I really enjoy SWTOR but the graphics are really killing me. Has there been any discussion of updating or optimizing the graphics to 2020 standards? I just feel like I'm playing a 2008 game.

 

Thanks!

I really enjoy SWTOR but the graphics are really killing me. Has there been any discussion of updating or optimizing the graphics to 2020 standards? I just feel like I'm playing a 2008 game.

 

Thanks!

 

I think it's been brought up in the past but I don't think there are any plans that I have read about. I don't take issue with the graphics really but more the game optimization...works my high end computer harder than it should on high settings.

 

I did notice the newer cosmetic gear has more complex models especially when it comes to boots and belts..Which I really like.

 

That said anything is possible considering Disney announced they are moving into the "Old Republic" era now...makes sense EA/BW may add emphasis on supporting this game a bit more to capture the increased hype for this time period...which might translate to some graphics improvements...maybe.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Soljin

Close, it's a 2012 game that started development long before that.

Few games ever overhaul their graphics engines. SWTOR is based in something known as DirectX9, which is a series of API (application programmer interface) procedures which invoke specific calls to a graphics adapter.

 

Updating from DX9 to DX12.1 (or even to DX10) would require a significant overhaul in how textures, lighting, tinting affect all things in the game.

 

And, importantly, were this development ($) actually be to be undertaken, the game's look and feel would be different, because the way light would fall on surfaces would be different, meaning all the original cutscenes would have to be redone to match, otherwise there would be this bizarre contrast between what players experience in the game and cutscenes.

 

Also, please note this is EA, and EA is pushing something known as the FrostBite engine (created by DICE) for all new game releases, and it's a demonstrably warmed-over heap of animal droppings. Even EA's own developers hate it. It's clunky, inflexible, and requires a lot of work-arounds to get anything meaningful done in it.

 

So, the work wouldn't need to be done once, but twice. Once, for the bare-bones rework from DX9 to DX-whatever, and through that process, a second round just to get everything done through FrostBite's inflexible structure.

 

It'd be nice for there to be an overhaul, and I've often clamored for one myself, and probably still will in the future, but just know it's not just a matter of installing in a new engine and turning the key, and every penny spent on such an endeavor takes away from the profitability of the game, which is always a sensitive subject for EA shareholders.

Edited April 25, 2020 by xordevoreaux

The graphics might not be up to 2020 "standards", but for me at least, they're good enough. A graphics update would be way down the list after bug fixes, new pieces of ordinary clothing, more story content, etc.

The graphics might not be up to 2020 "standards", but for me at least, they're good enough. A graphics update would be way down the list after bug fixes, new pieces of ordinary clothing, more story content, etc.

 

I have to agree, the graphics are fine, not perfect, but i'd hate to see how much time and effort it would take to improve them, I'd rather it was spent on content, etc

I have a friend who can barely play the game as it is, but it is one of very few games he can actually play with his 15+ year old PC.

 

I am against a graphic update. I like it how it is.

I have a friend who can barely play the game as it is, but it is one of very few games he can actually play with his 15+ year old PC.

 

I am against a graphic update. I like it how it is.

 

If his computer is truly 15+ years old, then eventually, it won't be your friend's decision. SWTOR is a Microsoft Windows game. How much longer do you think it'll be before Win7 gets the final shut-down, or an update that obliterates it, which almost happened already?

 

My computer is from 2012, so it's not all that much younger, but it was hand-built and 2nd-tier, not the best, not the worst, but with an I-7 processor and 32GB of ram. It's had lots of little upgrades along the way, including a GTX 1050 TI and the latest cut of Win 10.

 

If your friend is playing on a 15-year-old computer that's never seen so much as a memory upgrade, or a graphics card upgrade, or heaven forbid an O/S upgrade, it's just a matter of time before both Windows and anything your friend tries to run on it overwhelms it.

Edited April 25, 2020 by xordevoreaux

If your friend is playing on a 15-year-old computer that's never seen so much as a memory upgrade, or a graphics card upgrade, or heaven forbid an O/S upgrade, it's just a matter of time before both Windows and anything your friend tries to run on it overwhelms it.

If a 15-year-old PC is stil (subject to the various security updates and all that blah-blah) on its original version of Windows, that means it's on Windows XP, which was long since closed off by Microsoft, and as for SWTOR, well...

 

Don't you remember all the hoo-hah some years back when a bunch of certificates expired and BioWare had to drop support for XP?

 

And you'd be surprised at how well SWTOR can run on a creaky old 2.8 GHz i5 from 2011. My main PC is from the end of 2017, and I recently upgraded the graphics from GTX 1080 to RTX 2080Ti(1), and passed the GTX to my old PC.

 

Main PC (3.6 GHz i7-7820X):

* Standing on a reasonably busy Fleet, the RTX can feed Ultra graphics to a 4K/UHD panel at 120+fps (haven't tried WZs yet...)

 

Old PC (2.8 GHz i5-760):

* Standing on the same Fleet, the old GT430 struggled to make 25 fps on Medium at 1080p, with the fps counter solidly showing that the GPU was the bottleneck..

* And with the GTX 1080 that I took out of the main PC, it can go beyond 100 fps on that same Fleet, at 1080p and *Ultra*. Needless to say, under those conditions, the CPU is the bottleneck.

 

(1) I play other games than just SWTOR, obviously.

 

EDIT: On Medium, the GTX in the either PC appears to hit a hard limit in SWTOR's frame rate, of almost exactly 200fps.

Edited April 25, 2020 by SteveTheCynic

If a 15-year-old PC is stil (subject to the various security updates and all that blah-blah) on its original version of Windows, that means it's on Windows XP.

I didn't hear a big 'No' out of you for expecting such an old machine to continue to be meaningful for a new graphical overhaul.

 

Do you really expect that a 15-year-old computer, bought in 2005, with a processor die that was probably cast 2 years earlier, is capable of running Windows 10?

 

Windows 10 is the requirement for DX 12, which would be the requirement for any reasonable, and somewhat long-lived, graphics update. All that fancy ray tracing? DX 12.1 and an RTX card.

 

SWTOR is platformed on DX9. DX10 was cluttered and clunky, DX11 was better and offered better parallax calculations than DX10 and introduced tessellation, but DX12 originally came out to compete with VulKan, which provided a series of bare-metal API's that up to that point, DirectX lacked entirely.

 

So it's not just can it run the game, but can such an antiquated machine run the version of Windows necessary that any decent game graphics update would require?

Edited April 27, 2020 by xordevoreaux

I feel like I remember this getting asked at a cantina event and someone stated they actually can't do a major graphics overhaul because of engine limitations... I could be wrong about the reason but I'm pretty sure about the fact that they couldn't upgrade...

I feel like I remember this getting asked at a cantina event and someone stated they actually can't do a major graphics overhaul because of engine limitations... I could be wrong about the reason but I'm pretty sure about the fact that they couldn't upgrade...

 

You are correct. The engine can't handle it. The game engine makes calls (DX9 calls) to the graphics renderer.

Dropping in a new graphics renderer without replacing the game engine would be like ordering a set of platinum spark plugs for a Tin Lizzie.

Edited April 27, 2020 by xordevoreaux

I don't see the need, I mean I would be fine with it provided the game would still be able to be runned by my old computer. But if it means me losing access to the game then I'm heavily against it, I would rather the resources be put into new content or bug-fixing anyway.

Tbh, there's no reason for bioware/ea to update the game graphics even if it would be nice, because they'd have to retexture EVERYTHING which would be a pain to do especially atm during the coronavirus, so I don't think it'll ever happen unfortunately because of how long it would take.

Tbh, there's no reason for bioware/ea to update the game graphics even if it would be nice, because they'd have to retexture EVERYTHING which would be a pain to do especially atm during the coronavirus, so I don't think it'll ever happen unfortunately because of how long it would take.

 

Not to mention the chance they'd break something.....

Not to mention the chance they'd break something.....

Yeah, and we all know the saying...... If something isn't broken, don't fix it. And the graphics are pretty good for a game that's 8 years old, so there's literally no reason to update the graphics. The only thing that needs retexturing is grass, and even then you don't notice the grass is 2D and that it moves if you move, so it's not something I'm bothered about if at all really.

its funny how some guys here give excuses for bioware all the time.

ofcourse they can update the engine.

but will they and what will it cost them?

thats another issue.

wow had a much older engine and they worked wonders with it me thinks.

im not asking for star citizen graphics, but more light sources and textures perhaps.

I didn't hear a big 'No' out of you for expecting such an old machine to continue to be meaningful for a new graphical overhaul.

You didn't hear that "No" because I wouldn't have said it. I was only commenting on the "O/S upgrade" part of what you were saying.

Do you really expect that a 15-year-old computer, bought in 2005, with a processor die that was probably cast 2 years earlier, is capable of running Windows 10?

Running it? I'd expect it to be able to run Win10 32-bit, but not well, and certainly not at a level suitable for running a reimagined SWTOR.

Windows 10 is the requirement for DX 12, which would be the requirement for any reasonable, and somewhat long-lived, graphics update. All that fancy ray tracing? DX 12.1 and an RTX card.

I'd love to see SWTOR using RTX, frankly. (Er, I have the RTX part, but not the "SWTOR using" part.)

So it's not just can it run the game, but can such an antiquated machine run the version of Windows necessary that any decent game graphics update would require?

Such a machine is probably not capable of running Win10 *64-bit*, which is almost certainly necessary for such an upgrade, so no, I wouldn't expect it. As I said, my comment was more directed toward the OS upgrade aspect.

 

And last year I finally got around to hauling two old PCs that I assembled in 2006 to the recycling centre because they wouldn't power up, much less boot, due to burst electrolytic capacitors. There's a good-sized chunk of the 2005 population of PCs that will be in the same state.

I think the graphics are still pretty good. They don't overtax an older system, and compared to the OTHER online game I play (LOTRO), the characters look fantastic.

I'd be happy if they could just fix those odessen banners. They are focused in so many cut scenes. I play for story, so those overly bright trash banners are annoying. Today's update didn't fix them apparently

There is NO reason to update graphics. World of Warcraft have like mobile graphics, worse than SWTOR, and yet still plenty people play wow everyday. Plus engine is bad dunno if its related to it but no doubt if would cause even more problems if they do so.

 

Graphics aren't everything in my opinion, this is not some overpriced AAA first person shooter game, SWTOR released in 2011 as far as I know and graphics are pretty sweet and good. Update your CPU and move the slider to High in texture options,shader and character detail.

Honestly this is one game where I feel the graphics have aged pretty well.

Best you can do is to use some 3rd party stuff such as Reshade and Lod Bias.

 

To upgrade the Graphics Engine would require a TOTAL rewrite of SWToR. You would need a New gaming Engine and New Textures to go with the New Game code and Graphics Engine.

 

Remember that this game engine is a DX9c system and can never be upgraded to DX12,11 or even 10.

 

I don't see ths ever happening. The cost both in time and money would be far from worth it to BW or EA. On top of that it would take 4 to 6 YEARS to do a total rewrite of the game. So even if they started today, you would not see a new graphics engine for YEARS.

 

Far from what you may think, writing and designing an MMO is a long and grueling process that takes dozens of programmers, designers and writers to produce. It is not something that can be done quickly.

No really no....tnx

 

I talk as someone with a quite bad PC, that mean playing with almost everything on low. A new graphic will mean no more SWTOR for me and for all the ones with the same "problem".

 

While you people with super PC can freely take advantage of the super new graphics, we will be screwed for sure...not good at all.

 

I can see lot of people leaving cause their PC wont be enought anymore (happened to me with another MMO in the past and i still hate it cause i loved the game), some will update making some PC shop happy.

But i cant really see people leaving the game cause they wont upgrade the graphics, that would really be a strange way of thinking...

 

 

Avoid the flames about next part...will be appreciated...i already imagine lot of "then quit and bye" messages...

 

Talking a little seriously, buying a new PC only to use an upgraded game really is out of my thought, not being poor and not being rich. If my get broken is one thing, but following the new standards with games always lead to spend too much money on new PCs...

No really no....tnx

 

I talk as someone with a quite bad PC, that mean playing with almost everything on low. A new graphic will mean no more SWTOR for me and for all the ones with the same "problem".

 

While you people with super PC can freely take advantage of the super new graphics, we will be screwed for sure...not good at all.

 

I can see lot of people leaving cause their PC wont be enought anymore (happened to me with another MMO in the past and i still hate it cause i loved the game), some will update making some PC shop happy.

But i cant really see people leaving the game cause they wont upgrade the graphics, that would really be a strange way of thinking...

 

 

Avoid the flames about next part...will be appreciated...i already imagine lot of "then quit and bye" messages...

 

Talking a little seriously, buying a new PC only to use an upgraded game really is out of my thought, not being poor and not being rich. If my get broken is one thing, but following the new standards with games always lead to spend too much money on new PCs...

 

There is someone on another thread pushing the desire to see a "classic" server (something with practically no quality of life improvements whatsoever). That classic server could be the locus for throw-back graphics that we have now so that people aren't forced to upgrade their systems, while the existing servers are re-platformed to DX12/64/multi-core.

 

Fantasy, true, but that would be one way to satisfy people with aging computers as well as the half-dozen people clamoring for a classic server. Unfortunately, it would mean anyone not wishing to upgrade would be on a sub-par version of the game.

Edited April 29, 2020 by xordevoreaux