A Secret Door in Craglorn

RSram · June 2015

Normally an active zone will be surrounded by the geometry of the adjoining zones, so I was curious about the veteran zones. I tried to found a way through the invisible walls in Cryodiil, but each time I found one, I was teleported by to my alliance's keep. So I decided to try Craglorn. Craylon is surround by Cryodiil and Bangkorai and I was hoping to find parts of these zones. After many unsuccessful probes of the the invisible barrier that surrounds the zone I did find an entry point to the forbidden zone surrounding Craglorn. Craylorn is surrounded by just mountains and no other zones; its really a huge area of wastefulness. I circumvented the entire zone taking screen shots. The first part of the video shows how to get through the invisible barrier and is followed by a slideshow.

You will need to be a sorcerer with the streak ability to access this area. Sorry, but I couldn't find any other areas that could be climbed or walked through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuxdMuSqh3k

spoqster · June 2015

:-)

Asuryan11 · June 2015

Okay that was pretty good. haha I may have laughed more than I should have watching this.

JD2013 · June 2015

Where abouts geographically would you say that area is? If it's Hammerfell, you may have stumbled into Abah's landing which is a future zone.

nick59349b14_ESO · June 2015

I was able to find the same way through. It took a bit but I was able to find the checkerboarded area. I tried to follow the mountains around but fell off the planet into oblivion, lol. I had to hit /stuck to stop the fall. Thanks for the post, always fun to find new stuff.

Enodoc · June 2015

I don't understand why they create so much geometry (and texture a load of it) in areas that you're never supposed to see. Doesn't it waste resources rendering trees and buildings in an "inaccessible" area?

JKorr · June 2015

Enodoc wrote: »

I don't understand why they create so much geometry (and texture a load of it) in areas that you're never supposed to see. Doesn't it waste resources rendering trees and buildings in an "inaccessible" area?

Possibly. However if they ever decide to add something in that area it probably saves a lot of time.

Enodoc · June 2015

JKorr wrote: »

show previous quotes

Enodoc wrote: »

I don't understand why they create so much geometry (and texture a load of it) in areas that you're never supposed to see. Doesn't it waste resources rendering trees and buildings in an "inaccessible" area?

Possibly. However if they ever decide to add something in that area it probably saves a lot of time.

If they did add anything there though they'd have to move mountains (literally) to enable access to it, as well as making sure what they added was also properly surrounded by geometry and invisible walls itself.

Mettaricana · June 2015

I found one in riften area like this and ran from rift to stonefalls

Skiserony · June 2015

Wow, there actually is some real exploring in this game

Cool vid man.

Naivefanboi · June 2015

Great video.
Remi!ds me of wow days people would find all kinds of hidden locked away stuff.
Gm island anyone? Lol

Faunter · June 2015

I was hoping you had actually found a secret door while out of bounds that would lead you somewhere else.

RSram · June 2015

Mettaricana wrote: »

I found one in riften area like this and ran from rift to stonefalls

I found several and I plan to post then at a later date. Could you walk or climb through the one in Riften, or did yu have to use the streak ability to do this. all of the ones that I found (with the exception of one that doesn't go to Stonefalls) requires the streak ability.

RSram · June 2015

The actual terr

Enodoc wrote: »

I don't understand why they create so much geometry (and texture a load of it) in areas that you're never supposed to see. Doesn't it waste resources rendering trees and buildings in an "inaccessible" area?

I agree that they could have used backdrops like in the movies to create the illusion of distance objects like they do with the clouds on the horizon. With the exception of the terrain geometry, all other geometry should be instanced from a master, so only one copy is actually store on your computer; the copies are generated in real time in computer and video memory. Craglorn isn't that wasteful when compared to the non-veteran quest zones which include adjacent zones with moving wind mills, active fire places, lanterns moving from the wind, and etc.

The active zone Alik'r Desert is surrounded by inactive zones of Glemunbra, Stromhaven, and Bangkori. In fact you can either swim to Glemumbra, or get to it by traveling through the inactive zones of Bangkorai and then through Stormahven. I have a video of that adventure too.

ssewallb14_ESO · June 2015

It's really unlikely that any of that gets loaded or rendered in the actual game, at least not at a quality level that matters. If the engine's optimization technology were that poor the game wouldn't even be playable.

RSram · June 2015

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

It's really unlikely that any of that gets loaded or rendered in the actual game, at least not at a quality level that matters. If the engine's optimization technology were that poor the game wouldn't even be playable.

I traveled in these areas without tripping a load screen, so these areas are rendered with the active game or zone at the same quality as the actual game. Did you look at the screenshots in the video at the 1920 *1080 resolution on Youtube? There is no change in quality.

Here's a screen shot at 1920 * 1080 of the Crosswych mining camp located in Glenumbra of which I traveled to usng a secret door in Stormhaven and no loading screen appeared when I crossed into the inactive Glenumbra zone. Note that there are no NPC's in this zone, its just building structures and props. The rendering precision and quality did not change. The weather system also works in the inactive areas of the zone which is why you see the fog in the distance.

ssewallb14_ESO · June 2015

RSram wrote: »

show previous quotes

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

It's really unlikely that any of that gets loaded or rendered in the actual game, at least not at a quality level that matters. If the engine's optimization technology were that poor the game wouldn't even be playable.

I traveled in these areas without tripping a load screen, so these areas are rendered with the active game or zone at the same quality as the actual game. Did you look at the screenshots in the video at the 1920 *1080 resolution on Youtube? There is no change in quality.

Here's a screen shot at 1920 * 1080 of the Crosswych mining camp located in Glenumbra of which I traveled to usng a secret door in Stormhaven and no loading screen appeared when I crossed into the inactive Glenumbra zone. Note that there are no NPC's in this zone, its just building structures and props. The rendering precision and quality did not change. The weather system also works in the inactive areas of the zone which is why you see the fog in the distance.

That's not quite how real-time 3D rendering works. No PC could render everything in that picture completely and at the highest quality with playable fps. Look up culling/clipping and mipmaping if you're interested in how engines trick the user into thinking they're seeing more than they are.

RSram · June 2015

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

RSram wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

It's really unlikely that any of that gets loaded or rendered in the actual game, at least not at a quality level that matters. If the engine's optimization technology were that poor the game wouldn't even be playable.

I traveled in these areas without tripping a load screen, so these areas are rendered with the active game or zone at the same quality as the actual game. Did you look at the screenshots in the video at the 1920 *1080 resolution on Youtube? There is no change in quality.

Here's a screen shot at 1920 * 1080 of the Crosswych mining camp located in Glenumbra of which I traveled to usng a secret door in Stormhaven and no loading screen appeared when I crossed into the inactive Glenumbra zone. Note that there are no NPC's in this zone, its just building structures and props. The rendering precision and quality did not change. The weather system also works in the inactive areas of the zone which is why you see the fog in the distance.

That's not quite how real-time 3D rendering works. No PC could render everything in that picture completely and at the highest quality with playable fps. Look up culling/clipping and mipmaping if you're interested in how engines trick the user into thinking they're seeing more than they are.

I know how clipping works. Your right that only the areas that you see are rendered, but what I was referring to is that the geometry and textures are still in your computer's memory even when you can't see them, even when it would be impossible to see them. Sorry if I didn't state this clearly in my last post.

ssewallb14_ESO · June 2015

RSram wrote: »

show previous quotes

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

RSram wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

It's really unlikely that any of that gets loaded or rendered in the actual game, at least not at a quality level that matters. If the engine's optimization technology were that poor the game wouldn't even be playable.

I traveled in these areas without tripping a load screen, so these areas are rendered with the active game or zone at the same quality as the actual game. Did you look at the screenshots in the video at the 1920 *1080 resolution on Youtube? There is no change in quality.

Here's a screen shot at 1920 * 1080 of the Crosswych mining camp located in Glenumbra of which I traveled to usng a secret door in Stormhaven and no loading screen appeared when I crossed into the inactive Glenumbra zone. Note that there are no NPC's in this zone, its just building structures and props. The rendering precision and quality did not change. The weather system also works in the inactive areas of the zone which is why you see the fog in the distance.

That's not quite how real-time 3D rendering works. No PC could render everything in that picture completely and at the highest quality with playable fps. Look up culling/clipping and mipmaping if you're interested in how engines trick the user into thinking they're seeing more than they are.

I know how clipping works. Your right that only the areas that you see are rendered, but what I was referring to is that the geometry and textures are still in your computer's memory even when you can't see them, even when it would be impossible to see them. Sorry if I didn't state this clearly in my last post.

Depends on the engine. A modern engine will generally cache whatever it can up to how much it thinks the computer running the game can handle, based on specific instructions and/or whatever the engine thinks is necessary to run the game smoothly. It won't (usually can't) load everything at once into vram and is constantly moving things around to and from disk, ram, and vram. It's been this way for a while now. I can't speak on the specifics on Hero, but unless they're using code from the 90's it probably works like that. Not to mention it's unlikely the Rift would even load on most people's computers if it attempted to precache all of Stonefalls with it.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · June 2015

Guys, no big, open world 3D game has ever loaded every visible part of the scenery into memory with full detail. Mechanisms like culling and mipmapping kick in at rendering time to save processing power, but the main mechanism behind memory conservation, and the thing that makes the game playable even with long lines of sight outdoors is "level of detail" (LOD). The things you see in the distance are much less detailed models than what you would see up close.
The version of Stonefalls you can see from the Rift is not the Stonefalls you see when you are in that zone. That's why a loading screen kicks in when you cross the invisible border: Stonefalls simply isn't loaded.

Enodoc · June 2015

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Guys, no big, open world 3D game has ever loaded every visible part of the scenery into memory with full detail. Mechanisms like culling and mipmapping kick in at rendering time to save processing power, but the main mechanism behind memory conservation, and the thing that makes the game playable even with long lines of sight outdoors is "level of detail" (LOD). The things you see in the distance are much less detailed models than what you would see up close.
The version of Stonefalls you can see from the Rift is not the Stonefalls you see when you are in that zone. That's why a loading screen kicks in when you cross the invisible border: Stonefalls simply isn't loaded.

And that's why I find it odd that somewhere like the Crosswych mine exists in Stormhaven. If Stormhaven is a separately-loaded instance, why are parts of Glenumbra built in it?

RSram · June 2015

I know about pre-caching and VRAM, but you're missing the point. There is a large amount of mesh data and textures that are loaded with each zone that doesn't need to be; its's just laziness to copy parts of existing zones instead of taking the time to see what meshes are really needed (that is visible from within the active zone). All of this data is placed in DRAM memory, and not cached to the hard drive; I know this because my performance software only shows that ESO accesses the drive during transitions like when traveling between zones and entering or existing buildings.

I already posted a discussion named "Made it from Bal Foyen to Vvardenfell." where I actually traveled by foot from the Bal Foyen dock to the coastline of Vvardenfell. From the docks you could see the coastline Vvardenfell, but instead of using actual geometry, the designers could have use just a simple backdrop image like in the FX guys do in the movies.

The image below illustrates my point. The black rectangle show how big the Alik'r Dessert zone is:

I understand that some of these meshes can be seen from the Alik'r Desert coast, or from connecting roads between the zones, but there are hundreds of items that cannot be seen that are animated like windmills, camp fires, environmental effect etc.

I don't know how big the zones are that are surrounded by water (Glenumbra and Audiron) because I can't figure out how to get around the slaughter fish, but excluding these zones, and Cyrodiil, there are 14 zones with huge amounts of meshes or geometry that is impossible to see. This is a big waste of memory and efficiency

Merlin13KAGL · June 2015

Design-wise, they probably originally made a version of the zones contiguous in case they were to make the world free-roam as in TES III. The load screens (essentially triggered by invisible walls) serve to load the additional data (NPC's, quests, etc) on crossing.

While it's far from optimal, it is at least better than if all of the above data was present ahead of time. (Morrowind still had load screens, of sorts, but they happened dynamically and were less noticeable, accordingly.)

They definitely could have used a backdrop or even rendered on the fly with areas like that. The invisible borders (grid check) would have prevented forward progress until it was unlocked). Much like weather and environmental aspects (non-interactables such as cats and grass) could be handled client side and add to the efficiency without taking away from the illusion that we're all running around in the exact same game.

For instance, if a storm is rolling in, it doesn't really affect anything if the cloud I see looks different than the cloud you see.

As it stands, it does seem like there are lots of additional structures and data that are unnecessary. I haven't gone looking for doors explicitly, but have fallen through the world enough times to know it would at least be nice to find my way back.

Anyway, awesome job, as usual, OP. Seems like they're missing some quest/exploration opportunities with some of these.

What performance software do you use, out of curiosity?

RSram · June 2015

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Design-wise, they probably originally made a version of the zones contiguous in case they were to make the world free-roam as in TES III. The load screens (essentially triggered by invisible walls) serve to load the additional data (NPC's, quests, etc) on crossing.

While it's far from optimal, it is at least better than if all of the above data was present ahead of time. (Morrowind still had load screens, of sorts, but they happened dynamically and were less noticeable, accordingly.)

They definitely could have used a backdrop or even rendered on the fly with areas like that. The invisible borders (grid check) would have prevented forward progress until it was unlocked). Much like weather and environmental aspects (non-interactables such as cats and grass) could be handled client side and add to the efficiency without taking away from the illusion that we're all running around in the exact same game.

For instance, if a storm is rolling in, it doesn't really affect anything if the cloud I see looks different than the cloud you see.

As it stands, it does seem like there are lots of additional structures and data that are unnecessary. I haven't gone looking for doors explicitly, but have fallen through the world enough times to know it would at least be nice to find my way back.

Anyway, awesome job, as usual, OP. Seems like they're missing some quest/exploration opportunities with some of these.

What performance software do you use, out of curiosity?

Its possible that in the design phase all the zones were once connected. Now that I think about it, It does look like the surrounding area outside the rectangle was cut out after the design phase because many of the meshes overhang the edge of the zones which would suggest what your saying is correct, and my basic premise of copying and pasting is wrong. I didn't think about your're theory at all because I just figured it would be foolish to try to combine all the zones into one contiguous map.

I respect the replies that other have posted and they are right about how modern day 3D game engines works, but the only time I see data loading from my hard drive it when I transition to another zone, or access a UI function. Note that I had all addon's disabled during these tests. I assume that all of the and meshes are instances to traumatically reduce the memory load on the computer during run time.

For those who don't know how an mesh instance works, it like making a copy of a mesh or shape from a master blueprint, so to draw identical meshes from the original blue print, I just need to store the coordinates (3 data points) and the rotational angle (3 data points) of where I want the mesh copied to and this is done at run time. The more complex a shape or mesh is, the more efficient instancing is because you still only need just the coordinates and the rotational angle of where to place each additional copy, nothing changes. So when a zone is stored in memory, only one digital copy of an object is stored in memory and the rest of the data determines location, rotation, and how many of the objects to place in the zone. Textures are also instances in a similar method. Let's do the math: A tree mesh may take 50 data points to define its physical shape, but its instance will only take 6 data points to define its location and rotation. Lets say we want 300 trees in the game zone; without using instancing you would need to store 15,000 (50 * 300) data points just to draw the trees! Using instancing you would reduce the load to 350 (50 * 6 + 50) data points; a 97.7% reduction in storage for the tree data. Note that the 50 added to the equation is the master or blueprint data of the tree in this example. The game hardware and software specifications dictate the quality and how many objects can reasonably be rendered within a reasonable frame rate.

I just use the System Internal Tool Suit and the built in windows performance tools. Using these two tool sets I can tell exactly what any process on a windows computer is doing every microsecond.

ssewallb14_ESO · June 2015

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Guys, no big, open world 3D game has ever loaded every visible part of the scenery into memory with full detail. Mechanisms like culling and mipmapping kick in at rendering time to save processing power, but the main mechanism behind memory conservation, and the thing that makes the game playable even with long lines of sight outdoors is "level of detail" (LOD). The things you see in the distance are much less detailed models than what you would see up close.
The version of Stonefalls you can see from the Rift is not the Stonefalls you see when you are in that zone. That's why a loading screen kicks in when you cross the invisible border: Stonefalls simply isn't loaded.

If you find your way around the player clips in certain zones, you'll find that, in some zones, all or a large percentage of other zones (Stonefalls in the Rift was my example) exist as part of the map for that zone. The OP's most recent concern is that the unclipped/LOD'd portions are being loaded into memory.

RSram wrote: »

All of this data is placed in DRAM memory, and not cached to the hard drive; I know this because my performance software only shows that ESO accesses the drive during transitions like when traveling between zones and entering or existing buildings.

I wanted to test this for myself, and it gave me an excuse to visit netherworld Stonefalls, so I did. The game never uses more than 1.5gb of Dram; it's the same in zones with or without superfluous content. As I approach areas with new textures or models (Riften into the world for example), it's loading them from the disk in real time. The same thing happens when entering Stonefalls from over the clips. ESO actually seems to manage memory very well, although I have seen the LOD algorithms bug out in the past. I didn't check vram, but it's likely the same scenario. Basically, it's working exactly as I described above.

Darklord_Tiberius · June 2015

JKorr wrote: »

show previous quotes

Enodoc wrote: »

I don't understand why they create so much geometry (and texture a load of it) in areas that you're never supposed to see. Doesn't it waste resources rendering trees and buildings in an "inaccessible" area?

Possibly. However if they ever decide to add something in that area it probably saves a lot of time.

Add something? Nice one! lol!

SirAndy · June 2015

I found a secret door in Coldharbour, so far it's all empty but i just got there.

I'll report back if i find anything interesting ...

RSram · June 2015

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Guys, no big, open world 3D game has ever loaded every visible part of the scenery into memory with full detail. Mechanisms like culling and mipmapping kick in at rendering time to save processing power, but the main mechanism behind memory conservation, and the thing that makes the game playable even with long lines of sight outdoors is "level of detail" (LOD). The things you see in the distance are much less detailed models than what you would see up close.
The version of Stonefalls you can see from the Rift is not the Stonefalls you see when you are in that zone. That's why a loading screen kicks in when you cross the invisible border: Stonefalls simply isn't loaded.

If you find your way around the player clips in certain zones, you'll find that, in some zones, all or a large percentage of other zones (Stonefalls in the Rift was my example) exist as part of the map for that zone. The OP's most recent concern is that the unclipped/LOD'd portions are being loaded into memory.
show previous quotes

RSram wrote: »

All of this data is placed in DRAM memory, and not cached to the hard drive; I know this because my performance software only shows that ESO accesses the drive during transitions like when traveling between zones and entering or existing buildings.

I wanted to test this for myself, and it gave me an excuse to visit netherworld Stonefalls, so I did. The game never uses more than 1.5gb of Dram; it's the same in zones with or without superfluous content. As I approach areas with new textures or models (Riften into the world for example), it's loading them from the disk in real time. The same thing happens when entering Stonefalls from over the clips. ESO actually seems to manage memory very well, although I have seen the LOD algorithms bug out in the past. I didn't check vram, but it's likely the same scenario. Basically, it's working exactly as I described above.

1) The reason the game DRAM usage never changes is because the data of the entire active and inactive areas are loaded as one package.

2) LOD (Level of Detail) controls what you see on your monitor, not what is stored in DRAM (computer) memory. The purpose of LOD is to reduce the amount of VRAM (Video memory) to display the view that you see, not what is in DRAM. LOD is meant to reduce the VRAM memory and texture load on the video card. Can the video data be updated from the hard drive? Yes, the game "Half Life" did this to reduce the DRAM and VRAM memory load, but most modern computer games that display larges areas of terrain include a distance view setting in the graphics menu to compensate for this, or use a load screen, or has short pauses where the FPS drops due to new terrain being loaded as you posted; I never experience and pauses or hard drive loads when I am traveling in the inactive areas of a zone, so I am assuming all the inactive and active zone data are loaded into memory when my character first appears in the active zone. In my testing, I have the maximum viewing distance selected in the graphic options.

3) ESO does load new player data from the hard drive when new players enter the zone. I believe this is the one second pause that players experience when traveling around in the villages and cities, but the areas that I am in have no players or NPCs.

4) As I posted earlier, after disabling all addons, ESO stopped accessing the hard drive as long as I didn't access and user interface functions, or use any abilities. My gaming system has 24 GB of memory, so this might be why my system doesn't access the hard drive, and your does.

5) Checking VRAM doesn't matter.The amount of VRAM used can change from video frame to another. VRAM is only used to draw the view, not to store the mesh objects and texture maps of the entire zone.Yes the texture maps you see are loaded into the VRAM of the video card, but the textures you don't see are stored in the DRAM for immediate retrieval as soon as your character moves and /or when something else in the scene changes. In your test, you stated that the VRAM usage is constant while exploring inactive areas, so I would agree that you are correct in stating that ESO manages VRAM storage efficiently.

6) I am curious as where in Stonefalls and the Rift that you passed through the clipped areas. Could you post screen shots of them because I am compiling a video series of all of the areas in ESO that players can travel to that are beyond the clipped areas. If I post your access access points, I will give you credit for it in the videos.The four areas that I found in the Rift and Stonefalls require a player to be a Sorcerer using the "Streak" ability to breakout into the inactive areas of the zones.

Thanks for the lively debate.

RSram · June 2015

SirAndy wrote: »

I found a secret door in Coldharbour, so far it's all empty but i just got there.

I'll report back if i find anything interesting ...

I found two, one is at the beginning of the zone, and the second is in the "Statue Room" of Cold Harbor. These were the only two areas where I could access the entire zone; other openings were just dead ends to nowhere. There are some hidden goodies surrounding the active Cold Harbor zone.. I will post them in a video later. Did you just jump or walk to the outside of the zone, or did you use the streak ability to bypass the invisible barriers? Does you first screenshot show the location where you entered?

BTW, I call the second screenshot "The Money Shot!" That's the outside area of the active zone to where you can normally travel to any other location in the zone.

Nice job BTW.

RSram · June 2015

SirAndy wrote: »

I found a secret door in Coldharbour, so far it's all empty but i just got there.

I'll report back if i find anything interesting ...

I found your location and it's so awesomely easy. Nice find! The two locations that I found weren't as easy to by pass as yours. If it's okay with you, I like to include your location an my Cold Harbor video. I'm give you the credit in both the post and the video for finding it.

I'm actually standing in the exact same spot as your are in the video.

Once again, nice find.

SirAndy · June 2015

RSram wrote: »

I found your location and it's so awesomely easy. Nice find! The two locations that I found weren't as easy to by pass as yours. If it's okay with you, I like to include your location an my Cold Harbor video. I'm give you the credit in both the post and the video for finding it.

No problem with using it in your video. And yes, it's easy to get there, all you need to do is jump over a few rocks.

During the beta (early and closed) it got progressively harder to get outside the zone barriers. Initially there were very few invisible walls and a couple of us testers started to try to find as many holes in the barriers as possible.
We called it "mountain goating" because most of the time it involves climbing over rocks and cliffs.

Anyways, i have hundreds of screenshots from that time, some of them are pretty spectacular. We did report all of those holes and ZOS did a great job of fixing most of them.

But every once in a while i still find one, like the one in Coldharbour. It's always fun.
I'm still hoping to some day hit the motherload and find some leftover assets that a dev forgot about. You know, like a group of treasure chests or boss mob that instantly respawns.