Blob Shadows

[NrthnStar5]

Are blob shadows still on test? Are they planning on going live?

[Gladiia]

<p>What's a 'blob' shadow?</p>

[NrthnStar5]

They are the lower quality shadows , basically just a round shadow, not the highly detailed ones we have now. Last time I was on test was when Neriak and Darklight woods were on test, and they had them implemented then. I didn't know if they were still on test or what happened to them.

[Kirstie]

<p>Hiya,</p><p> Blob shadows are currently on a back burner for EQII.  The performance improvement we were hoping to see from them ended up doing the opposite of what we wanted (worse performance overall, not better than regular shadows).</p><p>- K</p>

[NrthnStar5]

<p>Kirstie,</p><p>Thank you for the input, sad to see that it turned out that way. May I ask if it's possible to have the current shadows use the GPU to render and not the CPU?</p>

[Pitt Hammerfi]

<cite>NrthnStar5 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Kirstie,</p><p>Thank you for the input, sad to see that it turned out that way. May I ask if it's possible to have the current shadows use the GPU to render and not the CPU?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: xx-large;">QFE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Not just shadows either, particles being rendered by the vid card would also be a nice perf boost</span></p>

[Dallun]

Kirstie,With regards to blob shadows, when the team was developing them, had you noticed an improvement with your in-house systems and only say the degradation after implementing it on a server?  Or did you notice the degradation while in development entirely.  I ask because if the problem cropped up afterwards I would like to know what system you are using as it might clear up other minor hiccups that I am having intermittently for example.  (Like going from Full screen to Windowed takes 3 minutes at times... blech)Thanks,Dallun/FioneWarden/IllusionistAntonia Bayle

[Araxes]

When has it been confirmed that particle effects and shadows are rendered by the CPU?That would explain why Particle Settings seem to be such a resource drain for me.

[feldon30]

At least SOME of the particle system effects must be done on the graphics card, because my old laptop with 128MB graphics card has a BLACK screen whenever particle effects happen in battle.

[Pitt Hammerfi]

<p>I mean if you look at age of conan they have just announced a new 30% faster engine for the game, and it hasnt even been released yet.</p><p>These guys know how important a smooth engine is for the immersion of the game.</p>

[Kirstie]

<cite>Dallun wrote:</cite><blockquote>Kirstie,With regards to blob shadows, when the team was developing them, had you noticed an improvement with your in-house systems and only say the degradation after implementing it on a server?  Or did you notice the degradation while in development entirely.  I ask because if the problem cropped up afterwards I would like to know what system you are using as it might clear up other minor hiccups that I am having intermittently for example.  (Like going from Full screen to Windowed takes 3 minutes at times... blech)Thanks,Dallun/FioneWarden/IllusionistAntonia Bayle</blockquote><p>Hi Dallun,</p><p>The specifics on which order we discovered the issues in is a bit hazy to me.  That problem is compounded by some of the people who worked on the project at the time are no longer with the company.</p><p>If/When we pick up the blob shadows as a project again to work on in the short term I'll be able to get better data.</p><p>As for the CPU vs GPU question for particles and shadows, I don't have a really great answer for this one either.  I'm not aware of any short term plans to restructure that particular part of the Client, but anything -is- possible.</p><p> - Kirstie</p>

[Bodracoran]

<cite>Kirstie wrote:</cite> <blockquote><p>As for the CPU vs GPU question for particles and shadows, I don't have a really great answer for this one either.  I'm not aware of any short term plans to restructure that particular part of the Client, but anything -is- possible.</p><p> - Kirstie</p></blockquote>This would be HUGE improvement and should be a top priority. GPU's are so much better and particles and shadows. And with more and more people buying dual core processors that have lower clock speeds this would help make the game more competitive in the current market.

[Catsy]

Seconded. The degree to which EQ2 ignores high-end video cards and places most of the load on one single core of a CPU is just inexcusable in this day and age. Even on maximum settings, there's no way those of us with quad cores and 8800 GTX's that eat cutting-edge games for lunch should have bad frame rates on a well-designed engine. When I get better frame rates in Crysis than EQ2, something is deeply wrong with the way this game is designed.I get that EQ2 is a three-year-old game. Its limitations make sense, to a certain extent, when keeping that in mind. The problem is that unlike a fire-and-forget single player game, which is expected to be eclipsed by New Hotness as time goes on, EQ2 was designed to scale in quality and performance with new hardware. For the most part this hasn't happened--most people with top of the line hardware still can't run in max settings, and even at max settings the game just frankly doesn't look good enough to justify the performance hit.If you want this game engine to stand the test of time this long after release, you need to be updating it the way Valve does with the Source engine. Minor optimizations and graphical improvements are all well and good, but the degree to which the game /doesn't/ take advantage of modern video cards is a major, fundamental flaw. Fixing this should have been a high-priority no-brainer for the past two years, not something that requires a six-month change approval cycle just to decide whether to put it on the table.

[Xehl]

<cite>Sotanyavejin@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>When I get better frame rates in Crysis than EQ2, something is deeply wrong with the way this game is designed.</blockquote>That was exactly the example I was going to give. Certainly, an old engine like EQ2 can't come close to modern engines when it comes to quality/performance ratio; that is a given. Still, the performance hit of EQ2 is not really excusable, especially with modern gfx cards. Like the above posters have mentioned shadows and particle effects should rely heavily on your card, and *not* the cpu.

[Coglok]

<cite>Bodracoran wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kirstie wrote:</cite> <blockquote><p>As for the CPU vs GPU question for particles and shadows, I don't have a really great answer for this one either.  I'm not aware of any short term plans to restructure that particular part of the Client, but anything -is- possible.</p><p> - Kirstie</p></blockquote>This would be HUGE improvement and should be a top priority. GPU's are so much better and particles and shadows. And with more and more people buying dual core processors that have lower clock speeds this would help make the game more competitive in the current market.</blockquote>Yes, please! If it's at all possible to make this a high priority, it would be *greatly* appreciated by many players. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[NrthnStar5]

<p>The only other really good solution to these issues would to at least incorporate dual core support. With everquest being such a CPU dependent game, Dual core support would do wonders. </p><p> WoW did it, is Everquest II going to allow that? <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[krrr]

Yes. Please-please-please!  Particles and shadows should be rendered by GPU, not CPU. And I think it`s worth upgrading engine to SM3.

[toxe14567]

<cite>Kirstie wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite><p>As for the CPU vs GPU question for particles and shadows, I don't have a really great answer for this one either.  I'm not aware of any short term plans to restructure that particular part of the Client, but anything -is- possible.</p></blockquote>As others stated before I think improving the graphics engine should be top priority. Just imagine the beautiful zones you could build with an upgraded engine.

[Pitt Hammerfi]

<p>Hehe now you've done it Kirstie <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src=" width="15" height="15" /> commented on a long taboo subject "performance of eq2" and opened a can of worms.</p><p>I don't think there is 1 player who would say they wouldnt like to see the game run smoother, throwing better hardware at EQ2 doesnt solve the problem</p><p>DX 10, Shader mark 3, particles and effects rendered by the GPU oh my !! just imagine <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src=" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Kirstie]

<cite>Pitt Hammerfist wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hehe now you've done it Kirstie <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src=" width="15" height="15" /> commented on a long taboo subject "performance of eq2" and opened a can of worms.</p></blockquote><p>ROFL... Yup that's me, I just walk around work with a big can opener!</p><p>On the there hand we are always interested in hearing constructive critism of EQII as a whole or in part (even when we don't respond, which you've all heard a million times by now).</p><p>-K</p>

[suroktheslayer5]

Can we fix the regular shadows first? They suddenly dissapear after I play a few mins. I hear this is an old bug that was never fixed.

[damicatz]

No offense but, if something as simple as blob shadows (which is merely overlaying an alpha-blended texture at the base of a model) causes a performance decrease over full-blown stencil shadows (which are VERY computationally expensive), then you have a much bigger problem than performance issues. 

[Shogok]

<p>Yes, please, make this a top priority. Again, WoW implemented dual core support and are pushing their engine ahead, even when its not necessary. WoW runs great on low end machines. I was hurt when my friend whos a big WoW fan was snuffing EQ2 for its poor performance. He was right to say so considering I had just finished showing him Crysis on my E6600 dual core with 8800GT.... runs great. I had an AMD 3500+ with ATI 1600 and was getting 25 FPS average in EQ 2. Upgraded to my current system... now I'm getting about 30 FPS average. Thats not even on highest settings which kills my rig bringing me down to 15 FPS. WoW on the other hand saw a performance boost from 30 FPS to 85 FPS (which is as high as it goes cuz my monitor has a 85hz max refresh rate). </p><p> So my upgrade got me a 5 FPS boost in EQ 2 versus a 55+ FPS boost in WoW. You can't let Blizzard put you to shame like that!</p><p>I can't believe EQ2 runs at half the frame rate as Crysis on High Settings. EQ2s graphics just don't justify this. I bet if I got a quad core I'd get even worse performance not better.</p>

[Buttcliffe]

On the topic of shadows... i'm still experiencing the disappearing shadows thing that's been around forever.  Any news on this getting fixed soon?

[adolf102]

<cite>Buttcliffe wrote:</cite><blockquote>On the topic of shadows... i'm still experiencing the disappearing shadows thing that's been around forever.  Any news on this getting fixed soon?</blockquote>Would be lovely to get some update on disappearing shadows.So many threads on forum but no much info from people in charge.Only think is that devs/TR cofirmed the problem is there. Hope those are not on back burner. It's such a nice visual effect <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Any chance to get info about that, pretty please? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Trojenn]

<p>I would have to agree that EQ2 needs an upgrade to its Client Engine. I used to run an Overclocked Pentium 4 Proccessor 4.2ghz with a GeForce 8400 GS ( yes not the best graphics card) 2gig Ram and I was running Balanced Settings at 60-72 FPS depending on Zone. I recently built anothe computer due to Coffee and Electrical Malfuntions to my old machine <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> and am currently running an AMD Phenom X4 Quad proccessor with 2.4 ghz x4, Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2 SLI x2, 8 gig Ram, Azus 98000 Mother Bord, and Windows Vista 64 Bit Pro. With the monster system I just built I cannot even push out 50+ FPS on any settings.. I realize multi core proccessors run at a slower speed but if you utilize the multi core spupport the proccessor speed is crazy. EQ2 Currently only utilized 1 Proccessor wether you have 1 or 4 proccessors. I have done everything I can possibly do to optimize the performance and its just not happening. </p><p>I downloaded a WoW demo just to check out how the conversion from there old Client to there current one went and I have to say I am pretty impressed.. Don't worrie I am not going to play WoW .. Hate the game .. but I do know that it runs outstanding on my current system and my roommate has no problems with the performance on his older computer. </p><p>AoC rocks on this computer but again I don't like AoC due to the lack of grp fun and raid fun. </p><p>Overall, I am not completely savvy on how much work is entitled to upgrading a client engine but if there is anything that EQ2 players would like more. Its to get an Engine Upgrade.. </p>

[DamianTV]

<cite>Coglok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bodracoran wrote:</cite>Yes, please! If it's at all possible to make this a high priority, it would be *greatly* appreciated by many players. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></blockquote><p>+1 to that.</p><p>We do get that the engine was developed long before crysis and Age of Conan came around, but after playing any other game and trying to come back to EQII with graphics turned up on a VERY strong box and getting poor framerates really makes me consider why Im continuing to pay money for something that I only occasionally play, and when I do, teh framerate is so bad that the game is almost not enjoyable.  No offense...</p>