Win XP feedback as requested by Higby

Directx is an API used by the renderer. There's nothing to stop SOE from adding a DirectX 11 renderer alongside their DirectX 9 renderer (like adding an OpenGL renderer).
The main issues faced by SOE are: 1.) That the added PS 5.0 shader types etc. need to have actually have features that use them. 2.) PS4 has a weaker CPU (8*1.6Ghz AMD cores) than most recent systems that play PS2, as well as a fairly weak GPU I imagine. PCs won't need too much optimisation beyond PS4 requirements - especially when SOE optimises CPU bound Panetside to run on the PS4.

I think what you and that survey are missing is probably an assumption SOE are purely sticking with DirectX 9 because of (existing or potential) XP users and some laptop users; DirectX 9 isn't physically stopping them from adding DirectX 11 - the amount of work and new features to justify it might well be, who knows. (Unless their recent launches in China/Russia meant a different spectrum of target hardware).

I'd love to see compute shaders and what not be used to partly procedurally generate details and so forth, but those are new features.

However, this is the wrong thread and the wrong forum for DirectX 11 suggestions. General discussion would be more apt.

Well the issue is making the game look nearly identical on all settings. The idea would be drop DX9 completely and skip 10. Simply tacking on 11 with the 9 fallback is a development nightmare as two totally different pipelines need to be created for optimal performance or more modern methods must be ignored.

It's hard to get into details, but there's a technique known as k-buffer (or a-buffer) that could be used for instance that differs drastically from most g-buffer approaches. Simple in DX11, but impossible in DX9 with no real fallback. In the DX11 you'd have cheap volumetric clouds and infinite transparency but when you jump to DX9 the only way to create anything close would be billboarded textures which kill fillrate.

Same thing for particles. While it's "trivial" to write snow and rain simulations with a compute shader to stop the particles at physical objects with little gpu/cpu bandwidth the best they have at the moment is PhysX particles and it's rather slow implementation that doesn't exist at all graphics settings. It's hard to create a DX9 alternative without sacrificing a lot of development time.

I bring it up a lot also, but shadows look way different on different settings. There are modern methods that scale for large worlds with varying qualities and no inherent advantage gained with lower settings. Because of their technical issues it's directly affecting the gameplay removing the whole concept of a day/night cycle to the point where it's simply an aesthetic color shift.

This is a common misconception. Compute shaders wouldn't be for new features (though they could be). They would replace current implementations of their post processing and particles. That is to use compute shaders in things like DoF and most any blur operation. (Ideally it would replace the whole g-buffer computation step for instance if using tiled lighting). Due to how the gpu threads can be allocated there's a huge performance boost over pixel shader approaches especially when combining certain shader effects. (A good example would be the Frostbite engine, but even they just scratched the surface). Essentially everyone on DX9/10 would be kicked out and everyone on DX11 and in the future would see speed improvements that would be easily iterated on with modern papers without needlessly dropping back to find an alternative DX9 method that doesn't exist.

Also I respect that you think this is the wrong thread, but XP is an anchor holding this game back and any discussion is warranted. I bring this up frequently only to stir discussion at SOE to change their minimum system requirement policies and reflect on their real ROI by investing time their time on these things.

Oh, well. Maybe the mods can split the thread

What I meant here is that a PC with decent hardware running DirectX 9 shouldn't have many issues keeping up with Planetside limited by running DirectX 11 on a weaker Playstation 4.

SOE probably actually has a DirectX 11 renderer on PS4. We will likely see that ported to PC too. SOE are probably trialling an OpenGL renderer internally; that would make it easy to port to Linux based SteamOS, other Linux types, and Mac OSX.

This is the issue left; and it's valid..whether there could be significant game play differences because of difference in visuals between DX9 and DX11, at some point in the future. I'm not sure if PS2 being 'held back' by this potential issue now, or to what extent it is.
Especially keeping in mind the bottleneck for computational power is Dx11 on PS4 for the entire lifetime of the console, and PCs will utterly outstrip it in future.

SOE will port their DX 11 PS4 renderer to the PC build fairly soon, I assume (unless they went with DX 9 to speed up the port). PS2 will move to supporting DX 11 only, at some appropriate point too.
When that point is remains to be seen. SOE should look at the current/potential numbers across their different PS2 PC launches and drop DX9 when it's logical, given SOE are fairly indie in terms of ambitious games and don't have utterly massive budgets
(Then again I'm speaking for myself; I'm not affected because of my hardware. As for me, If PS2 dropped DX9 right now for some reason I might drop PS2 for a while or perhaps dual boot, especially if there's a PS2 OpenGL 4+ renderer on SteamOS/Linux)

Sorry for the OT, but where did they say that PS2 is gonna use DX11 on the PS4?

I said SOE might well have a DX11 renderer (considering PS4 will be the slowest system in time).

It is small and getting smaller but still the second most commonly used operating system. A short google search could educate you as well as the others in this thread that seem to think windows xp deserves no love. I singled out your post to reply to many of the haters so please do not take my full response as a direct response to you.

Yes in April of next year Microsoft plans to pull all support for the windows XP operating system. but that does not mean all people who use xp will upgrade their windows. and with the many pc's floating around that still use this as the main OS not taking these potential customers and users into account as potential players would not be a smart move.

I know some with higher systems feel entitled and can understand that. but at no point should a system that meets minimal system requirements (in this case windows xp users) should experience crashes. The whole point that you meet the requirements is that while you may not see high fps marks it will still play stable. Now this problem has existed and persisted since the start of the games release.

And while windows xp is experiencing it more frequently there are also other 32 bit OS's experiencing this as well. The main reason is the limitations on the max amount of supported ram by the OS. Windows xp supports a max of 3 gigs of ram. And unless you fiddle around with your boot . ini file it will only allow a program of any type to utilize a max of 2 gigs of ram. Now with the state of the game now and how it has been from day one is that not only does it hog up memory but it also has memory leaks that combine to crash most minimal requirements pc's within less then 1 hour of gameplay be it in large battles or not.

Yes many other games are going the way of 64 bit systems and the newer dx 11 but none of those newer games have the higher populace that other games that use lesser system requirements. Why? Not as many pc users have tghe disposable income to just upgrade a pc at any given time or to build the killer systems that some of these games require. And its one of the reasons why those games become more or less niche games.

Keeping a game and its requirements low is a smart business decision. It has your game more open to more potential customers. More customers equals more money. And it is one of the reasons why a lot of times systems jump so far ahead of game requirements.

A few years back single core cpu's were quite common. As the costs of dual cores decreased more and more dual core systems showed up then games started requiring dual core cpu's. Now quad cores are finally starting to get cheaper and cheaper and in response you will in a few short years begin to see those as the base requirement for games. But that is still a short while off.

And it is why you still see some game systems a little over a year ago were being built with the i3 cpu. So there are still many dual core cpu's floating around. Also a few years ago ddr and ddr2 memory was quite expensive and as such most systems did not have much more then 4 gigs of ram installed. And most OS's did not utilize let alone show more then 4 gigs of ram until 64 bit OS's.

And many 64 bit OS's were terrible with compatibility for quire a few years. Windows 7 has made that a lot less of an issue with their 64 bit OS. While it has became a lot more popular and right now is the number 1 most common OS windows xp is still a close second as many people did not buy into the hype of vista and many people totally dislike windows 8.

I applaud them for trying to keep system requirements low and to finally be working on fixing the crash issues due to the 32 bit OS. And i hope they succeed. Like it or not there are many others out there that do play this game without high end systems. And they are paying customers as well. And i think the least we deserve is a game we can play without it locking up or randomly crashing or the game just vanishing leaving us to stare at our desktops getting frustrated that we then have to relaunch the game then run back to the battle only to play for a short while until it happens again.

While i feel for users having lower fps. I do think the game crashing is far more important then gaining a few fps. Lets face the facts in that its far less enjoyable of a gaming experience for the game to lock up or crash then not getting max fps possible. And if you were in these players shoes you also would want this fixed as well. And i really do hope that they finally get this fixed. And hopefully to the point i8 do not have to use a second boot . ini for only a 3-5 hour delay in the game crashing.

Not in the gaming sector. 7, followed by 8 are the two primary operating systems these days.
While it is correct that XP is the second largest on all existing machines, such evaluations fail to consider that almost all of those XP machines are not marketable.

They are essentially always either:
Antiquated machines (Pentium 4 and the like)
or,
Enterprise/company machines

Its a novice mistake to consider these as part of your market.

I would love to know where you are pulling that information out of that does not have that fresh bathroom smell to be honest. That is just an opinion without having hard data to back it up. Windows 7 is roughly 4 years old and up until a year or so ago it was the number 2 in most common OS's. Not every gaming machine out there has and is running windows 7. And even fewer are running 8. And you are also forgetting the basic limitations to windows xp is that it is a 32 bit operating system. Well i would hate to be the bearer of bad news but not all windows 7 installs are 64 bit OS.

So many of the things plaguing the windows xp Os are also effecting the other 32 bit versions of windows out there. And its a novice mistake to try to generalize any customer base. But more so to try not to have your product to be available to as many customers as humanly possible to do so. Some are on old machines and company machines as well. but the same can also be said fow windows 7 as well and its numbers. Any game pc made prior to 2009 are more then likely running windows xp. And that is only 4 years old. This game released open just a year ago when the windows 7 OS was just 3 years old.

While i agree upgrading your pc to maximize performance over the years. Some do not always switch from an OS they are happy with or maybe other outside influences (finances and such) make upgrading their OS not feasible. Windows XP is popular as it was the most stable OS. And it took windows 7 a good while to get where it is now. Windows xp is still a great os. The only reason microsoft is moving to faze it out is to push its other os's.

Take a closer look at the actual statistics your own sources use. Use a few filters.

One thing you'll also notice is XP is very china heavy - but one I didn't mention because they have an entirely separate market for PS2 China (ergo can't be discounted).

Steam's statistics are also very helpful - since it does targeted marketshare statistics. That is, it collects data on the people that are highly probable of buying your game.

There is a reason mass-market games like COD and BF do not have XP support these days. The cost is not worth the trivial gain.

Correct. OEMs however do not ship 32-bit OSs these days unless mandated by the underlying hardware - such as using Atom CPUs. Most 32-bit NT6 systems are consequently netbooks.
Home-builders also rarely use 32-bit editions.

The share of 32-bit vista, 7, and 8 is resultingly small.
Even then, 32-bit NT6 systems are capable of running newer versions of DX - and the RAM requirement for a 32-bit OS is not as large as that of 64-bit systems.

Its well established that only a small percentage of the Windows userbase switches operating system (versions included) on their own. This happens with far higher regularity among Mac OS and Linux users.

Keep in mind that if you've bought a PC for the last 5-6 years, it will have shipped with either Vista or 7. A machine older than 7 will have a hard time running the game.

you do realize that not every pc gamer out there uses steam right? Many like to have a physical copy of a game in their hand. And now you are trying to pinch numbers further by trying to generalize a country of citizens? really? I stand by what i wrote above. its backed not by one statistic but multiple. and its not done through a digital game selling company that not all people let alone all gamers use.

And that may be true lately about newer versions being mainly 64 bit. But when exactly did that start? i think you would be shocked to know the answer to that. I still see many pc's being sold with 32 bit windows. And its really quite common on many laptops. Windows xp is still the number 2 OS no matter what angle you look at it from. And up until a year or so back it was number 1. All limitations you put on windows xp users can also be applied to windows 7 users as well. Be it that they are work stations or from a specific company. A word of advice is to not believe every statistic you see unless its verified by multiple sources that come up close to the same number. And by sources i mean different people doing the same research not tied to each other or where that information does not in one form or another benefits them personally or business wise.

Yup, but it provides a more than adequate sample size. It will not be perfectly accurate, but it does not need to be.
Because it is more than large enough to provide a good representation of the usage of "PC Gamers", their market.

I would not use steam statistics if I was marketing a Word Processor. I would use it if I was marketing a game.

A fact is not a generalization. Again, check the statistics sites. China is very XP heavy, and this has been brought up countless of times in articles and discussions held on major tech sites as well. (Including discussions as to the reasons)

Quite a while ago.
A laptop I purchased 4 years just around the release of 7 had 3 supported operating systems:
Vista 32
Vista 64
W7 64

And watching the sales of newer machines this has only become more prominent - just with the dropping of Vista. Again, 32-bit systems tend to be Atom based, or otherewise extremely low end (e.g. 2GB RAM).

In both cases, they cannot run the game regardless and are thus a terrible idea to attempt to market for.
4GB of RAM is barely enough, but will still result in swapping.

Just to make this clear though: I do not believe the game should be 64-bit. The resulting increase in memory requirements would hit the 4GB userbase too hard.

That is the problem with trying to use just steams results. Why? Its only their customers that are showing within all of their results. And those results are internal. Meaning they could say purple people from mars are their number 1 customers and you have no way to prove or disprove their claim.

And where does this "fact" come from exactly? And where in those so called facts is it listed areas where computer stores are not prominent? Where i live the local walmart is the main pc store. And as such the store is generally behind in pc technology. The most common OS i see around here is windows xp. I've seen a few windows 7 but those tend to be 32 bit more often then not. And this is just one example of a whole.

I love how you start with vista which is one of the least liked OS's microsoft has released. You skipped over that windows xp pro also yhad a 64 version as well. And the fiasco many 64 bit users had as almost no games had 64 bit support for quite a while forcing the users to use all kinds of work arounds to get 32 bit encoded games to work on their 64 bit systems. And how that made several people leery of getting or using 64 bit OS.

And some systems that are not newer are also running windows 7. Why? because many are upgrading their pc's OS to prepare for microsoft dropping the OS in April of next year. So even in your own data of windows 7 users there are those either running old systems or 32 bit versions of windows. What is applied to the statistics of one OS can easily be applied to the other.

Yet that seems to be what you are asking for. Why? Because every windows 32 bit version is affected by what is causing problems with windows XP. So asking that all support for windows xp be pulled by the devs of this game is basically asking that 4 gig of ram systems be dropped altogether. 32 bit windows recognizes a max of 4 gigs of ram. And it allows a program to use a max of 2 gigs of ram by any program. Which means planetside 2 quickly hogs that up runs out of memory then crashes the game.

This problem has been around since the release of planetside 2. And has never been addressed till now. So imagine a year of game lock ups random crashes topped with crash to desktop. That is what those users have experienced. There are a few work arounds that allowed for longer play time. But none of them ever stopped these problems completely. Now take into account this new patch makes all current work arounds worthless. That is the problem and i hope they finally get this fixed.

I've talked a fair bit about market share with people from several businesses on the topic of market-share, because it helps us determine what clientèle that should be catered for.

As for some of the facts, it is no secret for anyone in the computer industry that enterprise machines lag in getting the latest OS installed, which will color any results based on web browsing statistics. Why? Because changing operating systems is a very intensive and time consuming job. There are numerous tools in enterprise which simply do not work on NT6 systems - sometimes even because they require a specific version of Internet Explorer! (Typically IE6)

That, and a ton of bureaucracy. Some businesses cannot even legally switch systems until certain criteria have been fulfilled.

If you're going to use PCs available in stores, then I can easily counter with every single branch here. None sell XP machines, none advertise Windows XP machines, and have not in years. They are all either Windows 8, or Windows 7. (The latter due to demand)

Because the OEM in question did not support Windows XP for the machine in question? You could certainly install it, but you would get no support in doing so. And as I apparently have to say again, your typical consumer does not change OS. You seem to be convinced that your typical consumer is more computer capable than they actually are.

Heck, a large quantity of them don't even change browser. Some stats site peg Internet Explorer web browser usage at 40%. Considering IE's reputation, does this really seem reasonable to expect them to not be aware they can change their browser - but be aware of how to change their operating system, and even why they should?

Remember, prior to Windows 8 there was no internal upgrade system available for Windows. Microsoft said themselves a big part of the redesign for the Windows installation process in 8 was to get more people to actually upgrade rather than only 'upgrade' in conjunction with a hardware switch. And I'm pretty sure they know better than anyone else how many people are actually upgrading.

Yep, and I also know how lacking its driver support is. Thus its never been popular, and OEMs have never really shipped it.

Some, yes. But not many.

Your typical user has no clue MS is doing this. Your typical user has no clue what this means.

Uh yes. And as I've said before, old machines (or low-powered) cannot run this game because it is too demanding on the hardware. There is not point marketing to this group. The difference is XP is extremely heavy on "Old machines" and "Enterprise machines". Windows 7 (and in particular 8) is not even remotely the same ratio.

Only if the program is not LAA.
If a process is flagged as LAA, the maximum is 3GB on 32-bit systems, and 4GB on 64-bit systems.

It's fine to speculate, but this thread is lacking a lot of facts. SOE probably has most of the hardware statistics and information to show that they have a lot of XP users. Would be cool if they could release that data to crush this kind of discussion. Also steam hardware survey has a sample size large enough to include anyone that can play Planetside 2 as mentioned before. Do you really think there are people playing Planetside 2 that have never used Steam and thus are not included in its statistics?

I'm honestly curious if that's true. It seems counter intuitive. A much more likely scenario is that they include XP users as cannon fodder for paying players.

Yes but those are businesses that can afford the upgrades in question yet they choose not to. that is hardly the same as home users who can not afford a windows upgrade. Why? costs. OEM windows runs about $100 but is not meant for home users according to microsofts Terms of use policy. Its meant only to be installed on a machine meant to be sold. So going by their TOS oem is not allowed and it ties itself to your motherboard meaning if you replace your motherboard at any time you are voiding that oem version of windows.

The second option is an upgrade which is about $110 and you have got to have your old key to upgrade. And when upgrading from 32 bit windows to 64 you more then likely are going to lose all information on the HDD in the process.

The final is the full installation of windows 7 which is about $180-$210 depending on how you buy it and it is the one with the least amount of restrictions placed on it. So yes upgrading windows versions is not cheap. Especially when you can not write it off to a business expense.

And the typical customer not changing their OS is my point. And its one of the reasons Windows xp has survived to this day. Yet you seem to think that companies should exclude such a large possible pool of customers? for all your so called business talk the first rule in any business is to maximize profits. So will they gain more profits by limiting potential customers? or by having it more open to potential customers. its pretty easy to decide which is the best choice here.

They may be trying to make it easier to upgrade but that does not help with customers disliking windows 8 entirely. I can not begin to describe people i've known who took their new pc's back simply because it had windows 8 instead of 7. Hence why windows 8 users are so low.

Yes and its that driver support that has had customers not wanting to upgrade their windows. Hence why xp is so popular. Although that has changed in the past year and a half with windows 7 over taking windows xp as the most common OS.

I would wager there are a lot more older systems running windows 7 then you can realize. gaming pc's are not the norm. They are within small circles of do it yourself system builders but buying prebuilt gaming rigs is not cheap so even within the windows 7 users they are a minority.

Typical pc customers do not buy systems blindly. many research things before buying as well as asking for advice. And the word has been out for quite some time that support for windows xp will be dropped in April of next year. And as a response many are either upgrading to windows 7 asap or planning to do so before that date. People are not as dumb as you may think.

With older systems upgrading their xp to newer windows versions thec data is far to muddy to say that the majority of windows 7 users have higher end machines. especially when you factor the costs of buying those higher end machines. The same could also be said for some higher end machines running windows xp as they like and trust that os more then others.

And your last point is wrong. research it yourself. even some 64 bit os's have to have their os tweeked to allow more ram to a program. and the max 32 bit systems allows and individual program not tied to the os is 2 gigs. And if it tries to go over that or to infringe on ram reserved for the os to function the programs process is killed out right with extreme prejudice hence the crash straight to desktop.

On a final note i would also like to point out that all desktop pc's are currently starting to die out. mobile markets such as smart phones tablets and laptops are rising in popularity. And as such desktop pc's are coming fewer and further in between. Add to that the costs of higher end machines its no surprise. don't get me wrong i prefer my desktop and gaming on it.

But fewer and fewer titles are showing up for desktops. Plus the higher costs are really killing the market. And as such not all of the os's showing up as being used are from desktops. Few laptops have the specs to actually play games on it compared to its lower specs that are far more common.

But these things can be debated ad nauseam for years. The bottom line is that windows xp as well as other 32 bit users are paying customers as well. and they deserve a good playing experience without constant crashes and lock ups that have plagued this game for over a year that the new patch just makes worse. Regardless what is said here windows xp is the second most common and used os.

Nothing can or will change that fact until windows xp is totally phased out and all support dropped but i would wager many people will still use it. Excluding any player base is not a smart business move. It makes far more sense to include as many potential customers as possible. It is just pure and simple smart business. Runescape jumped up their system requirements. How well is that game doing now? That is a perfect example of how upping system requirements and excluding players is a bad and unintelligent move to make.

Well none of the people buying lower end machines expect to be gaming. That's a totally different demographics entirely. The people that plan to play FPS games like BF4 or PS2 aren't the one suddenly switching to tablets for all their computer needs. Bringing it up in such a discussion is pointless.

Source? It seems like from my steam library that there are more and more games being released. PS4 and Xbox launch titles for the year is pretty slim also not indicating any switch from PC to Consoles. A lot of the "good" games are simply released to PC, PS4, and Xbox One at the same time.

What are you talking about? Read this. You seem to have confused yourself possibly. On that note, I don't know why they bother with 32-bit either. The game should seriously be 64-bit only. Supporting people running a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit computer isn't helping anyone.

And you know this how? i'm guessing a huge assumption here. Its brought up as since the demographic of players solely gaming on pc's gets smaller excluding any pc gamers is not a wise move. The whole point of feed back on xp users is to fix problems these users are having to keep these players as well as maybe gain a few more back as well as some new players. the point that has been tried to be made is that it is a waste of time and resources to fix broken game mechanics that are affecting players. The same can be made as a point that many people who plan to play those games would opt for a console to game on as well.

This is the year of the release for the ps4 and xbox 1 and as such most of the games will not be scheduled or released until next year. consoles and games have always released in this manor.

And i'm not confused read it carefully. When you have 4 gigs installed 2 of it is reserved by the os. now when you install 4 gigs of ram you get like 3 gigs showing under system information. So less then 2 gigs is allotted to a program. You can bump it up some by adjusting your boot . ini file to allow for more ram to be used. But that is not entirely safe i can not begin to tell you how many blue screens i've experienced running my system with the boot . ini set at 3 gigs.

And even newer os's are running 32 bit windows as well. So not all windows 7 users are running 64 bit windows. And if you would read above or even what you linked you would understand this. And supporting 32 bit windows users ensures they keep those customers. Not doing so is to lose that revenue. And that would not be smart.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you have a source for this: "since the demographic of players solely gaming on pc's gets smaller"? I mean I can find sources that point out that PC gaming has grew by 8% in 2012. I can believe your point that there are PC gamers that also use consoles, but I don't see any reports about any switches.

Yeah you're confusing virtual memory with physical memory. The problem is independent of installed memory as the OS will use a paging system with virtual memory per process. So on a 32-bit XP per process/application you have 4 GBs to use. 2 GBs is reserved by the OS. You can lower that as the link explains. The issue is that OS section is used for video card memory also. This was fine when cards had 512 MBs. Now that everyone has 1 GBs or more you can not use that flag reliably if at all. (Depending on how much GPU memory is allocated for the process).

This is primarily why you won't find any FPS gamers on a 32-bit OS. Once one buys a 2 GB GPU (I've had one for 2.5 years, so not exactly new technology) a 32-bit OS really can't handle it along with a memory hungry game. (A big part is the paging the OS will perform when it invariably runs out of physical RAM and has to hit the HD).

It seems like a wasted effort to me, but you seem to feel very strongly that XP is the future of Planetside 2. I have to assume you're using 32-bit XP for the foreseeable future?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20309

That is one example. go into any video game store and see the gaming selections for pc's for yourself. They have been on a slow decline for a while now.

I feel strongly that a basic system requirement should equal a stable game. At basic requirements you should not be setting fps records. but you should be able to enjoy the game with no crashing. That has yet to happen since planetside 2 was released. I know that many pc gamers feel they are elitist and many think that basic requirements should be set as high as possible. but that is not feasible for a game to create any revenue to support itself.

To some 60 fps is the least they will except. some higher some as low as 30 fps. me i'd settle for the game not randomly crashing on me. And is that honestly to much to ask for?

Wrong conclusion. Steam, GoG, and Origin killed boxed game stores for PC.