here's why we have FPS slow downs and low res textures

[Dunzo]

I would try testing the game again with higher ram to see if it stays at the 1.3 mark. Anyway, don't listen to the biased opinions about this. Certain people will tell everyone on this forum that there is -nothing- wrong with the game, that it is perfect and there is something wrong with their computers. The reality is the textures are a joke and the game runs like a sick, old dog. Oh and AA x 1? Groundbreaking!

[Stormnut]

IT IS THE GAME ENGINE & CODING!

 

on my i7-920cpu, 12GigRAM, GTX565tigpu and 30" Monitor (27"side2nd) - and 2nd level up highspeed internet (25m) that I pay extra for (above reg highspeed of 12-16+m)...NOTHING I've ever played, while watching streaming movies on the other monitor, has had problems at MAX graphic settings (even tweaked config settings)...everything always had excellent visuals and fps...

 

BUT NOT SWTOR! this game won't support DirectX10 or 11, and won't support any max settings while wz or pvp without ridiculous lag and low fps.

 

it is the old engine BW/EA chose...

 

enjoy the game as it is, single-player storyline...forget anything significant at level 50...try and endure boring alt repeated mission areas, then ignore them also when they hit 50...it's that simple.

 

But why is my 6 year old system on low budget DSL not having these issues? If a coding issue, why no issue for me. Maybe I am one of those rare people that can play with no issues with 10 to 15 FPS in a warzone. I guess I just don't notice the shuttering at all.

[ChicksDigHarleys]

But why is my 6 year old system on low budget DSL not having these issues? If a coding issue, why no issue for me. Maybe I am one of those rare people that can play with no issues with 10 to 15 FPS in a warzone. I guess I just don't notice the shuttering at all.

 

10-15 FPS is terrible. I wouldn't play at anything with a constant FPS below 30.

[Stormnut]

10-15 FPS is terrible. I wouldn't play at anything with a constant FPS below 30.

 

Why not, looks fine to me. Thats with things maxed out. Turn off shadows and I player around 30 to 40 in warzones.

[Dunzo]

But why is my 6 year old system on low budget DSL not having these issues? If a coding issue, why no issue for me. Maybe I am one of those rare people that can play with no issues with 10 to 15 FPS in a warzone. I guess I just don't notice the shuttering at all.

 

Playing at 10 FPS = an issue. If you think that's normal, please exit the forum immediately. Thanks.

[lubberlick]

I would just like to add that my i5@4Ghz w/8gigs ram and GTX 460 1g is running no less then 40fps in fleet and warzones and 8 man ops... I'm not sure if these are the worst areas or not but this is what i get.

 

I would like to also add though that anyone overclocking thier computer might look into putting some time with Prime95 running to test thier system stability. Just because you have 5-6Ghz cpu clocks does not mean your getting that level of performance. Also just because your getting 3.2Ghz on your 2.5Ghz cpu does not mean you improved performance.

 

Overclock->Test->Benchmark->Adjust OC. Do not just push for max Ghz... that is fail every time.

[paulgandersman]

Playing at 10 FPS = an issue. If you think that's normal, please exit the forum immediately. Thanks.

 

agreed. if you think 10fps is playable, you're NUTS.

[AkemManah]

I run 60-75 in Illum, 80+ everywhere else, the occassional stutter in there but not an everyday occurance.

 

I would list my specs but that is tiresome, just know my comp is 1 years old and had the best there was as of 1 years ago.

 

No fps issues at all on the fleet with 150+ ppl.

 

Obviously there are issues somewhere that cause many people issues regardless of build, however speculating on whats causing this is purely speculative.

 

Improvements can/need/and will be made.

 

It is quite obvious that another 6 mos or year of development should have been done for both content (end game) and other issues.

Edited February 17, 2012 by AkemManah

[Cupelixx]

This is part of the problem. There is extensive coverage of this stuff on the thread in my signature.

[Stormnut]

Playing at 10 FPS = an issue. If you think that's normal, please exit the forum immediately. Thanks.

 

Well I don't have an issue. I guess some do.

 

And that is with setting maxed.

 

I wonder if people are blaming FPS when it is in reality a combination of factors.

 

Sure the game could be to blame but it is not the only reason.

 

The devs have said the client and game are not optimized.

 

But that is not the only reason.

[Asavar]

Dude. Come on.

 

The texture quality in this game is like 1998 quality. Turn shadow quality to max and my system is begging me to shut it down. There are FPS spikes, jitters and lag. Mix that with ability delay/animation bugs and its just one whole barrel of monkies.

 

Texture quality is fine to me, you're delusional.

[Riulassher]

A game must respect a something called graphic budget, how many textures, models, effects, lights, etc can be in the rendered scene at once without FPS dropping under acceptable levels. Models and tetures have variable level of detail and can be adjusted at runtime to keep the scene complexity at right level, but that's just the beginning.

 

SWTOR is doing just that, it's using a second best model as a default model, and reserves the highest level model for cutscenes, where they can control complexity and have a "budget" to spare.

 

It's possible that they will find a way to optimize the system so it could work with high detail models even during normal gameplay, but it's obvious it would run more poorly than with the current level of detail. Some computers could handle it, but many people are...how to say...a little bit unreasonable and the first thing they do is to max out settings and then spread negative comments how the game engine sucks and how it struggles on their awesome (laptop) rig.

 

Crysis is an excellent example. Most people remember it as a extremely taxing computer game that burns out even the newest rigs. While in reality the engine was well written and optimized and the game ran perfectly even on mid-range rigs and it still looked great.

 

Bioware had to made a decision, balance the negative and positive outcomes and they decided that releasing the game with the reduced level of detail was better than releasing the game with full detail and a huge horde of angry players screaming how poor the game engine is. Which has happened anyway, but it would be far worse if they released the game with full detail mode unlocked, imho.

 

The engine for MMO must be prepared for rendering of a large open terrain, scenes containing 100-200 players, hundreds of additional effects on the battlefield AND still be able to render UI, and handle the whole logic and netcode at the same time.

 

Compex UI like in MMO games is not trivial to render either, it can easily take more GPU time than for example a terrain, if there is an even trivial inefficiency in its design.

 

That's something that takes time and multiple iterations of a game engine to get right. The first task is to get it working, then measure its performance and find what parts of code should be optimized. The length of a development isn't really relevant to this, because more time = more features in eyes of producers and designers, and there's only a small room for optimizations and profiling along the way.

 

And since the biggest part of optimizations is being done after most of the game is finished...there is usually enough time to fix only some of the performance problems. Anything requiring a large refactoring of a code is simply out of question and has to be delayed to one of future patches.

 

---

Games like AoC had above average character models, but with respect to the budget, the terrain was simplified and effects were light. I logged in AoC a year ago during one of its free trial periods for former players and I immediately noticed that while my character was still looking ok (almost as good as my SWTOR char and slightly better than Warhammer), the terrain was really really plain and outdated...almost as outdated as in LOTRO.

 

Also AoC was released with graphic requirements higher than appropriate for a MMO. While that was one of reasons why it wasn't a success, it made the game aesthetic slightly more resistant to ageing.

 

---

Warhammer had decent terrain. The terrain complexity was roughly comparable to SWTOR, but I believe the view distance was smaller.

I cannot honestly compare the character models, because WAR models had huge differences in quality. Some classes sported an excellent sharp look with fine details on armor and textures (for example Ironbreakers), while other classes (like my White Lion) looked like a elven farmer with painted on blurred armor with washed out colors and no detail worth mentioning.

 

---

 

Just my opinion. Game engines, OpenGL and associated optimizations is something I do for a living.

[TheRainstater]

I think it's funny how people with their supper high end towers are getting low and bad FPS compared to my laptop that even in high pop areas never dips down lower than 30. Makes me wonder if they are exaggerating to make their point or flat out lying.

[Zakua]

I can't believe no one really responded to the OP. This game runs poorly for the level of graphic detail displayed. I built a rig just to play this game and tested it before hand on other MMOs. In other games which have greater levels of detail and higher possible resolutions I had nearly flawless framerates. SWTOR looks sub par to those games (jagged edges, low res textures) and on Ilum especially has bad framerate. I can accept less realism in graphics if it amounts to frame rate preservation, but this is not the case.

 

So if the OP is correct and I have 6 gigs of RAM sitting idle instead of being utilized then Bioware needs to fix that crap.

 

I applaud the OP for looking into this.

 

/signed (petition to have RAM usage dynamically handled by the application)

 

I'm not sure about the RAM part but I like your mention of running poorly considering how simplified it looks graphicaly. Well said!

[PHInnocent]

Important and relevant key points being presented here. And why some people have no issues and other people have a lot of issues.

 

You need a lot of video ram for this game, because there is a lot going on graphially.

 

You need a modern processor because modern MMOs use processor power to spread the load in the game.

What if you took off your rosetinted glasses for a second and saw the game as it is.

 

There's nothing in the game that requires a lot of vram, nothing. If they had done their textures right like EVERY FREAKING OTHER AAA GAME IN THE WORLD.

 

And there's nothing that requires the latest processor model to run the game. It runs even on a single core processor (I know, they have a minimum requirement of a dual-core, but just google it and you find out that people have been running SW:ToR on a single processor CPU).

 

The program doesn't do the load balancing, never. OS does, the program may have been programmed to use threading but still it's the OS that does the balancing over the cores.

 

You're suckering people to get new PCs to play this game, that is lying. If you have a 2 year old middle range computer it's enough.

[darthdoll]

This isn't the sole reason...

 

1) DX9. GameEngine doesn't support 10+; vista/win7+. Users have received 50-100% fps increase by turning on winxp compatibility mode. Sorry excuse for an engine.

 

2) NetCode. I don't know the details, but there are several areas that can be recreated in the game. Open/close your inventory rapidly while moving; massive fps hiccups. On Ilum, in massive battles, stay raidless or join a raid a see a huge fps drop - game trying to sync all the health bars to your client, same issue related to the inventory above. Note: This is not latency, this is client-server communication issues.

 

3) HeroEngine.

 

1. Proof?

 

2. Netcode? Maybe

 

3. I like how you blame the engine, its not the engine.....

[Calei]

I agree they are not anywhere near 1998. The game looks decent. But it does not even look as good as mmos released in 2008. Its directly related to textures. You load up aoc in dx 9 and you see a massive difference in textures. Both ise cinematic cut scenes. A mmo released 4 years ago looks better and plays smoother has dx10 and runs on a lower system requirements

 

Decent?

 

In 1998 Quake 2 was released and the textures were 256 x 256. I'm sure TOR is using a higher resolution that that but, still, I expect 2k x 2k resolution by now. This is 2012 not 1998.

 

My video card's bandwidth pipe is over 75 times faster than the 3DFX Voodoo 2; which is what I was using in 1998.

[Aisar]

I heard BW could not have the high res textures ingame because of resources as well. Good to know they really are total screwups lol. Makes me feel better about switching to EQ2.

[Dezzi]

How can people deny something so glaringly obvious? There is a clear and marked difference between the textures in cutscenes and those in basic play. They've come out and admitted this! Edited February 17, 2012 by Dezzi

[Astron_]

How can people deny something so glaringly obvious? There is a clear and marked difference between the textures in cutscenes and when in basic play. They've come out and admitted this!

 

Fanbois are totally and utterly blind.

[jellosandwich]

There is an orc in front of you. Exits: North, South, East, Up.

 

>_

 

Exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS

[wifeaggro]

Decent?

 

In 1998 Quake 2 was released and the textures were 256 x 256. I'm sure TOR is using a higher resolution that that but, still, I expect 2k x 2k resolution by now. This is 2012 not 1998.

 

My video card's bandwidth pipe is over 75 times faster than the 3DFX Voodoo 2; which is what I was using in 1998.

 

Welli didnt say good. TOR is less then impressive that is for sure. everything maxed and when i am speeding along on my 110% mount i am disgusted thet i am watching grass render 50 feet in front of me and beyond it looks like a N 64 games tiles.

[Dronp]

Its obviously a game/engine issue. If u say ur comp doesnt lag when ur in ilum then ur full of ****. Therefore we can assume the engine can't handle mass amounts of players on the screen at the same time (which anyone could've told u would happen before the zone was introduced since the engine is trash). U get perfect fps everywhere then i drops to 5fps in ilum clearly the comp's fault amirite?

[Andryah]

Yes the graphics are not as good as Aion but the graphics are better than most MMO's out ATM. Nobody can compete with Aion's graphics atm. Rift tried but failed.

 

I like the look tbh.

 

I agree, on all points.

[Andryah]

What if you took off your rosetinted glasses for a second and saw the game as it is.

 

There's nothing in the game that requires a lot of vram, nothing. If they had done their textures right like EVERY FREAKING OTHER AAA GAME IN THE WORLD.

 

And there's nothing that requires the latest processor model to run the game. It runs even on a single core processor (I know, they have a minimum requirement of a dual-core, but just google it and you find out that people have been running SW:ToR on a single processor CPU).

 

The program doesn't do the load balancing, never. OS does, the program may have been programmed to use threading but still it's the OS that does the balancing over the cores.

 

You're suckering people to get new PCs to play this game, that is lying. If you have a 2 year old middle range computer it's enough.

 

Dude, I run on a laptop, an ASUS gaming laptop. Far far from a top end desktop. I advocate nothing to anyone in terms of getting new rigs. So get off if it.

 

As for the VRAM, Bioware has said flat out the game works better with more VRAM, with 1Gig being ideal.

 

People complain all the time about their processors clogging on this game. I do not have this problem on a modern laptop mobile version of an I7. In fact it never runs at more then 30% of load on the processor. However, many people with older cpus had problems, upgraded their cpus and the problems they had went away.