It's bad if the OP is in fact correct. I think the OP was right to ask the question, but I'm not sure we should be taking this as fact.

 

I'm not bashing the OP here, I think this is definitely something that requires more exploration or indeed a response from BioWare.

 

I'm not too au fait with all these things but surely if this was true, wouldn't everyone be experiencing the issues that some are talking about? Or, what could cause some people to experience the issues whilst others don't?

 

This.

 

Don't go running around yelling conspiracy and cancelling accounts on a theory. We need to push for answers, not jump to conclusions. The OP has been very good about this.

 

And don't forget about the effect confirmation bias has on your views:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/

If this turns out to be true... this is the worst example of copy protection I can think of. I'm not sure I can justify playing this game, as fun as it is, with this sort of nonsense going on behind the scenes.

 

Seriously, I hoped Bioware was above this junk.

Very interesting thread... Posted to rate

This.

 

Don't go running around yelling conspiracy and cancelling accounts on a theory. We need to push for answers, not jump to conclusions. The OP has been very good about this.

 

And don't forget about the effect confirmation bias has on your views:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/

 

QFT. Finding the truth is what matters.

 

My money goes on the bandwidth.

 

I have a 20mbit down/2mbit up VSDL connection, I can download at around 2.2 Megabytes per second. I still experience somewhat delayed animations, and the other day in republic fleet had my FPS go completely to crap while the hard drive went NUTS, practically identical to paging symptoms. I have 8GB of RAM, and 1GB of VRAM. I don't have an SSD, but I do have a Raptor-X, which is small and reasonably speedy.

 

It was also fairly recently loaded from scratch, with old files copied from the prior hard drive in massive batches. Fragmentation should be fairly minimal, overall.

 

If this turns out to be true... this is the worst example of copy protection I can think of. I'm not sure I can justify playing this game, as fun as it is, with this sort of nonsense going on behind the scenes.

 

Seriously, I hoped Bioware was above this junk.

 

My suspicion falls more on EA than anyone: they've got a history of forcing through ill-considered DRM schemes, it was why I didn't get Mass Effect for a VERY long time after it game out...I got it shortly after it was added to Steam withOUT SecuROM.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

I must admit I have spent almost 2 hours reading through this thread, - and trying, to understand the paper you link to in the OP. - Which is really way beyond my grasp, but when Im hearing someone explain how his fps remains stable while the world is loading, and how his game renders low resolution for a short while in a new area, till the game kinda "catches" up, I can 100% recognise the experience. I just didnt really know what to file that under before.

 

My cpu has been running so hot playing swtor, when it was completely fine during beta. I couldnt understand what had happened to it. It went fine with Skyrim, and the other mmo I play, which is EVE on high res, and so - not having much pc savyness I couldnt figure out what made Swtor special. - I understand now that it is very cpu intensive, and I am understanding now, why my cpu will run swtor at 45C when Im fighting mobs alone, but shoot up to 58-60C in imperial fleet when Im standing at the galactic trade hub with 30 people around me. - And this is after I pulled the cpu fan out and reapplied thermal paste to it. - Before that, my cpu almost cooked itself. And this came out of the blue.

 

There wasnt any warning from BW that they had changed the client somehow, and that the resolution while being low/when you think its medium, also demanded so much more out of my cpu. I think it would have been nice if they had been open about this.

 

Firstly, because as this thread and others show, where there be geeks, there be no secrets

 

My computer is also running scary hot. And it's a good system, it doesn't flinch playing other games or watching videos, etc. I couldn't understand why the fan just kicks in very loud every time I play swtor, but perhaps this explains it.

 

Sadly, if this is the case, I'm not going to ruin my computer over a game. Back to Skyrim or something until this is fixed.

If this is true, a lot of people are going to have to eat a very large humble pie.

 

Will be interesting to see BW's response, if any!

 

You will also require a medal if it is the case!

Edited January 11, 2012 by Elgarr

It's bad if the OP is in fact correct. I think the OP was right to ask the question, but I'm not sure we should be taking this as fact.

 

I'm not bashing the OP here, I think this is definitely something that requires more exploration or indeed a response from BioWare.

 

I'm not too au fait with all these things but surely if this was true, wouldn't everyone be experiencing the issues that some are talking about? Or, what could cause some people to experience the issues whilst others don't?

 

Im by no means an expert at all.

 

But I believe EVERYONE is currently experiencing medium or low res graphics in game regardless of how high they have put their graphics.

If bio is up to this sneaky stuff, they need to be caught red handed.

Greetings-

 

I'm a bit of a hardware monkey as well (at work, and at home), and this game runs my system much hotter than games that tax it much harder. I seriously hope that this is all a tin foil hat conspiracy, because if not - this game is dead in the water. They will have lost customer trust.

 

Regards

Androvis

also i am gona go on a limb here but i bet remote rendered is some kind of remote differential compression (if it isnt using it)basicly the idea is it only update what need updating what need updating in swtor we got the game we go everything but i bet there is one thing we dont have the key,(wow do this you upload the whole file and when they re ready they send you the key to unlock the game content)i bet it is a similar process here but for everything.so imagine all those player trying to get a key at same time during rush hour ?plus everythuing that is going on!grin no surprise we have so much issue lol

...You should try reading that research paper I linked. It talks about myriad ways to do just that.

 

And if the 'server' is the second process, the latency, other than network latency, would be relatively minimal and it could also be integrated quite tightly with the actual client's primary rendering.

 

Difficult, but possible. The difficult explaining the performance hit.

 

Honestly, I'd really prefer it if someone could provide a proper explanation as to what this 'remoterenderer' and the second client actually DO, so we don't have to sit here and speculate.

 

Ok, I did as you asked and read through the paper. I understood what it was saying quite well, as I work with 3D models for my living.

 

I couldn't find any mention of merging 2d streamed data and 3d client data together. If you could point out the relevent passages I will read them.

 

The system described in the paper is totally different to running one set of images from your computer and mixing in other images from the server. It is a proprietary system made to view models held remotely.

 

Unless you're suggesting all models and textures are bring rendered remotely and the whole thing is being streamed ala "Onlive" (which is isn't, obvioulsy).

 

I still maintain the the difficulty and effort to bring these images together would negate their usefullness as copy protection. Think of the programming man hours it would have taken them. There are much cheaper and easier ways to copy protect stuff.

Well bye bye SW:TOR i had enough of this.

My computer is also running scary hot. And it's a good system, it doesn't flinch playing other games or watching videos, etc. I couldn't understand why the fan just kicks in very loud every time I play swtor, but perhaps this explains it.

 

Sadly, if this is the case, I'm not going to ruin my computer over a game. Back to Skyrim or something until this is fixed.

 

I've heard some reports that high temps may be linked to forcing AA on: that because it's not properly implemented in-game, it isn't optimized correctly or something and pushes things way too hard.

 

Im by no means an expert at all.

 

But I believe EVERYONE is currently experiencing medium or low res graphics in game regardless of how high they have put their graphics.

 

This appears to be a deliberate design decision: reports from Public Test indicate that the current 'high' texture option has been removed, and the current 'medium' texture option renamed to 'high'.

 

I'm wondering, based on what I've heard about the timing, if the high res textures weren't disabled to aid the remote renderer, but that's speculation of the highest order.

It's bad if the OP is in fact correct. I think the OP was right to ask the question, but I'm not sure we should be taking this as fact.

 

I'm not bashing the OP here, I think this is definitely something that requires more exploration or indeed a response from BioWare.

 

I'm not too au fait with all these things but surely if this was true, wouldn't everyone be experiencing the issues that some are talking about? Or, what could cause some people to experience the issues whilst others don't?

 

Most people don´t do tough things , where the response and seconds counts .

When you try to solo a champion or do heroic 2-4 solo . response time is what keeps you alive or dead meat .

 

Now most people don´t even care they lag in Operations or Flashpoints .

Or that they don´t even notice there heals or damage dissapearing .

They just don´t care let alone interrupt something , most people complain there is a lag issue when they are forced to interrupt .

 

Let see week 3 and a half , there should be tons of 50 around nowadays .

Guess what most of my 50 friend list are offline ... even on peak hours .

Sure we can all reroll a alt , and play trough 8 stories and then quit .

But while knowing the system , this issue hampers gameplay especially frantic gameplay at the endgame .

 

Let see Black Talon normal mode , almost no lag no problems , Hard mode freaking hell lag >.< interrupt has to be done with perfection or else it won´t connect .

Hit enrage timer too often on bosses .

 

No wonder they don´t give combat text window , now I also know why , cause onscreen data and server data don´t match or are sync properly .

bandwidth doesn't matter at all as i said earlier ... the game use AT MOST 55k/sec wich is not even 1mpbs connection ... Even if you had a 1000 mpbs connection the game would not use more than 55k/sec.

 

the real deal is :

 

Loading = 55k/sec

pvping = 12.4k/sec average over 1 battleground.

upload during pvp = 3.75k/sec average as well.

If this is true, it would explain why my i7 extreme, with its 8 logical cores which, up until now, has not struggled with anything, including rendering high def video whilst playing a game on one monitor and watching a movie on my second, has the temperature shoot up to 80 degrees as soon as SWTOR is launched.

Ok, I did as you asked and read through the paper. I understood what it was saying quite well, as I work with 3D models for my living.

 

I couldn't find any mention of merging 2d streamed data and 3d client data together. If you could point out the relevent passages I will read them.

 

The system described in the paper is totally different to running one set of images from your computer and mixing in other images from the server. It is a proprietary system made to view models held remotely.

 

Unless you're suggesting all models and textures are bring rendered remotely and the whole thing is being streamed ala "Onlive" (which is isn't, obvioulsy).

 

I still maintain the the difficulty and effort to bring these images together would negate their usefullness as copy protection. Think of the programming man hours it would have taken them. There are much cheaper and easier ways to copy protect stuff.

 

Yes, I'm coming to the same conclusion as you. This paper isn't mentioning anyway to run 3d models in any animated way remotely, especially only partially. It's mainly about letting a user interact with a low res model, and then give them static images when they want to see high res.

 

I don't see how this would apply to SWTOR

So in short, everyone is using Bioware's servers as a remote video card? That information/rendering is then fed back to our respective computers?

 

Thus the hard bottleneck when people are PvPing (tons of movement/animation/combat data).

 

If this is true then this game is dead. It's a $200 Million dollar game that committed suicide the momment it was released.

 

WOW!! If SWTOR fails because of this it will be the 2nd Starwars MMO to commit suicide.

 

AMAZING!

I was just seeing that comment from pcgamers interview with some dude from BW: - He says, more or less, that 95% of players have no issues with the game, and the rest are the low end pc gamers. -

 

I am thinking that if OP has the right of things, that this guy is going to cringe his little feet off of himself once this information goes mainstream.

Good find man, keep this page Alive. I'd love go see an answer about this from the devs, but you know they will just deny and ignore it lol

Ok, I did as you asked and read through the paper. I understood what it was saying quite well, as I work with 3D models for my living.

 

I couldn't find any mention of merging 2d streamed data and 3d client data together. If you could point out the relevent passages I will read them.

 

The system described in the paper is totally different to running one set of images from your computer and mixing in other images from the server. It is a proprietary system made to view models held remotely.

 

Unless you're suggesting all models and textures are bring rendered remotely and the whole thing is being streamed ala "Onlive" (which is isn't, obvioulsy).

 

I still maintain the the difficulty and effort to bring these images together would negate their usefullness as copy protection. Think of the programming man hours it would have taken them. There are much cheaper and easier ways to copy protect stuff.

 

Bottom of the second page:

 

Hybrid hardware/software rendering. Hybrid hardware and software

rendering schemes can be used to take at least some advantage

of hardware accelerated rendering, while benefiting from software

rendering’s protections as described above. In one such scheme, a

small but critically important portion of a protected model’s geometry

(such as the nose of a face) is rendered in software, while the

rest of the model is rendered normally with the accelerated GPU

hardware. This technique serves as a deterrent to attackers tampering

with the graphics drivers or hardware path, but the two-phase

drawing with readback of the color and depth buffers can incur a

performance hit, and may require special treatment to avoid artifacts

on the border of the composition of the two images.

In another hybrid rendering scheme, the 3D geometry is transformed

and per-vertex lighting computations are performed in software.

The depth values computed for each vertex are distorted in

a manner that still preserves the correct relative depth ordering,

while concealing the actual model geometry as much as possible.

The GPU is then used to complete rendering, performing rasterization,

texturing, etc. Such a technique potentially keeps the 3D

vertex stream hidden from attackers, but the distortions of the depth

buffer values may impair certain graphics operations (fog computation,

some shadow techniques), and the geometry may need to be

coarsely depth sorted so that Z-interpolation can still be performed

in a linear space.

Nice post OP .

 

I'm looking forward for an answer from BioWare, and if it turns out to be true, bye SWTOR.

So in short, everyone is using Bioware's servers as a remote video card? That information/rendering is then fed back to our respective computers?

 

Thus the hard bottleneck when people are PvPing (tons of movement/animation/combat data).

 

If this is true then this game is dead. It's a $200 Million dollar game that committed suicide the momment it was released.

 

WOW!! If SWTOR fails because of this it will be the 2nd Starwars MMO to commit suicide.

 

AMAZING!

 

Yes it is - Its not quite as bad as an NGE the day after you go purchase an expansion, but its kinda up there - it deserves one of those big facepalm pictures at the very least.

This sounds like a complete joke to me. The only reason i can see for doing it like this is because Lucas Arts demanded that all assets are copy protected and EA/Bioware was forced to comply.

 

Or this is some kind of weird research project they are toying around with.

 

Pretty much this is the only thing that I could think of why they would need to implement such a feature.

If this is true, it would explain why my i7 extreme, with its 8 logical cores which, up until now, has not struggled with anything, including rendering high def video whilst playing a game on one monitor and watching a movie on my second, has the temperature shoot up to 80 degrees as soon as SWTOR is launched.

 

This is interesting, because I recently replaced my mobo and processor with an i7 2600k, and my mobo came with heat monitoring software. I've been monitoring it just to make sure I had my cooling set up properly, and I've seen no difference in heat levels between SWTOR and other games I play.

 

I consistently have around 52 C temps when running SWTOR, or any other game, and I idle in the high 30s to low 40s

Edited January 11, 2012 by Granrick