DirectX 12? Is that true? Also, let's talk about the game engine's performance...

Tommy_The_Gun

Well I recently discovered that I can't run ESO any more on my laptop... I can run it with no problem on my desktop PC thou... On my laptop I get a message that says: "Your DirectX version is unsupported"
I checked the GPU and it only supports direct X 10.1 And that to me seems weird - no backward compatibility.

Before I bought new desktop PC I played on older one. I haven't checked that but I guess it could not run ESO either (as GPU is an old model that only support direct X 10 at best.... ) - but I did played ESO on that PC in the past... so suddenly from patch - to patch - older versions of direct X are no longer supported ? (a reminder - almost all moba games and a lot of mmos still support direct x9 up to this day).

And this seems weird to me. ESO is a an MMO. Are ultra-high-graphics more important than backwards compatibility ? Most MMO I played were backwards compatible... you could set the graphics to look awesome if you had a good PC but also - you could set it to look at least decent if you did not had a good PC.

So I don't know about it if pushing direct X to 12 is a good idea.

JasonSilverSpring

Octopuss wrote: »

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

ESO supported DX 11 from the beginning, but it also supported DX 9. They removed support for DX 9 though.

I agree that making real use of DX 12 would require significant work.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/245011/pts-patch-notes-v2-3-0/p1
This implies it wasn't Dx11 before.

I was here then. DX 11 always existed but they removed DX 9 and made DX 11 default.

Octopuss

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler
Could you possibly forward link to this thread to the appropriate people and/or find out whether it's possible for the company to comment on this whole thing? I think it's important enough. A blog post would be suitable for stuff like this.
Plus It's been 1,5 years and not a single word about the Dx12 update.

idk

Asgari wrote: »

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

That is not true. In some rare cases it can be because of the users system. In most cases however the low fps is from ZOS poor preforming servers. i7-6700k, gtx1080, 32gb ram, every OC and running watter cooled and in Cyro FPS still dips into the 30s.

On top of that have fios gigabit fiber internet.

It is a mixture of both. Further, gigabit fiber at ones door does not guarantee a perfect path. There is much between ones front door and the game servers that also have an affect.

Zerok

DX12 won't happen anytime soon when you still have ~49% of PC users on Windows 7 (as of July 2017), and DX12 is not supported by Windows 7.

I wonder if it would be possible for ZOS to switch to Vulkan? Probably not since they've been using DirectX from the start?

Bonzodog01

Zerok wrote: »

DX12 won't happen anytime soon when you still have ~49% of PC users on Windows 7 (as of July 2017), and DX12 is not supported by Windows 7.

I wonder if it would be possible for ZOS to switch to Vulkan? Probably not since they've been using DirectX from the start?

Well its worth noting that the game has been ported to OpenGL/BSD for the PS4. (The PS4 runs a version of BSD Unix as its OS, and all games are therefore in OpenGL). Also, Mac OS most likely runs in OpenGL, so it might be a good idea to settle on OpenGL as the main rendering engine.

However, theres a significant problem with this - The Xbox One does not support OpenGL, so ZOS will have a duty to keep both rendering engines supported.

Incidentally, Windows 7 is classed as "old" now, and is no longer officially supported by MS, so there is no obligation whatsoever for ZOS to hold back on moving the rendering forward to DX12.

Zerok

Bonzodog01 wrote: »

Incidentally, Windows 7 is classed as "old" now, and is no longer officially supported by MS, so there is no obligation whatsoever for ZOS to hold back on moving the rendering forward to DX12.

Extended support for Windows 7 will end (officially) in January 2020. Until then, I don't expect to see a massive shift in OS shares toward Windows 10.

Tandor

Zerok wrote: »

Bonzodog01 wrote: »

Incidentally, Windows 7 is classed as "old" now, and is no longer officially supported by MS, so there is no obligation whatsoever for ZOS to hold back on moving the rendering forward to DX12.

Extended support for Windows 7 will end (officially) in January 2020. Until then, I don't expect to see a massive shift in OS shares toward Windows 10.

If then.

MS have some tough decisions to make over Windows 7. As we saw when XP received an out-of-support security patch for the recent ransomware, MS cannot afford to ignore security issues and especially so when such a large share of the market still uses an OS that they alone deem no longer fit for purpose. Interestingly, it's Windows 10, supposedly the most secure OS ever that had by a long way the most vulnerabilities reported in this month's update list!

SirAndy

PlagueSD

Tandor wrote: »

it's Windows 10, supposedly the most secure OS ever that had by a long way the most vulnerabilities reported in this month's update list!

Which is why I'm still running Win7...

Vapirko

Ravingar wrote: »

I mean the engine is capable of giving TERRIBLE graphics.. Just set absolutely everything to the minimal setting and play at 720p and you can run the game at 40-60fps on pretty much anything. Hell I'm running it on my 2012 Macbook Pro with its 'incredibly powerful' Intel HD Graphics 4000, i7 and 8gb of ram..

But of course I do agree, I had to put my render distance on 0 just so I can get decent frames. Basically this makes it so if your in a city, the walls don't load in until you are right up against them

This is how I play always, 2011 MacBook Pro

adeptusminor

While this game looks good, performance isn't great. I'm running a 4790k @ 4ghz, 16G Ram, a 1080ti, and a G-Sync monitor and I really don't feel like I should get the framerate fluctuations that I do-between 15 during heavy action(trials) up to ~90 and anywhere in between.

bardx86

Betheny wrote: »

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

Screenshots of you in Rawl'Kha at 100-120fps or I call BS.

Its BS and also not running Vsync

Jemcrystal

Is this still a thing?

THWIP71

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

BS...post a youtube link of you playing the game, "ultra", with those #s. Of course, you left off resolution ; if you're only playing at 1080p or lower, there's a chance you could hit those #s in some zones, without a lot going on, but not consistently.

I have an i7 2600K OCd @ 3.5Ghz, Titan X Hybrid 12 GB, 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance 2133mHz RAM, 1 TB Samsung SSD. I play at 2560x1440p, mostly max settings, and can average 50 fps easily, 60 when not in a crowd, or doing solo missions. But the dramatic dips in fps in densely populated towns, like Rawl'kha, or at dolmens, etc. are server-side issues, not hardware related. I've experienced dips into the low 20s.

Egonieser

Ravingar wrote: »

I mean the engine is capable of giving TERRIBLE graphics.. Just set absolutely everything to the minimal setting and play at 720p and you can run the game at 40-60fps on pretty much anything. Hell I'm running it on my 2012 Macbook Pro with its 'incredibly powerful' Intel HD Graphics 4000, i7 and 8gb of ram..

But of course I do agree, I had to put my render distance on 0 just so I can get decent frames. Basically this makes it so if your in a city, the walls don't load in until you are right up against them

"Why did the conso...MacBook peasant cross the road?"

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=== === === === === === === ===

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"To render the building on the other side."

FriedEggSandwich

Haven't read the whole thread, but my response to the title is that enforcing dx12 soon would alienate more people than the enforcement of dx11 did. I refuse to use the current version of win10, so I would probably have to stop playing eso if they enforced dx12 use. I'm not ready for win10 atm.

Darethran

There's a bunch of *** misinformation on the first page. Yikes. I'll explain the renderer situation 'n' all that, so we all know what the problem is.

In games, in order to render an object, the program must send a command to your graphics driver. This command is known as a draw call. The draw calls themselves, are just a few lines of code generated at run time. Psuedo-code example:

Draw{
DrawObject(objRockBoulder01)
DrawObjectShadow(objRockBoulder01)
DrawObjectRecieveLight(objRockBoulder01, ShadowSpotlight01)
DrawObject(objRockBoulder02)
DrawObject(objRockBoulder02)
DrawObject(objRockBoulder03)
}

Typically, for a deferred rendering engine, an object will issue 3 draw calls at the very least; +1 for the object, +11 for it's shadow, +1 for ambient lighting. An object's draw calls will increase when it is also receiving lights and/or shadows.

As for what an object is, it is an individual "thing". if it can be changed independently from something else, such as it's position, rotation, transparency, etc., then it's a separate object. For example, a helmet is one object. A boulder is another object. Your character's hands are another object. The flames from a fire staff's light attack is Another object. Etc.

As you can imagine, these draw calls quickly add up. Let's tally the minimum number a typical player might issue.

Hat +3
Eyes +3
Face +3
Ears +3
Nose +3
Torso +3
Chest clothing +3
Pauldrons +3
Gauntlets/Hands +3
Feet/Boots +3
Legs/Trousers +3
Weapon +3

So a minimum of 36 draw calls per character. Add another 12 for the global illumination (sun lighting), and we're at 48.

Let's take the typical Cyrodiil situation. Four groups attacking each other during a siege. (4 * 24) * 48 = 4,608 draw calls. We're already past the industry-accepted draw call limit of 2,000 per frame (http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC2/Rendering+Performance+Guidelines). For reference, the popular modern open world game GTA V typically issues around 3,000 draw calls per frame.

And we haven't even factored in particles and lights, like from healing spells and siege weaponry. Not only that, we also haven't taken into account the rest of the scene, such as NPCs, architecture, flora, and such. I wouldn't be surprised if the game is issuing nigh-on 10,000 draw calls in your typical mass siege.

Even worse, all the rendering APIs EXCEPT Mantle, Vulkan, and Direct3D 12, all run on a single core. Which is terrible and bad. You want to know why we haven't seen games with the level of detail like in James Cameron's Avatar? This is one of the reasons why; the draw calls alone would be astronomically high in number.

This is where the new API's come in. Unlike Direct3D 11, which is wholly single threaded and has a draw call performance ceiling of a few thousand, they are embarrassingly parallel and almost scale linearly in performance with core count. And even if they aren't used in a parallel manner, the draw call ceiling is in the tens of thousands of draw calls per core.

So even if all the developers did, was have the renderer use a single thread with Vulkan, performance would fly.

Darethran

For some additional information, CPU architectures process draw calls differently. Some are very good (Nehalem, Ryzen with ~3000Mhz DDR4, Skylake), others are not (Core 2, Piledriver). I did a test with a number of users over on Anandtech, and we came up with these results:

Thread's here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/part-2-measuring-cpu-draw-call-performance.2499609/



Unfortunately, we were not able to use NVidia GPUs due to NVidia having *** driver optimizations for unrealistic scenarios. When There are no dynamic lights, and there is only one object being rendered over and over again, and instancing is not used (which every developer would use in this bizarre case), and there are no shadows, and there are no dynamic lights, and there are no object materials, then performance will be ~2x higher than AMD's driver in that same synthetic. This is purely due to NVidia making itself look good, rather than having actually higher draw call performance.

tplink3r1

THWIP71 wrote: »

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

BS...post a youtube link of you playing the game, "ultra", with those #s. Of course, you left off resolution ; if you're only playing at 1080p or lower, there's a chance you could hit those #s in some zones, without a lot going on, but not consistently.

I have an i7 2600K OCd @ 3.5Ghz, Titan X Hybrid 12 GB, 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance 2133mHz RAM, 1 TB Samsung SSD. I play at 2560x1440p, mostly max settings, and can average 50 fps easily, 60 when not in a crowd, or doing solo missions. But the dramatic dips in fps in densely populated towns, like Rawl'kha, or at dolmens, etc. are server-side issues, not hardware related. I've experienced dips into the low 20s.

How can server-side issues impact your FPS?

There is something wrong with how the game works with some specific hardware. I always get 60+ FPS no mater where i go in open PVE areas with an i5 4690k(4.5ghz) - gtx980 - 8gb of Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz, not using an SSD. (1600p)
I get around 40 FPS on big PVP battles.

Wreuntzylla

tplink3r1 wrote: »

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

Same, but i'm running with an i5 4690k(4.5) and a gtx980. I don't think my FPS ever drops below 40 in PVP.

Aussie or Japanese on NA server?

JasonSilverSpring

tplink3r1 wrote: »

THWIP71 wrote: »

Tonnopesce wrote: »

I have a tiny i5 7600k (oc at 4.5 gz rock solid) a gtx 780ti and 8 gig of ram and pve side in ultra I'm at 100-120 fps, pvp usually 50-60 in battlegrounds and 40-50 in cyro.
The issue is probably on your side, a bottkeneck somewhere.

BS...post a youtube link of you playing the game, "ultra", with those #s. Of course, you left off resolution ; if you're only playing at 1080p or lower, there's a chance you could hit those #s in some zones, without a lot going on, but not consistently.

I have an i7 2600K OCd @ 3.5Ghz, Titan X Hybrid 12 GB, 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance 2133mHz RAM, 1 TB Samsung SSD. I play at 2560x1440p, mostly max settings, and can average 50 fps easily, 60 when not in a crowd, or doing solo missions. But the dramatic dips in fps in densely populated towns, like Rawl'kha, or at dolmens, etc. are server-side issues, not hardware related. I've experienced dips into the low 20s.

How can server-side issues impact your FPS?

There is something wrong with how the game works with some specific hardware. I always get 60+ FPS no mater where i go in open PVE areas with an i5 4690k(4.5ghz) - gtx980 - 8gb of Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz, not using an SSD. (1600p)
I get around 40 FPS on big PVP battles.

What is your draw distance? I have an i7 5930k at 4.5 GHz with a Titan X Pascal and I cannot maintain 60+ fps in heavily populated PVE cities. Running at 4k. In the wild I often get near 100 fps.

I use an add-on called Adaptive Settings that dynamically drops draw distance in cities to maintain as much fps as possible.

I am not sure if it is server calls to retrieve info on all the characters in range or the many draw calls single threaded. But, it is very hard to get full GPU usage in cities.