146 replies to this topic

[Impyrium]

Interesting post, thanks for taking the time to put it together.

[Bishop Steiner]

aniviron, on 03 October 2014 - 02:42 AM, said:

Yep, you're right about the cause. I realize my OP comes off as a little harsh, but I know that every change was done for good reasons, to try and optimize performance, or make way for a new feature, something like that. I'm not saying that this is a willful degradation of the game's visual fidelity, or that it happened through negligence.

It's just that every time I hear that something is being optimized in the patch notes, I dread the change. Every small level of detail removed detracts from the game experience. You might not notice it in the patch it happens, maybe at some point you'll go, "Huh, I thought that used to look better?" But all the little details add up to make a huge difference, and a lot of what made this game so attractive at one point got lost along the way.

Thanks for the pics of the kinematics, and armor damage- they're just what I was looking for. And the second one brings up something I was thinking about, but didn't add in the OP, but it fits here.

The Atlas' glowing eyes epitomize what happened to the visual fidelity of the game. They were added early on in beta. Why? Because they look badass. It let you know death was plodding towards you- time to run. Don't mess with the Atlas. They were removed later, for gameplay reasons, because they let you know that death was plodding towards you, and sometimes death wants to set up a nice ambush. It's a good reason to remove it, it makes sense, and I completely respect why the decision to remove the glow was made.

But that decision had a tradeoff. The glow-eyed Atlas was MWO's icon, it was amazing, and the game definitely lost something by removing it. The only workarounds would involve a lot of extra coding time that PGI's small team can't spare. A big studio would have maybe linked the glow to the cockpit lights which pilots can turn on and off (which is still in the game and working thank god, unlike heatsink monitors) but it would have taken time and work better spent on other things.

Tradeoffs happen. But Russ wants to know why we think the game looks worse: well, this is why.

The glowing eye also was a great way to start Forest Colony with a pair of Gaussapults poking dual gauss into it!

[MrDrunkenMaster]

Oh yes jesus, this has been one of my major problem with the games progression.

When I started playing, it was GORGEOUS, with great lighting effects, superb mech animation and great weapons effects.

I remember just standing and watching an Atlas firing missiles and UAC in River city night for about a minute straight, it was just beautiful to watch.

And we used to be able to turn off the film grain, and the colour depth of field, and use PrettyMWO Mod to boost the saturation and sharpen the textures.

We have lost :

Clear Windscreens.

Leg animations.

A lot of shader and lighting rendering.

Film grain is permanent.

Missile animation is now lame, and trails used to be beautiful.

The mech leg movement is *horrible* since they linked it to engine speed.

And so much more........its just lost so muchof its smoothness and beauty.

I would be happy with this if my framerates had doubled, or even gone up 30%. Whereas in fact they are lower now than before ( mainly due to film grain and windscreens adding extra rendering )

Playing the game is an ugly eyetest these days. Makes me very sad.

[Mothykins]

I think I have the basic grasp of this, but Correct me if I'm wrong.

Part of the issue, is, as stated, a lot of computation is happening on-server. Hit detection, Damage calculations, Verification of what's going on from your client side program. In how many matches, with how many possible weapons, missiles, AC rounds, Mechs, Turrets, etc. to keep track of?

Pretty much, a whole lot of what your Computer is actually doing is communicating with the Server. So you're getting a bottleneck from not just your system, but your ISP and the Game Server itself.

Right now, it's pretty rough, and needs more optimization. Or a bigger server bank. Both.

Why is IK on the legs out? Most likely HSR and Hit Reg. If it's out on low settings but in on high, it creates an aiming variance, and the systems have to work even harder to calculate. Pretty simple. A real shame though, it adds so much to the game visually, probably being the one thing I miss the most.

There are reasons, reasons I can see, and I don't see the game looking better until CW is rolled out and they can sit down to optimize the systems again.

[Hoax415]

I would have loved to hear more proper answers about this as well.

[EvilCow]

Most of those effects are purely client-side, the server load is not a factor.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

The game took massive graphical quality hits in the name of optimization. Why this hits are also included on high and very high settings is well....stupid.

The game looked better in closed beta, and in alot of ways it also ran better, the optimizations haven't had a significant effect on the games performance, look at AMD processors for example and before someone says it, they play Crisis just fine, it should be no different here.

This many years in, and performance and graphical reductions is simply unacceptable.

[Mister Blastman]

Vassago Rain, on 03 October 2014 - 02:28 AM, said:

You'll also note that at one point, you could see stuff on forest.

This x 1000000000. Aside from wanting knockdowns back, being able to SEE things in the game would be an immense improvement. I find myself stuck in thermal/night vision on more than half the maps due to how the rendering system tries to make it impossible to see anything I'm looking at.

[Clit Beastwood]

Crunk Prime, on 03 October 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

I think you're on a bit of an island there bud, these generic low res bullet hole textures put the mechs in the best state they've ever been!

ha! they look like the burnt dudes from fallout 3

[Xarian]

Kiiyor, on 03 October 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

Wasn't inverse kinematics canned because the servers couldn't handle all the extra calls being made for 12vs12?

They could just make the IK work client-side. It wouldn't affect HSR enough to require the server to do anything.

[Zyllos]

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this (my quick skim through the thread, I didn't see them) but the modification of ballistic projectile graphics!!! Go to 1:48 in the video below:



See how large that projectile is from the AC/10? This is a major thing I miss as visual fidelity. I hate how every ballistic shot in the game is the exact same size.

Edited by Zyllos, 03 October 2014 - 09:53 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Zyllos, on 03 October 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this (my quick skim through the thread, I didn't see them) but the modification of ballistic projectile graphics!!! Go to 1:48 in the video below:



See how large that projectile is from the AC/10? This is a major thing I miss as visual fidelity. I hate how every ballistic shot in the game is the exact same size.

Here's what you're actually firing.

Or were at one point. MWO has some very nice touches in it.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 03 October 2014 - 10:16 AM.

[Russ Bullock]

Some really good thoughts in here - its likely true that some of the optimizations removed stuff that should still be present on High or Very high settings.

People are looking into that now.

But Vassago lets not show screen shots of CryEngine with a solo player in view, its similar to those screen shots that were floating around with one mech standing amongst trees. That is one thing but then put 24 of them in the same scene all firing lasers, missiles and so on with player connected from Australia to Germany.

I have not doubt there is plenty of room for both optimization/performance increases and making things a lot prettier. We will let you know what we find in our investigation.

The new damage texture for the mechs was much more about time to develop. Basically the old method added entire days and days to the modeling process for results that in most cases were fairly poor and nowhere near worth the time and effort.

I think we need to put more time into model swapping destroyed components like we do with the arms. The code supports that for the legs, torsos etc. Just need the models.

[Zyllos]

Russ Bullock, on 03 October 2014 - 10:48 AM, said:

Some really good thoughts in here - its likely true that some of the optimizations removed stuff that should still be present on High or Very high settings.

People are looking into that now.

But Vassago lets not show screen shots of CryEngine with a solo player in view, its similar to those screen shots that were floating around with one mech standing amongst trees. That is one thing but then put 24 of them in the same scene all firing lasers, missiles and so on with player connected from Australia to Germany.

I have not doubt there is plenty of room for both optimization/performance increases and making things a lot prettier. We will let you know what we find in our investigation.

The new damage texture for the mechs was much more about time to develop. Basically the old method added entire days and days to the modeling process for results that in most cases were fairly poor and nowhere near worth the time and effort.

I think we need to put more time into model swapping destroyed components like we do with the arms. The code supports that for the legs, torsos etc. Just need the models.

Having actual torso sections removed from a mech when it is destroyed would be HUGE. I hate how you take out a LT/RT but just the arm falls off.

The legs seem to work fine for me now. I like the "leg dragging" effect, even though that animation gets removed when you haven't taken damage in a while and start moving again.

[Vassago Rain]

Russ Bullock, on 03 October 2014 - 10:48 AM, said:

Some really good thoughts in here - its likely true that some of the optimizations removed stuff that should still be present on High or Very high settings.

People are looking into that now.

But Vassago lets not show screen shots of CryEngine with a solo player in view, its similar to those screen shots that were floating around with one mech standing amongst trees. That is one thing but then put 24 of them in the same scene all firing lasers, missiles and so on with player connected from Australia to Germany.

I have not doubt there is plenty of room for both optimization/performance increases and making things a lot prettier. We will let you know what we find in our investigation.

The new damage texture for the mechs was much more about time to develop. Basically the old method added entire days and days to the modeling process for results that in most cases were fairly poor and nowhere near worth the time and effort.

I think we need to put more time into model swapping destroyed components like we do with the arms. The code supports that for the legs, torsos etc. Just need the models.

I like this reply.

Karl at one point said that it's possible to do a sort of HD texture pack, that'd upgrade all the camos to proper 2k versions. It'd not really be all that great to make such a thing a mandatory part of the actual game, since it'd bloat the install quite a bit, but as a separate download, for people who are into it, stuff like that would be a blessing.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 03 October 2014 - 11:32 AM.

[Creovex]

Bishop Steiner, on 03 October 2014 - 07:45 AM, said:

The glowing eye also was a great way to start Forest Colony with a pair of Gaussapults poking dual gauss into it!

This is the one thing I remember the most... that and the fact I felt like I was in Tron when my Atlas was getting chewed up and heated up!

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Vassago Rain, on 03 October 2014 - 11:31 AM, said:

I like this reply.

Karl at one point said that it's possible to do a sort of HD texture pack, that'd upgrade all the camos to proper 2k versions. It'd not really be all that great to make such a thing a mandatory part of the actual game, since it'd bloat the install quite a bit, but as a separate download, for people who are into it, stuff like that would be a blessing.

I support this idea if it's doable.

also @Russ, The idea of having more prominent destruction of torso's would be nice. If possible some things I'd really like to see implemented into the damage of mechs at higher end settings are:

More sparking of destroyed components over the course of a fight.
Exposed myomer bundles.
Grey-greenish coolant explosions apon the destruction of a Heatsink. [also minor "Dripping" of coolant leaking, perhaps as an alternate to the sparking of destroyed components, in some areas.]
Exposed internal strcture.
slightly more dynamic destruction of weaponry ect. [for instance if an AS7D has a PPC in the right arm, and the PPC get's destroyed, perhaps a rent back PPC barrel, or a twisted bit of wreckage where it was while the arm is still attatched. ect.]
Improved "Ammo Explosion" effects, this includes blowing out back panels in CASE for both Clan and IS. [rather impressive backflashes]

The game looks decent, but it HAS looked better before, sadly.

[poohead]

I yearn for the 2K or 4K pack suggested in the other thread. It sounded like content delivery was the main issue to work through for this as the assets already existed.

That and the kinematics. It makes it so much more immersive when mechs mesh with the environment. At the moment they seem divorced from it apart from the quickly-fading footprints.

Edited by poohead, 03 October 2014 - 12:13 PM.

[aniviron]

Remarius, on 03 October 2014 - 05:01 AM, said:

I'm curious as to what you're all running machine wise btw as I rarely drop under 60 FPS using 2560x1440 @ 144 on an Asus ROG Swift (all graphics settings maxed). There are some distinct moments with massive LRM spam when it drops quite a bit (particles I presume) but it recovers fast.

PS: As much as I liked the old Atlas eyes my number of headshot instances dropped through the floor when they went.

I'm the OP, and I'm running an i5 3570k, 16gb DDR3 9-9-9-24, an Nvidia GTX 680 on an MSI board. Oh, and a normal platter drive, 7200 RPM though. I run in a fullscreen window and my FPS varies widely between maps and environment conditions. When not in combat I generally get 60-100 FPS. In combat it's about 40-60. If there are particles anywhere near my mech, I get ~15-20. It's particularly bad on cold maps like Frozen or HPG, where a steam effect comes off of the mech anytime you start running hot; slashes my framerate to the single digits.

Glucose, on 03 October 2014 - 05:53 AM, said:

I never fully realized when the walking animations of the mechs changed. The IK solution looks so much better. I can't help but feel that the scale of the mechs seems wrong when playing, and I think it's all in their walking animation. Their gait is now too fast and the feet don't connect to the ground like they used to.

At some point in open beta, all the mech animations were sped up. Not quite sure of the reason; I believe it was because some mechs were capable of speeds that left them ice skating over the ground. The Awesomes in particular got it noticably; the animations were made for the Awesomes that top out around 65kph with a maxed engine, but the animations were sped up so that the 9M didn't look weird going 90kph. It means all the other Awesomes have a weird gait at their speeds now though.

I think the Atlas is the only mech that didn't get much of an overhaul, and it still has a gorgeous walking animation. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though.

Zyllos, on 03 October 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this (my quick skim through the thread, I didn't see them) but the modification of ballistic projectile graphics!!! Go to 1:48 in the video below:

See how large that projectile is from the AC/10? This is a major thing I miss as visual fidelity. I hate how every ballistic shot in the game is the exact same size.

This video reminds me of another thing that changed- the in-game font! Argh, can't believe I forgot it. The old font was great, the new one is... bland. It's the same font used in the UI now. I don't feel like the HUD needs to use the same font as the front-end UI, and the game looks worse for it.

Russ Bullock, on 03 October 2014 - 10:48 AM, said:

Some really good thoughts in here - its likely true that some of the optimizations removed stuff that should still be present on High or Very high settings.

People are looking into that now.

But Vassago lets not show screen shots of CryEngine with a solo player in view, its similar to those screen shots that were floating around with one mech standing amongst trees. That is one thing but then put 24 of them in the same scene all firing lasers, missiles and so on with player connected from Australia to Germany.

I have not doubt there is plenty of room for both optimization/performance increases and making things a lot prettier. We will let you know what we find in our investigation.

The new damage texture for the mechs was much more about time to develop. Basically the old method added entire days and days to the modeling process for results that in most cases were fairly poor and nowhere near worth the time and effort.

I think we need to put more time into model swapping destroyed components like we do with the arms. The code supports that for the legs, torsos etc. Just need the models.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I know you guys are busy with bigger things right now, and I'm not asking you to stop work on CW or anything like that. I know this kind of polish generally comes last, and for a good reason- you get the basic stuff working in game, then it gets spruced up.

I don't think MWO looks bad, by any stretch of the imagination. I'd say art is your strongest department, in fact- and every time I stop shooting people to look around, I notice gorgeous new details. The rust on the ship in the Forest Colony bay only rusts up to where the waterline is. The traffic lights on River City blink red. There are bike lanes in Crimson Strait. Things like that (Give my props to Dennis and the rest of the art team when you see them!)

But even though the game looks pretty good right now, I know it can look a lot better, even if it just means restoring some things that were cut from the game months or years ago. And when you guys finally get a few free development cycles, I'd love to see some of that make its way back in. It'd probably be a fair amount of work to get the sub-armor internal damage layers working, or solve the issue of kinematics working with HSR, but it would not be in vain- it's work well worth it.

Edited by aniviron, 03 October 2014 - 12:21 PM.

[zagibu]

Kiiyor, on 03 October 2014 - 03:39 AM, said:

I bolded the part that I think is the most relevant. I recall now; it was all part of trying to improve hit detection and HSR. I think.

The bolded part can't have much to do with regular hit detection, because the server doesn't draw anything, hence draw calls are no problem server-side. I'm not exactly sure how HSR works, so maybe if it does (some) hit detection on the client, it might still be relevant.