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

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.

WILL you PLEASE stay true to your word? I've 3 times now tried to explain to you ways you can test your own hypothesis to prove it is wrong, I've presented (as others have) lots of alternative explanations, and now Bioware has OFFICIALLY EXPLAINED the performance problems and texture problems.

Go edit the first post! These are not the droids you are looking for!
YOU SAID YOU WOULD.

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.

Queues? They're apparently tying up a fair portion of their server resources and bandwidth doing the client's job server side.

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!

WILL you PLEASE stay true to your word? I've 3 times now tried to explain to you ways you can test your own hypothesis to prove it is wrong, I've presented (as others have) lots of alternative explanations, and now Bioware has OFFICIALLY EXPLAINED the performance problems and texture problems.

Go edit the first post! These are not the droids you are looking for!
YOU SAID YOU WOULD.

They have not officially explained the rather suspicious findings.

Yes, but tacking on "because of decryption" is in no way founded at this point. Yes the local machine would have trouble keeping up with high res textures, but that in no way says "because we're encrypting them and forcing your machine to decrypt them"

So any official word on this yet?