Please reduce number of polygons in WZs by at least 40%

[MuNieK]

Like others have said, it's probably not your CPU, much more likely it's your GPU.

 

I have an i5, gtx 580, 8gb ram, 2560x1920 resolution with everything set to max only experienced any choppiness when going by the pvp terminal on the fleet. I admit I haven't checked my fps, but like I said, I haven't noticed it so no reason to check.

 

Btw, full HD just means 1920x1080 resolution.

 

I know what "full hd" means. Its far away from decent pc's graphics settings description. I have gtx480 myself so only generation differs me and you and hwile it comes to geforces generation isnt very important. Still, the problem is not in my high-end PC but with the definition we have of "fine performance". Its not about choppiness and significant freezes... its about fps drops below 30fps which are extremaly frustrating for dedicated gamer who expects developers to develop games to run smooth on high-end PCs, smooth = fine, smooth=fps > 50 all the time. Thats what you should get from instanced pvp. Its logicall that your fps could drop evenbelow 40fps or 30 when there are crowds of people fighitng in open, non-instanced zone... but come on... instanced pvp wz developed the way that it cant run 50fps on high-end PCs?

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[jolleebindu]

My computer is nowhere near top of the line, it is a midgrade computer with a video card that is a couple generations behind and still DDR2 RAM (just showing that it's 'old').

 

I run this game fine, I run it fine while using FRAPS in warzones, I run at low settings when recording, but without FRAPS I can run the game at mid to high settings without any actual issues with framerate. Now I am not getting 60fps, it is more like ~25 average, THIS IS FINE.

 

I'm not some loaded person either. I am a college student who works an average job and has an average income. I saved up and bought a computer a while ago and am currently saving to get a new one. You don't need to save that much to get a computer.

 

Not even 1,000$ (including monitor) can get you a decent rig.

 

 

 

Don't blame Bioware. Give your computer some love.

 

25 fps is not fine, it isn't playable, its irritating and gives me headaches

[OGsam]

I have gtx480 myself so only generation differs me and you and hwile it comes to geforces generation isnt very important. Still, the problem is not in my high-end PC but with the definition we have of "fine performance".

 

Your definition of "high-end PC" is certainly underwhelming. My PC's 18 months old and I am running dual GTX 580's. I still class it as high-end but only because not much else has come to out date it due to games slowing down their progression because everyone seems to have bad PC's or wants to play games on consoles.

Edited March 8, 2012 by OGsam

[MuNieK]

Your definition of "high-end PC" is certainly underwhelming. My PC's 18 months old and I am running dual GTX 580's. I still class it as high-end but only because not much else has come to out date it due to games slowing down their progression because everyone seems to have bad PC's or wants to play games on consoles.

 

Hehe are you using your pc to run games on 3 screens or maybe some proffesional rendering which utilise GPU cores or maybe you are streaming high resolution online? Otherwise you have just wasted a lot of money. gtx480 is more than enough to achieve 60fps in swtor at 1920x1200 unless it gets bottlenecked by CPU. And it happens on warzones - my i5 2500K got hammered down so much that my gtx480 need to wait for it to process before it renders frames - hence i get fps drop. What you describe as your PC config is called overkill.

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[OGsam]

Hehe are you using your pc to run games on 3 screens or maybe some proffesional rendering which utilise GPU cores or maybe you are streaming high resolution online? Otherwise you have just wasted a lot of money. gtx480 is more than enough to achieve 60fps in swtor at 1920x1200 unless it gets bottlenecked by CPU. And it happens on warzones - my i5 2500K got hammered down so much that my gtx480 need to wait for it to process before it renders frames - hence i get fps drop. What you describe as your PC config is called overkill.

 

Well since you've been so condescending to everyone in this thread, this being no exception, I won't bother explaining my situation to the likes of you and just end with a "nah nah I have way more money than you."

[Ironcleaver]

Am I the only person that can actually run this game? Is everyone else on an single core with onboard video? I'm genuinely concerned with the computers people are gaming with today.

 

My computer is basically six years old with the video card being a little newer (a geforce 260). The rest of the system is a P4 Wolfdale 3.2Ghz cpu, 2GB DDR2 system memory and a standard physicaly hard drive. Someone could buy all the same internal components of my computer for roughly ~250 bucks. That's less then what most people spend on just their video cards.

 

I have no problems running this game at 1680x1050. I just have to turn off shadows and Bloom.

 

A friend did test the game with a single core chip and the game wouldn't even load. Sure I don't have DX11, but the game is only DX9 anyway. heh. It's like people bought sports cars to run this game but have no clue how to use a clutch.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Ironcleaver

[askafar]

I too want smooth gameplay in warzones. 25 fps is definetly NOT fine.

[Deathnasty]

Am I the only person that can actually run this game? Is everyone else on an single core with onboard video? I'm genuinely concerned with the computers people are gaming with today.

 

nope i can run everything on max and with great frame rates, yes even illium on a full map i goet 45fps while frapsing my guild decimate the imps, you are not alone

 

 

Edit: For the OP, they could just add a view/draw distance slider, thus solving the problem of not needing to edit anything. and then the people with IBM 486XM/commodore 64 ala cart versions can then kick *** in Wz's

Edited March 8, 2012 by Deathnasty

[Ironcleaver]

...let some pros take controll over warzones development..

 

I've worked professionally as a poly optimizer for a real time environment. Just my background before someone says I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

You are correct in that these warzones could be optimized big time. Poly reduction here and there will net you a few frames per second.

 

Try this: Go into your game folder and rename "swtor_main_art_fx_1" to something else, then load up the game. This alone gave me 10 to 20 fps on average, in and out of warzones. The issue is that there is valuable game "feedback" information contained in this file like: lightsaber blades, personal speeders, all spell and ability effects, to name but a few.

 

If they were to optimize anywhere, optimize the FX file before tackling polygon optimizations.

 

Be careful with transparencies though. Far background items are fine, no problem there. But building full objects out of transparencies is a huge performance hit as opposed to straight polygons (example warhammer did far too many objects using straight transparencies and there was a massive fps hit for doing so).

[Nexii]

nope i can run everything on max and with great frame rates, yes even illium on a full map i goet 45fps while frapsing my guild decimate the imps, you are not alone

 

The part about ILUM, i simply so not believe you one little bit!

 

Please post one of these videos you have fraps'd, along with your pc spec to prove to me what spec i need to upgrade my pc too!

 

If you fail to do the above you are a shameless troll like the rest of idiots.

 

Thanks.

[Nexii]

Deathnasty,

im still waiting mate! I genuinly hope you prove me wrong and make look like a fool, cos i would realy like to know what i have to upgrade my pc too.

[Lakedaemon]

I don't think I could correct all the issues in this thread without writing an essay. However, @OP:

 

Your issue isn't with poly count. The problem is draw calls. Triangles per second is almost all handled on GPUs nowadays. There is a small amount of overhead on the CPU just by having the engine running. However, the real problem nowadays with games is draw calls. A draw call is basically the CPU handing data off to the GPU. The number of draw calls needed to render a scene and the speed at which your CPU can process draw calls limits your frames per second. It is a pretty straightforward mathematical equation. Here is a pretty good explanation of draw calls at the top of the google pile: http://wiki.uktrainsim.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=426074

 

The things you circled wouldn't actually have an impact on the performance. Trees are fairly low perf nowadays because they often share the same textures in a texture atlas or map which massively reduces draw calls. Same things with rocks, ground, etc.

 

With that out of the way I did want to say that if you HAVE to have 60 FPS to play SWTOR pvp I'm afraid you have issues. If this were an FPS I would say every frame matters, but MMOs are effectively turn based. You can get all the info you need from the UI (enemy status, cooldowns, distance, etc.) so using the graphics to time your rotations isn't necessary. I only have an issue with you because you clearly have a preference, but you slam other people by making yourself sound smart and (hardcore). This is a poor defense mechanism, and annoying.

[Almghty_gir]

i'm a character artist, and i'm going to say once and only once:

 

polygons aren't causing low fps. at all. it's the shaders they're using that cause them. graphics cards have been able to render millions of polygons with little effort for years now, in any warzone you're only likely to have ~100,000. but shader tech is very twitchy, every engine does it differently, and then every game made on each engine will have variations in shader calculations in order to help make the game gel together on an artistic level.

 

it's the shaders which drive the visual performance, shaders tell the engine which textures to call, when to call them, how to apply them to the meshes etc. if the shader is badly optimised, then you'll get fps lag.

 

this can be evidenced by simply turning your shaders to very low, and seeing the performance increase.

 

 

now, you're also saying "check how much a 2500k can render"... that's fine and all, but if you're playing with on-board graphics, then it's really your fault and not theirs... they have minimum specifications you know, and on-board graphics isn't on them! you could buy a $20 gfx card and see a marked difference in your standard of gaming.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Almghty_gir

[Vaipyr]

We dont need WZ to look ultra beutifull

 

Lies. Get a real gaming computer. My god. This game doesn't even require an even halfway up-to-date rig to run at 80+fps consistantly during full on combat. FFS. Upgrade your crap. Stop trying to go to the races in a pinto and then complaining that you aren't running as well as the real race-cars on the track.

 

Quad core 3.7ghz

dual nvid 570 1g's (sli)

16 gigs ram

200+ fps max settings during combat.

 

Get a real gaming rig for cryin out loud.

[MuNieK]

i'm a character artist, and i'm going to say once and only once:

 

polygons aren't causing low fps. at all. it's the shaders they're using that cause them.

 

Oh of course numbers dont do any harm... only that they influence the outcome. Especially if engine is bad and ruins performance while shading the polygons you should make sure you dont overdose polygons... Its logical and not seems like rocket science. Think like a Sith, dont try to fight jedi in the forest, burn down the forest with jedi inside. Dont try to fix the shading for years to help it get better performance with your polygon overdose - reduce the number of polygons. Noone is even looking on those things i marked...

 

edit:

and its very curious what you are saying, denying that the polygons have great impact on performance... Cause i have had recently my old PC having troubles with running BFBC2 smoothly no matter of the shader version. Now with new CPU it runs like butter - with same GPU.. even bf3 runs smooth like butter. So you're trying to tell me the CPU is doing shading work?

 

- of course its polygon number reducing performance.

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[Lakedaemon]

Oh of course numbers dont do any harm... only that they influence the outcome. Especially if engine is bad and ruins performance while shading the polygons you should make sure you dont overdose polygons... Its logical and not seems like rocket science. Think like a Sith, dont try to fight jedi in the forest, burn down the forest with jedi inside. Dont try to fix the shading for years to help it get better performance with your polygon overdose - reduce the number of polygons. Noone is even looking on those things i marked...

 

edit:

and its very curious what you are saying, denying that the polygons have great impact on performance... Cause i have had recently my old PC having troubles with running BFBC2 smoothly no matter of the shader version. Now with new CPU it runs like butter - with same GPU.. even bf3 runs smooth like butter. So you're trying to tell me the CPU is doing shading work?

 

- of course its polygon number reducing performance.

 

....

 

Shaders are applied to vertices (or pixels / or geometry). You can easily have 1 triangle with a shader that tanks your performance. And no the CPU isn't doing any shader work. All the CPU does is pass the shader program to the GPU to transform the vertex (again, or pixel / or geometry) it is applied to. This will not cause a performance issue if your CPU is having issues.

 

If you are seeing marked improvements in upgrading your CPU, again, your issue is with draw calls.

[MuNieK]

If you are seeing marked improvements in upgrading your CPU, again, your issue is with draw calls.

 

Call it however you want, the point still stands: If you will have 10 high-polygon objects (let it be some ruins) running around the camera point, they will be rendered at higher fps than if there would be 100 of them... So why arguing with the fact that reducing polygons count would adjust fps?

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[Lakedaemon]

Call it however you want, the point still stands: If you will have 10 high-polygon objects (let it be some ruins) running around the camera point, they will be rendered at higher fps than if there would be 100 of them... So why arguing with the fact that reducing polygons count would adjust fps?

 

Ah well...believe what you want. I would recommend taking some courses on this subject matter before trying to school a development team with 15 years of experience. Not saying BioWare is perfect, because they do have major issues still, but they clearly don't need your help.

[BloodySunBoy]

I get 64-75fps in warzones, make them look better tbh

[MuNieK]

Ah well...believe what you want. I would recommend taking some courses on this subject matter before trying to school a development team with 15 years of experience. Not saying BioWare is perfect, because they do have major issues still, but they clearly don't need your help.

 

You dont need technical courses in case where all you need is logic and bit of exprience... More objects = lower performance. More unnecesary objects = more unnecesary stress on hardware. Why are you advocating them? Bad performance may ruin great title.

[UncleJimbo]

I agree that the game could use some tweaks, but in all fairness to Bioware, people have so much crap installed on their computers that it slows down.

Also, do some research on how some GPU work with 2D and 3D rendering cores, because for instance, if you are running a browser with Flash, that will eat up to 10fps.

 

Also, try to limit the number of programs running in background that monitor performance or do CPU operations (I can thing of some guys that do programming and have MySql/MSSQL running or god know what).

Try to teak your virtual memory a bit (there is a lot of info about this on the web); check your video card performance, see if your HDD has deteriorated in time (I personally use an SSD, but those are more expensive).

Also you can improve performance of a mechanical HDD by proper partitioning and install OS and games on partitions that are at the inner part of the disk (this is a bit more advanced stuff) so you have better access times.

 

Edit: I forgot to mention that on my 1.5 years old rig with an upgrade to an SSD I have constant 60 FPS in wz and the only issues I have are like others say: Rep Fleet and Ilum. The game's engine seems to not handle well huge masses of toons, but it can handle environmental objects pretty well .... they explained something similar when giving an answer why the players and NPCs use mid res textures: they have some issues with the engine.

Edited March 8, 2012 by UncleJimbo

[Orangerascal]

For the record your i5 has nothing to do with how the polygons are rendered. This is all done through your graphics card. SWTOR has so little processing power you can probably run it on a dial core xeon.

 

Update your graphics card. I recommend the 560ti. It's good value for money and if you get two of them can handle any game out there.

 

Lastly the bottlenecks in this game is the network code. Not the graphics. Ilum stutters because you're updating so many play positions and actions. This is the same reason you have ability lag.

 

 

People using terms like "full hd" describing the graphic settings of the game doesnt sound like they have any decent knowledge of the topic they are talking about. Hence i dont expect you to understund what is the problem im talking about.

 

This is the height of irony, Mr. CPU-renders-polygons.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Orangerascal

[AetherMcLoud]

Well since you've been so condescending to everyone in this thread, this being no exception, I won't bother explaining my situation to the likes of you and just end with a "nah nah I have way more money than you."

 

I second that.

[Scudmungus]

o-o

 

Wait for it...

Edited March 8, 2012 by Scudmungus

[MuNieK]

Moderator removed my counterarguments - i wont rewrite them to proof how wrong you were - you already know where you made errors in your reasoning.

Moderator seem to overlook your lying tho. I never said thing you imply i did.

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK