Patch 1.5: FaceFX delayed on OS X

KhajitFurTrader · October 2014

From the PTS Patch Notes v1.5:

Improved Facial Animations
Goodbye sock puppet mouth, hello lip-synch! We have completed the implementation of the basic FaceFX pipeline, processed over 100,000 lines of dialogue and completed the phoneme creation for all of the races in the game. Facial animations will now synchronize with the dialogue they are speaking. There are some specific monsters that are not updated yet because they do not share the standard “human” animation rig, but these will be updated in the future.
Note: This feature is not supported on Windows XP or OSX at this time, but support will be added for them in a future update.

(emphasis mine)

Now, before someone gets their tail in a knot, here are two things to consider:

FaceFX is available on OpenGL, and it works. I've been playing the OS X version of Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution Director's Cut lately (awesome game btw, a true successor to the original DX back from 2000), which uses FaceFx, too, and it looked really great.
As is stated above, for every phoneme there needed to be created a fitting animation (lips, teeth, tongue) for all racial skeletons (player and NPC races). And while many, if not all, assets may be shared between platforms, Direct3D and OpenGL are still very different animals in some important aspects. My guess is that this work needs to be done again in its entirety for OpenGL, and it's a ton.

While I would sure have loved to see FaceFX coming to the OS X client with v1.5 as well, I now know that we'll get it later, and this is good enough for me.

So thank you Chris, for your continued effort, and keep up the good work!

Publius_Scipio · October 2014

Let's not get concerned with facial animation. Let's find out is it is ok to upgrades to OS X Yosemite and not affect ESO at all.

chris.dillman · October 2014

FaceFX uses a lot more animation points (bones).

Adding FaceFX to OS X means rewriting the OpenGL renderer
and all shaders to work with OpenGL 3.2.

We ran out of shader variables and thus needs to move to a more modern version of OpenGL.

We have a draft working internally, but not yet ready for release.

KhajitFurTrader · October 2014

Yay! Great news.

From what I've gathered, even OS X 10.7.5 was capable of running OpenGL 3.2, so the minimum specs shouldn't change (much).

Gix · March 2015

I was half-expecting v1.6 to update the FaceFX for OSX. Do you guys have an ETA for this? first quarter 2015? 2016?

If the consoles get it before we do, I'm going to cry!

chris.dillman · March 2015

Gix wrote: »

I was half-expecting v1.6 to update the FaceFX for OSX. Do you guys have an ETA for this? first quarter 2015? 2016?

If the consoles get it before we do, I'm going to cry!

Sorry Gix

FaceFX are not on the schedule at this time.

Mac needs a new 3D renderer to support it.

SlayerSyrena · March 2015

chris.dillman wrote: »

Gix wrote: »

I was half-expecting v1.6 to update the FaceFX for OSX. Do you guys have an ETA for this? first quarter 2015? 2016?

If the consoles get it before we do, I'm going to cry!

Sorry Gix

FaceFX are not on the schedule at this time.

Mac needs a new 3D renderer to support it.

Wait, does this mean that Mac users will never get the updated FaceFX?

KhajitFurTrader · March 2015

SlayerSyrena wrote: »

Wait, does this mean that Mac users will never get the updated FaceFX?

No, I take this to mean that a new renderer, based on a more recent OpenGL version, is in the works as we speak. Chris said as much in post #3 above.

Sentinel · March 2015

I just hope we can get this feature within the next few months at the very least... I feel like I'm missing out without it, you know? I RP quite a bit, like to talk to NPCs, and it's just a bit disheartening seeing the robot mouths.

At least it's in development, I'd just hope it's given some priority over the other things on their schedule as it's a feature that has still yet to be released on one platform versus another.

Neryuslu · March 2015

chris.dillman wrote: »

FaceFX uses a lot more animation points (bones).

Adding FaceFX to OS X means rewriting the OpenGL renderer
and all shaders to work with OpenGL 3.2.

We ran out of shader variables and thus needs to move to a more modern version of OpenGL.

We have a draft working internally, but not yet ready for release.

Hello chris.dillman,

Do you have any news on this? Also, will using a more modern version of OpenGL improve graphics performance in general?

chris.dillman · March 2015

Neryuslu wrote: »

chris.dillman wrote: »

FaceFX uses a lot more animation points (bones).

Adding FaceFX to OS X means rewriting the OpenGL renderer
and all shaders to work with OpenGL 3.2.

We ran out of shader variables and thus needs to move to a more modern version of OpenGL.

We have a draft working internally, but not yet ready for release.

Hello chris.dillman,

Do you have any news on this? Also, will using a more modern version of OpenGL improve graphics performance in general?

Hi Neryuslu

News: Everyone is busy with bug fixes and the console launch.

We will look at PC / Mac Engine upgrades some time after consoles launch.

Moving from 1 version of opengl to another will probably not speed up the game.

There are some newer features in OpenGL 3.2 that in theory could speed tasks up.
But it depends on where an app is spending all of its time.

ESO's OpenGL renderer is very well optimized and keeps the GPU saturated with draw calls.
Meaning most of the time GL and the GPU are actually busy drawing things.

Most of the advancements in newer versions of OpenGL come from being able to better
pack up and send large amounts of data / variables to the GPU.

So instead of calling a function like

glSetColor( BLUE ); ( made up call )

100 times the game might be able to call a command like

glSetData( BIG LIST OF DATA ); ( made up call )

only once.

This should have some positive effect on GL performance.

But it will probably not be huge.