the sky above

[Albrig]

Can the sky maps be updated to be slightly less synthetic than they are now or is the engine the limitation. I rarely message to SoE (probably once a year if that), but this is one thing that after years of playing, I thought would one day happen (like, why wouldn't it - it's like not releasing adventure packs because there's too much to do). If you can make DoF and EoF with astounding ground textures, could not the sky map be updated to be a tad more realistic - like the real thing, you know? Moody, Cloudy - total eclipses. The sky can perform amazing things. The sky is more important than the ground maps. Let me just say that again. The two need to combine - at the moment, I've got crinks in the necks of my characters that are getting eye-sores by looking up.

[Albrig]

<p>I've been away from these forums for well over a year (and the game; I'd given up on it).</p><p>Anyway, I was looking up information on google and I typed in the search engine:</p><p>"eq2 gpu"</p><p>just to see if anything would come up about possible improvements: anything really - and then, much to my incredible shock, up pops a link right at the very top - within Everquest 2's forums, an SoE hired programmer is at work moving and balancing the shadow workload between the CPU and GPU (amongst other things like animation and spell effects). I looked at the brandy bottle in my hand and thought, woah!</p><p>Well I've read the whole lot. I've read about GU51 (and the promise of GU52) and the test server and, well, I've subscribed just to send in a response (I can't reply to the eq2 gpu thread area).</p><p>I never in a bazillion years thought SoE - of all the dumbest companies in the world with regard to ANY effort to bring EQ2 up-to-date - would ever do something even remotely like this. I am truly shocked.</p><p>I understood years ago that the shadowing system was based on geometry triangles and shader 1.1 and the only way to improve them is either do it in Vista DX10 and Shader 4.0 using the same technique, re-write the engine, or a employ a very motivated programmer and pay them a lot of money with hire girls and sex as a monthly bonus.</p><p>I like shadowing. Very much so. LOTRO is rubbish without those DX10 shadows. Just utter crap. With them, LOTRO comes alive - the scene is a self-motivation of scripted life giving dark and light. EQ2 is the reason I started gaming in a sort of long-term committment sort of way. Those shadows were just incredible (and still are).</p><p>SoE you still haven't improved the sky - but what the heck. If you're at least trying to get the EQ2 engine to run at 60fps in Very High Detail (and it seems that in all likely-hood - that may happen), with shadows, with spell effects, particles and what-not -</p><p>Then you might find me signing up for an entire year and actually playing the game.</p><p>My PC is:</p><p>Core i7 920 (3.2Ghz OC;160x20); 12Gb DDR3; X58; Intel X25-E x2 + Highpoint 3520 Raid controller (600Mb/sec sustained read 0.1ms, 25,000 IOPS 4k); nVidia Geforce 285 1Gb; Vista 64 Home Premium</p><p>That spec above slaps LOTRO in DX10 Ultra detail (1920x1200, 60fps locked) settings like it wasn't trying hard enough to make my system notice it was the best there is, visually, for an MMORPG. Any textures being streamed from the SSDs is done completely invisibly. It's that fast. No indication that the world is being loaded at all.</p><p>I'd dump LOTRO in a single second if EQ2 gets a visual revamp like what seems to be occurring at the moment.</p>

[Elrood]

<p>I completely agree! Of all the amazing textures and detail in nearly every other aspect of the game, the sky is really drab. Visually unexciting, bland, and doesn't even look anywhere near 'natural' or realistic.</p><p>I really do believe a "sky revamp" would breathe new life into the game.</p>

[Naubeta]

<p>LoTRO looks nice but it has some very visible flaws.</p><p>It's very minimal in it's use of shaders so most detail has a flat 'painted on' look.</p><p>The trees and other flora don't look 'right' or natural. Speed tree (like in Vanguard) is much better.</p><p>The animations aren't quite 'there' either. And it doesn't help they are identical between races and genders either.</p><p>Two very positive things tho are the view distance, which has been amazing in all turbine games goign all the way back to asherons call, and how smoothly it plays even on very average pcs (I would guess that your uber computer is mostly wasted on it).</p>

[Tsunai]

<p>Let's let the dead rest peacefully. If you feel an issue needs to be readdressed, please feel free to create a new thread on the subject instead of bumping a very ancient one.</p><p>Thanks!</p>