OpenGL use in ESO with Windows. Interesting result.

VisceralMonkey

I've seen this hinted at before but didn't see anything substantive regarding it. Playing around with the user setting.txt file I decided to see how well the OPENGL renderer worked for ESO as opposed to the default Dx11 (Dx10 wrapper.)

The results surprised me, but not for the reason I expected.

First, it should be stated that OpenGL is every bit as advanced as DX11 and has the same capabilities and feature set, it's just usually harder to implement. In general though, it has less overheard and in the right environment, performs better than DX. This depends on a lot of things though, so in general DX out performs OpenGL in games not specifically optimized for it. I wanted to see how well the OpenGL renderer works in Windows.

I found two things right away:

1.) The performance hit of using OpenGL over DX in ESO was almost non-existent for me, I noticed no significant disadvantage to using it. This is largely anecdotal, I did not do any kind of measurable testing (i5 at 4.5, 2 GTX 780 SLI).

2.) What I did not expect was the difference in lighting effects. Almost immediately I noticed a subtle difference in how lighting was working in the game, it looked much more organic and natural. After playing for a while and doing some AvA I was struck by several changes in how well spell effects, torches, player lighting, etc looked as opposed to the DX client. For me, it was clearly superior and more immersive. So much so that I've decided to keep the opengl setting and use that instead of the DX client.

Has anyone else used the opengl renderer in windows and seen lighting improvements? I did have to install the latest opengl drivers from nvidia but it worked after that. Performance in general seems slightly smoother as well, the game seems to handle fps ups and downs better.

Thoughts?

C3N50R3D

Link for latest NVidia OpenGL? I did not have good experience when I tested it but will have to verify driver version.

Edit: Found it. https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-driver

VisceralMonkey

I have a post on reddit as well and one poster did say you shouldn't *need* to install opengl drivers, they should already be there. However, when I tried this initially, after changing to OPENGL in the .ini, I had weird graphical corruption when starting the launcher. That's why I installed the latest beta opengl drivers and that issue went away.

I'm intensely curious to what your perception of the opengl client is like. I swear I can tell a difference in the lighting, but, maybe I'm seeing things? I'd also like to know what you think of performance.

Let me know.

Edit again: Installing the beta package will apparently install older DX drivers as well. I've found the following:

Using the latest nvidia drivers and opengl will display some weird graphics on the login screen and also garbled text in loading screens. HOWEVER, it has no effect on in game text, so you can do this without installing the beta drivers.

Installing beta drivers results in no graphic corruption on login screens and loading screen, but, it apparently installs a complete package meaning some slightly older DX drivers as well, so be aware of that.

C3N50R3D

Yeah I just figured that out. So the new drivers don't support OpenGL? Using 344.75 and OpenGL results in worse than normal stutter for me.

VisceralMonkey

The latest, 347.25 (Non Beta) do NOT give good performance for me. The Beta OpenGL ones, 340.82, give performance close, but not quite as good as the DX drivers in 347.25. As for the better lighting I was speaking of, I swear it looks different but when I'm going back and forth I'm not having a hard time saying HOW. I think I'm losing my mind.

C3N50R3D

347 branch has some serious issues. Had to roll back to 344.