This is the 6th post about this issue:

1st post (117 pages long): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=140954

2nd post (112 pages long): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=151787

3rd post (125 pages long): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162569

4th post (148 pages long): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=164481

5th post (117 pages long): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=167957

Off topic: If you are looking for some information in order to increase the graphics quality of the game, and since nothing can be done with model textures until Bioware gives us real hi-res textures, I recommend you to visit this post in order to increase the scenario texture quality: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=178454

So here we go. The answer we wanted, and also probably the answer nobody wanted:

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

 

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

 

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

 

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

 

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

 

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

 

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

 

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

 

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

 

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

 

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

So no, we won't have high resolution textures in a 2012 AAA game anytime soon.

Thanks all for the support on this subject guys.

We finally got a first response by Stephen Reid. I'll just quote it:

Hey all, wanted to let you know we're aware of this issue.

 

We're tracking down the details with the development team and will give you an update soon - hopefully later today.

I'll update this post as soon as we get that info.

Original 1st post with 117 pages: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=140954

I want to thank EVERYBODY for the support we are all giving to this post. Many good opinions here. More than 50 pages in 1 day clearly shows one thing: as customers paying for a 50$ product and worth 15$ a month, we deserve an answer.

//Update

Ok, since this has become the "official" post for the High Resolution Textures issue, I'm going to update this post for newcomers with the information we have at the moment. So, here are the facts we know:

1- The game had high resolution textures during beta. But they disappeared before releasing the live client.

2- You are NOT playing in high settings, no matter what your preferences window says. At this moment, medium=high, and there is no high, so you are all playing viewing your char's textures in medium quality.

3- This was expected to be fixed in the PTS. However, at this moment the issue hasn't been fixed for 1.1. What is more, they deleted the "Medium" quality option, and now there are only two options. Low and High. And yes, you are right: High is just the new Medium, as you can see in this screenshot:

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9238/swtor3.png

More info on this, by MaxWham:

Ok, I've made myself to download the whole Test Client, and that's what I've found:

Now there are only 2 options for "Texture Quality", "Shader Complexity" and "Character

Level of Detail":

 

http://floomby.com/content/Unhn91yMJ0

 

http://floomby.com/content/mx3gBmTTkS

 

http://floomby.com/content/axEz2UPYUE

 

This is how the game looks on Low:

 

http://floomby.com/content/5hsuNryE1E

 

And High:

 

http://floomby.com/content/SpcGe55FUk

 

So you see enviroment textures do change, but the character ones are always the same...

The options of "Low" and "High" only affect cutscenes, but unfortunately I can't make screenies during them:(...

4- Somehow, the high resolution textures are already in the game. But they are not being used while playing with your character. You can see em during dialog cutscenes. You can see them on your companions wardrobe preview window. And you can see them for 0,5 secs after clicking on your holo terminal in your ship. Here are some examples:

Medium: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/screenshot2012010419385.jpg/

High: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/851/screenshot2012010419390.jpg/

Medium: http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8974/screenshot2012010710454.jpg

High: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/553/hirez.png

Medium: http://imgur.com/NqI7j

High: http://imgur.com/M7Geg

ToonPhil shared with us this one: http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3646/swtorhightextures1.png

Another one from Adamant:

Medium: http://i.imgur.com/PsqBo.jpg

High: http://i.imgur.com/U1RMk.jpg

And yet another one: http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r277/UnruheEndlos/The%20Old%20Republic/TORTextureComparison.jpg

One of the best high/med comparison photosets I've seen in this forum, by Rhykker: http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5493/hirez.jpg

Gif showing the difference between both: http://m.uploadedit.com/bac/1325903803236.gif

and another gif: http://i40.tinypic.com/ip8wmb.gif

And a video:

And a WoW vs SWTOR comparison: http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r277/UnruheEndlos/TORWOWComparison.jpg

Also, I'm getting this technical information from the user Lemon_King. It's really impressive what some users like him are finding inside the code:

FYI: Did some mining, in the Renderer where it handles Dynamic Models - There is code for once it has all the textures for a Player / NPC Dynamic model is resizes the texture by 50%. So forcing MipMap Bias to -1 won't work around this issue.

However, a crafty dll Mod for RemoteRenderer could get around this issue by setting the resize to 1:1 instead of 1:2."

 

XML Data for Controlling Texture MipMaps in RemoteRenderer.dll @ 0x00096B60

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<TextureObject>

<MagFilter>Linear</MagFilter>

<MinFilter>Linear</MinFilter>

<MipMapFilter>Linear</MipMapFilter>

<UAddress>Clamp</UAddress>

<VAddress>Clamp</VAddress>

<WAddress>Clamp</WAddress>

<LODBias>0</LODBias>

<MaxMipMap>1</MaxMipMap>

<Compression>Color</Compression>

<Type>Image</Type>

</TextureObject>

 

Direct Dump from RemoteRenderer.dll @ 0x000944B9

 

Shader Function for Downscaling Textures

Code:

#ifdef PS_1_x.#define TEX2D( value ) tex2D( tex##value, In.T##value ).#define EXTRA_TEXCOORD( value ) float2 T##value : TEXCOORD##value;.#define CONSTANT_SCALE( value ) ( ( (value) > 2.0 ) ? 1.0 : ( (value) / 2.0 ) ).#define RESCALE( value ) value += value.#else.#define TEX2D( value ) tex2D( tex##value, In.T0 ).#define EXTRA_TEXCOORD( value ).#define CONSTANT_SCALE( value ) value.#define RESCALE( value ).#endif.sampler tex0 : register( s0 );sampler tex1 : register( s1 );sampler tex2 : register( s2 );float4 consta : register( c0 );struct VS_OUT{ float2 T0: TEXCOORD0; EXTRA_TEXCOORD( 1 ) EXTRA_TEXCOORD( 2 )};float4 main( VS_OUT In ) : COLOR{ const float4 crc = { CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.595794678f ), -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.813476563f ), 0, 0.0 }; const float4 crb = { 0, -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.391448975f ), CONSTANT_SCALE( 2.017822266f ), 0.0 }; const float4 adj = { -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.87065506f ), CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.529705048f ), -CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.081668854f ), 0 }; float4 p; float y = TEX2D( 0 ).a; float cr = TEX2D( 1 ).a; float cb = TEX2D( 2 ).a; p = y * CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.164123535f ); p += (crc * cr) + (crb * cb) + adj; RESCALE( p ); p.w = 1.0; p *= consta; return p;}........#ifdef PS_1_x.#define TEX2D( value ) tex2D( tex##value, In.T##value ).#define EXTRA_TEXCOORD( value ) float2 T##value : TEXCOORD##value;.#define CONSTANT_SCALE( value ) ( ( (value) > 2.0 ) ? 1.0 : ( (value) / 2.0 ) ).#define RESCALE( value ) value += value.#else.#define TEX2D( value ) tex2D( tex##value, In.T0 ).#define EXTRA_TEXCOORD( value ).#define CONSTANT_SCALE( value ) value.#define RESCALE( value ).#endif.sampler tex0 : register( s0 );sampler tex1 : register( s1 );sampler tex2 : register( s2 );sampler tex3 : register( s3 );float4 consta : register( c0 );struct VS_OUT{ float2 T0: TEXCOORD0; EXTRA_TEXCOORD( 1 ) EXTRA_TEXCOORD( 2 ) EXTRA_TEXCOORD( 3 )};float4 main( VS_OUT In ) : COLOR{ const float4 crc = { CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.595794678f ), -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.813476563f ), 0, 0.0 }; const float4 crb = { 0, -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.391448975f ), CONSTANT_SCALE( 2.017822266f ), 0.0 }; const float4 adj = { -CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.87065506f ), CONSTANT_SCALE( 0.529705048f ), -CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.081668854f ), 0 }; float4 p; float y = TEX2D( 0 ).a; float cr = TEX2D( 1 ).a; float cb = TEX2D( 2 ).a; float a = TEX2D( 3 ).a; p = y * CONSTANT_SCALE( 1.164123535f ); p += (crc * cr) + (crb * cb) + adj; RESCALE( p ); p.w = a; p *= consta; return p;}.ps_2_0

 

It is important to note that after 200+ pages, Bioware still hasn't said anything about this.

I'm also quoting this very well written post:

Well, that thread on the PTS forum shows that they at least know about this one and are reading it. I have faith in Bioware to fix this issue, I'm sure they understand the damage to their credit by removing the medium texture setting and changing it to be called "high" and obviously the cat's out of the bag now. I think in general if they answer the following questions here, most of us will be satisfied -

 

1. Please clarify the "work around" requested in the first post of this thread, including a clarification of the sentence: If you installed prior to 5:00AM CST on January 4th, 2012, your graphics will display as "Low" even if actual in-game settings are higher due to automatic preference detection. and if reinstalling the game from origin, or any other source will remedy this issue.

 

2. Please explain the removal of the "medium" texture setting on the PTS and its apparent promotion to being called "high" despite the fact that it still retains all of the characteristics and low quality textures of the current "medium" setting.

 

3. Please indicate if a fix is being worked on/implemented, and if so, when we may roughly be able to expect it.

 

Muddy textures are not a game breaker. You can still, as I have, have an enormous amount of fun with this game. I think we jump the gun if we say that bioware is sweeping the problem under the carpet, without an explanation, we wont know for sure if that is the case until 1.1 goes live.

 

That being said, this is a Triple A title, from a Triple A studio, and a Triple A publisher. We are indeed paying customers who really want noting more than an explanation. I think we all generally understand that this isn't a "snap your fingers" fix, because if it was they would have no reason to hold it back. The frustration from most reasonable people in this thread is one of lack of explanation/communication.

 

We can split hairs about if the issue is lighting, or if its textures (though the visual proof shows textures http://m.uploadedit.com/bac/1325903803236.gif). And we can say "Why not just settle? Its a good game," But the core of this problem is a simple one - missing high res textures, and the apparent lack of information on a fix.

 

Say you buy a blender at Wal-Mart, you have really been wanting this blender. You have read previews about it online, you have been watching videos about it, and have been ooggling at pictures of it. One of its prime features, often advertized is the new "Mega Frappe" button. This button helps to differentiate this blender from its competition.

 

Alas! When you buy the blender and fervently remove it from the box, you find that the Mega Frappe button has been pried out, and the words "Mega Frappe" have been crossed out with a magic marker. Surely you would feel like you have been just been, for lack of a better word, screwed.

 

Now, replace the words Blender, with SWTOR and Mega Frappe with Hi-Res Textures and I think that you will find that the frustration is indeed well placed.

 

I have faith in Bioware to fix this issue, but we really do need to be told what is going on.

//Update.

So, this is what the official known bugs forums says:

If you installed prior to 5:00AM CST on January 4th, 2012, your graphics will display as "Low" even if actual in-game settings are higher due to automatic preference detection.

Workaround: Your graphics setting will display properly once modified and saved.

Workaround: Individual preferences will display properly once modified and saved.

Also, it was stated on 1.0.2 patch that:

Upon a new installation and first launch of the game, settings files and in-game graphics preferences are now consistent with each other.

So, please Bioware, can we get a clarification on this? Does this mean that if we reinstall the game using the online installer, we will get high resolution textures everytime and not only during dialog cutscenes?

If not, any ETA on when the high resolution textures bug will be fixed?

Thanks in advance for answering this confusive situation.

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

Because the previous thread has exceeded our normal threshold for thread length, we've started this new thread for the community to discuss high resolution textures.

As always, we ask that the community keep the following things in mind when responding:

• Stay on Target - Please keep discussion on topic.
  
• Insults - Please do not resort to or use them in any way in your posts. Posts should be productive, not destructive.
  
• Trolling - Please do not post messages that are purposefully designed to provoke, antagonize, or otherwise elicit a negative emotional response.
  
• Agree to Disagree - Be respectful of others' viewpoints even if they are opposite of your own. Discuss disagreements constructively.
  
• Flag, Don't Fight - Utilize the Flag Post feature to report possible rules violations, rather than responding to or fighting them.
  

We would also like to bring to your attention a follow-up post made by Community Manager Stephen Reid in a previous thread:

That screenshot is from a cinematic in-game. As stated, cinematic scenes use high resolution textures because we have control over how many characters are rendered on-screen at once. This is how the game was always intended to look in cinematics. We did not 'remove' high resolution textures - they were always in the game for use in cinematics.

 

With that said, thank you for all of your responses. We understand everyone's desires around this issue, and although it's not going to be an overnight fix, as mentioned we're working on addressing this. Many of the suggestions you have made are similar to potential changes the development team is investigating...

Thank you and enjoy the discussion!

I think, at this point, Bioware would do better to re-implement the high-res texture option. Yes, it may cause game instability -- provide a warning for such. Let players have the option.

You'll have people complaining either way. They're mad now because they feel "cheated" without the textures -- they can be mad later when the game runs sluggish, as Reid predicts, with high-res textures. At least in that second scenario, BW can say "you asked for it, we gave it to you, we warned you it may not be ideal gameplay" (more diplomatically, of course).

So, in that regard, I support the option for high-res textures.

When are we finally going to get a real and honest response from Bioware on this issue. The last response was frankly insulting to the player base. It's painfully obvious nothing less then getting these High res textures into the game asap and working efficently is going to be accepted by subscribers so there's no point in making excuses anymore but getting to work to do what needs to be done.

Lets get an official response with what is clearly inevitable before you lose a lot of paying customers when the free month is up. There's no point in finally conceding months later after you've already lost thousand of subscribers. By then it will be far to late.

Mr. Stephen Reid,

How come the highres texture worked fine in beta for months

and now with release they dont anymore?

It feels strange to look at the response about this issue. Basicly poeple should be able to choose their setting. It is a pcgame and not a game for xbox.

Could we get some clarification on that?

Thanks.

Simply said. If you cannot provide features, which are naturally part of ~ 95% of the pcgames released, and rather stay blatantly quiet about it, not answering at all,

i want to issue a refund, please.

Thank you!

oyyyy...

jesus people...enough already, if its REALLY REALLY that gamebreaking to you, just leave and cancel already, i think they have given this subject enough attention and answers already, they will implement it, as soon as the 1.2 patch, but just because you all keep screaming and posting the eleventieth thread about the subject wont make it go any faster

there MUST be reasons, whatever they are , that they are reluctant to do this, there MUST be deeper issues here that they may not be able to reveal (think about it, if it was so gamebreaking that it causes server instabilty or your character to glitch in some unwanted way , would you really tell the masses so they could duplicate it? )

it cant be that easy to switch on and it cant be some devs personal vendetta to just not let us have it, yall need to chill out and have some friggin patience

PS: to clarify , i do want high rez as much as the next guy, and i do agree this issue could have been handled in a more proffessional way by BW , but im not gonna stop enjoying the whole of the rest of the product jsut because of some grainy pixels, ill just lower my rez to 1920x 1080 and barely notice it 90% of the time while i wait for a fix

"With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change"

WUT? so if not for 5000 posts you'd just stuff us with these crappy graphics and do nothing about?

to confirm, refunds are being issued?

That's what I heard. Debating.

WUT? so if not for 5000 posts you'd just stuff us with these crappy graphics and do nothing about?

lol so now that you got your free month and decided you don't really like the game, you can just complain about the lack of high res textures & get a full refund?

lol

Who said BioWare wasn't innovative? That's a 1st!

That's what I heard. Debating.

goodddd times.

That's sort of how feedback works.

you mean we absolutely cant trust BW to do the right thing on their own and we have to keep their feet to the fire and force them to do so?

lol so now that you got your free month and decided you don't relly like the game, you can just complain about the lack of high res textures & get a full refund?

 

 

lol

 

 

Who said BioWare was innovative? That's a 1st!

Your free month cost $60 minimum though, just saying...

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

 

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

 

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

 

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

 

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

 

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

 

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

 

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

 

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

 

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

 

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

Short Answer: You Bioware devs need to implement a LOD system that calculates how many players are on screen and the load it has on GPU then enable a texture LOD that lowers the detail when many people are in the same area to keep speeds consitant. This feature would also have a drop down where the user based on their system can pick different LOD settings ala low med high. or None if they so choose.

To be honest I am not sure why you didn't implement (not you personnally but bioware) a LOD system for characters in the first place you knew there would be heavy amounts of players in certain areas like pvp matches, hubs, and world pvp....

Go take a look at Aion their character models (poly's and textures) blow this game away. And I have sieged with over 700 people in one spot no slow downs on my system. They have a LOD system so if they detect your fps is dropping due to overloading of textures in GPU memory they start stripping the farthest players from you of textures till your system is at a decent FPS.

lol so now that you got your free month and decided you don't relly like the game, you can just complain about the lack of high res textures & get a full refund?

 

 

lol

 

 

Who said BioWare was innovative? That's a 1st!

these are the dangers of releasing unfinished product that does not deliver... people will et upset and find excuses to get their money back

lol so now that you got your free month and decided you don't relly like the game, you can just complain about the lack of high res textures & get a full refund?

 

 

lol

 

 

Who said BioWare was innovative? That's a 1st!

shhh... 10 fps in hutball.

tomorrow i better get my money.

I don't know, to me it sounds like BW took the eaiser, lazier way out of this issue.

Does the game engine have anything to do with this? I've heard a lot of negative feedback about this games engine.

I know nothing about game making, so I'm just asking.

you mean we absolutely cant trust BW to do the right thing on their own and we have to keep their feet to the fire and force them to do so?

As far as "doing the right thing," they already did that. They disabled a feature which led to poor performance and gameplay. Then, when it was revealed just how large of an issue it was, they began working on it. Both were the correct calls to make at the time.

I don't know, to me it sounds like BW took the eaiser, lazier way out of this issue.

 

Does the game engine have anything to do with this? I've heard a lot of negative feedback about this games engine.

 

I know nothing about game making, so I'm just asking.

Yes and no. Hero engine, which they use their own modified version of, is apparently dirt cheap to licence, so they have to program alot of features themselfs. During beta highres textures did work, but now they dont anymore and it is not very well optimized in general. This probably would not happened with unreal tech, which they use for mass effect.

Altho hero engine has some interesting interactive tools, which unreal sdk does not have, as far as i am aware.

Yes and no. Hero engine, which they use their own modified version of, is apparently dirt cheap to licence, so they have to program alot of features themselfs. During beta highres textures did work, but now they dont anymore and it is not very well optimized in general. This probably would not happened with unreal tech, which they use for mass effect.

Thanks Ommm!

oyyyy...

 

jesus people...enough already, if its REALLY REALLY that gamebreaking to you, just leave and cancel already, i think they have given this subject enough attention and answers already, they will implement it, as soon as the 1.2 patch, but just because you all keep screaming and posting the eleventieth thread about the subject wont make it go any faster

 

there MUST be reasons, whatever they are , that they are reluctant to do this, there MUST be deeper issues here that they may not be able to reveal (think about it, if it was so gamebreaking that it causes server instabilty or your character to glitch in some unwanted way , would you really tell the masses so they could duplicate it? )

 

it cant be that easy to switch on and it cant be some devs personal vendetta to just not let us have it, yall need to chill out and have some friggin patience

 

PS: to clarify , i do want high rez as much as the next guy, and i do agree this issue could have been handled in a more proffessional way by BW , but im not gonna stop enjoying the whole of the rest of the product jsut because of some grainy pixels, ill just lower my rez to 1920x 1080 and barely notice it 90% of the time while i wait for a fix

My eye sight is crap and i can't tell the difference between low and high quality unless i get uncomfortably close to my monitor so my care factor is low.

But, if you advertise a Porsche and deliver a VW Beetle then the consumer has legal cause to be concerned about misleading advertising. They shouldn't have kept putting out high quality gameplay videos if they couldn't deliver on it.

While nobody expects games to be of trailer quality, ones showing gameplay are meant to be indicative of what you should expect in game.

You should also stop telling other people what they should and should not get upset about, as customers it is their right to complain about any aspect of the product which could jeopardise the business relationship.

People need to let go of the concept that games are not big business and consumers shouldn't expect the high standard they expect from any other product they purchase or service they PAY for.

If they can't deliver then they should come out and say it and say when the customers can expect features they assumed they were already paying for. To shut off the feature because somone's rig might struggle with the load sounds like BS. Give everyone all the options and if my rig struggles then I can turn things down until i have the performance I am comfortable with.

If I were to guess I believe it is a limitation of the graphic engine they are using and because they don't want to cop even more flak for using a third party engine instead of creating their own custom built one for their needs they claim the reasons they have put through the PR machine.

Alphas and Betas are really the area where you should test this level of functionality, you shouldn't launch live by hardcoding lower end graphics and claim people's rigs can't handle it. There are much better looking FPS games out there where performance is critical which handle fine by even average rigs.

There is more to it then what they are letting on but I don't really care about reasons, you just want to see a developer handle issues well and resolve issues timely because if they struggle with handling problems it is usually not a good sign for the future.

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well.

The thing is, the ultra-high end enthusiast doesnt care. Those with beefy enough rigs should be allowed to access the maximum settings. Yes, it wont be usable by most people, but thats not the point. Some people drop thousands on rigs with very high end parts (my rig is pretty good, and not even close to the best available).

When im playing SWTOR, im using about 60% of the VRAM, and getting 100-200fps @ 1920x1200. As the textures exist, we should be able to enable them via some method in order to be able to fully use the computer power available. It doesnt need to be via in-game settings: there would be too many complaints on the forums about low FPS/crashing due to insane VRAM usage and so on. Simply add a config line like "texturequality = 3" to represent 'high' settings (current high is really medium). That way those who know what to expect have access, while those with no clue about the settings wont accidentally get 5fps.

Look at Crysis (I will never stop using it as an example). It came out and destroyed EVERY SINGLE computer available. It just couldn't be maxed out. Most played at medium settings and got 30fps. However, there were still the few with Quad Core CPUs overclocked to 4.5ghz, 8gb ram and quad-SLI 8800GTX setups that would end up writing custom config files in order to surpass the maximum settings. Years later, with most high-end rigs getting 100fps or so, most use extremely high configs that surpass the default "very high" by a lot.

And yes, I KNOW its possible. Entities in cut scenes are flagged for high-rez textures, and then de-flagged once the cut scene is over. Knowing that, it shouldnt be too hard to just have that flag set to 'on' all the time.

That, or someone will simply find a way to force it (replace medium texture files with the high ones, etc.).