304 replies to this topic

[zolop]

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:32 AM, said:

Is anyone of us SO STUPID as to FORGET we're inside a big stompy robot without smudgy glass, and a functionless cockpit surrounding us?

I am fairly certain that MOST of us aren't... Though some posting on this forum, I'm beginning to suspect otherwise, admittedly.

I guess some MWO pilots want this game to be more like mech assault than mechwarrior, but thats PGI fault for starting MWO as a First Person Mechwarrior game when they got the funding from beginning and then keep backtracking...

[Void Angel]

Basically, I'm kind of confused as to why people think it's some sort of scandal.

[Winterwolf]

Kyle Polulak, you and Dimento are my heroes. You just made a major step forward in my trust in PGI and the game in the way you handled this conversation. I salute both of you!

Now I am off to purchase the Masakari package. This is worth supporting!

-- Winterwolf

[Dimento Graven]

Void Angel, on 29 January 2014 - 11:30 AM, said:

That's what you guys are unintentionally doing: Because we're allowed to modify the user configuration file, and the FoV variable is part of that file, we're allowed to modify it; what's the problem? The difficulty is that this is an oversimplification of the actual rules; we're allowed to alter that config file in good faith in order to get the game working (e.g. joystick settings,) but the very next question in the FAQ tells us that any modification intended to gain an advantage is prohibited - and removing visual obstructions can certainly count. It's the same as if I hacked the game to remove the fracking film grain, which I hate with a passion.

Now hold on, you're INTENTIONALLY misapplying statements that were directed towards a question about THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE and modifications of files OTHER THAN the USER.CFG.

So, you need to stop that. Your cherry picking your quotes and trying to enforce rules that don't exist. Stop it.

Plus, "in good faith" is an undefined term in this circumstance, and therefore meaningless. If PGI wants to define it and set the boundaries of what "good faith" is, they need to do so.

Quote

Now, some people would argue, I'm sure, that they don't notice the glass (or the grain,) and that it doesn't affect them and give them an advantage. They may be sincere in their beliefs, but sincerity alone doesn't make for a strong argument. I know, for example, that film grain's removal would affect my performance - I've had to fiddle with my color and contrast controls because something in the way my monitor/system/the aether is set up made it really hard for me to see people at long range. removing grain, or glass, would simplify the visual environment by making my brain filter out less junk for target recognition. An argument that amounts to, "well, I don't notice it" isn't going to hold water when it's a clear (haha, get it?) benefit to others.

And this is the cruxt of the issue, because we were told there'd be a means of removing the film grain well over a year ago, nearly two now, and we've yet to see it. Of course, AT THAT TIME, they'd just removed the ability to disable film grain from the USER.CFG, and made it against TOS to modify the overlays where the filter is embedded.

Possibly this change will suffer the same fate, who knows, but, in the mean time by PGI's own words this is not cheating.

[zolop]

Rhaythe, on 29 January 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

I think the big qualm here is that this, along with third-person view, shatters the suspension of disbelief. It reminds us we're in a videogame and alters the experience.

I kind of put this "view" along the lines of cycling through views in a Need for Speed game. You have the trailing camera, the driver's cabin, and the "bumper cam". This reminds me a lot of that. I'd love to see PGI embrace this view and incorporate it instead of shunning it outright. If it offers an advantage, then give it a balancing disadvantage. For example, have it be a "camera" on the front of the mech with an extremely-limited field of view and even more smudge on it than the cockpit (after all, it's lower to the ground).

I may not like third-person view, but they incorporated it into the mythos by having a trailing drone. They can do the same here.

That is something more reasonable, having a clear field of view without cockpit but a obvious disadvantage,,,

Edited by zolop, 29 January 2014 - 11:41 AM.

[zolop]

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

And this is the cruxt of the issue, because we were told there'd be a means of removing the film grain well over a year ago, nearly two now, and we've yet to see it. Of course, AT THAT TIME, they'd just removed the ability to disable film grain from the USER.CFG, and made it against TOS to modify the overlays where the filter is embedded.

Possibly this change will suffer the same fate, who knows, but, in the mean time by PGI's own words this is not cheating.

I can't disagree with this, PGI fails in communication most times and keeps missing deadlines... we';ll see what happens feb 4th

[Ngamok]

Shamous13, on 29 January 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

i think the biggest thing here is the fps gains making the game playable by more low end computers allowing the community to grow even more, or bringing back people that have left due to running with 15-20 fps, a lot of people don't have $300 to drop on the latest and greatest hardware let alone $1000+. I would be interested in seeing what results others get. (press f9 to see your fps)

I have an almost 4 year old computer (will be in April) with a video card that costs me $110 (GTX 550 Ti) which can be purchased for less now. There is no way this game requires anything remotely close to $1000 to play with good fps. I get 30-40 fps with my AMD 1055T 6 core at 2.8 GHz (which a super inexpensive processor) with that video card.

[Shamous13]

Ngamok, on 29 January 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

I have an almost 4 year old computer (will be in April) with a video card that costs me $110 (GTX 550 Ti) which can be purchased for less now. There is no way this game requires anything remotely close to $1000 to play with good fps. I get 30-40 fps with my AMD 1055T 6 core at 2.8 GHz (which a super inexpensive processor) with that video card.

is that with high or ultra high graphic settings?

(settings in mwo control panel)

Edited by Shamous13, 29 January 2014 - 11:56 AM.

[Ngamok]

Shamous13, on 29 January 2014 - 11:54 AM, said:

is that with high or ultra high graphic settings?

Most of the settings are set to high. Some settings I have set and medium and some at ultra but for the most part a majority of them are set at high.

[Dimento Graven]

zolop, on 29 January 2014 - 11:39 AM, said:

That is something more reasonable, having a clear field of view without cockpit but a obvious disadvantage,,,

Well, I don't know why it would be necessary to add views with more crappy quality. The TRUE limitation of what you can fire at is the torso/arm swing and rate of movement. THAT above ANYTHING ELSE, affects how well you can react to what you see.

Not every 'mech responds with the same arm swing distance, vertical or horizontal, nor do they all have the same torso twist speed or range, nor can they all look up and down at the same angles or speed.

The cockpit limitation, plus smudgy glass, plus fog, plus terrain (vegetation), plus film grain, plus, plus, plus... It starts to get overly excessive, and EVERY extra pixel and polygon required to support these things degrades video card performance, in most cases, very unnecessarily.

[Sandpit]

I run on an HB 6560M Radeon 1GB, i5 Core (2.4 GHZ IIRC), 4GB Ram and get 30-40 FPS on low settings. You don't need a $1000 rig to run this game. That laptop is 4 years old and runs it just fine in low settings.

[Dimento Graven]

Ngamok, on 29 January 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

I have an almost 4 year old computer (will be in April) with a video card that costs me $110 (GTX 550 Ti) which can be purchased for less now. There is no way this game requires anything remotely close to $1000 to play with good fps. I get 30-40 fps with my AMD 1055T 6 core at 2.8 GHz (which a super inexpensive processor) with that video card.

So are you saying we should all be willing to spend real money to remain competitive?

As opposed to, at no cost, updating the USER.CFG file?

And, it almost sounds like you're intimating that people who CAN and HAVE spent the money on high end cards, triple monitor setups and the like have an unfair competitive advantage to those that don't. What is it you actually believe on that, and why?

[Shamous13]

Sandpit, on 29 January 2014 - 11:58 AM, said:

I run on an HB 6560M Radeon 1GB, i5 Core (2.4 GHZ IIRC), 4GB Ram and get 30-40 FPS on low settings. You don't need a $1000 rig to run this game. That laptop is 4 years old and runs it just fine in low settings.

Sandpit, on 19 January 2014 - 08:31 PM, said:

I am starting the search for a new gaming laptop.
I currently have an Acer Aspire 7741G-3647
i5-450M 2.4GHZ processor
ATI Mobility Radeon HD5650 (1GB)
4GB DDR3 Ram

I've started to price and I'll probably be looking for something in the $800-$1000 price range. I usually head to best buy, new egg, and tiger direct to do my research but I figured I'd get some suggestions from my fellow gamers. So if you know of any good retailers, etc. I'd appreciate it.

no you dont need a $1000+ rig, but wouldn't it be nice to run on high settings with what you have and see no loss or actually see an increase in fps? IMHO I would be happier keeping what I have and being able to play on higher settings enjoying the graphics

[Ngamok]

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

So are you saying we should all be willing to spend real money to remain competitive?

As opposed to, at no cost, updating the USER.CFG file?

And, it almost sounds like you're intimating that people who CAN and HAVE spent the money on high end cards, triple monitor setups and the like have an unfair competitive advantage to those that don't. What is it you actually believe on that, and why?

I am not playing on a TRS 80.

[Void Angel]

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Now hold on, you're INTENTIONALLY misapplying statements that were directed towards a question about THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE and modifications of files OTHER THAN the USER.CFG.

So, you need to stop that. Your cherry picking your quotes and trying to enforce rules that don't exist. Stop it.

Plus, "in good faith" is an undefined term in this circumstance, and therefore meaningless. If PGI wants to define it and set the boundaries of what "good faith" is, they need to do so.

Nonsense.

First, I'm intentionally considering all of the rules instead of picking one to pursue with monomaniacal intensity. Nor am I 'enforcing' a rule by pointing it out to you. If any modification of the user.cfg file is acceptable, why is the phrase "in good faith" included? Why did PGI's own fracking post on this thread point you to that very FAQ? It's no good to try and claim that PGI's answer to the second question only applies to third party software and modifications other than to user.cfg. First, which files are modified is not mentioned in that question; you made that up. Second, and more importantly, their response differentiates between "these types of modifications" in general and "any type of modification" in particular which alters visibility significantly from the original product (to create a tactical advantage; this is a valid possible argument, but not a compelling one.) The term "in good faith" is not "undefined;" it means what it always means. Applied in the context of "is this allowed under the rules," good faith means "as long as you're not violating other rules." See next question. You are cherry-picking your quotes in order to create permissions that do not exist. You should probably stop it.

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

And this is the cruxt of the issue, because we were told there'd be a means of removing the film grain well over a year ago, nearly two now, and we've yet to see it. Of course, AT THAT TIME, they'd just removed the ability to disable film grain from the USER.CFG, and made it against TOS to modify the overlays where the filter is embedded.

Possibly this change will suffer the same fate, who knows, but, in the mean time by PGI's own words this is not cheating.

The crux of the issue with removing cockpit glass is that they haven't implemented an intended feature to toggle film grain? Uh... are you sure you thought that through?

No, the crux of this issue is whether or not PGI has given express permission to modify the game client in this way. They have not, of course. The FAQ is clear on that, and the TOS is very clear that modifications are not permitted except by their express permission. The user.cfg question on the FAQ specifically references "need" and gives hardware configuration as an example. This does not constitute the express permission you need to claim that PGI has unequivocally allowed this modification.

You're harping on a bad reading of one rule and claiming it supercedes all others to create a permission that does not exist. You stop it. By this kind of amateur, D&D-ish rules-lawyering, you succeed only in embarrassing yourself. Given the gushing flood of defensiveness and misrepresentation my comments have provoked from you, I'm going to re-iterate that I don't see any grounds to punish you, nor do I think you're 'cheating,' as the OP fears (but he is violating the Name and Shame policy; heck, this kind of thing is exactly what that policy is designed to prevent.) But you simply don't have any grounds to claim that you were told by PGI that you could circumvent the cockpit glass in this manner. Whether they agree you should or not remains to be seen.

[Dimento Graven]

Sandpit, on 29 January 2014 - 11:58 AM, said:

I run on an HB 6560M Radeon 1GB, i5 Core (2.4 GHZ IIRC), 4GB Ram and get 30-40 FPS on low settings. You don't need a $1000 rig to run this game. That laptop is 4 years old and runs it just fine in low settings.

My system:
i7-2600K (8 logical core, 3.40ghz)
16gb system RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 - 2gb RAM
Vertex IV 256gb SSD (and a Level 0 HDD array 6TB in space)
BENQ GW2750 LCD Monitor

My MWO Video Settings are as follows:
Screen Res - 1920x1080
V-Sync - enabled (eliminates the textures issue in Frozen city)
Windowed Mode - Fullscreen
Motion Blur - OFF
Effects - High
Object Detail - Very High
Particles - Low
Post Processing - High
Shading - Low
Shadows - Low
Texturing - Very High
Environment - Very High
Anti-Aliasing - PostAA

USER.CFG, I've got my FOV set to 100, all the time.

I do A LOT of things on this machine, so I have a {Scrap} ton of background process I leave running (up to and including rendering videos in the back ground) while I play and you can see my performance.

I could probably do quite a bit of pruning and easily hit 60fps full time, but then I'd have to bother maintaining multiple startup sequences, and after a while, it gets to be too much of a bother.

[Madw0lf]

Dimento Graven, on 29 January 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

Just to add some info to the debate, here's some testing I did comparing performance with and without cockpit:

With Cockpit -


Without Cockpit -


This test was done with a Cicada-3M.

I saw better performance in the testing ground, and it was much nicer to look at.

Is your view really THAT distorted when you play like that? That would drive me mad, and yet you think its "much nicer to look at".... o_O

Honestly this should either be disabled or added as an in game option (with balancing, like 3PV) Because, yes, it does give a mild advantage in the form of situational awareness

Im not going to fault you for the performance increase, but it seems rather trivial to me. But then my system can just barely run this game on lowest settings.....

EDIT: And now i see youre running on a high end machine, with high end settings enabled.....

Edited by Madw0lf, 29 January 2014 - 12:33 PM.

[Shamous13]

Madw0lf, on 29 January 2014 - 12:30 PM, said:

Im not going to fault you for the performance increase, but it seems rather trivial to me. But then my system can just barely run this game on lowest settings.....

Well try it and let us know if you see and significant fps gains.

[Madw0lf]

Shamous13, on 29 January 2014 - 12:33 PM, said:

Well try it and let us know if you see and significant fps gains.

Thig is I like seeing the cockpit, and the glass (when I notice it....) and if I had to deal with the distortion his videos show....like I said it would drive me batty.

Thats not saying it isnt worth a run just for "science"

[Kazly]

Destined, on 27 January 2014 - 10:52 AM, said:

Hello everyone,

Just to make the point, any modifications made to the game files in order to give the player a significant advantage is prohibited. We are aware of the "No Cockpit Glass" mod and are actively investigating it. Don't use it.

I've left the thread intact so you are aware of what I am referring to.

Cheers!
Destined

Significant?