Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by MigPosada

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by MigPosada

 

Server doing rendering is what is not possible.

Are they using an obfuscated (and slow) method for rendering? That's possible.

Could they be streaming media from server? Yeah, that's possible too.

Could they have reduced texture resolution to have a smaller installation? Yep, very likely.

But frame by frame transmission of rendered images is not what is going on behind the curtains.

Read my last post just above this one. People have already done some tests and confirms what I experience myself ingame!

Those tests only confirm two things:

- On loading the game is putting data into GPU (that's what any game does, including single player games).

- They are transfering a lot of data from server to client. (Assets? Textures? that's possible)

Does it mean the server does rendering? Nope.

Either way, there's a difference between streaming media assets on loading, and slow frame rate rendering, animation responses, etc. One thing is how the game gets the data, other is how the game renders the image and yet another how the gameplay mechanisms work.

Read the OP. It's not live stream rendering during gameplay!  It's remote streaming/loading of art assets (textures)!

Which would explain many of the performance issues people are having, even with high end rigs!

People can have a high end rig, but if they have ISP / bandwith issues, this might precisely explain why they are suffering low FPS performance issues they should not be having.

 

The most interesting will be EA/Bioware's response! As a can of worms has sertainly be opened. And seeing EA's and Lucas Art's track record and horrible reputation. I would be not be suprised at all, if this is going to be the first MMO with DRM in place!

Thanks for the clarification, from the first post I was understanding that :P

However, unless the engine is bad coded on that aspect, loading data should not be related to low frame rates, specially with multicore processors everybody has in our days.

This is what triggered my "nuuuuttzzz!" alert:

Quote:

It's entirely possible that the second process is the 'remote renderer', and is being used as a secure transmission and decryption method for the assets from the server. It's also possible that it's doing this using software rendering, due to it being considered more secure.

Originally posted by MigPosada

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by MigPosada

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by MigPosada

 

Server doing rendering is what is not possible.

Are they using an obfuscated (and slow) method for rendering? That's possible.

Could they be streaming media from server? Yeah, that's possible too.

Could they have reduced texture resolution to have a smaller installation? Yep, very likely.

But frame by frame transmission of rendered images is not what is going on behind the curtains.

Read my last post just above this one. People have already done some tests and confirms what I experience myself ingame!

Those tests only confirm two things:

- On loading the game is putting data into GPU (that's what any game does, including single player games).

- They are transfering a lot of data from server to client. (Assets? Textures? that's possible)

Does it mean the server does rendering? Nope.

Either way, there's a difference between streaming media assets on loading, and slow frame rate rendering, animation responses, etc. One thing is how the game gets the data, other is how the game renders the image and yet another how the gameplay mechanisms work.

Read the OP. It's not live stream rendering during gameplay!  It's remote streaming/loading of art assets (textures)!

Which would explain many of the performance issues people are having, even with high end rigs!

People can have a high end rig, but if they have ISP / bandwith issues, this might precisely explain why they are suffering low FPS performance issues they should not be having.

 

The most interesting will be EA/Bioware's response! As a can of worms has sertainly be opened. And seeing EA's and Lucas Art's track record and horrible reputation. I would be not be suprised at all, if this is going to be the first MMO with DRM in place!

Thanks for the clarification, from the first post I was understanding that :P

However, unless the engine is bad coded on that aspect, loading data should not be related to low frame rates, specially with multicore processors everybody has in our days.

Both no and Yes (people with ISP problems and bandwith restriction might, even if having a high end PC itself), but it DOES explain why at a sertain point during Beta the new build of the client was suddenly more than 10GB less in size and High Resolution textures later (together with AA) being dissabled and still is up til this day!

Originally posted by JeroKane

 

Both no and Yes (people with ISP problems and bandwith restriction might, even if having a high end PC itself), but it DOES explain why at a sertain point during Beta the new build of the client was suddenly more than 10GB less in size and High Resolution textures later (together with AA) being dissabled and still is up til this day!

 

The textures are the same now as they were during beta, parts of the client were compressed or cleaned out is all. AA was disabled due to severe problems when used on Ati cards, a problem that still persists and you would see if you stepped on to the test server. Lee Harvey Oswald is not to blame.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by DarkPony

The only thing lacking in this theory is "motive". What has Bioware to gain with streaming 3d assets and what does it have to lose?

To lose:

- a metric ton more traffic and bandwith requirements = lots of moniez

- potentially severly impacting the smoothness of gameplay and graphic performance = unhappy customers

- making things much more complex for their tech department

To gain:

- People not stealing 3d assets? (you can't really stop people to steal anything made up of bits and bytes but if they do and try to make money out of it, you can sew them anyway).

- Prevent certain exploits? (Could be a reason but they wouldn't want to sacrifice so much for that I reckon).

i.e. It doesn't make sense to me.

p.s. The performance issues might be linked to this but on the other hand: they might not. Apparently it's a new engine with still plenty of optimization work. Could be anything or more than one thing. Don't put your tinfoil hats on just yet.

p.p.s Would still be nice to hear what Bioware has to say about this though. So far they told us that they are aware of the problem and will react soon. *curious is*

 

Electronics Arts is well known for their controversy regarding DRM!

Lucas Arts is also well known for their extreme paranoia!

Bring those two together and people shouldn't be suprised to discover that SW:TOR is the first MMO with a DRM system in place.

We all know it's retarded, just like the whole Spore Secu:ROM debacle (if people remember) and any other DRM crap consumers have been put up with in the past!

This decision most sertainly hasn't been made by developers or most probably Bioware itself even, but more likely some stupid suits suffering paranoia and desilusion at EA and Lucas Arts HQ that forced this into the game!

And as some other people have suggested. There are many motives as to why they would go through these lengths to put such a system in place, like for example, preventing people from reverse engineering the game code and start running private servers. Just to name one.

The other one, is the most obvious one and the most likely real reason, protection of Art Assets!  Which is still dumb, as every other MMO company covers this in their EULA and threatens with a Law Suit if people steal and reuse their Art Assets!

But like I said... we are dealing with both EA and Lucas Arts. So don't be so suprised really.

Still crazy and like you also point out: no good motive at all. Also it's far fetched to say that EA or Lucas Arts would jeapordize people's enjoyment of the game for a silly reason as artwork protection. How evil or unethical they might be; you don't kill a hen laying golden eggs for you like that, unless you're a veritable window licking waterhead.

It's like NASA packaging their next Space Shuttle in a mock-up exterior so the Russians won't steal the design and never mind about the damn thing blowing up upon re-entry due to that.

Either:

1. You are jumping to conclusions that whatever this service does is the also the thing that impacts performance for a lot of people.

2. It is in fact an unneeded service impacting our gaming. In which case I'll be the first to join you on the barricades.

We shall seeeth :)

I don't know nearly enough about networks and game processes to comment on that part

But I could definitely see EA and LA hampering performance to protect their assets.

They knew the game was going to sell like hot-cakes anyway, and since it leans more towards the CORPG model, private servers would be popular. Why pay for something that runs like crap and doesn't involve much interaction between other players?

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by DarkPony

The only thing lacking in this theory is "motive". What has Bioware to gain with streaming 3d assets and what does it have to lose?

To lose:

- a metric ton more traffic and bandwith requirements = lots of moniez

- potentially severly impacting the smoothness of gameplay and graphic performance = unhappy customers

- making things much more complex for their tech department

To gain:

- People not stealing 3d assets? (you can't really stop people to steal anything made up of bits and bytes but if they do and try to make money out of it, you can sew them anyway).

- Prevent certain exploits? (Could be a reason but they wouldn't want to sacrifice so much for that I reckon).

i.e. It doesn't make sense to me.

p.s. The performance issues might be linked to this but on the other hand: they might not. Apparently it's a new engine with still plenty of optimization work. Could be anything or more than one thing. Don't put your tinfoil hats on just yet.

p.p.s Would still be nice to hear what Bioware has to say about this though. So far they told us that they are aware of the problem and will react soon. *curious is*

 

Electronics Arts is well known for their controversy regarding DRM!

Lucas Arts is also well known for their extreme paranoia!

Bring those two together and people shouldn't be suprised to discover that SW:TOR is the first MMO with a DRM system in place.

We all know it's retarded, just like the whole Spore Secu:ROM debacle (if people remember) and any other DRM crap consumers have been put up with in the past!

This decision most sertainly hasn't been made by developers or most probably Bioware itself even, but more likely some stupid suits suffering paranoia and desilusion at EA and Lucas Arts HQ that forced this into the game!

And as some other people have suggested. There are many motives as to why they would go through these lengths to put such a system in place, like for example, preventing people from reverse engineering the game code and start running private servers. Just to name one.

The other one, is the most obvious one and the most likely real reason, protection of Art Assets!  Which is still dumb, as every other MMO company covers this in their EULA and threatens with a Law Suit if people steal and reuse their Art Assets!

But like I said... we are dealing with both EA and Lucas Arts. So don't be so suprised really.

Still crazy and like you also point out: no good motive at all. Also it's far fetched to say that EA or Lucas Arts would jeapordize people's enjoyment of the game for a silly reason as artwork protection. How evil or unethical they might be; you don't kill a hen laying golden eggs for you like that, unless you're a veritable window licking waterhead.

It's like NASA packaging their next Space Shuttle in a mock-up exterior so the Russians won't steal the design and never mind about the damn thing blowing up upon re-entry due to that.

Either:

1. You are jumping to conclusions that whatever this service does is the also the thing that impacts performance for a lot of people.

2. It is in fact an unneeded service impacting our gaming. In which case I'll be the first to join you on the barricades.

We shall seeeth :)

 

Ofcourse it doesn't make sense!  But when have EA and Lucas Arts ever been know to make sense in most of their corporate decisions in the past?  EA being known for many controversal s-hit storms revolving around DRM for one and LA imfamously known for the NGE on SWG!

Need to say more?

Originally posted by 77lolmac77

I don't know nearly enough about networks and game processes to comment on that part

But I could definitely see EA and LA hampering performance to protect their assets.

They knew the game was going to sell like hot-cakes anyway, and since it leans more towards the CORPG model, private servers would be popular. Why pay for something that runs like crap and doesn't involve much interaction between other players?

Exactly,

The fact is that the beta client one point in time suddenly decreased in size for more than 35% !  No magical new compression technique will suddenly reduce a GAME client with that much!

In all my MMO beta particpations in the last 10 years I have never ever a MMO game client seen shrinking in size, most always the oposite actually.

Fact 2 is, that shortly after the new "smaller" client, both AntiAliasing and HighRes textures were suddenly dissabled without any explanation!!

Fact 3 is, that beta testers reported better performance with the older "larger" client with "better" graphics, than with the new "current" client! Most of the performance issues started after the "new" client!

Perhaps artwork and other stuff is compressed more in the newer client. That would explain the smaller client size and the increased load times.

Originally posted by Axxar

Perhaps artwork and other stuff is compressed more in the newer client. That would explain the smaller client size and the increased load times.

And suddenly reduces the entire client for more than 35%? These kind of decisions are made much earlier in the development phase and are most always already set in stone the moment the game goes in Closed Beta and players get access to it.

The OP on the official forums isn't stating his discovery as a fact. But it is an intruiging disovery that would make sense, seeing the problems the game has at the moment.

It is also too much of a coincidence that the HighRes textures were suddenly dissabled with the release of the new client, with no explanation whatsoever. Them even going as far as to try covering it up with patch 1.1, by removing medium settings and make the current medium the new high setting.

The fact of the matter is, that a lot of strange issues are happening, including the whole issue around ability delays, and that Bioware is dancing around them and moving in shady mysterious ways handling these issues.

So we will see with what Official Statement they are coming up with today!

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Axxar

Perhaps artwork and other stuff is compressed more in the newer client. That would explain the smaller client size and the increased load times.

And suddenly reduces the entire client for more than 35%? These kind of decisions are made much earlier in the development phase and are most always already set in stone the moment the game goes in Closed Beta and players get access to it.

The OP on the official forums isn't stating his discovery as a fact. But it is an intruiging disovery that would make sense, seeing the problems the game has at the moment.

It is also too much of a coincidence that the HighRes textures were suddenly dissabled with the release of the new client, with no explanation whatsoever. Them even going as far as to try covering it up with patch 1.1, by removing medium settings and make the current medium the new high setting.

The fact of the matter is, that a lot of strange issues are happening, including the whole issue around ability delays, and that Bioware is dancing around them and moving in shady mysterious ways handling these issues.

So we will see with what Official Statement they are coming up with today!

Not only possible but probable and common.

During development the textures are often NOT compressed. Also often they are late in the development process. (oh and also other assets like sound files - ahem)

Also, removing of higher res texture is also not unheard of. Especially with games that are cross-platform. Having a single set of textures and reduced graphic setup flexibility is a good way to get a stable product out the door. The PC side of things requires ALLOT of extra QA, By removing PC only features that have no direct effect on game play (only eye-candy) and removing Allot of initial risk, time and $$ trying to fold those in at the start is rather sound policy. And again commonly done.

“In all my MMO beta particpations in the last 10 years I have never ever a MMO game client seen shrinking in size, most always the oposite actually. “ -jerokane

Well interesting, but not really proof of anything. Anecdotal evidence at best and I counter that I have been on a few shrink for the same reasons listed above (and the reason I brought them up)

Also, I find it hard to believe any “remote rendering” is going on as it is easy to check . . . Nope not happening.

“software rendering” - well that is totally crap also. Really do not have to go there at all.

Did you know there are ways to monitor your graphics card/driver to see more or less exactly what it is doing, See what textures, objects etc it is loading and rendering?

“And yet, I can't figure out why, when I'm on the republic fleet and have a large number of characters on screen at once, it causes a system with 8GB of RAM to act like it's paging. “

Really I can come up with a long list . . if you can't well you should not be going off like this on matters that may be beyond you.

So in short your listed “proof” of something “going on” really falls flat in light of normal reality. (and with some checking)

Yes there are problems, yes they did a few things you may not like this time . . but that is rather normal and really much less problematic then most mmo releases (and probably BECOUSE of those decisions you don not like BTW)

Much to do about nothing . . .

I take this blatant fear mongering to be an insulting, below the belt, slap in the face.

this would explain the heavy sharding so that you hardly bump into other players on a heavy server

I love the people dismissing these claims. What other program has 2 processes that run simultaneously? There is a reason for it, and EA/BioWare is not telling consumers. 

This would explain why my computer runs like crap while playing SWTOR, and the loading times are insane. I always get booted from a PvP match if its already in progress due to the AFK timer starting in mid-load.

Of course, the noted apologist think every thing is fine. The good news is in a few months you guys will have a ton fewer players to solo with.

Ok, since MOST of you are in the dark as to WHY they're going to such extreme lengths to "Protect" their animations & art i'll clue you in.

Lucas Arts saw what happened to SWG, and how fans were able to "Reverse" engineer it into an emulator. Unfortunately emulators are considered "Fan Art", and CANNOT be touched by law unless they plan to profit from the publisher's work.

EA-Bioware did this ENTIRELY to prevent SWTOR from EVER being emulated. There's just no way to capture the proper data for an emulation project using the method they are now employing for SWTOR. This ALSO answers MANY questions as to why the game is so instanced.

Congratulations, you're now more informed :)!

ps: To the mods, since I KNOW how overzealous you guys can be, I am NOT advocated in ANY way, shape, or form emulation projects. I'm merely EXPLAINING why SWTOR devs did this. Thank you.....if you'd like to discuss this further please PM me before outright editing my post on this matter!

Regards,

Faded

Originally posted by omome

I take this blatant fear mongering to be an insulting, below the belt, slap in the face.

[Mod Edit]  Basicly Stephen Reid shoot whole thing down already with dual texture post. Also anyone with even little understanding of programming could easily explain why this is pure fear mongering. Again, basic problem with all game devs in PC world is huge amount of possible HW configurations not to mention all crap that people have in there computers like anti-virus. Then you might have bigger problems like how you done the pipelining of graphics engine, which gets worse in MMO scene because you need to cut those pesky cheaters by coding graphics rendering with network code. Why because if you don't happens what happened with games like Mortal Online or Darkfall. And keep mind Mortal Online is based on Epics version of Hero Engine which they call Atlas. Usually the easiest answer is the correct one. But this has all the good stuff written in it, I mean EA and DRM perfect bullshit to sell on masses that have no clue how games let alone MMO games work.

I personally don't have any problems running this game, but then again I actually know this computer stuff. I don't "optimize" my Windows to gain extra fps(you might get 1 fps more but breaks pretty much everything else), I don't use beta drivers because they give more fps(which they might but causes tons of bugs and instability), I don't install some hack AV or security stuff that some "dude" recommended in Internet(because that "dude" is most likely is some teen with less knowledge of computers than opposite sex genitals).

Haha that's english humor? i like it.

The software rendering part and the remote rendering of 3D model is just ... well i can't find proper words. The funny part is that it make some sense to me, but it shouldn't lol.

One thing is sure the rendering is garbish in this game. Plastic like texture in today mmo is just not professional at all, i used this kind of texture 10 years ago in my rendering, especially for such an heavy sharded and instanced game, thats almost ridiculous.

Now the how and why, well i'll let you that... I'll go watch the show at Swtor.com defore bed time...

Here's a MS patent from 2002 that describes using remote rendering as copy protection: http://www.patents.com/us-7296154.html 

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

EA-Bioware did this ENTIRELY to prevent SWTOR from EVER being emulated. There's just no way to capture the proper data for an emulation project using the method they are now employing for SWTOR. This ALSO answers MANY questions as to why the game is so instanced.

The problem with this (assuming any of this is true)  is that there really is no defense against the data being captured, eventually someone dedicated enough will figure it out which means the end result is intentional gimping of the game performance for no benefit.