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

[Scudmungus]

o-o

 

....

It is of course possible for a game to be CPU-bound rather than GPU-bound but the OP's point about polygon count being the bottleneck rather than shaders is likely false as for modern games it is fill rate (fragment throughput) rather than polygon count. Shuffling lots of data across the buses and to the GPU per frame can of course be a bottle neck but once the data is in video memory then you are in the domain of shaders as you cannot actually draw anything without shaders on a modern GPU.

 

Polygons are transformed by shaders and pixels are drawn by shaders. Shader complexity is probably the biggest limiting factor of any nth generation game engine. Triangle throughput has been very high for quite a long time but throughput aside, it's the pixel shader that is usually straining the GPU the hardest (although of course the pipeline will be balanced where possible).

 

A fairly simple (but not bullet proof) way to test if a game is fillrate bound is to change the display resolution (or run it in window mode and resize the window). If your FPS increases drastically when your display resolution decreases, your are probably fillrate bound as you are rendering the same amount of geometry albeit with a considerably higher fill rate (remember that doubling the display resolution quadruples the amount of pixels to be draw).

 

::

ARE WE TAKING NOTES?

 

THERE WILL BE A TEST LATER

Edited March 8, 2012 by Scudmungus

[Spymaster]

I don't want to get into the technical side of this, mostly because the game runs fine on my PC.

 

However, looking at the OP's screenshot, I do see a bunch of red circles around background objects I don't think I've looked at once in about 1,000 WZs.... so he does have a point there.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Spymaster

[MuNieK]

o-o

 

....

It is of course possible for a game to be CPU-bound rather than GPU-bound but the OP's point about polygon count being the bottleneck rather than shaders is likely false as for modern games it is fill rate (fragment throughput) rather than polygon count. Shuffling lots of data across the buses and to the GPU per frame can of course be a bottle neck but once the data is in video memory then you are in the domain of shaders as you cannot actually draw anything without shaders on a modern GPU.

 

Polygons are transformed by shaders and pixels are drawn by shaders. Shader complexity is probably the biggest limiting factor of any nth generation game engine. Triangle throughput has been very high for quite a long time but throughput aside, it's the pixel shader that is usually straining the GPU the hardest (although of course the pipeline will be balanced where possible).

 

A fairly simple (but not bullet proof) way to test if a game is fillrate bound is to change the display resolution (or run it in window mode and resize the window). If your FPS increases drastically when your display resolution decreases, your are probably fillrate bound as you are rendering the same amount of geometry albeit with a considerably higher fill rate (remember that doubling the display resolution quadruples the amount of pixels to be draw).

 

::

ARE WE TAKING NOTES?

 

THERE WILL BE A TEST LATER

 

Still the point stands: more unneccesary objects the lower the FPS. Dont bash me with the technicall terminology. Im not into 3d, however im following logic: the model to be rendered must have polygons or whatever else as substitute - when you move - when camera moves, all those polygons/whatever must be calculated in CPU. The more unneccesary objects = the lower performance. No need of escalating discussions into technlogody news and advanced tech poems.

[MuNieK]

I don't want to get into the technical side of this, mostly because the game runs fine on my PC.

 

However, looking at the OP's screenshot, I do see a bunch of red circles around background objects I don't think I've looked at once in about 1,000 WZs.... so he does have a point there.

 

oh thanks god for the voice of reason! You see people? A smart person who tolerate any fps drops he receives in game / dont notice any fps drops and yet he takes his time to think about subject before writing.

[Scudmungus]

o-o

 

How have I bashed you?

 

I've provided all parties involved with information that they can choose to ignore if they wish.

 

Or, they can take a little time to learn which relevant areas will support their technical bickering.

 

::

 

I realise you are feeling under attack

 

I hope you will appreciate the support to your thread.

 

:.

 

EDIT:

To my mind, when arguing the obvious, I keep to the obvious:

 

SWOTR requires more development regarding optimisation.

 

..which is essentially what you seem to be saying.

 

A point on which I agree.

 

However, we will probably realise that such 'problems' are often low on the dev priority list as they have a tendency to boost hardware sales, 'fixed' by consumers willing to spend away their 'problems.'

Edited March 8, 2012 by Scudmungus

[MuNieK]

o-o

How have I bashed you?

I've provided all parties involved with information that they can choose to ignore if they wish.

Or, they can take a little time to learn which relevant areas will support their technical bickering.

::

I realise you are feeling under attack

I hope you will appreciate support to your thread.

 

Pardon me choose of wrong words perhaps. I ment that there is no need of throwing unneccesary technical information into discussion while they dont deny the fact i mentioned: more unneccesary objects = less performance.

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[Scudmungus]

I agree - see my edit.

 

We must learn to communicate in the language of our audience.

 

 

Good luck all - happy posting.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Scudmungus

[stolengun]

nevermind Edited March 8, 2012 by stolengun

[me_unknown]

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

 

We dont need WZ to look ultra beutifull

 

Oo

 

please NO! warzones are already extrem ugly and boring looking. don't make them even worse. they already have a very low polygon count. performance issues are not due to high polygon count but due to stupid devs!

 

beautiful ... i was shocked when i read this.

 

beside of this i do not know anyone with performance issues in warzones, even with lower end pc.

Edited March 8, 2012 by me_unknown

[SuperMonkeyBall]

Still the point stands: more unneccesary objects the lower the FPS.

Not necessarily. If the fill rate is the bottleneck, lowering the polygon count will not improve the FPS.

 

Don't bash me with the technicall terminology.

Then with all due respect, don't try and form a technical augment.

 

Im not into 3d

And this is precisely your problem. You've made claims about knowing where and why the bottlenecks occur yet are completely closed off to technical reasons as to why you may be right/wrong.

 

however im following logic

If by your own admittance you do not understand the rendering process, how can you possibly form a logical argument about such a process?

 

the model to be rendered must have polygons or whatever else as substitute - when you move - when camera moves, all those polygons/whatever must be calculated in CPU.

Actually, in all likelihood a fair size of the vertex data ("polygons") will stay in VRAM as the untransformed geometry will be sent to the GPU to be transformed on the GPU. This is much cheaper than transforming the geometry on the CPU and having to transfer it to the GPU each fame.

 

The more unneccesary objects = the lower performance.

Your statement is vague enough to hold truth but you have made specific claims about polygons being the performance bottleneck. This is not necessarily the case, especially if you are fill rate bound. Polygon count is all smoke and mirrors anyway, it is usually only the objects close to the view camera that will have a sizeable polygon count (if they even require such a sizeable count).

 

No need of escalating discussions into technlogody news and advanced tech poems.

Let's at least try and escalate it to a position where all parties are informed enough about the topics at hand to make for an intelligent discussion.

[Scudmungus]

Typing/talking is easy,

teaching is hard.

 

If you students do not understand,

Then the teacher must adapt their

Style of teaching,

Not blame the students.

 

Blaming others for not understanding is lazy,

And ultimately reveals those that play teacher

From those that teach.

 

::

 

ANYHOOO.......

Could SWTOR benefit from more dev time dedicated to optimisation?

 

YES!

 

Will they do so?

 

DAMNED IF I KNOW!

 

How do games work?

 

MAGIC!

 

o_o I hope we're in agreement.

::

 

Does anyone want to start a new thread called:

''Mind numbing discussion on the technical issues involved in rendering?''

IF YES - DO IT

 

IF NO - DO NOT DO IT

Edited March 8, 2012 by Scudmungus

[Almghty_gir]

the other thing here, is that it depends how you define unnecessary objects.

 

in terms of general gameplay, there are lots of things that don't need to be there. you don't need the trees in the background, you don't even need the hills, just make it a flat surface and off you go.

 

however there is this thing called immersion, which is generally quite important to gamers. what you're asking to be removed here, is the same as asking for pieces of paper blowing in the wind to be removed from BF3, or maybe even remove the clouds in the sky, and everything that's outside of the playable map area... yeah you heard me, just make it a flat plane with a tiled texture and be done with it. after all, it's just a game and we all know that outside of that playing area nobody cares about.

 

but seriously, set your shader settings to very low, and you won't have any more fps problems. it's the shaders that are causing the fps drops in SWTOR, not the polygon budgets.

[NevesNET]

... all these programming geniuses on this forum, they should get together and make their own game.

[QuiJonPed]

Ahhh people who read a PC mag ten years ago suddenly become experts.

 

I was running:

Quad core 3GHz

4GB RAM

HD3850 512MB

 

The GFX card, although a good card, is now dated. The CPU is about a year and a half old. It's not cutting edge.

 

I *could* run the game on high settings, but in PVP the FPS was too low. I notched it back to medium and hey presto, the FPS in PVP was fine. I still had FPS isues in that damned area with lots of smoke

 

I then upgraded my GFX to a 1GB HD6850. I cranked everything up to max and the game looks wonderful AND I still have no FPS issues.

 

I didn't have to upgrade, it was perfectly playable on my dated card.

 

My point is, yes cater to the lowest common denominator but there has to be a limit of how low you go. If you're having abysmal FPS issues in PVP, it's your PC that requires attention.

[MuNieK]

the other thing here, is that it depends how you define unnecessary objects.

 

in terms of general gameplay, there are lots of things that don't need to be there. you don't need the trees in the background, you don't even need the hills, just make it a flat surface and off you go.

 

however there is this thing called immersion, which is generally quite important to gamers. what you're asking to be removed here, is the same as asking for pieces of paper blowing in the wind to be removed from BF3, or maybe even remove the clouds in the sky, and everything that's outside of the playable map area... yeah you heard me, just make it a flat plane with a tiled texture and be done with it. after all, it's just a game and we all know that outside of that playing area nobody cares about.

 

but seriously, set your shader settings to very low, and you won't have any more fps problems. it's the shaders that are causing the fps drops in SWTOR, not the polygon budgets.

 

So first you say reducing amount of objects far in distance or replacing them with something simple is "no-go" cause of immersion, and then you advice me to turn off shaders?

 

Havent tryied it yet, but i will just out of curiosity try to get to alderaan c.w. and see if it will grant me smooth 50-60fps in warzone which i doubt. - But still, its not a "fix" even if it would work as you say and as i doubt, becouse i didnt bought new high-end PC to play with lowest shader you know I paid expensive game to play with nice visuals on optimised enviroment.

 

Anyway: The immersion you are talking about aplies differently for movies and differently for games, especially where pvp is involved. You can have immersive enviroment done in smart way by really great pros. Its not an art to just put a lot of objects to achieve immersion. Its an art to create immesive neviroment which will take least possible PC's resources so they can be used for other tasks and grant smooth gameplay on high-end PCs.

 

If there s a ruin with a lot of polygons far away, it can be optimised by putting simple transparent 2d texture imitating 3d object. IF players never see rear of the ships, they should be optimised and all unnecesary polygons should be removed. If your game is dropping fps on high-end PC you may consider removing all objects that will have little to no impact on the immersion (hardly visible change) but will reduce stress they put on PC a lot. Thats the art of opitmising enviroment and you need really smart developers there - not just the ones with nice artistic talent - other way youw ill have harsh gameplay. And harsh gameplay wont help players get immersed into something...

 

edit:

did test: FPS maybe go like 3-8 higher - so it still perform poorly but then also look like some game from 1995

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[Almghty_gir]

If there s a ruin with a lot of polygons far away, it can be optimised by putting simple transparent 2d texture imitating 3d object. IF players never see rear of the ships, they should be optimised and all unnecesary polygons should be removed. If your game is dropping fps on high-end PC you may consider removing all objects that will have little to no impact on the immersion (hardly visible change) but will reduce stress they put on PC a lot. Thats the art of opitmising enviroment and you need really smart developers there - not just the ones with nice artistic talent - other way youw ill have harsh gameplay. And harsh gameplay wont help players get immersed into something...

 

okay two things here. first of all, i have a high end pc, and my fps is permanently at 60... but that's because i enable vsync. if i disable it, i get ~119fps but that's a waste of resources since my monitor refresh rate is only 60hz.

 

second of all, using a 2d alpha masked plane costs MORE than making a tree with 1000 triangles in terms of both rendering and storage space. an image with an alpha channel is twice the size of an image without one. using alpha in games is a very costly technique, and comes with other inherant problems like sorting.

 

your solutions aren't solutions at all, they're just more problems. i tell you what though, visit this forum, and ask in the technical discussion section which solution would be better: http://www.polycount.com/forum/index.php

it's a forum run by games developers, for games developers and aspiring artists. it houses artists from blizzard, blur, bioware etc. as well as programmers and technical artists.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Almghty_gir

[dcgregorya]

OP is right. I understand that the content was rushed to meet deadlines but they need to optimize and force some QA onto their map and model designs. That's a large part of why Ilum is so painful, it has oodles of unnessarily complex structures built into the map.

[MuNieK]

okay two things here. first of all, i have a high end pc, and my fps is permanently at 60... but that's because i enable vsync. if i disable it, i get ~119fps but that's a waste of resources since my monitor refresh rate is only 60hz.

 

second of all, using a 2d alpha masked plane costs MORE than making a tree with 1000 triangles in terms of both rendering and storage space. an image with an alpha channel is twice the size of an image without one. using alpha in games is a very costly technique, and comes with other inherant problems like sorting.

 

your solutions aren't solutions at all, they're just more problems. i tell you what though, visit this forum, and ask in the technical discussion section which solution would be better: http://www.polycount.com/forum/index.php

it's a forum run by games developers, for games developers and aspiring artists. it houses artists from blizzard, blur, bioware etc. as well as programmers and technical artists.

 

Ok i wont argue about storage and rendering stress cause im by no means expert here, but how about calculating movement, rotation etc? Dont tell me that 2d object with alpha will devour more resources than some 3d model with 1000 polygons when it comes to movement and rotations - and thats what happens when you move camera and your character around, right?

 

---------

 

Digression:

Someone mentioned sarcastically removing everything from enviroment and even clouds from warzone. You know whats most funny? I bet if there would be such simple warzone and people would be able to choose on which to queue it would be most popular becouse vast majority of pvpers praise smooth fps over sightseeing while pvping.

But of course its not reasonable way to go. Reasonable way to go is somewhere between sightseeing and empty enviroment to get great performance and still nice look.

Edited March 8, 2012 by MuNieK

[dcgregorya]

the other thing here, is that it depends how you define unnecessary objects.

 

No, he's talking about the ability to achieve the exact same visual effect using textures instead of models. When you have the ship in Alderaan Civil War for instance that you cannot willfully approach and interact with, many of the surfaces could be re-rendered to provide the same visual experience using textures transparently to the end user. The benefit of textures is they require significantly less CPU than all the matrix transformations for the viewport (camera) that is required for rotating models as you move around because they're painted as a separate pass.

 

For games, a general optimization post-production is to eliminate any unnecessarily complex models, remove as many vertices and faces as possible and offer alernate models for lower performance graphics settings.

 

Eve for instance will swap out the ship models depending on your graphics settings will less intricate ones. The way this game performs I'm guessing that these models have lots of invisible vertices that haven't even been stripped yet.

[Bloodcharged]

If your PC can't run WZs fluently then you need to upgrade your PC. Mine is roughly 2 years old and the only areas I suffer any sort of frame-rate drop is on the Imperial Fleet or Ilum and I play on High settings as well.

[MuNieK]

For games, a general optimization post-production is to eliminate any unnecessarily complex models, remove as many vertices and faces as possible and offer alernate models for lower performance graphics settings.

 

Exactly. It seems this phase was skipped by Bioware. It was created, accepted, and never optimised.

[Almghty_gir]

Ok i wont argue about storage and rendering stress cause im by no means expert here, but how about calculating movement, rotation etc? Dont tell me that 2d object with alpha will devour more resources than some 3d model with 1000 polygons when it comes to movement and rotations - and thats what happens when you move camera and your character around, right?

 

---------

 

Digression:

Someone mentioned sarcastically removing everything from enviroment and even clouds from warzone. You know whats most funny? I bet if there would be such simple warzone and people would be able to choose on which to queue it would be most popular becouse vast majority of pvpers praise smooth fps over sightseeing while pvping.

But of course its not reasonable way to go. Reasonable way to go is somewhere between sightseeing and empty enviroment to get great performance and still nice look.

 

what's moving or rotating?

 

the whole point of the warzone is to shoot down the enemy ship... you want to just get rid of the ship?

 

the trees don't move or rotate. they're static objects with no skeletal/vert deformation. they are minimal on resources at best.

[nexusbob]

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

 

We dont need WZ to look ultra beutifull and all this unneccesary CPU draining stuff that is present there (what looks good on screenshots), while we cant have smooth gameplay... You overdosed polygons like some madmans... Just like the people creating Warzones were racing each other who will plant more polygons on the Warzones before there is no room for anything else ot be added :/

 

I could expect such amateur aproach by amateur developers creating custom maps in starcraft's map editor, not highly payed empoyees of huge company.

 

The thing is that you cant immerse and get a feeling of a game (let alone having competetive pvp) when game is hammering CPU and dropping frames like crazy. Performance first -> visuals seond. And no, ultra low shaders wont count for totally NOTHING when the number of polygons stays the same and are sweating our CPUs.

 

Do the magic people expect from rich companies developers: use textures tricks insetad of polygons, cause now it looks like amateurs work... Like people without any knowledge about game making were allowed to add stuff to warzones' levels and they felt creative adding tones and tones of stuff without having performance in mind.

 

Do research, check how many polygons can i5 2500K run on 60fps and set it as limit, count your polygons on your maps, summarize it with allowed players on the map and median polygon count of a player character and fix those zones. How hard can it be if you have proffesional team at yoru disposal?

 

Warzones in current shape are very not entertaining. Even the boring old memory of WoWs BGs with dynamic, smooth gameplay seems interesting in comparision of swtor's laggy warzones... laggy on high end PCs... I woudlnt have any issues if that would be my PC fault - being outdated... but i have upgraded PC recently just for swtor and bf3. BF3 worksl ike a charm and swtor atm is just misunderstunding.

 

You cant even think that players gonna treat swtor's pvp seriously if insetad of pvp competition they are strugglig with FPS.

 

edit:

Sample of quick sketch what could be removed and having little impact of the "feel" and huge impact of performance is marked on this screen with red marker:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/6235/polygons.jpg

- cant count it, but the huge amount of polygon used for this unneccesary models, if removed equals huge relief for our PCs, so they can perform at smooth fps.

 

On yellow is marked 1 of 2 capital ships (but it aplies to both) - that could be optimised from polygon point of view - remove all polygons that could be replaced by transparent textures, make sure there are nopolygons on the rear of the ships that are never seen by players anyway etc...

 

Please for force sake, optimize your game! And tell your developers that they are not creating levels for pre-rendered movie, but for game (that should run smooth on high-end PCs).

 

edit:

I have created this topic on suggestion forums, but noone really care about performance of WZs there, so im moving here.

 

edit2:

Please restrain from replying to this thread if you dont have idea what is the problem. If you define "fine performance" as ~25fps your reply will also be awkward cause you dont even know what is the thing people who expects real high performance find missing in current gameplay. Thank you for understunding.

 

edit3:

Please also restrain from posting comments like "lololol your pc is old lololol trolololo - mine is awezum and runs 500000 fps in ilum" cause they are not only far from true, but also points how ignorant poster is.

 

just lol man get u selv a bether PC i never got eny problems at all got +100FPS all the time and all is on MAX - just stop play new games on old PC wed crap crads in them

[MuNieK]

what's moving or rotating?

 

the whole point of the warzone is to shoot down the enemy ship... you want to just get rid of the ship?

 

the trees don't move or rotate. they're static objects with no skeletal/vert deformation. they are minimal on resources at best.

 

Let me explain this to you:

 

all objects in the area are moving and roating while you move your character. By moving character you are moving camera, and from camera point of view everything is moving and rotating. CPU have to calculate all those moves and rotations before sending it to GPU to render.

 

I mentioned optimising ship, cause there is always room for reducing some polygons noone ever sees (from back side of the ship for example - it could be flat untextured wall).

 

Hope it sheds some light on it for you.