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• PC/Mac: No maintenance – March 3
• NA megaservers for maintenance – March 5, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 11:00AM EST (16:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for maintenance – March 5, 9:00 UTC (4:00AM EST) - 16:00 UTC (11:00AM EST)
• ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – March 6, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 4:00PM EST (21:00 UTC)
Optimisation suggestions & graphics quality questions.
CossackHD
✭✭
First problem I noticed once I ran the game: Inconsistent GPU load spikes (50% goes up to 100% for a short time) - that makes my PC fans go crazy. I cap my FPS to 48 through config (min. frame time = 1/48) and even underclock the GPU to reduce heat, but if there was an option that would resolve GPU load spikes it would make it so much easier to enjoy the game!
I know, well optimised software is supposed to use as much of GPU as possible to provide best performance, but 50% GPU usage with sudden 100% load spikes (in the very same scene or even main menu!) is simply overkill. I hope there's a way to resolve the GPU load spikes or give us an option to whether have such GPU hungry optimisation or not.
Other suggestions:
Texture streaming speed issues: many ingame static objects aren't visible until high-res texture has loaded into VRAM (or is it model geometry? If so, go to next point). Is there any way to make low-res mip-maps stream in first, in situations when there is a lot of objects to be loaded simultaneously? The same way it works with characters - first blurry but visible, and later high-res - same for such props as crafting tables. Prioritising commonly seen objects over less visible for texture streaming would be neat too.
Add separate texture quality setting for 3D meshes and particles?
Reducing particle resolution decreases CPU load in several games. I wonder if it could have a positive effect in ESO. Automatically reducing particle resolution in particle dense situations would probably reduce CPU load. Could be useful for PVP too.
And yeah, no one wants to reduce overall texture quality just to make the particles less demanding.
Inconsistent or low character hand texture quality.
Depending on which hand accessories (gloves etc) are worn by player, different textures are displayed both in TP and FS view modes. Some textures look OK in first person, some are very blurry and remind me of late 1990s games (the first game with the red crowbar for example)
I know, ESO was originally designed as a third person game, but it won't harm to have separate hand textures for first person, would it? Only one set of these textures will be loaded into VRAM at a moment anyway, so it won't affect performance, it's mostly a content related question (who will create all these high-res first person hand textures?).
It should be possible to move current highest quality hand textures one mip-level down - that will be highest mip-level for third person models, and then create a new higher quality texture for hands viewed exclusively on player's own character - all in the sane file, but on different mip-levels (if ESO uses MIP-maps the same way Skyrim does).
I know, well optimised software is supposed to use as much of GPU as possible to provide best performance, but 50% GPU usage with sudden 100% load spikes (in the very same scene or even main menu!) is simply overkill. I hope there's a way to resolve the GPU load spikes or give us an option to whether have such GPU hungry optimisation or not.
Other suggestions:
Texture streaming speed issues: many ingame static objects aren't visible until high-res texture has loaded into VRAM (or is it model geometry? If so, go to next point). Is there any way to make low-res mip-maps stream in first, in situations when there is a lot of objects to be loaded simultaneously? The same way it works with characters - first blurry but visible, and later high-res - same for such props as crafting tables. Prioritising commonly seen objects over less visible for texture streaming would be neat too.
Add separate texture quality setting for 3D meshes and particles?
Reducing particle resolution decreases CPU load in several games. I wonder if it could have a positive effect in ESO. Automatically reducing particle resolution in particle dense situations would probably reduce CPU load. Could be useful for PVP too.
And yeah, no one wants to reduce overall texture quality just to make the particles less demanding.
Inconsistent or low character hand texture quality.
Depending on which hand accessories (gloves etc) are worn by player, different textures are displayed both in TP and FS view modes. Some textures look OK in first person, some are very blurry and remind me of late 1990s games (the first game with the red crowbar for example)
I know, ESO was originally designed as a third person game, but it won't harm to have separate hand textures for first person, would it? Only one set of these textures will be loaded into VRAM at a moment anyway, so it won't affect performance, it's mostly a content related question (who will create all these high-res first person hand textures?).
It should be possible to move current highest quality hand textures one mip-level down - that will be highest mip-level for third person models, and then create a new higher quality texture for hands viewed exclusively on player's own character - all in the sane file, but on different mip-levels (if ESO uses MIP-maps the same way Skyrim does).
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