Why is there a copy protection system in the graphics, and is it crippling the game?

Nope. They're completely separate. The texture atlasing is a solution to handle holding all the texture data in VRAM and making seperate render calls to the graphics card.

The OPs suggestion had to do with loading assets over the internet, possibly texture or animation data, for the purposes of trying to secure those assets. He confused the article, because that would not protect the assets, and the article's method involves actually rendering EVERYTHING on the server, which is not being done in SWTOR and can be tested. (we have tested it, this isn't happening. Read the last few pages for explanation.)

This has nothing to do with a local server or decryption whatsoever.

Read the response

Makes Sense. However, it still doesn't fix the problem that the engine runs terrible... even on high end machines.

so..... we are running LOW RES TEXTURES when in game (outside of cinematics) yet it still runs terrible?

Does this not seem like a problem?

I love the response... I hope bioware keeps communicating with the community

still........ fix ur engine.......

So basically the engine is not fit for purpose.

Stop comparing this to WoW, we're on the PC. We don't get stuck in release purgatory where every game is buggy as hell. There's a difference between "not ideally optimized" and memory leaks and frame-rate issues on a high-end computer.

The Witcher 2 has a third party engine and it ran fantastically, I know you're going to say "BUT IT'S NOT AN MMO" An engine is an engine.

He said that the original 'high' setting was too much for most systems, even high-end ones to handle, because of the wide variability in what gets displayed at any given time. The high-res textures are still there and are used in cutscenes, because cutscenes are tightly controlled and thus don't have the variability that pushes the super high res textures to the point they're a problem.

And from the way it's described, it sounds like the problem has more to do with getting the assets off the hard drive and into the memory than with what happens once they're in the memory, which explains my apparent 'paging' on the republic fleet station...as I think I had high res textures forced via a trick with the launcher at the time.

Only answer I can think of for that would be to lean on the memory more: my experiences with explosive memory leak induced crashes caused the client's memory usage to spike to around 3.7-3.8 GB before it crashed, suggesting it's not using much, if any, more than 256MB of VRAM presently. Loading more textures into the vram from the outset, if the VRAM is available, would increase initial load times but vastly reduce the performance hit. Instead of having to look up and load everything on the screen, it only needs the ones it hasn't loaded in yet.

The problem with that would be that the client is 32 bit: any VRAM used reduces the amount of normal system RAM it can address on a 64 bit system (on a 32 bit system it's reduced from the outset, so it may as well use it if it's got it). I've seen shiny new graphics cards with 1GB, 2GB, 3GB, and 4GB of VRAM on them. The client process generally pushes somewhere between 1GB and 2GB of Memory usage. In theory using up to 1GB of VRAM shouldn't be a problem. 2GB is pushing it, more is going to have severe performance effects.

So this gets more feasible with a 64 bit client.

Agreed. I think the problem comes from The Hero Engine. It is a very, VERY expensive 3rd party engine, and its brand new, so it hasn't been tested much in a production game. The developer tools are AMAZING (seriously, some of the best I've seen, and I've worked in-industry), so it allows them to make all these huge, detailed planets. I really helps their ability to build the game.

But it would seem the rendering engine that comes with those tools isn't quite as robust as we would like. And while good tools are important for good content, all the content in the world is no fun on a bad game-play experience.

Between Bioware and Simutronics, I'm sure they'll work out the kinks and optimize the engine better. Its just a question of how long its going to take.

For instance, The Hero Engine may still be single-threaded. Ugh. Supposedly they're working on multi-threading it so it'll run smoother on multiple cores.

HEY, maybe thats what that second process is all about!

Quote: Originally Posted by Tiron_Raptor

If it is in fact the case that assets have been deliberately withheld from the client, and thus have to be transmitted to the client from the server in some form, it goes a VERY long way to explaining most of the performance problems
SWTOR has been having.

Delayed animations? It's having to send what you're doing to the server, and then wait for the server/the second process to render it and send it to the client.

Queues? They're apparently tying up a fair portion of their server resources and bandwidth doing the client's job server side.
Disabled High Res Textures? Sending the higher quality images would result in a tremendous increase in the memory load and bandwidth usage of the server. They could also just be too much for the remote renderer server to handle, and had to be disabled to prevent performance degradation.

Performance drop in areas with a lot of characters? The DLL Referenced in the textures thread appears, from what I can tell, to be specifically related to character models in particular, so it's logical that the performance hit from it would be worst when there are many characters on screen.

It makes so much sense, and potentially ties together a large number of the problems people have been reporting.

And for what? Copy protecting the models? Seriously?

This needs some serious, detailed, answers as to what exactly this 'remoterender' actually does, and what benefit it provides to us as customers. At the moment it sounds like it may be substantially degrading our experience and providing no benefits to us in return.

Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models? It has to be one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

Please Note:
**Dear Bioware, I have no ill will or bad faith intentions towards bioware, EA, or any of its subsidaries, and this is only a friendly courtesy warning from your neighborhood civil lawyer, that (condition) -IF- any of the foregoing is true and correct, then the following (condition(s)) -MAY- additionally apply to this situation, and I would suggest that BIOWARE clarifiy immediatly and/or fix these product malfunctions or defective designs in order to avoid any potential highly unfortunate future legal action regarding this matter (NOT from me).**

TITLE 15 > CHAPTER 2 > SUBCHAPTER I > USC Federal law § 45
The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act (P.L. 93-637) is a United States federal law, (15 U.S.C. § 2301 et seq.).

CHAPTER 50—CONSUMER PRODUCT WARRANTIES

• § 2301. Definitions
• § 2302. Rules governing contents of warranties
• § 2303. Designation of written warranties
• § 2304. Federal minimum standards for warranties
• § 2305. Full and limited warranting of a consumer product
• § 2306. Service contracts; rules for full, clear and conspicuous disclosure of terms and conditions; addition to or in lieu of written warranty
• § 2307. Designation of representatives by warrantor to perform duties under written or implied warranty
• § 2308. Implied warranties
• § 2309. Procedures applicable to promulgation of rules by Commission
• § 2310. Remedies in consumer disputes
• § 2311. Applicability to other laws
• § 2312. Effective dates


§ 45. Unfair methods of competition unlawful; prevention by Commission

Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45 grants the FTC power to investigate and prevent deceptive trade practices. The statute declares that “unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting consumers, are hereby declared unlawful.”[9] Unfairness and deception towards consumers represent two distinct areas of FTC enforcement and authority. The FTC also has authority over unfair methods of competition between businesses.

Types of liability

Section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability distinguishes between three major types of product liability claims:
manufacturing defect,
design defect,
a failure to warn (also known as marketing defects).

However, in most states, these are not legal claims in and of themselves, but are pleaded in terms of the theories mentioned above. For example, a plaintiff might plead negligent failure to warn or strict liability for defective design.[2]

Manufacturing defects are those that occur in the manufacturing process and usually involve poor-quality materials or shoddy workmanship. Design defects occur where the product design is inherently dangerous or useless (and hence defective) no matter how carefully manufactured; this may be demonstrated either by showing that the product fails to satisfy ordinary consumer expectations as to what constitutes a safe product, or that the risks of the product outweigh its benefits.[3] Failure-to-warn defects arise in products that carry inherent nonobvious dangers which could be mitigated through adequate warnings to the user, and these dangers are present regardless of how well the product is manufactured and designed for its intended purpose.


Negligence

A basic negligence claim consists of proof of
1.a duty owed, - Full graphics capability option and playable client conditions as displayed pre release in all advertisements and beta forms of the game, and non defective gameplay.

2.a breach of that duty, Negative graphics capability, defective gameplay

3.the breach was the cause in fact of the plaintiff's injury (defective gameplay, Low FPS, animation lag, poor client performance etc.)

4.the breach proximately caused the plaintiff's injury.

5.and the plaintiff suffered actual quantifiable injury (Stressful Defective gameplay while paying for a product/service ^see above).


(a) Declaration of unlawfulness; power to prohibit unfair practices; inapplicability to foreign trade
(1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce/consumers, are hereby declared unlawful.

(2) The Commission is hereby empowered and directed to prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, except banks, savings and loan institutions described in section 57a (f)(3) of this title, Federal credit unions described in section 57a (f)(4) of this title, common carriers subject to the Acts to regulate commerce, air carriers and foreign air carriers subject to part A of subtitle VII of title 49, and persons, partnerships, or corporations insofar as they are subject to the Packers and Stockyards Act, 1921, as amended [7 U.S.C. 181 et seq.], except as provided in section 406(b) of said Act [7 U.S.C. 227 (b)], from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

In the criminal law, criminal negligence is one of the three general classes of mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") element required to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability offense. It is defined as an act that is:
careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind, or in the case of gross negligence what would have been reckless in any other defendant.

From a legal perspective, culpability describes the degree of one's blameworthiness in the commission of a crime or offense. Except for strict liability crimes, the type and severity of punishment often follow the degree of culpability.

Modern criminal codes in the United States usually make distinct four degrees of culpability.

Legal definitions are:
1.A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offence when: 1.if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result; and
2.if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.
(purposefuly making gameplay defective to serve the manufactureres interest but produces tangible customer loses)

(Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models?)

2.A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when: 1.if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and
2.if the element (defective gameplay) involves a result of his conduct - Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models?), he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

(Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models?)

(Purposfuly making gameplay defective to serve the manufacturers interest but produces tangible consumer loses)

3.A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and intent of the actor's conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.
4.A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the actor's failure to perceive it, considering the nature and intent of his conduct and the circumstances known to him, involves a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.

(The above has been quoted verbatim from the Pennsylvania Crimes Code[dead link]. That in turn derives from the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, which is the basis for large portions of the criminal codes in most states. The only difference is that the MPC uses "purposely" instead of "intentionally".)

In short:
A person causes a result purposely if the result is his/her goal in doing the action that causes it, (Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models)
A person causes a result knowingly if he/she knows that the result is virtually certain to occur from the action he/she undertakes,

(Deliberately crippling the performance and appearance of the game for legitimate, paying customers in order to keep someone from being able to rebuild your 3D models)

A person causes a result (Defective Gameplay) recklessly if he/she is aware of and disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk of the result occurring from the action, and
A person causes a result negligently if there is a substantial and unjustifiable risk he/she is unaware of but should be aware of.

The first two types of culpability are each a subset of the following. Thus if someone acts purposely, they also act knowingly. If someone acts knowingly, they also act recklessly.

The definitions of specific crimes refer to these degrees to establish the mens rea (mental state) necessary for a person to be guilty of a crime. The stricter the culpability requirements, the harder it is for the prosecution to prove its case.

There is one more type of culpability, and that is strict liability. In strict liability crimes, the actor is responsible no matter what his mental state; if the result occurs, the actor is liable.

The Magnuson-Moss Act contains many definitions:
A "consumer" is a buyer of consumer goods for personal use. A buyer of consumer products for resale is not a consumer.
A "supplier" is any person engaged in the business of making a consumer product directly or indirectly available to consumers.
A "warrantor" is any supplier or other person who gives or offers a written warranty or who has some obligation under an implied warranty.
A "consumer product" is generally any tangible personal property for sale and that is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes. It is important to note that the determination whether a good is a consumer product requires a factual finding, on a case-by-case basis. Najran Co. for General Contracting and Trading v. Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc., 659 F. Supp. 1081 (S.D. Ga. 1986).
A "written warranty" (also called an express warranty) is any written promise made in connection with the sale of a consumer product by a supplier to a consumer that relates to the material and/or workmanship and that affirms that the product is defect-free or will meet a certain standard of performance over a specified time.
An "implied warranty" is defined in state law. The Magnuson-Moss Act simply provides limitations on disclaimers and provides a remedy for their violation.
Designations: A "full warranty" is one that meets the federal minimum standards for a warranty. Such warranties must be "conspicuously designated" as full warranties. If each of the following five statements is true about your warranty's terms and conditions, it is a "full" warranty: You do not limit the duration of implied warranties.
You provide warranty service to anyone who owns the product during the warranty period; that is, you do not limit coverage to first purchasers.
You provide warranty service free of charge, including such costs as returning the product or removing and reinstalling the product when necessary.
You provide, at the consumer's choice, either a replacement or a full refund if, after a reasonable number of tries, you are unable to repair the product.
You do not require consumers to perform any duty as a precondition for receiving service, except notifying you that service is needed, unless you can demonstrate that the duty is reasonable.

A "limited warranty" is one that does not meet the federal minimums. Such warranties must be "conspicuously designated" as limited warranties.

A "multiple warranty" is part full and part limited.
A "service contract" is different from a warranty because service contracts do not affirm the quality or workmanship of a consumer product. A service contract is a written instrument in which a supplier agrees to perform, over a fixed period or for a specified duration, services relating to the maintenance or repair, or both, of a consumer product. Agreements that meet the statutory definition of service contracts, but are sold and regulated under state law as contracts of insurance, do not come under the Act's provisions.
Disclaimer or Limitation of Implied Warranties when a service contract is sold:



http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/2301.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15..._15_10_50.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/ch50.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuso...s_Warranty_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_negligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_liability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuso...s_Warranty_Act

A big topic for the estimated 5% of users with performance issues..

My (off topic) reply to this is that bw should admit that the game doesnt run well and give an explanation for it, i cant believe that they dont have any clue what is causing performance issues that a lot of people are having. I have an aging system ( in short quad q9450, ati rad 5770 enough ram and vista 64 bit), but never ever had experienced bad performance with a recent game to a point that it isnt playable (at warzones, pve is fine, but still).
swtor does not deliver high end graphics but does need a high end system, and a lot of people are pissed about it. BW should give clear information about that and share this, otherwise people are kept guessing.

They're saying most people's PCs aren't fit for the high res textures at all times. Some of that fault probably comes down to the engine, but not all of it. Their concern is not that you can't run high res textures with the engine, it's that with the variable amount of players loading in at high res it can cause slowdown. They decided to err on the side of caution. They disabled running high res textures outside of cutscenes for a smoother run of the game.

Was it the right decision? Maybe not, Maybe so.

I say local server vs. the local hard drive due to the speculation earlier in this thread regarding the second process. Decryption would involve remote requests for keys, and although the data transferred would be small the load would be huge for the remote server authorizing the requests. Actually removing the high quality texture option even though it was available in the beta and used for advertisement is a very risky move, and there has to be an important reason. Reducing load on their servers would be one such reason.