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

[daMarek]

I may be oversensitive because I design 3d game artwork for a living, but has anyone else noticed that, for a modern game, The shader work and normalmaps are absolutely crap?

I mean, I half suspect they are using a heightmap shader instead of normalmaps. (more than half) Shader heightmaps was a technology that died because it was both GPU-intensive and looked like crap.

This is enhanced by the reduced (I suspect JPG-style encoding) texture depth, and I think that they must be seriously using some horribly reduced shader maps of some sort... even the reflectance map is awful.

 

Maybe they are just using an awful light engine.

 

Model and texture work=top notch. environmental model and texture work= top notch. post-production scaling, shading, and/or lighting engine= bottom of the line crap that wouldn't look out of place in Quake II (Circa 1997). Is Bioware using that cruddy shader from FIFA or something? No skin translucency or multilayer skins? No coded colorchange? No built-in ambient occlusion? This is all OLD stuff that games have been doing since 2005.

 

 

I dunno. at every level of the game you can see where laziness was 'resolved' by simply throwing money at the issue. I know Game companies have all jumped at the strategy of keeping employees terrified of losing their jobs, but you know what? that only makes people work barely well enough to avoid losing their jobs... entertainment companies need people that LOVE their jobs, in order to put out a product that players love.

 

Even though I dont understand half the things you're saying I agree. I think.

[wifeaggro]

I may be oversensitive because I design 3d game artwork for a living, but has anyone else noticed that, for a modern game, The shader work and normalmaps are absolutely crap?

I mean, I half suspect they are using a heightmap shader instead of normalmaps. (more than half) Shader heightmaps was a technology that died because it was both GPU-intensive and looked like crap.

This is enhanced by the reduced (I suspect JPG-style encoding) texture depth, and I think that they must be seriously using some horribly reduced shader maps of some sort... even the reflectance map is awful.

 

Maybe they are just using an awful light engine.

 

Model and texture work=top notch. environmental model and texture work= top notch. post-production scaling, shading, and/or lighting engine= bottom of the line crap that wouldn't look out of place in Quake II (Circa 1997). Is Bioware using that cruddy shader from FIFA or something? No skin translucency or multilayer skins? No coded colorchange? No built-in ambient occlusion? This is all OLD stuff that games have been doing since 2005.

 

I dunno. at every level of the game you can see where laziness was 'resolved' by simply throwing money at the issue. I know Game companies have all jumped at the strategy of keeping employees terrified of losing their jobs, but you know what? that only makes people work barely well enough to avoid losing their jobs... entertainment companies need people that LOVE their jobs, in order to put out a product that players love.

 

that will not happen with a EA game anyone with talent , skill and expierence went to companies like trion . seriously they got the lion shares of the talent pool 5 years ago when Scott hartsmen recruited for that company. the MMO devolper pool is not that big believe it or not.

[AstarielleUK]

There are websites with .ini file edits that switch on hi-res. FPs, warzones, fleet and landscape questing are all fine, but central ilum pvp was very stuttery, exactly the same as normal hi settings. I'm really enjoying the clothes and scenery now and it's making alt a lot more fun visiting the same places. Even the droids have reflective surfaces

[jbonk]

I just started playing a day or so ago and thought something was broken on my machine because the textures look terrible. Glad to hear they are making their way back into the game again but anyone know what kind of performance hit we can expect as a result?

[daMarek]

I just started playing a day or so ago and thought something was broken on my machine because the textures look terrible. Glad to hear they are making their way back into the game again but anyone know what kind of performance hit we can expect as a result?

 

LOL I love it when this is the first thing new players say.

 

I dont know how BioWare thought they could get away with this.

 

Anyway better textures coming in 1.2 confirmed. Now we jsut gotta wait and hope the results are as promised.

[Hunterdk]

There are websites with .ini file edits that switch on hi-res. FPs, warzones, fleet and landscape questing are all fine, but central ilum pvp was very stuttery, exactly the same as normal hi settings. I'm really enjoying the clothes and scenery now and it's making alt a lot more fun visiting the same places. Even the droids have reflective surfaces

 

And where did you find that website i found some sites but no one with solution to it...???

[Toweleeeie]

I just started playing a day or so ago and thought something was broken on my machine because the textures look terrible. Glad to hear they are making their way back into the game again but anyone know what kind of performance hit we can expect as a result?

 

When the game had higher res textures in beta the game ran better for me.

[cipher_nemo]

Glad to hear they are making their way back into the game again but anyone know what kind of performance hit we can expect as a result?

 

Depends on your video card's memory. There's really not that much difference on the processing end, so you'll take only a minor performance hit there. But if your video card has slower dedicated video memory, or less of it, you'll take a bigger performance hit. On modern, high-end video cards at HD or less resolution, you probably won't notice any performance difference.

 

You can verify how much dedicated video memory you have free while gaming if you use Process Explorer: http://www.geeks3d.com/20110719/quick-test-process-explorer-15-0-with-gpu-support/

Edited March 7, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[jimdove]

so they gonna let us have higher res textures on our characters? what about the rest of the world

[TheLonelyTusken]

How can they just say they are going to give something and then not do it, it's just not right, even if there is some legal thing they can slip out of.

 

I mean I paid for high resolution textures and I got this, I just feel cheated.

[eightohfive]

OP has waaaay too much time on his hands.

[TheLonelyTusken]

OP has waaaay too much time on his hands.

 

Why? Because he made a thread that spans over time? The original one he created wasn't very long at all, he added quotes to keep us updated, so don't insult him.

 

Now go back to your 15 year old school and attempt to type this out in less than 3 hours.

[Thornsbane]

I may be oversensitive because I design 3d game artwork for a living, but has anyone else noticed that, for a modern game, The shader work and normalmaps are absolutely crap?

I mean, I half suspect they are using a heightmap shader instead of normalmaps. (more than half) Shader heightmaps was a technology that died because it was both GPU-intensive and looked like crap.

This is enhanced by the reduced (I suspect JPG-style encoding) texture depth, and I think that they must be seriously using some horribly reduced shader maps of some sort... even the reflectance map is awful.

 

Maybe they are just using an awful light engine.

 

Model and texture work=top notch. environmental model and texture work= top notch. post-production scaling, shading, and/or lighting engine= bottom of the line crap that wouldn't look out of place in Quake II (Circa 1997). Is Bioware using that cruddy shader from FIFA or something? No skin translucency or multilayer skins? No coded colorchange? No built-in ambient occlusion? This is all OLD stuff that games have been doing since 2005.

 

 

I dunno. at every level of the game you can see where laziness was 'resolved' by simply throwing money at the issue. I know Game companies have all jumped at the strategy of keeping employees terrified of losing their jobs, but you know what? that only makes people work barely well enough to avoid losing their jobs... entertainment companies need people that LOVE their jobs, in order to put out a product that players love.

 

Keep in mind though that its an mmo and any game were you are going to have a large number of ppl on screen at one time is going to have to really cut down on any graphics that chews up cpu.

I cant think of any mmo of the top of my head that has all the bells and whistles graphically.

Its a whole different ball game to single player games, or fps where its all based in a very small arena.

[TheLonelyTusken]

Keep in mind though that its an mmo and any game were you are going to have a large number of ppl on screen at one time is going to have to really cut down on any graphics that chews up cpu.

I cant think of any mmo of the top of my head that has all the bells and whistles graphically.

Its a whole different ball game to single player games, or fps where its all based in a very small arena.

 

It doesn't have to be bells and whistles, high resolution isn't even a bell or a whistle, it's practically a necessity, in this day and age.

 

There is no reason it shouldn't be in the game, other than poor development on Bioware's part, irregular game coding and file management, as well as the game engine in accordance with these things, made it very hard for computers to process high res textures.

Edited March 9, 2012 by TheLonelyTusken

[Pandabutt]

I have seen a system in place in various other MMOs that handles texture quality filtering based on number of entities within rendering distance in all directions. Personally I find these systems more desirable and efficient than the Texture Atlas that BioWare is using. There are even some using threshold gradient, multiple zones, and scaling texture renders based on zone.

 

The player ALWAYS renders at full detail (as determined by graphic settings)

players near-by render at full detail if under control limit (5-10 near-bys within 5 meters)

visible but not near-by players render reduced detail if under control limit (15-20 within 20 meters)

distanced players render low detail (any beyond 20 meters)

 

if near-by or visible exedes local control limit reduce detail appropriately based on number of entities.

[Thornsbane]

 

There is no reason it shouldn't be in the game,QUOTE]

 

Oh it can definately be done, but generally its kept on the lower end, not out of laziness or ineptitude, but so that the game can reach its maximum audience, including people with lower end machines.

 

Looking forward to the option of higher textures though! No doubt EA rushed the release deadline before Bio could include the higher graphics settings option. This also happens for a reason, as after years of development, the Devs need to get paid!

[brtpp]

srysly i appreciate that you respond after 300+ threat but still , why you don't give as chose ? better texture or good performance ?

[Kinrain]

srysly i appreciate that you respond after 300+ threat but still , why you don't give as chose ? better texture or good performance ?

 

Read the patch notes for 1.2, High res character textures are in as a choice.

 

Which is why this thread was finally dying without a response since the 9th of march.

[Tikigit]

srysly i appreciate that you respond after 300+ threat but still , why you don't give as chose ? better texture or good performance ?

 

Unfortunately this can easily backfire when you get people who crank everything up to max for everygame they play simply because they can play "xxxxx on max settings!!".

 

Texture atlasing is an reasonably interesting choice by Bioware and by no means is anything new to gaming.

 

My only concern is that to my knowledge texture atlasing requires reusing parts of texture images as much as possible for a whole range of uses.... this quickly leads to very bland looking designs where everything looks like everything else because pieces are no longer using object specific texture files but instead are all just reusing the same 'template' source meaning everything is exactly the same, not to mention the potential UV stretching problems when forcing the UVs of sections of an mesh to shape around a generic texture files area.

 

So for example if a piece of armor has a wide but very short rectangle light, and the diffuse texture images being reused for armor lights only has perfectly square styles of lights, then then to get the rectangle lights UVs to map around the desired light is going to require introducing stretching issues on meshes.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Tikigit

[cipher_nemo]

*stabs thread a few more times*

 

Ug, just let it die. This will be offered in 1.2 and can be discussed then in plenty of other threads.

[silenius]

there would be a way to reduce the draw calls and still have high res texture. it would only requires to generate one texture for each toon on the screen. the texture would need to be generated only once unless the toon change equipment. performance impact would be minimal. this would of course increase the memory usage on the video card but this allow many other things, such as changing color and so on

[metalgearyoda]

Why is this thread here?

 

high res tomorrow. Close plz.

[Badnamed]

I hardly believe the high res they are gonna give us tomorrow will be the thing we are waiting for...

 

Ilum, with 40+ players on screen is really bad, even with everything on low (10fps in fight)... And before the self-proclaimed geeks blame my computer, 6 cores, GTX580 card on SLI, etc...

 

If they give us high-res, unless a miracle happened and they fixed the engine somehow, it will be to our char only and probably off for everyone else you see on your screen...

 

Don't get me wrong, I take that over the crap that is today... But all the crap ppl kept saying about SWTOR these past months and that I chose not to listen are getting really loud and difficult to ignore...

 

I won't do like the kids that come out and say "Tera is coming and gonna kill this game" coz it's ridiculous and Tera will probably be a big failure at lauch... But I gotta say that this community is fading and with it, the game... Many people I know are still playing it strictly coz they have "hope"... But you can't keep ppl forever coz hope alone...

Edited April 11, 2012 by Badnamed

[cipher_nemo]

Ilum, with 40+ players on screen is really bad, even with everything on low (10fps in fight)... And before the self-proclaimed geeks blame my computer, 6 cores, GTX580 card on SLI, etc...

 

If you get 10 FPS on Illum with a GTX 580 and everything on low then you are either 1.) lying, 2.) have something seriously wrong with your PC, or 3.) are talking about lag spikes due to server population on fleet (and Illum months ago) which is not due to graphical performance. Because my GTX 295 at 2560x1600 was near Vsync of 60 FPS on Illum at medium to high settings. My new GTX 680 keeps it 50+ on maxed settings.

 

Now, kindly let this thread die. We're getting high-rez textures for characters in 1.2.

Edited April 11, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[Badnamed]

There's absolutely NO WAY that you can have that FPS during a 40+ players fight... I would like to see a screenshot of that coz if so, as you said, something must be really wrong with my computer...