Awesome, thanks.

Although the shadows are indeed pretty on the PTS, I can sadly tell that the promised optimization for SLI setups is NOT working.

 

I'm getting 60+ FPS whatever the settings on live servers.

 

On the PTS, whenever I put the shadows on high, it drops to 28-30... Even with today's patch (it even got a little worse?)

 

Dual GTX 570 with latest NVidia drivers.

 

They probably haven't fully optimized it for the test serve, though. If nothing else at least the shadows will LOOK better

"Players with high-end AMD CrossFire or Nvidia SLI machines should notice a large improvement when running the game with the new shadow system."

 

Best news in a long time! Can't wait to test it out.

 

 

Please DO test it!! As I said, with SLI GTX570 x2 I'm NOT getting optimized, and the new shadow system is ruining my performance. (from 60+ to 28-35)

In addition to these functional changes, there have been numerous optimizations made to the underlying core technology to reduce the load on the player’s computer. In most cases, players should notice an improvement to framerate compared to the previous system. Players with high-end AMD CrossFire or Nvidia SLI machines should notice a large improvement when running the game with the new shadow system.

Unfortunately, the performance gain for Nvidia SLI powered systems doesn't appear to hold true, at least on my computer. To the contrary, my dual GTX 580 3GB Nvidia SLI powered PC (which I think is rather high-end - see the bottom of this post for detailed system specs), I am experiencing a massive performance loss with the new shadows on Public Test 1.4 compared to 1.3 on live and also compared to 1.4 with SLI disabled.

Two areas are all of Alderaan where there is lots of grass as well as the Jedi Knight's Defender' starship's big room with the big holocom in it (just examples, most areas of the game are affected by this performance hit). Framerate is halved from live (from around ~50 down to ~20 FPS on Alderaan, from 110FPS down to 43 FPS on the defender). The game also runs a lot more choppy with framerate (noticeable microstutter, even with Vsync disabled) being far less inconsistent in 1.4. 1.4 with new shadows is nigh-unplayable on my machine with the same settings as 1.3 with the old shadows.

 

GPU usage for both GPUs in SLI is also way down in 1.4 from 1.3. Where in 1.3 both of my GPUs were used between 94% - 98%, which is proper SLI scaling, both GPUs are only utilized around 30% - 40% each in 1.4 on the Public test Server in the same, problematic areas. SLI scaling basically isn't working properly at all.

How are you rendering the new shadows? Using the CPU instead of the GPUs?

 

Both 1.3 and 1.4 run on the "Very High" Graphics Quality Preset, at 1920x1080@60Hz, Full Screen (Windowed), same with proper Full Screen mode. I'm using 4x Multisampling FSAA + 2x SGSAA Transparency Anti-Aliasing. I'm using Nvidia's latest WHQL GeForce driver, 306.23.

 

Which video cards did your testers test with and which driver versions did they use? Perhaps you have tested with unreleased beta drivers with a new Nvidia SLI Profile for TOR? Or much older drivers than the current ones?

Or maybe it's just an issue with the current build on the Public test server and has already been fixed on the build you have internally?

 

With that in mind, I think it would be a good idea to leave the old shadows in as an option. Perhaps you leave the old, blocky, more static shadows for the High Shadow setting and then use the new, dynamic shadows/Ambient Occlusion as new, Very High shadow setting.

 

If you can't keep the old, more performant shadows as an additional option, it may be a good idea to leave the new shadows out until you have implemented DirectX 11 support (for increased performance) and a native x64 client.

 

On a side note, the old bug from beta that cripples performance (FPS and GPU utilization) after leaving the Galaxy map (including entering space combat) on ships like the Jedi Knights's Defender on multi-GPU setups until one reloads the graphics is back in Game Update 1.4 as well.

 

Here are my system specs:

 

 

I tried to post my Dxdiag.txt as well, but unfortunately, the post would exceed the maximum character limit for posts as I have so many devices installed, sorry.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Glzmo

omce again totaly useless crap in a patch , FFS fix the damm issues instead of spenting time on useless stuff like this !

 

This is anything but "useless" as you put it. Increasing the optimization of the Engine should be #1 on the list. After all, it is the foundation of the game. Since the Engine is very poor at the moment, its limitations are still staggering. But this is a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the performance gain for Nvidia SLI powered systems doesn't appear to hold true, at least on my computer. To the contrary, my dual GTX 580 3GB Nvidia SLI powered PC (which I think is rather high-end - see the bottom of this post for detailed system specs), I am experiencing a massive performance loss with the new shadows on Public Test 1.4 compared to 1.3 on live. Two areas are all of Alderaan where there is lots of grass as well as the Jedi Knight's Defender' starship's big room with the big holocom in it (just examples, most areas of the game are affected by this performance hit). Framerate is halved from live (from around ~50 down to ~20 FPS on Alderaan, from 110FPS down to 43 FPS on the defender). The game also runs a lot more choppy with framerate being far less inconsistent in 1.4. 1.4 with new shadows is nigh-unplayable on my machine with the same settings as 1.3 with the old shadows.

Both 1.3 and 1.4 run on the "Very High" Graphics Quality Preset, at 1920x1080@60Hz, Full Screen (Windowed), same with proper Full Screen mode. I'm using 4x Multisampling FSAA + 2x SGSAA Transparency Anti-Aliasing. I'm using Nvidia's latest WHQL GeForce driver, 306.23.

 

Which video cards did your testers test with and which driver versions did they use? Perhaps you have tested with unreleased or older drivers?

 

With that in mind, I think it would be a good idea to leave the old shadows in as an option. Perhaps you leave the old, blocky, more static shadows for the High Shadow setting and then use the new, dynamic shadows/Ambient Occlusion as new, Very High shadow setting.

 

If you can't keep the old, more performant shadows as an additional option, it may be a good idea to leave the new shadows out until you have implemented DirectX 11 support (for increased performance) and a native x64 client.

 

Here are my system specs:

 

Cooler Master HAF X Case

Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 80 PLUS® Gold Certified Fully-Modular 1200 Watt Power Supply

Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler with four Corsair Fans in Push/Pull configuration

Gigabyte Killer Gaming G1.Assassin2 Mainboard

Intel Core i7 3930K @ 4.5GHz

32GB DDR3-1600 Quad Channel RAM (4x8GB Corsair Vengeance CMZ32GX3M4A1600C9 Quad Channel Kit)

2x Gainward Phantom³ GeForce GTX 580 3GB SLi (GeForce 306.23 WHQL drivers)

LG E2750-PV 27" Full-HD LED Monitor @ 1920x1080 @ 60Hz

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi CA20k2 16MB X-RAM onboard

Logitech X-530 5.1 Surround Speakers

Bigfoot Networks Killer E2100 onboard Gaming NIC

1x 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 SATAII Solid State Disk

1x 512GB Crucial M4 SATAIII Solid State Disk

1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT 7200.12 SATAIII HDD

1x 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATAIII HDD

LG BH10LS SATA BlueRay Writer

Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard

Logitech G700 Wireless Laser Gaming Mouse

Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 USB Joystick

Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 USB Joystick

4x Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows

2x Wii Remote Plus & Nunchuck

Logitech MOMO® Racing Force Feedback Wheel

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (Service Pack 1, fully updated Windows Performance Index: 7.9)

 

I tried to post my Dxdiag.txt as well, but unfortunately, the post would exceed the maximum character limit for posts as I have so many devices installed, sorry.

 

EDITED (cauz I made a mistake)

 

My issue was "fixed" by disabling the SLI in the NVidia software,

 

Using SLI and drivers 301.42 OR 306.23 does not work with the new high shadow settings.

Edited September 18, 2012 by JonathanCP

BW keep stuff like this up and people will stop leaving, good job. maybe try to fix the load screens? its stuff like this that make people happy.

Very great to see this game coming together and into it's own more and more ! I am VERY excited to see these changes happening and believe this game will last a very long time. Congratulations on the game and I hope to see more of these little fixes more often. Things like this excite me!

 

Glad to see the game is being worked on!

 

See haters THEY DO CARE!!

Great change.

 

The games shadows were embarrassing.

Graphic optimizations are always welcome devs.

BW keep stuff like this up and people will stop leaving, good job. maybe try to fix the load screens? its stuff like this that make people happy.

I could see something in the future happening like

 

Load time optimization in 1.8! We have now the technology to further reduce the load times dramatically for everything in Star Wars: The Old Republic. For example, say you are on Belsavis and need to load to do dailies back and forth between your ship, well, the technology we now have available cuts that time in half or virtually seamless! Enjoy yourselves!!

 

Or something like that. The more and more they work out their own code for the heroengine and the more tools that become available within hero engine, I believe we will see things getting done faster because the heroengine is capable of A LOT more than other engines are. Faster to. The more they just optimize like this, the more it will become better

great job

you know what? I can really see slowly but surely and dynamic heroengine day/night cycle unique for every planet come in this game at SOME point. They just need to figure out how to do it to keep the art very nice. Because the art style is very nice. I think in time everything will be in. Just be patient

There were a number of things I'd rather the Devs worked on than shadow textures. Like enabling cross server queues, balancing pvp so it's worth playing something other than a sentinel or scoundrel, create new craftable items so it's worth levelling something other than Biochem, you get the idea.

There were a number of things I'd rather the Devs worked on than shadow textures. Like enabling cross server queues, balancing pvp so it's worth playing something other than a sentinel or scoundrel, create new craftable items so it's worth levelling something other than Biochem, you get the idea.

 

The 3d software team is NOT going to fix the PvP balance, nor create new items. Is that so hard to understand?

Will this increase performance for players that don't have shadows activated?

It's about time. The warp and square like shadows was some thing I would expect from a decade ago game not in a modern game despite this game being mmorpg.

Awsum, really looking forward to 1.4.

Interesting, this does nothing for me since I don't play with shadows on but I can see a LOT of positive feedback on this, so clearly they're doing something right.

 

I will admit those shadows make the game look very pretty but I'm waiting for them to fix more issues in the engine so turning on shadows doesn't completely destroy FPS, maybe then I'll be more apt to turn them on.

 

Still glad to see this, +1 Bioware

There were a number of things I'd rather the Devs worked on than shadow textures. Like enabling cross server queues, balancing pvp so it's worth playing something other than a sentinel or scoundrel, create new craftable items so it's worth levelling something other than Biochem, you get the idea.

 

We can NOT be playing the same game...

omce again totaly useless crap in a patch , FFS fix the damm issues instead of spenting time on useless stuff like this !

Relax, this is a different team that worked on this.....Do people no realise there are a number of different teams, and not just one?

Edited September 18, 2012 by Omicronmd

Glad to hear this. Just today I had to photoshop screenshots' shadows (as usual) for guild purposes. Not only a pleasant eye candy, but will save me a lot of time. Edited September 18, 2012 by Darth_Haderach

Nice touch. Thank you sir.

Tested the shadows as soon as I landed on the PTS even before the announcement and I have to admit it is night and day.

 

So far I had the shadows disabled because they killed the fun.

 

So thanks and as next step, can we please have a draw distance slider?

Getting fed up of seeing the grass growing around me when a F2P game has better graphics and higher FPS... without this issue.

Cool beans. How where's my hood toggle?