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My biggest turnoff today in CO

novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
edited May 2015 in Champions Online Discussion
For some reason, the heightened textures I see in the costume creator don't load out when outside of it. I know it's due to that "raise details in costume creator" setting but why doesn't it load out of it?

I have tried tweaking everything possible, it's almost as if settings does not do anything about the textures. Anyway to resolve it?

Example:

The steel commando chest has several ridges on it, but they don't show. Same with ventilators on the leg accessories. The grills don't show. It's just like a sharp boundary between colours, solid too.

I use a Nvidia graphics card and its one of the better ones.
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

~me
Post edited by novaninja555 on

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    flyingfinnflyingfinn Posts: 8,408 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Pictures of both?
    CHAMPIONS ONLINE:Join Date: Apr 2008
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    novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    flyingfinn wrote: »
    Pictures of both?

    Damn, unfortunately I can't post them in till Saturday.
    "Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

    ~me
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    deadman20deadman20 Posts: 1,529 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    This sounds like your Lighting Quality is set to Low. Most detail textures are locked behind the Lighting Quality, have you tried setting it to High?
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    novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    deadman20 wrote: »
    This sounds like your Lighting Quality is set to Low. Most detail textures are locked behind the Lighting Quality, have you tried setting it to High?

    Man, I didn't bother tweaking lighting :O Cuz some idiot in zone told me that lighting should be set at low for best texture quality, and me like an idiot didn't bother tweaking it since it was already on low -.- !

    I will do it when I log on next! It would probably explain why my textures mysteriously disappeared after mechanon - I set everything to low during the mechanon effect to increase performance when fighting him.

    Thanks!
    "Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

    ~me
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    jonsillsjonsills Posts: 6,317 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Yeah, dunno who told you that but it sounds like the same sort of person who tells others to improve their graphical performance by pressing Ctrl-F12. Setting the lighting to Low can improve performance on borderline graphics cards - by lowering the graphical detail.

    Also, check to make sure you weren't somehow set to Half-Graphics On - happened to me once, and it was a real headache until I thought to double-check that setting.
    "Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"

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    novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    jonsills wrote: »
    Yeah, dunno who told you that but it sounds like the same sort of person who tells others to improve their graphical performance by pressing Ctrl-F12. Setting the lighting to Low can improve performance on borderline graphics cards - by lowering the graphical detail.

    Also, check to make sure you weren't somehow set to Half-Graphics On - happened to me once, and it was a real headache until I thought to double-check that setting.

    Is this half graphics thing part of CO settings or computer settings? If its on CPU settings, I don't have that problem cuz all my other games work as usual.
    "Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

    ~me
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    jonsillsjonsills Posts: 6,317 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    novaninja555 wrote: »
    Is this half graphics thing part of CO settings or computer settings? If its on CPU settings, I don't have that problem cuz all my other games work as usual.
    No, it's in the Video settings in CO. Back in the day, it used to default to "On" for everyone - I can only imagine how many people back then logged in, glared at the "graphics", logged out again, and never came back... Now it defaults to "Off", but I did find it toggled back to "On" one day. Only happened the once, thanks be.
    "Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"

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    biffsmackwellbiffsmackwell Posts: 4,739 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Yeah the reason it's under lighting is because Champions relies a lot on lighting to bring out details, instead of using more polygons to actually build the details into the models. It's the reason we can have stuff like the Muscle sliders, and why we can assign different textures to pieces like adding wrinkles or bands to tights without having to select a new piece that had the wrinkles or bands designed into them.

    It's great for flexibility, not so great for slower machines.
    biffsig.jpg
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    chaelkchaelk Posts: 7,732 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    jonsills wrote: »
    Yeah, dunno who told you that but it sounds like the same sort of person who tells others to improve their graphical performance by pressing Ctrl-F4. Setting the lighting to Low can improve performance on borderline graphics cards - by lowering the graphical detail.

    Also, check to make sure you weren't somehow set to Half-Graphics On - happened to me once, and it was a real headache until I thought to double-check that setting.

    fixed that. F12 just removes your UI, F4 is the boot out.
    my biggest surprise when I updated from the GEforce 9200 was finding out there were details and textures.

    Ripper before was plain green guy in some armour.
    Now he has a lot of detail.

    I got to see the rubbish on the ground, kicking bottles around.

    Downside is, so have the explosions.
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    aiqaaiqa Posts: 2,620 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    biffsmackwell wrote: »
    It's great for flexibility, not so great for slower machines.

    On the contrary, compared to having high detail models, normal maps are great for slower (any) machines. Having all those extra polygones on screen would grind the CO engine to a halt on even the highest performaning computers.
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    meedacthunistmeedacthunist Posts: 2,961 Arc User1
    edited May 2015
    aiqa wrote: »
    On the contrary, compared to having high detail models, normal maps are great for slower (any) machines. Having all those extra polygones on screen would grind the CO engine to a halt on even the highest performaning computers.

    Actually, it's less about having more triangles on models (CO models are already pretty heavy on polygons; believe it or not, but they're actually heavier than DCUO models), but about CO having actual textures with details and shading painted on diffuses, like it's usually made in games.

    This would not only be less demanding on video cards than having every detail indicated almost exclusively by normalmaps, but also would result in a crispeir looking models with more indicated details.
    Or at least in models looking less like they are vacuum formed out of plastic sheet, lol.

    See STO and NW in comparison, they're on the same graphic engine, but they're ress reliant on normals and more reliant on diffuses. STO is notable for running smoother than CO, NW has its own share of stability problems.
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    biffsmackwellbiffsmackwell Posts: 4,739 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    aiqa wrote: »
    On the contrary, compared to having high detail models, normal maps are great for slower (any) machines. Having all those extra polygones on screen would grind the CO engine to a halt on even the highest performaning computers.

    I don't think so. On my old computer, I could have a hundred players on the screen at one time, and the game wouldn't grind to a halt. Having more polygons on the screen didn't really matter much. Turn on High Quality Lighting when you're doing anything other than looking right at a wall, and the FPS plummets hard. Turn on screen-space ambient occlusion on too if I was feeling like watching a View-Master.

    If Cryptic would have gone with a mix of texturing and normal mapping on more of their pieces, it wouldn't look so bad. But on some pieces, all detail is just gone without High Quality Lighting.
    biffsig.jpg
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    novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    So.... Is it better to have my lighting quality up at high? Or does it make the computer chug real bad?
    "Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

    ~me
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    biffsmackwellbiffsmackwell Posts: 4,739 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Depends on the computer and your opinion. With it on, I only get about 40 FPS but that's playable for me. On my old computer I would get around 12 FPS with it on... Not playable.
    biffsig.jpg
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    meedacthunistmeedacthunist Posts: 2,961 Arc User1
    edited May 2015
    biffsmackwell wrote: »
    I don't think so. On my old computer, I could have a hundred players on the screen at one time, and the game wouldn't grind to a halt. Having more polygons on the screen didn't really matter much. Turn on High Quality Lighting when you're doing anything other than looking right at a wall, and the FPS plummets hard. Turn on screen-space ambient occlusion on too if I was feeling like watching a View-Master.
    This one actually migh depend more of the game engine itself, how it calculates light. If it's not optimised enough it actually can be slower with more light to calculate than with a fewer polygons more.
    But I can tell that the one of the biggest resource hog combo in CO can be dynamic lightning + slider for number of lights per object set too high + shadows quality and texture filtering set to max (since it seems like it affects also textures for shadows and normals) + lightning quality set to max.
    Lightning quality option alone isn't very demanding if the rest is kept at low or medium.

    Seems like issues with CO are most often coming from light tracing, not from polygons or textures.
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    biffsmackwellbiffsmackwell Posts: 4,739 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    meedacthunist wrote: »
    This one actually migh depend more of the game engine itself, how it calculates light. If it's not optimised enough it actually can be slower with more light to calculate than with a fewer polygons more.
    But I can tell that the one of the biggest resource hog combo in CO can be dynamic lightning + slider for number of lights per object set too high + shadows quality and texture filtering set to max (since it seems like it affects also textures for shadows and normals) + lightning quality set to max.
    Lightning quality option alone isn't very demanding if the rest is kept at low or medium.

    Might depend on the game engine, sure, but we're talking Champs. I used to run the game on everything set to the lowest settings except for screen resolution (can't stand blurry pixels) and the most dramatic decrease always came from turning light quality to high, even with all the other options on minimum.

    Trust me, if there was a way to put light quality to high and have it be playable, I would have found it.
    biffsig.jpg
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    biffsmackwellbiffsmackwell Posts: 4,739 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    gradii wrote: »
    The brain stops noticing a difference after 30 FPS.

    On my old computer I never got more than 25 FPS and was often spiking at lows of 17 FPS, and the game was still very playable, and it didn't bother me too much.

    Lag and FPS are 2 different issues

    I can absolutely tell the difference between 60 and 30 FPS.

    And I can absolutely tell the difference between FPS and lag.
    biffsig.jpg
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    novaninja555novaninja555 Posts: 836 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Turned lighting in high as soon as I got back, characters looking good again :D not much change to FPS ; it was at 50 if I remember correctly and 60 before changing that.
    "Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."

    ~me
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