ESO and Microsoft Surface 3 Pro

Davadin

So.... I got a Surface 3 Pro from the office. And while I'm reading up on some links, I came across this:
https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-ca/why-surface/for-gaming

THAT'S ESO!
HOLY COW!

So immediately I went ahead and installed it....

BUT hell, apparently the native resolution is 2160x1440 which is too much lol.... so I dropped the resolution down. By default it's high, so let's drop it too to medium. And then.....

1. 50% of the time I got stuck at a loading screen. Either from username login into char selection, OR loading a char, OR changing graphic option (it loads). I had to kill the client. What gives?
2. It's still roughly 5-10FPS... lol. Do I need to run it MINIMUM? I thought... come on... look at the screen above. I'm pretty sure THAT's not minimum... right? RIGHT?


Anyway, just trying to figure out what's the best setting to play this on Surface 3 Pro.

Thanks,

KleanZlate

Do you have an i5 or i7?

wrlifeboil

I think it's going to overheat.

Davadin

i7.

yes this thing gets freakin hot.

what settings should i use tho?

DaveMoeDee

I bet it is just a screenshot. Taking pictures while the game is playing might make it tougher to get a good shot. It would also *** off the other 3 people in the group.

Davadin

no.... i'm still 50-50 on sucessfully reaching the char selection screen. evne when it's cool.

LameoveR

It's photoshop.

DaveMoeDee

The ability to run ESO decently would boost the chances of me buying a SP3.

ThePonzzz

I would not play ESO on a tablet. You're going to burn that thing out super fast for what will be extremely subpar quality.

Davadin

ThePonzzz wrote: »

I would not play ESO on a tablet. You're going to burn that thing out super fast for what will be extremely subpar quality.

its not mine. it's the office. and i'll be playing on my GTX970 at home anyway :P

Davadin

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

The ability to run ESO decently would boost the chances of me buying a SP3.

on MINIMUM/LOW it's about 25-30 FPS.

it kinda suck.

i'll see if i can tweak some stuff again.

Davadin

OK i'm in-game and i switched a few graphic settings, kicked me to loading screen.... and now im stuck again.



seriously, what's going on? lol

can @ZOS_YigaelK @ZOS_HugoP comment on what settings is best for Surface 3 pro?

Davadin

Oh, or how about which video graphic settings doesn't require a UI reload? that way i can test settings a lot easier and faster....lol

Davadin

OK, scratch 50% of the time.

I'm now at about 4 out of 5 times stuck in loading screen after I entered my password and hit Login.....

What gives??

I tried changing Dx11 to Dx9. Changing to minimum settings from both login screen and userSettings.txt.... I don't know....

Wily_Wizard

You said you reduced your resolution from 2160x1440. What resolution is it on now? You will gain the most FPS by reducing the resolution. I would find the smallest resolution that's acceptable to you to play on 1st, then try to tweak the in-game settings.

Davadin

its on 1980x1080.

on minimum, no AA, its around 30-40 running around major city hub, but it looks horrible as hell lol

ill try goin down further on resolution.

bumping up to medium is about 25-30 which i dont think its worth it.

to be honest its not the quality that gets me, it's the 10-15 min loading screen. im NOT exagerating. its that long. its crazy.

ill play around further with the settings to see if i can improve it...

Wily_Wizard

I would try something like 1320x720, that's still 720p HD, and you should be able to get quite a bit more FPS at any quality settings. I'm just guessing the 1320 horizontal resolution, it may be something different, that SP3 seems to have some non-standard resolutions.

Caelo

Wily_Wizard wrote: »

You said you reduced your resolution from 2160x1440. What resolution is it on now? You will gain the most FPS by reducing the resolution. I would find the smallest resolution that's acceptable to you to play on 1st, then try to tweak the in-game settings.

I think you'll gain the most by completely disabling shadows and water reflections. You don't want the graphics engine to render the scene more than it actually has to and disabling shadowing and reflections certainly removes at the minium two rendering passes. When you've disabled those settings you can think about dropping to 1920x1280, 1440x960 or 1080x720. You want a 3:2 resolution for the Suface 3 Pro or else upscaling will make it look terrible.

Wily_Wizard

Caelo wrote: »

I think you'll gain the most by completely disabling shadows and water reflections. You don't want the graphics engine to render the scene more than it actually has to and disabling shadowing and reflections certainly removes at the minium two rendering passes. When you've disabled those settings you can think about dropping to 1920x1280, 1440x960 or 1080x720. You want a 3:2 resolution for the Suface 3 Pro or else upscaling will make it look terrible.

Honestly, there is no right or wrong way to do it. The only way to find out is to test different resolutions with different settings and find the most acceptable for your own setup. Its always a balancing act because the game settings and the resolution both reduce the overall quality of the game.

Here's a pretty good GUIDE that might help you get to the right settings.

As Caelo stated, you will definitely want to stick with a 3:2 aspect ratio if possible for any resolutions settings you choose. Ordinarily its best to leave the monitors settings on native, and adjust the displayed resolution inside the game settings itself. I'm not sure how many 3:2 resolutions the game settings will provide though, only you can see that. The game may, or may not pick up on your SP3's available resolutions and display those for you, it depends on the programming. I have no idea if this will work, but if there are no 3:2 resolutions to choose from in the game settings, you could alternately try to change the SP3 to the desired resolution and then set the game to fullscreen, it might trick the game into displaying your resolution.

With the SP3, you are definitely in uncharted territory, which is kind of cool, but might be frustrating at times....I wonder if you're the 1st one to really try to make it work right? Whatever you find, its pretty amazing that you even got it to work.

Wily_Wizard

Here's quotes from a couple posts that gives you idea what other SP3 users had to say about ESO:

Elder scrolls online runs very well, surprisingly well, with medium settings and full resolution. I have to run full resolution because it letterboxes anything under that, I wonder why, my baytrail atom did not letterbox like that.

So, after seeing videos of people running Skyrim on a Surface Pro, I decided to give ESO a shot on the tablet.
All things considered, it ran better than expected. The biggest return came in the reduction of the draw distance. Beyond that, reducing or eliminating some of the eye-candy (shadows, grass, etc) helped greatly. I was able to make the thing definitely playable (as long as you aren't a >60fps or nothing type of gamer) at 720 resolution.

Just for kicks, I reduced the resolution to 320x240. The thing ran very smooth then.

Here's a couple good links that might be helpful:
Surface Firmware and Driver Updates
SP3 Undervolting for Gaming Performance Improvement

Davadin

Nice! will read on those articles, but wow, it's performing pretty badly lol... But the lowest I tested was 1280x1024. Maybe I should try 720.

On further testing (going into big crowded cities, large landscape, even cyrodiil....) On medium, it's around 15-25FPS , and on minimum it can get around 35-40... but omg is it ever ugly lol...

But again, I still can't get around the super long loading screen. And my SP3 is equipped with 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and an i7...........

Wily_Wizard

The funny thing is that Microsoft lists ESO as a "Featured Game", whatever that means. Most likely its just a marketing gimmick.

Davadin

Wily_Wizard wrote: »

The funny thing is that Microsoft lists ESO as a "Featured Game", whatever that means. Most likely its just a marketing gimmick.

i know. look at the link/screenshot on my first post above.

Miszou

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but did you ever get this to work?

I'm heading out of town for a few days, and I'd like to be able to keep my crafting research going while I'm away. I have no intention of actually trying to play, but like you, I can't get past the loading screen...

edit: Never mind, I think I resolved it. I'm running it at fullscreen 1280x720, minimum settings, and while it looks like something from the early 90's, it's got a decent frame-rate and I can at least manage my crafting research.