Stopped reading here. I've told you approximately 4 or 5 times now that streaming of textures or animations has never been postulated.

 

Streaming of specific parts of the scene, probably just characters, after having been rendered on the server has been posulated, but is thought to be highly unrealistic and very unlikely.

 

Streaming of some MODELS from the server to the client, to be 'remote rendered' in the second process has been postulated, and is thought to be the most likely manifestation of the theory if it is in fact true.

 

Every thing you say continues to harp on about streaming textures and animations, despite the fact that it's never been suggested that these things were streamed.

 

I'm just going to stop even paying attention every time you start spouting these ridiculously far off the mark bits of nonsense.

I just can't keep your "hypothesis" straight, you aren't being very clear.

So its not textures or animations now, but "some models" that are being streamed and used by the second process or decrypted or something...

Again, same point works. Models are going to be exponentially larger files than textures.

Are they constantly streamed, or stored locally? If they're stored locally, then staying in one area should allow you to buffer up all the models and your performance should improve. Is that the case? If they aren't being stored, then which models are streamed? If its just your model, WHY? That doesn't accomplish anything for any reason. Your model would be viewable by someone else, and their model would be viewable by you. So that data is still out there, stored on SOMEBODY's local machine, so why not store it on yours? Is it more than just your player model? Then what? For what arbitrary reason? What would it accomplish? It would have to be ALL player models, and by the previous argument, you can't buffer them. So then, that means somehow the game is streaming to you EVERY player model over and over in real-time for every frame. Your bandwidth would explode.

SWTOR never uses more than a few kb/s unless it is downloading a patch. So thats not happening. The traffic we see with SWTOR is in the same ballpark as other MMOs. Therefor, it is purely game state data, and is not streaming any additional data.

Try downloading the streaming WoW client without main data. While you play, the game runs smoothly (the engine isn't effected by lack of assets) and many things are just very, very low texture while you start playing. The game will be pulling those assets down as fast as it can, so your internet connection will go up dramatically, to the hundreds of kb/s, and the texture quality will slowly, SLOWLY, improve. (because it takes minutes to load in textures, you can't stream ALL of them instantly in real-time.) If textures take that long, models would take longer. You would be sitting at a very black screen for minutes, then one model would show up, then another, slowly. And thats if you're caching the models, buffering them, which we already agreed you can test and prove isn't going on.

The performence problems are not huge and slow at start, and then the game gets smooth. Instead, the game looks pretty good, you've got good models and textures almost as soon as you're done loading, the second your computer can move them from HD to RAM to VRAM, and yet you've got small performance delays across the board. This is an unoptimized game engine, not massive data streaming.

Ridiculously far off the mark bits of nonsense?? Maybe you are just trolling. I guess I lose.

i'll also say right now that we're not 'remotely rendering' textures and sending to your client via your internet connection; that would be some impressive technology and if we were doing it, is likely something we'd have talked about before now.

 

I'll seek developer comment on this, but i just want to caution anyone from overreacting.

bwahaha, ^ this.

It doesn't help us to have rational informed discussions about the issues that we are facing.

 

That's just win right there.

I'm going to ask the development team to look into this, but I'd ask you to pull back on some of the more extreme speculation. It doesn't help us to have rational informed discussions about the issues that we are facing.

 

There is, to my knowledge, no single DLL that's responsible for a multitude of problems across the game. For example, our 'ability delay' issue is being addressed by the development team right now, and I've been told there are dozens of fixes potentially being looked at to help improve things. There's no single magic fix (although some fixes may have more of an effect than others).

 

I'll also say right now that we're not 'remotely rendering' textures and sending to your client via your internet connection; that would be some impressive technology and if we were doing it, is likely something we'd have talked about before now.

 

I'll seek developer comment on this, but I just want to caution anyone from overreacting.

The same caution I've been trying to emphasize more and more strongly, overreacting doesn't help anything.

And yes, it would be some impressive technology, which is why I found the mere idea fairly unbelievable from the start.

Frankly, I don't really want to believe any of this is right. I WANT it to be torn down bit by bit. Because I'd rather not believe that anyone involved in development at any of the companies involved is that foolish.

I'll continue updating the OP: It's been clarified and updated again already, and I'll add this post to it as well.

Most recent addition: "It has been stated that the 'missing data' was in fact localization data, because the original beta client installed all possible localization files, whereas the retail version only installs at most a few specific ones. Can anyone verify?"

I'll also say right now that we're not 'remotely rendering' textures and sending to your client via your internet connection; that would be some impressive technology and if we were doing it, is likely something we'd have talked about before now.

 

I'll seek developer comment on this, but I just want to caution anyone from overreacting.

Thanks. Can you also directly clarify or ask the dev team if there's a local server handling on-the-fly decryption of game assets? Basically the same situation you've already confirmed as false, but occurring on a local server vs. a remote one.

It doesn't help us to have rational informed discussions about the issues that we are facing.

Dr. Freud would like a word with you sir.

(I'm sorry I know it's just a word-choice slip up, but given these forums it's pretty darned funny).

Wrong, you should've seen Bioshock and Oblivion when they were first released. Talk about getting a little crispy.

You can't have work your hardware work at more than maximum. And if your hardware fries at maximum you can fry it with any cpu/gpu load tool. You have to ensure that your hardware gets enough cooling when it works at maximum.

Guys, please don't forget that finding something including the word "remoterenderer" on your own PC means nothing.

 

The server-client model (ie something involving a remote renderer, where remote is your own machine through loopback) is often used in multicore rendering and IPC calls.

 

I know it is easy to get fueled by something like this, but as a few guys have advocated, please use reason before jumping to conclusions.

 

Even though the OP maintains that only a portion of a 3D model would need to be protected (and thus re-sent) I believe the simple fact that the engine still needs to sync it up for everyone would make it unfeasible in hub areas (as evidenced in the post by StephenReid).

 

If you actually look up time-rewrite lag compensation in engines such as the Source engine, or more recently, Battlefield 3, you realize that the amount of data actually transferred for sync-up is text size, ie as small as possible.

 

Just food for thought.

An interesting idea, that I think I'm too tired at the moment to process fully. I'm gonna try to look it up and see if I can process it.

Glad to finally be seeing some concrete ideas being laid down to explain some of this.

Thanks. Can you also directly clarify or ask the dev team if there's a local server handling on-the-fly decryption of game assets? Basically the same situation you've already confirmed as false, but occurring on a local server vs. a remote one.

Think about how long it takes steam to decrypt your files. You wouldn't need the entire 20GB to be unencrypted every time you play, but still, there's no way its decrypting all the game assets in real-time.

If somebody can provide a counterexample, I'd be thrilled, but I've never heard of a game decrypting major assets in real-time. Lots of games like doom and quake would zip some of their assets, but a zip is quicker to unzip than secure encryption, and files were smaller. They might encrypt the config files or a program file or something small, but the entire games grahpics?

I guess this goes back to the "its just a few character models, the rest aren't" argument, which doesn't make much sense. Why, again?

I'm going to ask the development team to look into this, but I'd ask you to pull back on some of the more extreme speculation. It doesn't help us to have rational informed discussions about the issues that we are facing.

 

There is, to my knowledge, no single DLL that's responsible for a multitude of problems across the game. For example, our 'ability delay' issue is being addressed by the development team right now, and I've been told there are dozens of fixes potentially being looked at to help improve things. There's no single magic fix (although some fixes may have more of an effect than others).

 

I'll also say right now that we're not 'remotely rendering' textures and sending to your client via your internet connection; that would be some impressive technology and if we were doing it, is likely something we'd have talked about before now.

 

I'll seek developer comment on this, but I just want to caution anyone from overreacting.

Stephen, I have a Masters in IT - I can point you in the dirction of this particular piece of technology. If indeed it is being used, then this poses a lot of problems - not only redering isssues but placing pieces of software on people's computers that they are not aware of - there could be serious legal ramifications if the latter is the case...

Stephen, I have a Masters in IT - I can point you in the dirction of this particular piece of technology. If indeed it is being used, then this poses a lot of problems - not only redering isssues but placing pieces of software on people's computers that they are not aware of - there could be serious legal ramifications if the latter is the case...

But since he said they aren't, your point is moot.

i had this mental image of a forum rep running into ohlen's office yelling "sir, they're onto us!" after reading the op. That being said i'll just sit back and watch to see if/when this is confirmed.

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

The "smell test" of conspiracy theories is to answer a single question: WHY?

Why would BioWare put all this nefarious code in place? Why would they create high-quality textures and then not use them? Not only not use them, but attempt to cover them up?

They're a business. They want to make a profit. That is their only driving force.

Please answer the "WHY?" question within that context.

Think about how long it takes steam to decrypt your files. You wouldn't need the entire 20GB to be unencrypted every time you play, but still, there's no way its decrypting all the game assets in real-time.

 

If somebody can provide a counterexample, I'd be thrilled, but I've never heard of a game decrypting major assets in real-time. Lots of games like doom and quake would zip some of their assets, but a zip is quicker to unzip than secure encryption, and files were smaller. They might encrypt the config files or a program file or something small, but the entire games grahpics?

 

I guess this goes back to the "its just a few character models, the rest aren't" argument, which doesn't make much sense. Why, again?

The speculation as the moment is that it's an attempt to break private servers, by essentially making some of the assets unavailable to them: It's the only plausible thing anyone's come up with to explain why you might do such a thing.

I can't see simple encryption accomplishing that, however. With access to the client, which we all have, you could pretty easily break the encryption.

There'd have to somehow be some kind of element that wasn't present in the client necessary to the process.

Stephen, I have a Masters in IT - I can point you in the dirction of this particular piece of technology. If indeed it is being used, then this poses a lot of problems - not only redering isssues but placing pieces of software on people's computers that they are not aware of - there could be serious legal ramifications if the latter is the case...

I do NOT have a "Masters in IT" but I CAN understand plain English! He said they do not use anything like that - /tinfoilhat

Think about how long it takes steam to decrypt your files. You wouldn't need the entire 20GB to be unencrypted every time you play, but still, there's no way its decrypting all the game assets in real-time.

 

If somebody can provide a counterexample, I'd be thrilled, but I've never heard of a game decrypting major assets in real-time. Lots of games like doom and quake would zip some of their assets, but a zip is quicker to unzip than secure encryption, and files were smaller. They might encrypt the config files or a program file or something small, but the entire games grahpics?

 

I guess this goes back to the "its just a few character models, the rest aren't" argument, which doesn't make much sense. Why, again?

Well the decryption would be on-the-fly, so only as needed. And it's quite possible, especially with caching and pre-loading. You can encrypt entire hard drives boot an OS on them, decrypting/encrypting as you go.

I'm not aware of any other MMO doing this but there's always a first with new copy protection methods.

/signed

Interesting info and glad they are at least responding to this.

For example, our 'ability delay' issue is being addressed by the development team right now]

Really? When will we see this fix going live?

Dr. Freud would like a word with you sir.

 

(I'm sorry I know it's just a word-choice slip up, but given these forums it's pretty darned funny).

It threw me for a second as well, but it's actually not a boo boo. He's referring to what he stated in the previous sentence - the 'extreme speculation' part, which is what doesn't help rational informed discussion.

For example, our 'ability delay' issue is being addressed by the development team right now]

Really? When will we see this fix going live?

Such an interesting thread..

Always wondered why my HD goes ape with activity. Subscribed!

I do NOT have a "Masters in IT" but I CAN understand plain English! He said they do not use anything like that - /tinfoilhat

Having "A Masters in IT" makes me think you went to a national university and not somewhere reputable. That is also like Saying I have a masters in science, very non specific.

all i can say this thread is absolute lame, pull yourself together guys, stop speculating on things that are beyond you.

since i know bioware for so long, actually they are 1 of the only company that ONLY THINKS FOR THE GAMERS, not for the CASH and thats practicaly proved by the years

althou with EA involved they might turn bioware visions into the $$$, i just hope they will keep their spirit up and dont give up to EA greediness

and i`m certain if anything stupid like this as the OP suggest is involved Bioware 10000% will first talk to the gamers about this before anything else

what i can say... lame thread is lame