Game looked awesome, played awesome in beta. I decided to buy it.

 

Now it looks like ****, plays like **** (low fps, ability delay).

 

 

This has been my experience as well. what happenned?

So what Bioware is telling us is. Free to play games can render better textures. An 8 year old game in WoW can render and "call" better textures. But a new game with hundreds of millions invested in it can't "Call" **** effectively. I'm sorry but this is a can of crap. I ordered two CE's and now I feel cheated. I don't care how long it takes you to fix your textures, or how many more millions you need to dump into this project. This should of been done and done pre-release. Don't give us a reach around.

Not only in wow, many other mmo's can Present a high detail level WITHOUT compromising Performance, setting are there to tailor the Eyecandy according to your PC

 

Pixelated textures are things of the past, no excuse for it, was in beta and now its gone for mellow reasons

 

Exactly.

 

All AAA MMO's in the past few years have had this.

 

The dev post was rubbish, pure smoke and mirrors

what I find hilarious is that there are a few people complaining about low FPS and yet they are some of the same ones complaining they don't have high res textures.

 

Because textures are mostly handled by how much VRam you have and nothing beyond that?

 

In a well-optimized game, texture resolution will have very little impact on FPS performance as long as you have the ram to handle it. Much bigger performance strains come from processing effects such as raw render resolution, shadow, lighting, etc.

I would of had no problem had a press release or something explaining that as of right now high res textures will not be in the game a launch due to technical issues with performance on some machines (this reminds me of when Age of Conan released with out DX10 and how people were up in arms about False advertising when that game released) I really hope that Bioware does not glance over this issue its a major issue that needs to be fixed Soon. Edited January 11, 2012 by jakedrake

Thats LOD control, more or less to keep it from being too shiny.

 

As for forcing the engine to stop using _d.tiny.dds and use _d.dds is taking a bit of work.

 

Too shiny!? What?

 

Do you even know what LOD means? Hint: Level of Detail. It's used to tell the rendering part of the engine how crisp the texture has to be rendered. Closer to the camera, crisper, farther = blurrier and that's fine! Normally. Right now the LOD is so high (or low depending on your interpretation) that toon texturing is seen as if the camera is miles away.

I don't know. I don't have an AMD GPU, but if you can force LOD bias somewhere in your AMD settings, you could try it. I can't vouch for stability or anything though.

Sadly they removed LOD options from the drivers. I can remember seeing them about 10 years ago.

 

Thanks for your reply anyway, I will look into it. There must be some way to do it

Not true at all, but I agree that making random assertions is fun.

 

 

There has been one in the last 5 years that has not had high res textures as an option? I don't mean F2P either.

Quoted from massively user Deliverator:

 

"THIS IS ALL CAUSED BY BIOWARE IMPLEMENTING REMOTE RENDERING AS A FORM OF COPY PROTECTION. THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING BETWEEN THE HIGH SETTINGS DURING BETA AND THE SETTINGS AVAILABLE NOW.

 

Massively - what you missed is that the High Rez textures worked fine in the Beta. For release, they implemented REMOTE RENDERING. What's actually happening is that they can't handle the network traffic generated by remotely rendering higher rez textures.

 

Let me repeat - High Rez doesn't work because of anti-piracy DRM shenanigans, not because they're concerned about players' machines. They're remote rendering so people who have purchased the game won't be able to dig through Lucas's precious artwork for their fan sites.

 

Again - they're remote rendering so you can't 'steal' what you bought already. Its copy protection and they're willing to go so far as to gimp the game and lie to cover it up.

 

Remote rendering is the cause of all of the frame drops and slow downs as well as advanced rendering features not working, We pay big money to buy the machines that have gigantic pipes between all of our components, especially to the GPUs. Internet throughput is nowhere near the bandwidth on your motherboard."

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/11/swtor-senior-community-manager-responds-to-high-res-texture-conc/4#comments

This would actually make a lot of sense, and why they are covering up the texture AND FPS issues under its "lower end pcs".

What do you think the resolution is on those WoW textures? Let me save you some time-- "Ultra" is not an answer.

 

The answer is miles better than TOR.

I'm just gonna shamelessly plug my thread with a suggestion that should help calm everybody down a little right here: Link Skywalker

 

Go there and make a post to bump it and bring it to BW's attention if you think this is a viable short-term solution:

 

 

It's hard being heard in this mess of a thread, so bump it for constructive feedback!

What a garbage engine is this...

WoW handles textures that are so much better-looking, like here:

http://eu.media.blizzard.com/wow/media/screenshots/classes/druid-worgen03-large.jpg

Sure, the polygon count is lower, that's out of the question, but textures in Blizzard adverts are looking exactly as what you can see when playing!

WoW engine - development started in 1999 (afaik, please correct if i'm wrong).

Hero engine - somewhere around 2004-2005, i think?

 

Compare this:

http://eu.media.blizzard.com/wow/media/screenshots/classes/paladin-tauren02-large.jpg

to that:

http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/7371/swtor2012011110050596.jpg

 

Not to mention fps i'm getting when messing around in Orgrimmar (1 phase for all!) and Imperial Fleet.

 

I really do enjoy the game. But this joke is one of many things that keeps me from playing it for 3+ months right now. I'll finish class questlines and i'll quit.

Edited January 11, 2012 by calibro

I understand the statement about, "The graphics don't make the game". But this is freaking 2012!! The graphics on charcters from Lineage II look even better! More detailed etc! Why are we being scaled back on a current generation MMO with Quad Core processsors and massive GPUS???

 

I'm so freaking mad over this. I never ever once thought I would quit this game, but this is absolute rubbish!

 

Problem alot of people don't understand is that these graphics WERE ALREADY IN GAME.

I don't know. I don't have an AMD GPU, but if you can force LOD bias somewhere in your AMD settings, you could try it. I can't vouch for stability or anything though.

 

 

If you have Nvidia Inspector, you can go to your Star Wars: The Old Republic profile there and change settings on a driver level. I've changed LOD bias there to -3, as well as Triple Buffering and other texture filtering optimizations. I'm not keen on writing a guide as my experience is pretty limited and I'm not sure how well received it would be by Bioware here on their forums.

 

thx a lot, after reading your post i downloaded inspector and did the adjustments, the ground texture looks fantastic even though it has some strange pixels on that texture. but the difference is too big not to use it!!!

Yeh I know, in this case it only took almost a month to discover this

 

<--- long time FFXI player. FF XIV felt almost like a step backwards to me.

I didn't think this would turn out to be a game-breaking issue for me, but the game looks rubbish, and nothing like I thought it would.

 

I was fine with this at first, when I still had hopes thinking it was a mistake on BW's behalf.

 

But if this is infact intentional, then I'm worried I won't be staying for long. The game is cool and all, but if I've got to look at this in the years to come or tinker with unsupported features, risking god-knows-what every patchday I'm taking off.

 

Don't tell me what my computer can handle, especially when the game both ran smoother and looked better during BETA.

Too shiny!? What?

 

Do you even know what LOD means? Hint: Level of Detail. It's used to tell the rendering part of the engine how crisp the texture has to be rendered. Closer to the camera, crisper, farther = blurrier and that's fine! Normally. Right now the LOD is so high (or low depending on your interpretation) that toon texturing is seen as if the camera is miles away.

I was referring to the Cubemap used on the Fleet. If you notice its bias is purposely lowered so its blurry and to not make a mirror.

But why was it difrenet in BETA Stage and now as it is the official game it looks like CRAP, but really CRAP, as the Armors were painted in "PAINT" from little kids.

 

I remember that there are some painting books for kids, this is how SWTOR armors look like XD

 

IM like ***, did i buy the wrong game?????

maybe this is a old Star Wars game from 2000 and not the new expected SWTOR, maybe all my mistake.

Back to shop and i see, noooo...... this is the real game......

what is this sh**......

where can i get my money back??????

This needs to be in the OP

 

Originally Posted by SucXeviouS

Quoted from massively user Deliverator:

 

"THIS IS ALL CAUSED BY BIOWARE IMPLEMENTING REMOTE RENDERING AS A FORM OF COPY PROTECTION. THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING BETWEEN THE HIGH SETTINGS DURING BETA AND THE SETTINGS AVAILABLE NOW.

 

Massively - what you missed is that the High Rez textures worked fine in the Beta. For release, they implemented REMOTE RENDERING. What's actually happening is that they can't handle the network traffic generated by remotely rendering higher rez textures.

 

Let me repeat - High Rez doesn't work because of anti-piracy DRM shenanigans, not because they're concerned about players' machines. They're remote rendering so people who have purchased the game won't be able to dig through Lucas's precious artwork for their fan sites.

 

Again - they're remote rendering so you can't 'steal' what you bought already. Its copy protection and they're willing to go so far as to gimp the game and lie to cover it up.

 

Remote rendering is the cause of all of the frame drops and slow downs as well as advanced rendering features not working, We pay big money to buy the machines that have gigantic pipes between all of our components, especially to the GPUs. Internet throughput is nowhere near the bandwidth on your motherboard."

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01...onc/4#comments

 

This makes a lot of sense and if true, it is absolutely scandalous.

Edited January 11, 2012 by dooplex

Add me to the list of pissed off high end pc users!

Not to feed the flames here... but I'm extremely disappointed by Bioware's decision on the matter, and I'm pretty confident that their decision to cater to the lowest common denominator and only that, will not work to their advantage.

 

This is the first time I have ever played an MMO where developers have decided to halve the texture quality not as an option but as a mandatory change across all clients. It's unforgivable, and the reasons behind it are ridiculous.

 

Until now, I've been tinkering a lot with the .ini as well as NvidiaInspector to try to force high res character textures.

Thinking it was an LOD bug, I forced the LOD bias to -3.00 and noticed something else happening instead. It seems we may not even be getting the best environment textures the game has to offer because the standard LOD refuses to render them.

 

I've attached screenshots below for comparison between what the game is rendering at standard "high" settings, and what the game renders with LOD bias forced below the standard threshold.

 

Standard LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_No_LOD.jpg

 

Forced LOD:

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j136/Cgramnaes/SWTOR_Forced_LOD.jpg

 

I should also mention that the change has made no impact on my FPS, and has if anything made the game run smoother for me.

 

WOWW this changes the game for me thank you so much!!!!

What a garbage engine is this...

WoW handles textures that are so much better-looking, like here:

http://eu.media.blizzard.com/wow/media/screenshots/classes/druid-worgen03-large.jpg

Sure, the polygon count is lower, that's out of the question, but textures in Blizzard adverts are looking exactly as what you can see when playing!

WoW engine - development started in 1999 (afaik, please correct if i'm wrong).

Hero engine - somewhere around 2004-2005, i think?

 

Compare this:

http://eu.media.blizzard.com/wow/media/screenshots/classes/paladin-tauren02-large.jpg

to that:

http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/7371/swtor2012011110050596.jpg

 

Not to mention fps i'm getting when messing around in Orgrimmar (1 phase for all!) and Imperial Fleet.

 

You must be mistaken. I think that last one there is from Asheron's Call. If I squint I can see a Tusker.

If you have a ati card, download a program called radeonpro, go to global settings and advanced, set mipmap bias to -3 for super sharp reflection textures and environment textures.

Or a better comprimise is - 2 , fps doesnt suffer much with that setting.

 

If your usin nvidia card, use nvidia inspector instead, ive not used that one tho so i cant say.

But this only effects environment textures and reflection textures, NOT characters

Add me to the list of pissed off high end pc users!

 

added

Just want to add:

 

These "high res textures" are already ingame, but only used for cut-scenes at the moment, shouldn't be too hard adding an option for people that are able to run those "high res textures" outside of cut-scenes as well?

 

As i've understood they where there in beta so i don't really see the problem here. So gives us the option, options shouldn't hurt at all.