Memory Mode Loading Changes

Risk/Reward was way off. Should just enjoy it for the time it lasted.

It appears that the new deferred texture loading is excluding models that are with in range but out of the camera field of view.

Test:

Load into guild hall. Don't move your camera until all textures have finished loading. I went AFK for about 5 minutes.

Move your camera around and you'll see models with out textures swing into your field of view, which then triggers the delayed texture loading, and lag.

Continue moving the camera around forcing objects to come into view, and finish texture loading.

Eventually, the game will have all the textures loaded and moving with the mouse to pan your camera is smooth, but, it can take a while depending on how aggressively you have dialed back the "per frame" loading parameters in your memory.ini

Suggest:

Give objects in the field of view priority, but, continue to load all object textures with in the range settings outlined in memory.ini

Reason:

Its better to get all the choppy loading out of the way early than to keep getting choppy motion every time we start moving the camera around to view a new object.

I wonder if the game is ignoring texturecache=true and just building them as it goes.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...e-game-unplayable.295587/page-14#post-4284745

No need for that to be a bug, logical it would be changed

In addition there is Hidden-surface determination, which means don't load things on the other side of a wall, hill, etc. These things are not-trivial (computer speak for Hard).

I have a feeling that the devs are working on this and it is difficult and a work in progress. You don't want to load everything, as it causes choppy gameplay. There is also the issue of what is "in range". You can usually see pretty far, if your Clip Planes (Far, Actor, Shadow) are at maximum. What stops you (or should stop you) from loading most things is hills, walls, etc., which is hidden-surface determination.

If you look at the article I linked from Wikipedia, it is not easy. One can hope there are some built in aids in DirectX, but I feel like this is part of making a graphics engine. I would guess that one reason so many games use the Unreal Engine is these things are likely built in it. EQ has its own proprietary engine.

I would cut them tons of slack, except for the management decision to push DirectX 11 live before these things were worked out. I'm sure the developers told them (as much as they could) it wasn't ready but the bosses said push it out, we are behind (the unrealistic from day one) schedule.

I prefered when it loaded in properly, it may have taken a few seconds longer, but the way it is now is going to cause a lot of issue on 2 of the T3 raids coming up where we move around a lot if textures are not preloaded to areas we haven't moved to yet.

Really don't understand why they would remove the texturecache. That prevented a lot of these issues.

When I zone I now see naked people. I'm traumatized. Must find an attorney

I agree.

I had a project modifying a flight sim that used OpenGL and OpenSceneGraph (OSG). The graphics engine was critical and highly optimized and tuned to that particular API. It had many of the features you see in the settings, level of detail textures, mip maps, etc. It wasn't something you could just go in fiddle with unless you really understood what goes on under the hood.

It takes a lot of time/focus to chase down performance bottlenecks.

Hopefully, DPG management has cleared the devs plate and said make finding the DX11 performance issues your #1 priority.

Anyone have a comparison of what exactly changed in Memory.ini and whatever files so I can revert back. I just don't want to run up to npc's naked and watch them cover from being naked. I would rather wait seconds for the world to fully load before I see it blank, greyed out, npc's not load right.. and so on.

You either get to run up to NPCs naked, or endure extra hitching. I already posted the only answer available, in this thread, until DB pushes another patch:

Memory.ini is where quickness of textures loading can be adjusted.

• TextureLoadsPerFrame at higher values will cause blank/gray textures to render faster, however hitching/stuttering increases significantly.
• TextureLoadsPerFrame at lower values will cause blank/gray textures to render slower, however hitching/stuttering is vastly improved

Want minimal hitching with rock hard bods? Set it to 1. Want no nudity, but insane levels of hitching? Set it to 100. Only prefer semi-nude PG-13 content, that may be somewhat difficult to watch from your VHS stuttering? Set it to 10.

If its either partly or mostly a change in EQGraphics.dll then you can't change it back.

Otherwise:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ch-notes-and-discussions.296275/#post-4285339

I'd keep the last 2 (TextureMem) settings, you might want to try BitmapsPerFrame at 10.

It's the naked ogres and trolls that REALLY make me reach for the eye bleach.

For those who want to wait for textures to load while zoning, please try this in your custom copy of Memory.ini.

This is tuned to pre-load all the textures of a typical lag pile in the Guild Lobby. Indeed, there can be over 2000 of them! Zoning will take longer (then the current config) as you wait for them to load. After the textures are loaded, frame rate should be steady because resampling is still throttled down. The changed lines are highlighted.

Replace the existing [MemoryMode2] section with this one:

[MemoryMode2]
TextureLoadsPerFrame=3000
AnimationLoadsPerFrame=4
BitmapsPerFrame=3
DownsamplesPerFrame=1
DownsampleDistance1=300.0f
DownsampleDistance2=600.0f
UpsamplesPerFrame=1
UpsampleDistance=150.0f
TimeoutNearDistance=150.0f
TimeoutNearTime=60000
TimeoutFarDistance=1200.0f
TimeoutFarTime=10000
MaxTextureQuality=0
MinTextureQuality=0
TextureDistance1=250
TextureDistance2=500
MaxHighQualityTextureMem=512
DownsampleTextureMem=512

Edit: This is activated by choosing "Most memory usage" for Memory Mode in the Advanced Options window.

Cool...
Is this what it was before the patch?

Confirmed, Popping mercs arrive at 72% hp instead of 100% HP.
Also swapping mercs arrive at 72%. Swapped: 62% HP, Swapped: 80% HP, Swapped: 78% HP.
I think it is a portion of the full HP the last merc was when swapping? Odd that they all don't appear the same below % # of full HP.

No. This is new and where it's heading based on my internal tuning tests and player feedback

Trying the new pre load all textures Mem setting Cairbrae posted.

28 Sec zone time from GGH to Guild Lobby
31 Sec zonetime from Guild Lobby to PoK.
29 Sec zone time from PoK to Guild Lobby

Average zone times around 30 sec even to different zones off of PoK, some were a few seconds longer. What does Darkpaw expect as an average anticipated zone time? If your taking longer than what timeframe how to trouble shoot and resolve excessive zonetimes?

Plenty of hitching though.

I'll put up with "naked" people for a few seconds if it means faster zoning time. Hopefully, we won't have to choose in the future and can get the textures pre-loaded (cached?) and still have fast zoning. However, I would pick faster zoning above all else.

Perhaps some kind of in-game setting like the "Least, Balanced, Most" we have for Memory Mode. Players should never ever ever have to mess with .ini files.