res. What a bunch of BS!

 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216349p1.html

 

Wheres the large disclaimer saying your graphics will actually look like EQ1 in game.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Corpeus

[Morgander]

I am dissapointed with the direction this thread has gone.

 

At first people were expressing their concerns over the high res textures and demanding a response from bioware, as we should have. But now, this thread has turned into hate mongering with very little constructive posting. In my opinion, Bioware is far from a horrible company and they did give us feedback on the issue. They are trying to improve the game's visuals while trying to keep the game stable.

 

Now, there is an issue about holding back the option for high res from customers for apparently no reason. I won't assume to know everything about game mechanics and say they should have done this another way. Sure, I am upset I am not offered an option to at least try out the higher settings for myself. But you know what? The game is still very new and Bioware has time to make things right. Everyone makes mistakes right? Are we not allowed to make up for our own mistakes? I say we allow them some time with this, at least until 1.2 like they stated.

 

In closing, my opinion is that Bioware is a good company. I have always enjoyed their games and they seem to be in this business for the right reasons. I am willing to give them some slack.

 

 

 

Disclaimer: This post is in no way focused on any one person or being used as an attack of any kind. The above is strictly the author's opinions and to be treated as such.

 

Adamant,

 

It's not about the graphics. It's about false advertisement. If I go looking for a television and find one who's box tells me it's high definition, then take it home and find out it's not, all the while the company's website continues to tell me that it is, as does the box and articles and advertisements, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.

 

If they wanted to create this game with graphics on par with the Nintendo Entertainment System's 8 bit glory, so be it; but they had better damn well show me screenshots of that graphics capability, not that of a Playstation 3.

 

This entire issue would have been different had they told us in BETA that this was something they wanted to make sure got into the game as soon as possible. They blatantly told us that they removed them, with obviously no intention of putting them back in, or at the very least, no intention in the near future, nor any proper communication about it.

 

I don't want excuses. I don't want false promises or dodgy claims of "sometime in the future we're looking into increasing the graphics "fidelity".

 

I want true spoken words of promise, backed by actions. Maybe even an apology.

 

I want, "we've heard you and we're so sorry we lost your trust". We are going to fix this as quickly as we can and get you the graphics we've been advertising. I don't mean months from now, I mean much, much sooner. We are very sorry.

[BeeblesTV]

False advertisement must stop. Give PC gamers graphics options, don't force us to use a lower visual standard.

[Janet]

Speaking of false advertisement:

 

Also, I'm getting this technical information from the user Lemon_King. It's really impressive what some users like him are finding inside the code:

 

You really should remove this from the OP. The quoted shader has absolutely nothing to do with downsampling textures. All it does is sample single Y, Cr and Cb colour components from a texture unit separately, adjustment these values a bit, and returns a pixel colour from the result. If it was downsampling, you would have multiple colour samples being averaged, which is simply not the case.

 

I'm sure any layperson looked a this must've jumped up the curtains upon seeing CONSTANT_SCALE( value ) ( ( (value) > 2.0 ) ? 1.0 : ( (value) / 2.0 ) ), because clearly it is dividing by two! Anyone who actually took the time to understand it, however, would notice that this CONSTANT_SCALE define is conditional to PS_1, aka Shader Model 1.0. If your GPU is running shader model 1, then you will have bigger concerns running this game than getting high resolution textures.

 

The extracted XML is equally meaningless, all it does is describe some very normal sampler states for what we can assume is a texture unit... Of which's contents we know absolutely nothing.

 

Doing a text search in a DLL doesn't prove anything. On the contrary, if you find code in plain text in an executable, then it likely is an oversight and it definitely will not be executed. If you really want to figure out what's happening behind the scenes, crack open shaders.bin and try to figure out the format to then decompile the shaders there. (Pro tip: it's a waste of time.)

Edited January 16, 2012 by Janet

[RhythmEmotion]

I was just watching the trailer for the new rakghoul flashpoint.. nice to see they got their systems running with hi res over there...

 

I can't even stand looking at troopers because of their ugly pixelated armor.. couple that with no aa and i'd swear I'm playing a game thats 10 years old.

[Nodens]

If you really want to figure out what's happening behind the scenes, crack open shaders.bin and try to figure out the format to then decompile the shaders there. (Pro tip: it's a waste of time.)

 

http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm

 

You can disassemble into shader assembly with this. Unfortunately I do not have spare time

Edited January 16, 2012 by Nodens

[Illutian]

Except programmers don't spend time recording voice-overs or patching them into the game data.

 

The amount of questionable programming decisions in this game makes you wonder how much programming time was allocated in keeping the engine up to date over course of its long development time. Things such as the game client being 32-bit only when it frequently could use more addressing space, the dubious use of intermediate cache files on the disk, the shadow mapping which is a throwback to single sampled non-cascaded shadow maps from the 80s, the sheer inefficiency (or lack of) of visibility culling in the game... Not to mention the texture resolution, of course. I could go on and on.

 

I have too much respect for fellow game developers to start lambasting the whole BioWare programming team without knowing how it went behind the scenes, or what they started with from the HeroEngine. PC development is a tricky beast, and this being an MMO also means a lot of effort needs to be invested on back-end things that are invisible to the user. But I'm still puzzled that the combined resources of BioWare and EA couldn't iron out these many flaws.

 

while they (Programmers) 'usually' don't do VO. Their budge is still linked to the VO. As the entire project (aka the Game) shares a Master Budget; in this case the game's budget was apparently around $200 Million.

 

As for 32bit client they have to until XP is gone like Windows 3.1. Even though there's a 64-bit XP, most people got the 32-bit version. And have failed to upgrade since then.

 

Now they did manage to jury-rig around it by creating two EXEs. I assume the larger one houses the graphics and the smaller one does the processing.

[Nodens]

As for 32bit client they have to until XP is gone like Windows 3.1. Even though there's a 64-bit XP, most people got the 32-bit version. And have failed to upgrade since then.

 

Now they did manage to jury-rig around it by creating two EXEs. I assume the larger one houses the graphics and the smaller one does the processing.

 

Actualy in this time and age you can offer executables for both 32bit and 64bit. All it takes is making sure your code is 64bit compatible while you write it and then you can just compile a 64bit version as well. If it's not a driver you're coding the guidelines you have to follow in your code are very very simple.

 

Still 32bit/64bit is entirely irrelevant to this issue native 64bit support would provide only a marginal increase in performance (5-10%). Again 32/64bits have nothing to do with our issue.

[Illutian]

Actualy in this time and age you can offer executables for both 32bit and 64bit. All it takes is making sure your code is 64bit compatible while you write it and then you can just compile a 64bit version as well. If it's not a driver you're coding the guidelines you have to follow in your code are very very simple.

 

Still 32bit/64bit is entirely irrelevant to this issue native 64bit support would provide only a marginal increase in performance (5-10%). Again 32/64bits have nothing to do with our issue.

 

Actually, it sort of does. As 32bit is limited to 2GB, unless LAA is flagged; then it's 4GB, and after about 2hrs of SITTING IN REPUBLIC FLEET I'm up to about 1.5GB of memory in use by one of the SWTOR EXEs. And this is with our 'so-called' High graphics, which are really medium.

 

Question is was that the issue they refer to as "to make the game run smoother". Perhaps with true-High the memory usage exceeded 2GB to quickly and caused the client to CTD. Now this could be easily fixed if they flagged LAA like Bethsda did for Skyrim (finally!). But for some reason companies still refuse to flag it.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Illutian

[areto]

Actually, it sort of does. As 32bit is limited to 2GB, unless LAA is flagged; then it's 4GB, and after about 2hrs of SITTING IN REPUBLIC FLEET I'm up to about 1.5GB of memory in use by one of the SWTOR EXEs. And this is with our 'so-called' High graphics, which are really medium.

 

Question is was that the issue they refer to as "to make the game run smoother". Perhaps with true-High the memory usage exceeded 2GB to quickly and caused the client to CTD. Now this could be easily fixed if they flagged LAA like Bethsda did for Skyrim (finally!). But for some reason companies still refuse to flag it.

 

Now that you mention it I'm almost 100% sure that's what the issue is.

[pixeltricks]

Having a lot of system ram isn't the problem, the problem is lack of video card ram. If everyone had a video card with 2GB ram it wouldn't be an issue, you could have high resolution textures everywhere, but people with that much video card ram are few, most are under 1GB and many are at 512MB or using integrated video that uses system ram.

 

 

Has anyone at bioware looked at ptex rendering ? It seems well suited for this problem.

Edited January 16, 2012 by pixeltricks

[Toweleeeie]

Having a lot of system ram isn't the problem, the problem is lack of video card ram. If everyone had a video card with 2GB ram it wouldn't be an issue, you could have high resolution textures everywhere, but people with that much video card ram are few, most are under 1GB and many are at 512MB or using integrated video that uses system ram.

 

Yep, which is why they should give us an OPTIONAL high res texture download.

[seanwagner]

I found in My AMD VISION Engine Control Center, That REALLY improved my textures, Like. N64>PS3. However I usally have all my graphics settings on Performance. I doubt this is High res textures, But I found Cranking Mipmap Detail level to High Quality, Really improves the textures, If it wasn't already set on high quality to begin with.

[riipeli]

Hell when EQ2 launched it brought 6800 SLI systems to their knees when you pushed all the graphics to max.

 

A tidbit of gaming history: I've heard claims that SOE had asked Intel about the future of processors when they started coding EQ2. Intel said

 

'the future will bring single-core CPUs with very high clocks, expect to see over 5GHz when your game launches.'

 

and then they brought out core2duo with mediocre clocks.

 

So, EQ2 WAS well coded. For a platform that never materialized.

 

I think SOE's experience with MMOs shows quite well in how their UI had great configuration options from the start - you weren't locked into someone else's idea of what shape your hotbar should be like. (I, for one, rolled with 3 hotsquares in the bottom of the screen.) and you could do away with the silly art in the UI - something that wow required a mod to do and SWTOR doesn't allow at all for the time being.

 

And like everybody has said, you could adjust SO many variables to tweak the performance/quality of the graphics. Then again, SWTOR was never going to be a real MMORPG so what we have is more or less what was expected - KOTOR 3-8, a PC port of a console release. Honestly, who expected great coding or MMO systems from BioWare? They can't even design single-player game rulesets.

Edited January 16, 2012 by riipeli

[Keihryon]

A tidbit of gaming history: I've heard claims that SOE had asked Intel about the future of processors when they started coding EQ2. Intel said

 

'the future will bring single-core CPUs with very high clocks, expect to see over 5GHz when your game launches.'

 

and then they brought out core2duo with mediocre clocks.

 

So, EQ2 WAS well coded. For a platform that never materialized.

 

Off topic, but EQ2 still runs like crap for me. And I have more than tripled the cpu/gpu/ram that I had when the game launched.

[spajdr]

If you guys want at least faster antialiasing or sharpen/bloom/etc. effects you can try SMAA Injector or FXAA Injector

 

You need to do this first though.:

 

Download Large Address Aware 2.0.4

 

And set flag to false for executabe swtor.exe

 

SMAA Injector is here

http://mrhaandi.blogspot.com/p/injectsmaa.html

 

or FXAA Tool here

http://www.assembla.com/spaces/fxaa-pp-inject/documents

 

Only problem is that disabling LAA makes program to use only 2GB RAM maximum and it can make game less stable.

 

FXAA Tool have Graphic Interface where you can set alot of things, good luck and post some screenshots with it.

Edited January 16, 2012 by spajdr

[riipeli]

Off topic, but EQ2 still runs like crap for me. And I have more than tripled the cpu/gpu/ram that I had when the game launched.

 

Yeah - but we were supposed to be playing with CPUs with stock clocks over 5GHz in early 2005! Remember, the coding started in 2001 and Intel projected (in accordance with Moore's law) that 5GHz would be something many gamers would have by then.

 

I still don't have that many clocks seven years later! All the GFX in EQ2 were coded with the idea that they could expend clocks like mad. The lightning in the halfling/gnome suburb of Qeynos at nighttime blew my socks off... The windows of the little huts are light sources.

[Shoxc]

I know people are trying to help, but we shouldn't have to mess with driver settings and download 3rd party programs just to unsuccessfully try to emulate something that was already working perfectly in beta but then inexplicably removed.

 

Compounded by the 'medium setting was a ui bug' lie, but was fine in beta, it's just downright insulting.

[BeeblesTV]

I know people are trying to help, but we shouldn't have to mess with driver settings and download 3rd party programs just to unsuccessfully try to emulate something that was already working perfectly in beta but then inexplicably removed.

 

Compounded by the 'medium setting was a ui bug' lie, but was fine in beta, it's just downright insulting.

 

This. Bioware needs to support good graphics.

[Corpeus]

THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!

 

Have a read through this thread that provides someones opinion on why they think the high res textures were taken out.

 

Stephen Reid shuts the thread with the last post and provides an explanation.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162079

Edited January 16, 2012 by Corpeus

[Nodens]

Actually, it sort of does. As 32bit is limited to 2GB, unless LAA is flagged; then it's 4GB, and after about 2hrs of SITTING IN REPUBLIC FLEET I'm up to about 1.5GB of memory in use by one of the SWTOR EXEs. And this is with our 'so-called' High graphics, which are really medium.

 

Question is was that the issue they refer to as "to make the game run smoother". Perhaps with true-High the memory usage exceeded 2GB to quickly and caused the client to CTD. Now this could be easily fixed if they flagged LAA like Bethsda did for Skyrim (finally!). But for some reason companies still refuse to flag it.

 

Well you have several facts wrong:

 

1) The game's executable is compiled with the LAA flag and can actually adress up to 4GB of RAM. Check the PE for the flag and you'll see for yourself. Also the LAA flag is the reason why the SMAA Injector (for those who are trying to use SMAA Antialiasing--remove the flag and SMMA Injector works) doesn't work.

 

2) The LAA PE flag only allows an application to address up to 4GB on it's own, on a 64bit platform. On 32bit operating systems you ALSO have to change the user memory setting. This is done by adding the /3GB kernel switch on XP platforms and on Vista/7 via running this command on the command prompt "bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072" and yet you'll only get up to 3GB of virtual address space as 1GB is always reserved anyhow as the operating system itself needs it and can't address more than 4GB itself (being 32bit).

 

So this is entirely irrelevant. Crashes due to memory usage on 64bit platforms are impossible unless the game utilized more than 4GB which it never event gets close to that kind of memory usage. This is only a matter of poor optimization on the game engine and nothing else especially if you consider that the so called high res textures are not even high res to begin with.

[Enikad]

Bit of a late comer so this is an independent statement related to the topic:

 

Here's what I would like, since I'm not entirely dissatisfied with the answer to ability delay.

 

A real time that bioware, or ea, or whoever will update us on this issue, ability delay got their 15 seconds of fame, I want a clear response not a "we got bugs, and at some point we will investigate". I wouldn't let a mechanic be vague with my money in terms of what needs to be done to resolve an issue, and if he didn't know I'd expect him to tell me he does not know and will have an answer for my by "mm/dd/yyyy" with the clear understanding that he does not get paid if, it does not get fixed or I do not get an answer, because I would very much like for what I've bought to work properly and in a timely fashion.

 

Tell us you're looking into short term fixes like limiting draw requests, so if there are 100 players on a server the 10 closest player characters are rendered, along with companions and party members. Folks I don't want to presume your ability to repair the game as mystical, but there have got to be some short term fixes for people to enjoy Hi-Res again, even if it's only local to the player, and not other players characters.

 

You cannot in good faith tell me, having hi-res textures that have been used in product advertisements are "a bug" and that the only choices were really just low and medium. Because medium is optimized for people who haven't updated their PC since 2006, and I don't feel I need to be limited by the majority's hardware decisions when it was never stated that I would be.

 

Not your team specifically, but the company (Bioware; ex. DA2) has thrown the "download hi-res pack" option around. That's it, if it can't work for everyone fine, if I need to click a link, download, unzip, and install it, heck if I have to re-install it each time to correlate with patches, I don't care. That's okay, because I have a complete experience at that point.

 

I can cope with the other 1000 bugs that are going to get fixed, patches are a part of PC gaming. However while I'm scoffing at ability delay's, and my character getting stuck on a one inch rock in the terrain, I want to see it in a glorious hi-resolution fashion, that my PC is more than capable of handling.

 

And furthermore in the sake of fair business practice. Disclaimers should appear on this product that the end product is not reflected in the images displayed in advertisements, that disclaimer should also appear on any images displayed to represent the final quality of this product for purchase.

 

You all can solve this, just tell us when you'll have either an update about what you've done, or when it will be solved. Because you're being vague with my money, and that will not do.

[Nodens]

THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!

 

Have a read through this thread that provides someones opinion on why they think the high res textures were taken out.

 

Stephen Reid shuts the thread with the last post and provides an explanation.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162079

 

This is simply laughable. I could list a gazzilion reasons why this doesn't technically stand. But if you're so inclined to find out you can check with a simple packet sniffer (eg wireshark). Anyhow it's largely impossible to render something over a high latency network (such as the internet) and achieve more than 0.(insert many zeros here)1 frames per second.

[Gunthen]

I have called customer support and requested a full refund (I bought the digital version of the game). I have also filled a report with the BBB, since the guy on the phone told me he would foreword the concern, and within 24 hours I would hear back from a management team that could give me the refund. I am very disappointed in the lack of transparency, and if I do not hear back within the next 5 days, I will be filling a dispute with my credit card company.

 

Pulling a bait and switch on customers is a good way to piss a lot of people off, if anyone else is having issues getting a refund, I recommend using the BBB to hopefully get a response.

 

http://www.bbb.org/edmonton/business-reviews/computers-system-designers-and-consultants/bioware-in-edmonton-ab-111723#reasonrating

 

EDIT- Response to phone call received, filling credit card dispute.

http://imgur.com/5KrVP

Edited January 17, 2012 by Gunthen

[Arkulin]

I have called customer support and requested a full refund (I bought the digital version of the game). I have also filled a report with the BBB, since the guy on the phone told me he would foreword the concern, and within 24 hours I would hear back from a management team that could give me the refund. I am very disappointed in the lack of transparency, and if I do not hear back within the next 5 days, I will be filling a dispute with my credit card company.

 

Pulling a bait and switch on customers is a good way to piss a lot of people off, if anyone else is having issues getting a refund, I recommend using the BBB to hopefully get a response.

 

http://www.bbb.org/edmonton/business-reviews/computers-system-designers-and-consultants/bioware-in-edmonton-ab-111723#reasonrating

 

Thank you for this mate.