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

[daMarek]

This thread was nerfed by CS again.

 

Yes I have been watching it all day (I have a boring job )

[Urko]

I wonder will 1.2 fix the issue or will they continue to pretend this graphics are anything but the medium we all know they are.

 

Supposedly being sorted out in March, if it aint one less sub.

[MoonsLightV]

There was a dev post that stated that the graphics will be going along the lines of what is being advertised in their videos...which suggests high res textures. But i will remain skeptical until this happens. I am guessing this is going to come in the next big patch next month.

[Blaqlite]

Today I bought a brand new, 150$ Radeon 6850 graphics card so that I could play the game at nice, expected, high quality graphics. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that, my graphics were indeed not on high, but rather the same. I'm not sure what's more outrageous, that this issue even exists or that it hasn't been fixed yet.

 

I'm not paying 15 dollars a month to re-beta test a game, this should not be an issue.

[Zorvan]

There was a dev post that stated that the graphics will be going along the lines of what is being advertised in their videos...which suggests high res textures. But i will remain skeptical until this happens. I am guessing this is going to come in the next big patch next month.

 

Actually what he said was "close to cutscene quality", which basically means don't count on any real improvement.

[settix]

Today I bought a brand new, 150$ Radeon 6850 graphics card so that I could play the game at nice, expected, high quality graphics. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that, my graphics were indeed not on high, but rather the same. I'm not sure what's more outrageous, that this issue even exists or that it hasn't been fixed yet.

 

I'm not paying 15 dollars a month to re-beta test a game, this should not be an issue.

 

Not to burst your bubble, but even if the high-res textures were enabled. A $150 dollar card wouldn't be able to handle them. Which is mostly the point, people like this would flood the forums complaining that their 4 year old machines and $150 cards can't play the game on ultra high.

[mArchangel]

Not to burst your bubble, but even if the high-res textures were enabled. A $150 dollar card wouldn't be able to handle them. Which is mostly the point, people like this would flood the forums complaining that their 4 year old machines and $150 cards can't play the game on ultra high.

 

errrrmmmm.......yes the 6850 can handle it. I find it absolutely amazing that people think hirez textures would make the game one tid bit slower tbh. As long as you have enough VRAM, and the 6850 does, to hold all textures it will be performance loss free. Don't you guys realise that the REAL issue is with the servers and not ONLY the client??

[formulaic]

errrrmmmm.......yes the 6850 can handle it. I find it absolutely amazing that people think hirez textures would make the game one tid bit slower tbh. As long as you have enough VRAM, and the 6850 does, to hold all textures it will be performance loss free.

 

That's mostly correct:

- swapping textures in/out are not free.

- it's possible that there are bugs with dynamic texture loading. (Conan had some terrible issues - I think partly due to dreadful ati drivers).

 

But mostly, yes. Hi-rez textures themselves don't normally cause performance problems... making this a bit of a mystery.

 

Don't you guys realise that the REAL issue is with the servers and not ONLY the client??

 

There's no issue with the servers in terms of textures. We've already downloaded them, and there's no additional information required to be transmitted.

 

---

 

Crazy shot in the dark: BW are targeting the game for release on the xbox-720 o_O.

(probably not the right answer, but it would explain things)

 

[another possibility is that they were so concerned about loading screens/times that they went with the "texture atlas" - but that's a boring answer]

[AlValentyn]

That's mostly correct:

 

 

Crazy shot in the dark: BW are targeting the game for release on the xbox-720 o_O.

(probably not the right answer, but it would explain things)

 

[another possibility is that they were so concerned about loading screens/times that they went with the "texture atlas" - but that's a boring answer]

 

The 720 is apparently going to have DX11 hardware, from the AMD 6xxx series. So if the game is made for a console not scheduled until either the end of 2013/early 2014 they've already failed.

 

It also make no real sense.

 

 

I suspect it's got to do with the Atlassing and load times probably. Then again, if so that reflects on their engine and programmers.

 

We all know it's nothing to do with "our" machines anyway.

[formulaic]

The 720 is apparently going to have DX11 hardware, from the AMD 6xxx series. So if the game is made for a console not scheduled until either the end of 2013/early 2014 they've already failed.

 

It also make no real sense.

 

The most restrictive component of modern consoles is not cpu/gpu speed, instead it's memory...

 

I suspect it's got to do with the Atlassing and load times probably. Then again, if so that reflects on their engine and programmers.

 

We all know it's nothing to do with "our" machines anyway.

 

Yep, there's a bunch of things that would have added concern for the devs in terms of load...

 

But I can't help wondering why a very successful franchise with the xbox as lead platform is 'ending' as a PC-only MMO, especially with a new Xbox launch apparently 'imminent'... (another quirk is that they did not disolve the client software team after the release, which is highly unusual for an MMO).

 

It's possible that they felt ME/KOTOR were "too similar", but I really wouldn't be surprised to see SWTOR as a 720 launch game.

[daMarek]

Actually what he said was "close to cutscene quality", which basically means don't count on any real improvement.

 

He didn't even say "close to" cinematics, he said "closer to". That means it could be a 2% improvement, and that's what's worrying me.

[SiLiZ]

The most restrictive component of modern consoles is not cpu/gpu speed, instead it's memory...

 

 

 

Yep, there's a bunch of things that would have added concern for the devs in terms of load...

 

But I can't help wondering why a very successful franchise with the xbox as lead platform is 'ending' as a PC-only MMO, especially with a new Xbox launch apparently 'imminent'... (another quirk is that they did not disolve the client software team after the release, which is highly unusual for an MMO).

 

It's possible that they felt ME/KOTOR were "too similar", but I really wouldn't be surprised to see SWTOR as a 720 launch game.

 

The most restrictive aspect of modern day consoles are Optical Disc Drives/HDDs. Not memory. The CPU gets an input from the user, the CPU gives direction to move the requested information from the disc/HDD onto the memory/VRAM to be cached for instruction, then sequentially executes said information in the order it needs to be processed.

 

Now to be fair, the amount of VRAM/Memory in consoles is limited in comparison to modern day PCs, allowing the disc to only cache a certain amount of data on the memory, typically the game engine itself, utilizing the rest of the memory and VRAM as a medium for accessing visual/sound information when needed. But still reading off the disc or HDD is the slowest aspect of modern console/PC setups. This is why SSDs were invented and should be/will be included in next generation consoles. The engine can store on the memory when a disc is loaded, then the visual/sound bulk can be loaded onto the SSD. The I/O operations of a SSD far surpass a standard ODD/HDD making this ideal. Unfortunately due to size limitations of SSDs, installing the entirety of the game on that may not be plausible (Due to the increasing data size of fully developed games and smaller storage volume of SSDs.) You see this now with consoles where you install parts of the game so it runs/loads quicker.

 

SWtOR is poorly optimized. Why? But I am sure BioWare will get right on fixing it.

 

It reads off the HDD twice for any SINGLE function. Once to figure out what information to cache, then it uses a temporary folder to cache that information on the drive again, and finally reads and sends the information to the memory/VRAM. There would be huge throughput gains (Performance increases), if they nixed out that needless caching back to the drive. Client-side anyway.

[Urko]

Not to burst your bubble, but even if the high-res textures were enabled. A $150 dollar card wouldn't be able to handle them. Which is mostly the point, people like this would flood the forums complaining that their 4 year old machines and $150 cards can't play the game on ultra high.

 

There would have to be some graphics options sliders then, to adjust the High Rez texture settings to what your machine is capable of.

 

Most MMOs have them.

[cipher_nemo]

EAware, please get your head out of your you-know-what and fix this already.

 

Fix the confusion.

Fix the lies.

Fix the damn high res textures and give us an option to enable them.

 

Not to burst your bubble, but even if the high-res textures were enabled. A $150 dollar card wouldn't be able to handle them.

 

You assume too much and know too little. It's all relative to gaming resolution and how smooth you want to play the game. Everything max at triple-screen resolutions, 2560x1600, 1920x1200, or 1920x1080 with a $150 card? Probably not. Everything maxed at 1280x1024 with a $150 card. Most likely just fine.

Edited February 3, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[Lasse_B]

The game looks to be limited to only 1GB VRAM, ignoring anything more that cards might have.

 

This is the highest I ever got VRAM usage to while taking screenshots:

http://i.imgur.com/n4plr.png

This is Windows (~200MByte) + the game

 

I've seen it go up to 1.1GB while playing SWTOR, but couldn't grab a screenshot in time. And I've yet to visit places beyond Tatooine.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Lasse_B

[Hamsterkill]

People already complain about performance during warzones with the lower res textures. The problem from the developer's standpoint is the variability of the situation. They can't control how many textures the player needs to see.

 

So lets take a case of someone who is just fine playing the game with high res textures most of the time. He thinks his machine has no problems handling it. Then he heads to Ilum and finds a large PvP battleground and in this intense situation he finds his machine slowing to a crawl. He thinks this must obviously be some sort of bug, after all he has no trouble with performance most of the time, so he starts complaining to customer service and raging on the forums.

 

The developers had to find the right balance for graphical settings so that the case above was not EVERY player. They may adjust the graphical quality some time when they find that balance starts to shift.

[Tenceriker]

People already complain about performance during warzones with the lower res textures. The problem from the developer's standpoint is the variability of the situation. They can't control how many textures the player needs to see.

 

So lets take a case of someone who is just fine playing the game with high res textures most of the time. He thinks his machine has no problems handling it. Then he heads to Ilum and finds a large PvP battleground and in this intense situation he finds his machine slowing to a crawl. He thinks this must obviously be some sort of bug, after all he has no trouble with performance most of the time, so he starts complaining to customer service and raging on the forums.

 

The developers had to find the right balance for graphical settings so that the case above was not EVERY player. They may adjust the graphical quality some time when they find that balance starts to shift.

 

What a ridiculous scenario, it is never acceptable to hold players back simply because some players won't be able to handle the graphics under all conditions. Players who are having trouble in WZs have bigger problems than graphics going on and it is not anyone's responsibility to handle user error or lack of adequate components. Furthermore, this is no where near the right balance for graphics and the longer BW takes to fix it the more they make themselves look like fools in the MMO world. Prettier games are coming and sadly aesthetics or lack therefore of will do permanent damage to this game if not corrected.

[Hamsterkill]

What a ridiculous scenario, it is never acceptable to hold players back simply because some players won't be able to handle the graphics under all conditions. Players who are having trouble in WZs have bigger problems than graphics going on and it is not anyone's responsibility to handle user error or lack of adequate components. Furthermore, this is no where near the right balance for graphics and the longer BW takes to fix it the more they make themselves look like fools in the MMO world. Prettier games are coming and sadly aesthetics or lack therefore of will do permanent damage to this game if not corrected.

 

The point is that in this kind of game a player's components may do just fine 90% of the time, but cry like a baby when a lot of stuff starts happening around them -- leading their owner to do the same. Bioware would rather have *some* players complain that they want better graphics than have *most* players complain that the most exciting content is too taxing on their computers.

[daMarek]

The point is that in this kind of game a player's components may do just fine 90% of the time, but cry like a baby when a lot of stuff starts happening around them -- leading their owner to do the same. Bioware would rather have *some* players complain that they want better graphics than have *most* players complain that the most exciting content is too taxing on their computers.

 

That's why you get graphic options and sliders. Every game has that.

[PellonSW]

The point is that in this kind of game a player's components may do just fine 90% of the time, but cry like a baby when a lot of stuff starts happening around them -- leading their owner to do the same. Bioware would rather have *some* players complain that they want better graphics than have *most* players complain that the most exciting content is too taxing on their computers.

 

Thats the point of having graphic sliders and video options. Almost every video game to date has this. We're not talking a revolutionary concept here.

[Hamsterkill]

That's why you get graphic options and sliders. Every game has that.

 

Again, the problem is the confusion for players that they can run on a setting just fine 90% of the time, but then grind to a halt when things start getting exciting. The devs apparently desire to avoid this confusion for now.

 

I'm sure a lot of your machines (and mine) could probably take a decent-sized amp of the graphics without much problem even in the intense scenarios, but more people play than just us. The devs already see people complain these intense scenarios are too taxing on their machines, never thinking "Hey, maybe I should switch to 'Low' graphics." They don't want to add more fuel to that fire for now.

[formulaic]

The most restrictive aspect of modern day consoles are Optical Disc Drives/HDDs. Not memory. The CPU gets an input from the user, the CPU gives direction to move the requested information from the disc/HDD onto the memory/VRAM to be cached for instruction, then sequentially executes said information in the order it needs to be processed.

 

Now to be fair, the amount of VRAM/Memory in consoles is limited in comparison to modern day PCs, allowing the disc to only cache a certain amount of data on the memory, typically the game engine itself, utilizing the rest of the memory and VRAM as a medium for accessing visual/sound information when needed. But still reading off the disc or HDD is the slowest aspect of modern console/PC setups. This is why SSDs were invented and should be/will be included in next generation consoles. The engine can store on the memory when a disc is loaded, then the visual/sound bulk can be loaded onto the SSD. The I/O operations of a SSD far surpass a standard ODD/HDD making this ideal. Unfortunately due to size limitations of SSDs, installing the entirety of the game on that may not be plausible (Due to the increasing data size of fully developed games and smaller storage volume of SSDs.) You see this now with consoles where you install parts of the game so it runs/loads quicker.

 

Good answer . For me, I'd still be looking at the amount of VRAM in any new console - it's expensive and the console manufacturers will be looking to cut corners, especially given the economic climate and the performance of the original PS3.

 

My own guess is that the new consoles will have HDDs (or a hybrid drive?) and a "modest" quantity of VRAM (0.5gb?), so a "texture atlas" is a compelling argument on those platforms... it also theoretically reduces disk seek as the atlas can be loaded in 1 shot.

 

SWtOR is poorly optimized. Why? But I am sure BioWare will get right on fixing it.

 

Yep.

 

It reads off the HDD twice for any SINGLE function. Once to figure out what information to cache, then it uses a temporary folder to cache that information on the drive again, and finally reads and sends the information to the memory/VRAM. There would be huge throughput gains (Performance increases), if they nixed out that needless caching back to the drive. Client-side anyway.

 

Almost like the code was designed to be run from a DVD and then cached to a hard-drive...

 

[but seriously, I suspect the boring answer is correct - although I still wouldn't be shocked to see the game at the 720 launch party]

[daMarek]

Again, the problem is the confusion for players that they can run on a setting just fine 90% of the time, but then grind to a halt when things start getting exciting. The devs apparently desire to avoid this confusion for now.

 

I'm sure a lot of your machines (and mine) could probably take a decent-sized amp of the graphics without much problem even in the intense scenarios, but more people play than just us. The devs already see people complain these intense scenarios are too taxing on their machines, never thinking "Hey, maybe I should switch to 'Low' graphics." They don't want to add more fuel to that fire for now.

 

This can happen even with the currently available settings (shadows, AA, Bloom, resolution just to name a few more taxing ones).

 

Give us the high-rez textures back BioWare!

[ChicksDigHarleys]

At this point I'd be happy if they could get rid of all the low rez textures even when I have everything set to max.

[Tenceriker]

The point is that in this kind of game a player's components may do just fine 90% of the time, but cry like a baby when a lot of stuff starts happening around them -- leading their owner to do the same. Bioware would rather have *some* players complain that they want better graphics than have *most* players complain that the most exciting content is too taxing on their computers.

 

I'm sorry you've never heard of AoC, Aion, LOTRO, FFXIV or a slew of other games where no one quit because they couldn't handle the graphics at max settings in 10% of the gameplay. Having options never hurt anyone playing a game. You cannot jump around this point or make the assumption that people are going to try and play on maximum sliders so long as they are warned that the game setting may not run well on PCs that do not substantially exceed the recommended requirements.