Rendering distance of players is a BIG JOKE !

The issue with Render Distance is server side,they can't handle it. Your PC will go to 0 fps before it stops trying to draw stuff. if you are getting 10fps constantly and are on high settings, then you are drawing everything the server is allowing you to, turn down shadows and you will get 30fps but you wont get more enemies on your screen.

They dumbed down the graphics in the game, in a vain hope to improve it. now I think it is time they put their hands in their pockets and replace the old Planetside and SWG hardware with some new stuff.

Like always the only post I read is the OP so sorry if this has already been said.

The problem with "fixing" the render distance is that people who already have horrible fps in large fights will have even worse fps. Then they will flood the forums with QQ about their fps. (Render distance slider ftw?) Then when thats fixed they will find something else that if "fixed" will reduce fps even further then... etc etc heh. stop complaining and give it time...

It will all be fixed with time soe is not incompetent if you want something to really complain about go play mechwarrior online, that game has some incompetent devs < heh sorry some of my own rage slipped in >_>

You think your machine can take all the physics processing for 500-1000 players and vehicles being rendered? SOE have machines that sill piss all over yours and they grind to a halt. The biggest performance problem they have, this is coming from the devs, is managing what information get sent to who and on the client end it is all the physic processing involved in not all those players but all their bullets being shot and all the explosions going on.

One thing you have to understand is just because your cores aren't at 100% doesn't mean they can just use that. Multi threaded applications have some serious timing issues to deal with. SLI works similarly but is actually easy to deal with then an application like this. This is why sticking in a second graphics card != 2x the performance. They can break up problems to a point but at some point they'll have a thread finished before the data is needed or another thread waiting for some other thread to finish. I'm an Analyst/Developer and have been for going on 24 years. I've worked on many systems where we deal with this type of performance issue all the time. One was a Seahawk helicopter full motion simulator for the Royal Australian Navy. Not only was that system "multi threaded" it was a distributed application across many server. By your logic because most of the system sat idle 80% of the time the performance should be 5x faster but that is not the reality of complex systems. The reality is that your system is only as fast as the slowest piece.

Cool I am a network technician and anaylyst. I deal with pipes sending 16 petaflops a day.

On topic. However those quantities of people aren't usually what we see. Server pop gets spread and while there are huge clusters rarrely are there more than a few hundred players / player objects visible. Considering what they show me now, and how much of my system is currently used, yes they do have head room.

I also highly doubt SOE just uses machines to the spec of mine for testing. They would use low end, middle and of the road PCs not 3k high end boxes.

I think the devs set out with a goal in mind, but found out their "revolutionary engine" couldn't truly handle this many people with good FPS, so they were forced to continuously nerf render distances and graphics to the point they are at today.

This is evidenced all through the beta. Render distances were way better earlier in beta.

The core issue is the engine SOE is using for PS2, its garbage.......utterly and completely. In order to fix the draw distance/low fps nightmare the Forgelight engine offers it needs a complete overhaul. There was no reason to create the inferior Forgelight engine in the first place when there are several tried and true engines in the market, engines that offer first rate graphics and fps with extreme scalability. Its that straightforward, no other argument is worth even humoring........the Forgelight engine is nothing but pure hubris.

I'm pretty sure back in tech beta Higby said that they had some 3x680 SLI rigs going and that they had builds that graphically ground them to a halt. Granted they haven't pushed those levels of resolution down to us...

Don't get me wrong...there is more optimisation they need to do but it isn't a simple task

Here is an example

3 players A, B & C

A can see B,
B can see A & C
C can see A & B

Now at this scale you'd just send A the information about B & C
But when we are dealing with hundreds of people the server needs to work out who can see what then send that info to them. Unfortunately they push to the minimum spec. IE just because you have a great system doesn't mean they push more data to you and rightfully so they shouldn't. A player in this game shouldn't be unduly penalised because their system isn't top of the line.

Every player you add increases the processing on the server side more then "oh here is 1 more bit of info" For the server it is 1 more bit of info but it is also how does that 1 bit of info relate to the other 2,000 bits of info

Say I have a group of n people. For simplicity sake say it takes 1 second to see if a player sees another player the most simple method means I have n*n-1 seconds to figure out who sees who. So 2 players = 2 seconds, 3 players = 6 seconds, 4 players = 12 seconds, 5 players = 20 seconds, 6 players = 30 seconds....100 players = 9,900 seconds...
499 players = 248,502
500 players = 249,500
Going from 499 to 500, one player, increases the amount processing the server have to do as a normal FPS 16x16 player game has to do in total. And it gets worse from there

Now there are some things you can do to optimise this, and this is where the clever programming starts to come in. Some of this is straight up optimisation others may have some form of trade off. You can not calculate this information as much but faster moving objects may get closer in before registering. If an player hasn't moved since the last check use the same value. etc

Now again some people might be saying to themselves "Just send me info about all 2,000" but this would put a bigger burden on the client and despite what many people think the graphics isn't the issue here. It is all the physics processing. IE on my machine I'm CPU bound. I'm getting ~45fps at 1920x1080 on high settings and that isn't even with a tweaked config and only running off one of my GTX 480s. If lots of stuff starts happening, I.E. lots of explosions and players dieing, if you monitor your system you'll see a big spike on CPU usage. You and I see an explosion both of us have to do the physics for it and hopefully we see very similar things. Sometimes we don't. Most of us from Beta will recall seeing some vehicle, often Gals, freaking out. Spinning out of control and wondering what is going on. In most cases the pilot doesn't see anything. It is a result from info the pilot had the you didn't and when you got closer your system computes the physics of what is going on as wrong.

You sir/madam are cluesless. The forgelight engine is more then graphics and there is NO game engine out there that could come even CLOSE to what forgelight is doing. You know how I know besides the devs saying the same thing?!?! Because there is NO game out there that lets this many people play in one area. Show me a game that can do the battles PS1 did forget what PS2 does. A battle in PS2, per player, has a ton more going on then PS1.

Honestly ignorance doesn't suit you or anyone well.

The Forgelight engine is not doing what you claim it can, not even close. PS2 , being able to place many players in the same area and have many players in the same area that can actually interact without massive lag issues, stuttering, render distance akin to 1999 games etc.. (the list is huge, you should try reading the all forum sections sometime instead assuming absurdity) is quite different. You are right that no game can claim to have as many players in a battle running properly as PS2 claims becasue Ps2 can't do it either. The only ignorance here, clearly, is on you.

Back up your claims Plixin. Do you even understand that forgelight isn't just a graphical rendering engine. It not only deals with the client side graphics but it includes VOIP, Chat, Networking, Physics, Graphics, and a host of other features that you might not even think about like world building, modelling, quest/mission capability. It is a platform designed for MMOs and complaining that it has issues when fully loaded...FFS take a look at any MMO and show me when they don't struggle fully loaded. Hell EQ2 is 8 years old almost and the graphics in it can grind a 2xSLI 680 rig down to a crawl for get showing me a game where more then 100 players can be in one area let alone 500+.

Well I seem to be in battles with a few hundred people at once just fine. Sure as an ESF I might have to be 50m from infantry before their positions are sent to me but I'm amazed they can do what they do. You are like an over weight sports fan yelling at an athlete like you could do better.

Can 2,000 people fight in one area? No. Can 2,000 be on one cont? Yes. Will it get better over time as they do more optimisation? I'm confident it will. Don't like it? LEAVE. Or actually make constructive criticism. You'll not I've not once said that render distances are ideal and I know Smedley and others have said the same thing but calling Forgelight "garbage.......utterly and completely" is moronic. So get used to people calling you BS what it is.

The problem is that SOE didn't listen to beta testers, when they said the game wasn't ready.

Hopefully they can give us the option to render more players in your vicinity. Maybe have the default as the base and have a warning that this can grind your system to a halt if you put the numbers really high up.

Why would people start discussing the engine in this thread like they know it?

Just agree that this issue is horrible for a FPS and should probably the be highest priority for

fixing after server stability. Seeing as this is an intended mechanic though so that both the

server and your client don't die brings us to a rather funny situation. This problem appeared

midway through beta which means it is at least about a month old. It's like we are playing this planetside 2

game(honestly I've dreamed about a game like this for a long time) which is supposed to have these massive battles

as it's main and unique feature. They advertise and claim it that way. The cruel reality is that they can't handle it.

Planetside 2 : massive battles with invisible foes.

I don't think this issue is going to be resolved any time soon, we might be stuck with it for even a year or more, who knows.

This thing made me stop participating in beta, it may actually make me stop playing the game at some point. I definitely need to never let myself spend any cash on the game until at least this issue is fixed and we are able to render everything properly while maintaining a decent FPS. I pretty much bought a new rig this summer solely for the game and beta.

Technological limitations, yes in 2012 soon 2013, we still have to be limited by it. We can't have it all ways. We want massive battles, more than BF3/CoD, more than most PvP MMO's, so we've got it. But we have to know there are limitations to having 300+ players battling for a base.

Does it suck to have this limitation, sure. But the technology still isn't there yet to have it all ways. I think you'll find most gamers understanding this, and they'd rather trade distant rendering for massive battles.

SoE this is the largest problem in the game right now. Snipers are nearly worthless, libs cant see infantry on the ground, zoom optics are worthless, any sight greater then 6x is worthless and the list goes on. Seeing your target is one of the most crucial parts of an FPS. This issue needs and immediate fix or the game will lose players.

need to get something off my chest

People who say "get more RAM" are ridiculous.

The game is 32 bit, it can't address anything over 4GB.

Having 8GB or 16GB isn't going to do anything unless you're watching a HD movie while you're playing the game or have 20 internet tabs open at the same time.

I have no idea why this game doesn't run in 64 bit after a 64 bit core is detected like many games do now.

Devs forgot the 6 P's... Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

I had bought a new rig for this game back when rendering distance for foot was way further, so I could properly fly aircraft. At least they upped the vehicle rendering distance a bit last week. Still, I am disappointed, to say the least, that people / ammo towers pop up at less than 100m. To say the least, I am downright pissed off about this the entire time I am in air. I wanted to play the game the way it is meant to be played, that's why I put money into it.

Another thing is that yesterday I went 330km/h across the ground when suddenly magical erectus ammo tower appears right into my windshield. Needless to stay my Mosquito was not very pleased, neither his pilot who had just pulled the bloody bird a minute earlier. And logged off for the night one minute and a rant later.

Look AGAIN read again i am talking about RENDERING PLAYERs NOT OBJECTs SHADOWs ETC O M F G START READING BEFOR YOU POST ALLLL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Btw. : I ll dont zero of my money when they DONT SOLVE THIS i have free 100 euro to spend..

Admin why you moved this into gameplay discusion this is not discusion this is the send BIGGEST problem in the game !!!!!!