(Dev's please review this.) How PS2 Works and Where it can be Optimized

Such a quick and easy fix for fps problems by un******izing the flash UI .. Been hating it since beta for the valuable fps it chomps down. For some reason the devs have chosen to keep it, and the forced FXAA setting .. All the while people complain about low fps, the situation could easily be improved quite a bit.

No...Yes? They have acknowledge it several times. I don't think most people would care about specific details what they're doing (I'd love to though, probably you as well). I've been into software development, reverse engineering and all that myself. So, I know a thing or two. It would be very interesting to hear what they're doing, but I don't think it will happen. Unless it's some kind of an indie title, I've yet to hear someone post in-depth optimization or general, detailed development progress about their game.

Your suggestions in original post are fairly basic (no offense). I know you know way more than that, but I'm pretty sure they're aware of this. In fact, I believe the reason they haven't paid much attention to it is that there are way more "burning" issues that could be improved. Let's not forget they also have server-side stuff.
I totally agree that some of the things could easily be streamlined. These tiny quirks were probably used to simplify/speed up development and left in for the moment as it was "good enough."
They've said their optimization-patch would require a re-download. So, I think we could assume changes across the board.

As for packers...meh. You know yourself it isn't hard to pull it from memory anyways. Any kind of tinkering would only add extra overhead and possibly negatively affect performance. Implementing some kind of clever way to prevent hackers and unpacking when big changes are incoming seems to bit of a waste of time. There's of time to get to that later. They've also said they'll be using Punkbuster.

Did they say it's January? I recall them mentioning there are going to be changes in January (classes, balancing, etc), but the optimization patch is more or less ready to go. I'm expecting it to pop up any day to be honest. God I want to be right in that regard. Waiting until January is a bit...long.

I have a way more in-depth dissection of the game (several thousand line .txt file), but for forums I try to keep it toned down and more/less understandable. At current, I'm still trying to figure out what's using the opengl libs and why those have imports from directx as well as the random references to lib-xfree86, having not ran windows outside of virtualbox the past few years until now, it intrigues me. From what I've read scouring the forums here, the big patch is supposedly due this January.Yes pulling it from memory is quite easy, if you had read, I already addressed the dumping of a .exe at run-time using Win Commander.

Yes. The chorus of angels descends from the heavens and gives thee a medal.

Yes I read, just re-stating the obvious. Anyways, can you pastebin (or something) and PM me your findings. I'm quite interested as well.

Thanks.

It is effective if they are able to sync the render frames with all other stuff.... like, post processing is probably rendered on a separated thread, and they are probably using deferred shading on the main render thread (because all that lighting effects and stuff.)

now, they can break that main render pass into multiples passes and putting them on different tasks, but..... can they sync all this ? than you put a little of v-sync on this and poop goes flying everywhere. It is hard to split things, really hard.

Now, there is still frustum culling to be calculated, and this is really a pain in the butt when you have a bazilion players at the same location. They are probably using portal culling ? or occlusion culling (bad for large areas ?) ? They have a lot of options for this, some are good some are bad. different culling for different games.

One thing i can say is they won't be able to drastically improve performance without re-coding the main render thread. And that probably won't happen.

So basically they wont be able to drastically improve performance ... ? That sounds alarming

They can, for sure. There's a lot more going on than just rendering and to be honest, engine does a pretty good at it. GPU utilization is fine (when and if you're not CPU bound). Not sure what lighting, shadowing, etc methods they use, but possibly they'd have to sync it up a bit better with CPU. As well as physics, audio, input, i/o, etc.

What i find strange though is why they havent fixed things like hte UI and FXAA options ... these should be relatively simple compared to the long term optimizations.

Priorities. It's like building a house without foundation. Due to possibility of major patch/patches in the near future, these little changes may very well have to be redone. So, it could be a complete waste of time to do them now.
Keep in mind it's a big team and communication can sometimes take time. There are several steps they need to take to do...anything, really. It's not like one guy is doing the programming, giving it a green light and sending you a patch. These things unfortunately take a bit of time. You don't see minor changes often, because they're inefficient in many ways. One big patch with many changes is a bit easier to work with, but takes longer timer. Don't take my word on it, I could be completely wrong. I believe Kitsune94 can enlighten you on this subject way more than me.

you know the sad thing is THE PLAYERS can find the issues wrong and know how to fix it but the devs can't i think sony needs a new dev team

ehhh... I think this guy knows his stuff. Devs should definately take a look

Read through this; definitely agree. DEVS PLEASE READ =] Several people here know what they're talking about

Those imports could be remnants of cross-platform code in the FreeRealms engine for consoles.

You're full of yourself and I don't like you. What you're saying sounds really amateurish. 3d rendering and net code performance has little to do with settings file format or txt containers. Get over yourself.

Really ? Tell us how it works then.

I honestly know absolutely nothing of which you guys speak but what confuses me is how at the warp gate I got 70+ FPS even where a lot of people are (in my experience the more people = more lag in an fps, but yet the second I leave the warp gate I drop to 30 fps (on either one of my cards listed in my sig)

I have also noticed that my ATI 5670 runs the game more stable than my Geforce (as far as "hiccups" go)
I get a "hiccup" (FPS drop from 30 to 0-1 that lasts for 2 seconds about ever 15-30 seconds on my Geforce, but only about every 60+ seconds on my ATI which is very odd to me because (at least in my experience) it seems to be tied to bullets and explosions (which correct me if I am wrong, but is linked to physics calculations) and my Geforce has the embedded physx chip (I know it is disabled atm, but am unsure which side is responsible for calculations for this part, hardware or software)

again I am just trying to understand, if anyone could explain the reasons why I am having hiccups or at least have ideas, or even inform me that I am wrong about the source I would greatly appreciate it, Thanks

@helloworldy
I'd be more than happy to share my findings with you within the next few days. However, if you would like to join me on teamspeak3 or irc for a faster response or live collaboration on the subject, I use the same url for ts3 and irc, timeofeve.jp.pn

@Krizzen
There is no reason for OpenGL .dll's to be importing functions from DirectX. If it were for cross-platform support, they'd simply just need both sets of .dll's which they do have. I've worked with OpenGL in the past, primarily on linux and my experience with it on windows as well as in comparing to other versions of the same .dll's, it does not rely on DirectX at all.

@NOX2097
I'm not sure if you've read and/or understand the thread. Before making an Ad Hominem attack such as you have. Please post some reasoning as to why you are making the attack.


May I remind everyone who keep bringing in gameplay issues into this thread. This thread was not created with the intention of discussing the gameplay of Planetside2 but it's core. Originally the thread was posted under Technical Support as it is entirely related to the technical side of PS2 and unrelated to General Gameplay and Discussion.

Hmmmmm I noticed a lot of ******* in this thread. Good post OP. But what you excel at is actually pulling in haters.

@Kitsune94

If it isn't too troublesome, keep updating this thread with your findings. Unless of course it's something that could get you banned (code chunks). After all, you did say it's not packed. Wouldn't be too hard to peek in.
Anyways, can you or someone confirm to what extent PhysX is used. Is it used as the main physics engine or not? It probably is, seeing as there's no other physics engine "around."
As for OpenGL, it's used by the launchpad. You can check it yourself. Plantside 2 does not use or load any OpenGL libs. So, it's pretty irrelevant.