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Update the GFX engine pls...
darcanis
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I have heard it said many times that the graphics in STO are not high end like single player games as you have to tune for performance in an MMO. So why don't we have graphics like EVE Online which has tons of players per map?
For example their planets http://youtu.be/InimDSMVHiY
New DirectX 11 tech http://youtu.be/YXYeNiXHWmc
and ships.. http://youtu.be/IJIEu7hA5lE
Graphically I think STO could use a major overhaul. This would make it way more immersive and feel like you are truly exploring the stars. Currently while fun to play and I am by no means leaving for another game, it is however looking quite dated in many areas.
For the most part (like 99.99%) it is the users computer carrying the weight of graphical enhancements. (I have worked on MMOs) No reason away missions could not have Unreal tech looking graphics as it handles way more people per map at a time. Same with starbases and other instanced maps.
Lastly... What happened to ripples in water when you run through it? A few weeks back your uniform would get wet and you'd more or less splash around. Now nothing again. Graphics is actually taking a step backward... lol
Still fun game though, but for $25 a ship I want it to look as real as possible!
For example their planets http://youtu.be/InimDSMVHiY
New DirectX 11 tech http://youtu.be/YXYeNiXHWmc
and ships.. http://youtu.be/IJIEu7hA5lE
Graphically I think STO could use a major overhaul. This would make it way more immersive and feel like you are truly exploring the stars. Currently while fun to play and I am by no means leaving for another game, it is however looking quite dated in many areas.
For the most part (like 99.99%) it is the users computer carrying the weight of graphical enhancements. (I have worked on MMOs) No reason away missions could not have Unreal tech looking graphics as it handles way more people per map at a time. Same with starbases and other instanced maps.
Lastly... What happened to ripples in water when you run through it? A few weeks back your uniform would get wet and you'd more or less splash around. Now nothing again. Graphics is actually taking a step backward... lol
Still fun game though, but for $25 a ship I want it to look as real as possible!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by darcanis on
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There is currently an option in STO to choose between DX9 and DX11 so if they added advanced DX11 stuff (that you would be able to turn on and off anyways) won't affect you if you can't use DX11 or don't enable the features.
Don't jump down someones throat without thinking first.
Fleet Admiral Enterprise-D
whilst we are on the subject i would like to see mmos and all games with this:
Next Generation Graphics - Human Skin Simulation
Future of Game Graphics - VFX tech Demo
This on top of the DX11 tessellation and higher resolution textures is my dream for games, but till our realtime redering bandwith and speed improves for gaming it will be a while till we get that far.
in the meantime this is a good watch: The Future of Gaming
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The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
Whoa dude.. What's with the hostility? You'd think I killed your puppy or something. Graphics settings are there for a reason. It wouldn't stop you from playing. On my laptop I play with integral GPU same as you, but my desktop can handle a lot more and it would be great to take advantage of that power when playing on it. No offence meant. I in no way mean to shut out those with lower video capabilities, just to improve for those who can handle the experience tech wise.
@th3xr34p3r
Cool vids! I want that now! lol Maybe in a couple more years at the rate graphics cards and tech evolves that stuff will be in every game.
It would be cool and all, but it sounds like the game would have to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
I was wondering the same thing about the water ripples... I always loved that :P
Depends on how badly it was programmed. If it was modular then you only need to tweak or rewrite the graphics engine itself and leave everything else alone. As for textures they could hold a contest for us to create textures for different things following various rules of size and file types. Doing that could retexture the whole game quickly and easily. Nothing like crowdsourcing for speeding up a task. There are many on here that could do that easily. Overall it could be done fairly quickly with little effort over the long run as the community would carry the heavy texture load.
Just look at games like Skyrim to see how much improvement the community can add to the graphical experience of the game.
While we're on the subject of what EVE does and doesn't do compared to STO...
How's the "Walking in Stations" feature (announced and touted from 2006 until 2011 when they finally gave players ONE type of 'Captains Quarters' with a 3D avatar that can walk around in those small quarters, and out on a walkway? As I recall even that wasn't implemented as promised and they got rid of 'ship spinning' and made the Captain's Quarters non-optionnal....
The result? A LOT of pissed off players who's PC rigs couldn't handle the additions; as well as the fact you couldn't invite or interact with others in your Captain's Quarters because the tech to do that didn't exist.
Five years to bring a proto version of WIS to EVE with the end result being such a negative backlash that CCP has finally admitted to completely abandoning any furthe work on WIS (although honestly, to take 5 years to finally implement what they did, I don't thnk thjey EVERv bdevoted Dev rosources to implementing it in the first place.
Also, sorry, but I donm't find the linked videos so 'mindblowing' to divert STO Dev time to upgrading the graphics engine beyond what they alreadhy did with Season 4.
Finally, if you look at EVE player's reaction, it"s 'meh' as well, and they would rather see CCP work on the buugs, UI and mechanics issues EVE still has after nearly 10 years. It was funny to see plahyers reactionms when one of teh big selling points or a recent EVE update was new missile contrails.
STO has A LOT of issues and IMO is still light in a lot of content areas for an MMO. <---- This is what needs the most attention right now. The graphics engine is fine - better then some other MMOs and worse than others - but it does a good job of conveying what in needs to.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The water in Skyrim always bothered me, it was pretty bad. Got a texture pack for it, and it made all the difference.
I suppose it could be done, but I'd rather have more story content. I agree, it's definitely not the worst MMO graphics out there. At least on high settings, the ships and people look pretty darn nice.
Okay that's cool. I want to see that prettiness on my Dready.
The STO engine is not actually that terrible, but it does have a couple of failings. For instance, STO has some royally craptastic textures. They are so inconsistent to the point of absolute comedy. (Since when do asteroids glow? :P)
And just look at the silliness that you can see in sector space. The "Stars" are pixely, the backgrounds are full of artifacts, and most of the alien star systems are in fact our solar system, just butchered. :rolleyes: (Just go see earth and jupiter in orbit of Ker'rat, and never see this game the same way ever again)
Seriously, fixing the textures would solve about 80% of all the graphical problems with STO.
I mean, the only other big problem I can see is how big everything is. But that's a scaling issue not a GFX Engine one.
I am betting the engine could handle better textures easily and better textures alone would improve things a lot. An easy way to improve them is release a database of all the textures and let the community play with them. Then use the best in the game rewarding contributors with a free ship, dil, or something... For me it would be reward enough to see better textures in game. Though a small credit as voluntary texture artist for portfolio would be nice.
If Skyrim can go from bland to photorealistic with a simple texture mod then imagine how much it could improve STO.
Textures and hud elements like skill icons etc are already stored locally on the clients machine, you just need a converter to extract them and replace them.. so it can be done. can't rem if it was wrd, wrt, or wrx hell i need to redownload and reinstall the game to double check once i get the new gaming pc setup.
Twitter | Blog | Original Join Date: Dec 2007 | Gaming Setup | Raptr Profile | Gamer DNA
The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
Wouldn't you have to reinstall the texture after every patch though?
Number two: 22nd Century Excursion Jackets
Number three: Handheld communicator animation for non-combadge uniforms
Assuming that texture was updated, I would say yes. But if the update didn't change that texture, then I don't think it would. STO is not Minecraft.
But that's even if you manage to get the files out in the first place. And Cryptic really doesn't take kindly to that.
Graphics arnt everything. Fallout 2 > Fallout 3
DISCLAIMER: If any of my opinions or what I say hurt/offend you. TOUGH. Either deal with it or go cry like the whiny keyboard warrior you probably are.
ex: H:\Cryptic Studios\localdata\texture_library\costumes\Avatars would contain sub-folders to alter various race/gender specific textures relating to what's worn....only you see the changes however. thought that was one of the best things they did....one of the strangest was textures are in .wtex~>.dds with a wrapper that probably adds functionality for their engine. but makes it less straightforward to mod.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Graphics wise, there are alot of imperfection that need to be fixed. They have been consentrating on making the star background looks so real that they forgot about the ships. The canon shops don't even look canon. The widows are not arranged properly, even when you choose the different styles. Some styles windows don't even touch the skin when you look close.
I thinks it has alot to do with the new type of devs they brought to Cryptic from PWE. They are just straight up lazy, and don't care to fix what already exist in the game. I don't even think they are Star Trek fans because the game looks less and less like Star Trek with every patch. They are more concerned with bringing you more ships that they created for you to buy than, to fix the already existing ships and performances. When you look at the space battles, it doesn't resemble anything like Star Trek, with cannon volleys firing 100-200 rounds per minute. Cannons in Star Trek don't fire that fast. These actions of ships zipping around and firing machine guns are something from another fighter ship type of game. Maybe thats why there are more escort ships than cruisers and DHC are really machine guns. I guess I have to wait for a true Star Trek game to come out because this one is drifting away to something else.
i'm pretty sure once never winter is out those updates will come and many more. they just have the workforce bound to that project right now.
exact same thing was in dragon age: origins...community made a higher resolution texture package for the game. looked amazing.
Sorry for the late reply.
No not really as the files are not directly replaced from within the original folders/sub-folders, the client reads them first via the folder in the top of the tree so unless its a big code change they should load up perfectly every time. i.e as described by deadspacex64
Twitter | Blog | Original Join Date: Dec 2007 | Gaming Setup | Raptr Profile | Gamer DNA
The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
Even if they updated to DX11, what then? The most you'd get DX11's better handling of textures, thus giving you a faster frame rate. Suppose they added assets that take advantage of tessellation. What good is that? Oh look my dinky little ship that's so tiny on my screen because it's a tactical disadvantage to zoom in on it is all tesselated. Nobody can tell the difference because when zoomed out like that it's all curvy without tesselation anyway. It's not like extra detail added in by tesselation can even be seen at those zoom levels.
With ship combat often taking place at the edge of firing range, you can't even see the extra detail from improved assets on other craft either. You can't really get in close enough to look at your avatar or anyone else's for tessellation to make much of a noticeable difference.
What good are geometry shaders for this game? There's no procedural graphics generation, and the game isn't designed in a fashion that it would benefit from such a thing.
What good is DirectX 11 for this game except the added performance on compatible cards?
Yes I'm aware that there's already a DirectX 11 mode. Are you aware that it makes certain polygons in interiors look totally black and screws with the lighting just as it has for the year and a half that it's been there?
↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → Ⓑ Ⓐ
Actually thats BS, because before F2P they use to update the graphics and performance with every patch. The fact that water use to ripple and splash around when you ran in it and had a dripping wet uniform when you got out, is proof that graphics and audio has gone backwards. Laziness is never the answer to problems. Blaming players and genralizing them, assuming that they all have low graghics cards is not the answer either. That makes about as much sense as an auto maker blaming drivers for causing auto recalls. Just because you like looking at your ship as the size of a fly doesn't mean the rest of us do.
If the devs are going to be busy concentrating on other games then why is this one an online game? Why isn't it a single player RPG? The minute my ships become pixelated, I will retire this game, because I didn't pay money to see less looks and performance.
you need to look up everything dx11 can do...fps improvements in several areas, lighting and shadows for one, volumetric fog, etc. it's not just tessellation and texture handling, nor even just shaders. though all those have big improvements in how they're handled and what can be done with them.
in raw rendering dx11 easily outperforms dx9 with dynamic lights and shadows. ye, you can ramp up texture rez in either, but that isn't the bottleneck. that comes from how dx9 does light, shadow, specular, reflections, moving light sources, ambient light, caustic lighting effects. so much has to have a faked work around to even appear in dx9.
and people wonder why so many dx9 games tend to load the cpu as much or more than the gpu >.>
in short, it would make the game look better, just moving the engine up to dx11 capabilities. getting a completely new engine...like say cryengine 3 or unreal 3 with those capabilities built in...dx11 and 64 bit capable...the game could have much more detail, less stuff vanishing (like torps) and run faster.
dx9 needs to be taken off life support. all game devs need to let it die. only reason it's being held onto so dearly is consoles...and the mistaken assumption that a majority of pc's are still running winxp and vista.
while statistics (bleh) say both are still out there in numbers (xp/vista) what those statistics don't show is are those mostly aren't gamers machines still running that old TRIBBLE. this last bit is more towards any devs that might peruse this thread. gamers tend to stay current with tech. business and people who don't game don't bother. so survey's and website stats of OS's visited tends to get skewed.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
STO Engine is kinda outdated and i want to spend my sparetime in the best visual quality possible. That is one big reason for me to play STO not that much as I could - and a reason not to spend so many money - i rahter spend it on other games...
The engine code use with some tweaking and optimising, to say the least.
I noticed as I was running the new content that my laptop's temperatures were skyrocketing, both CPU and GPU. Now, you might say "well, don't use a laptop", but I have to say it didn't get quite as warm playing Crysis 2 or TW:Rome 2 on high, for instance - good i7 quadcore CPU and 2gb dedicated GPU in a very decent rig. I mean, I love how the new content looks better than the older stuff did, but some efficiency tweaks to engine/code would be welcome...