Interview with Engineers - Optimization/Performance

I would like to know if optimization will mean less objects in the world, and how that will effect how the base design look and function. For example, will they be removing trees/barriers and other things that we use for cover in order to reduce assets and improve performance?

Will this mean Hossin needs more time to get "optimized" as well? Or will that be back on track once the optimization passes are complete and new content can begin anew.

Will resource hogging geometries be fixed? This is both on the level design and art side.

On the level design side, there are areas, besides obvious bio-labs amp stations, which tend to break weapons and/or kill FPS, and not just triggered by large zerg on zerg fights. (Vanu Archives and Quartz Ridge come to mind. A few old threads have been created about this issue.)

On the art side, models such as composite armor act as an additional model added onto the armor model. will it be condensed so that composite armor isn't 2 models? (So i've heard). I know it's time consuming to do with all the camo out there, but it will reduce the amount of models needing to be rendered, wouldn't it?

When

Linux version of Planetside 2 possible?
In Wine have horrible performance.

I guess basically I would like a "roadmap" for optimization. What all is being worked on, when are the stages of it expected. What should each alleviate and for who.

More specifically I want solid info on who these changes will help. Like specific hardware examples of test machines at the office and what sort of improvements they have seen. Will this just be fixes to help lower video card strain? Increase the lowest framerate on low speed processors?

I really hope for some user controlled settings that will affect cpu usage. Right now you can work down graphics settings to an ok place if your vide card sucks. But if you don't have a beefy i5 and rather have some lower clock AMD, or older intel, you are most likely boned since there are zero controls that you can change to help your situation.

I would gladly accept being shot from people I can't see if I could constrict the area around me I poll updates for and get a much better framerate in the medium/short game.

Better multi-core support would certainly be welcomed but I feel more of a player retention issue is on the lower end CPU users. Can anymore performance be squeezed for those folks? Being a F2P game the lower spec guys will be needed and retained at a much greater rate than they are now.

This is a good idea. If you're worried about dates slipping and the community raging then just don't set any dates. But a Todo-list in the roadmap fashion would be great. We could all salivate over upcoming fixes and tweaks. Optimization is a rather secretive and dry topic after all, why not spice it up a bit?

If im GPU limited, will i receive an FPS boost too?

+1 for triple loading screen. It went away quietly, then snuck back in with a bang.

-Will there be any option to turn the bloom OFF (except for turning the graphics to medium)? I never liked it, and i literally cant play more than 30mins with bloom. So more options in the graphics menu?
-Game crashes when exiting, alt-tabbing?
(-Can we some more interaction like this on the ehm "official" forums? )

First comes first: when are you going to do these interviews Maggie? So we all can tune in.

I'd like to know what is being worked on in terms of render distance of projectiles, infantry, and general rendering. Anyone who have played PS2 since BETA knows that the game has always had serious render problems which has continued to this very day. Specifically the main questions I have is...

Are you working on making infantry render at ranges that they can use AV weapons? I bring this up because infantry should never be able to engage vehicles at ranges where infantry are a pixel or don't render at all. This is one of the biggest issues that is ruining the combined aspect of your game because infantry can engage ground vehicles, specifically tanks, at much greater distances than tanks can engage infantry. Ideally infantry would be able to see tanks from a far distance, to prepare for the armor that is coming, but infantry would not be able to engage the tanks with their own AV weapons until they themselves were within a set render distance 300-400M. This way infantry don't get farmed from really far away, and tanks don't get blown up by infantry without the infantry rendering to them first.

It has already been asked, "an ETA on the optimization". But I'd also like to know if we can get an ETA in regards to all the August features that got pushed back. We've gone maybe two update cycles without an update. Specifically the Infiltrator and ESF updates. Are these been pushed to the back burner until optimization is finished, or are they still being worked on?

This.

lets remember that these would be the engineers working on the game engine itself, I doubt weapon/model/base specific things will be answered.

GPU limited folks should see an improvement due to the art-side optimizations.

I'd be interested to see what kind of method they are using to split up the big worker thread and what changes that entails(if it splits up player rendering into multiple threads what kind of logic it uses and at what are the rules it uses to create threads for rendering them) will we be able to expand player rendering distance?(specifically infantry) how many cores will it be able to run on? will it run on a large number of cores constantly or just use them as needed?

Is it possible/feasible for projectiles to be displayed on the HUD minimap?
That is, every player in a given area being able to see every missile flying through the air in that given area (specifically the lock-on missiles)

Is the optimization for ps4, pc or both?

Having a better than average computer I have had very few issues with the game and none in the last few months. I understand those with lesser computers wishing for optimization.

The lack of development and more importantly bug fixes has left some feeling the pc version has been abandoned to implement the ps4 version.

I guess I'd like to have our expectations set one way or the other -- will these changes improve gameplay for most all systems, or will it mainly benefit lower-tier machines? I guess I just don't know what to expect..."optimization" seems to be a magic word and I fear some people will be expecting too much too soon...

Player culling seems to have been increased recently. Continent centric alerts are wreaking havoc on large scale fights where all players, friendly and hostile, are ALL being culled outside 40 meters in highly contested territories.

Will this be one of the areas targeted for improvement being it is network traffic related, and not simply client side performance?

A good move asking customers what we think optimization is.

I would like to know what the staff considers optimizations, what target(s) they have in mind and how long to achieve them?

Perhaps not directly related to the game, but these forums... we've read that this board is getting an update, what optimizations are you planning for these forums?