Guild Wars 2

Back in 2007 an Anet employe promised that GW2 will have an DX10 mode. Betas passed, several month after release passed and the game still only got a DX9 mode.
Now DX10 is outdated for a while already and even old games like WoW received a DX11 mode. So when will GW2 will get a DX11 mode? It would be really helpful to use MSAA instead of FXAA for example, since GW2 uses deferred lightning.

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

I’m not sure but if by the time the next expansion is released and still no word on dx11 implementation, I would be worried.

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

juno.1840:

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

You would think that GW2 would run great on a brand new high end machine but the facts are there are a lot of people having issues with it. Optimization should always be one of the top priorities.

juno.1840:

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

My machine is higher than their “best appearance” specs, and tanks to 20 fps in large zerg combat (dragon events).

it bottlenecks on the cpu (4.6ghz i7 2600) and only utilizes 2/3 of the gtx 670 oc .

That’s a major optimization issue. I should not have to buy a xeon just to drive a video card that’s 2 generations old.

plasmacutter.2709:

juno.1840:

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

My machine is higher than their “best appearance” specs, and tanks to 20 fps in large zerg combat (dragon events).

it bottlenecks on the cpu (4.6ghz i7 2600) and only utilizes 2/3 of the gtx 670 oc .

That’s a major optimization issue. I should not have to buy a xeon just to drive a video card that’s 2 generations old.

Even Nvidia said on their driver release notes a while back ( a few driver revisions back, you may still find it if you search their older driver release notes) that GW2 is a massive CPU hog. GW2 is a poorly optimized game that would have done so much better if they had done it right.

As I said its not only for better performance, but also for better anti aliasing, which is quite frankly horrible compared to what other games offer.

Isn’t it somehow harder because the game has a proprietary engine?

You skipped my questions… if ANet provides DX11 support will it make your situation magically better? Somehow I suspect not.

juno.1840:

You skipped my questions… if ANet provides DX11 support will it make your situation magically better? Somehow I suspect not.

DX11 has built-in optimizations for some of the performance-with-scaling issues plaguing this game.

juno.1840:

You skipped my questions… if ANet provides DX11 support will it make your situation magically better? Somehow I suspect not.

Yes, the game is not pretty enough. Art style is nice, graphics are not. Even if I use supersampling and 25% downsampling the graphics are still bad. We need MSAA so we can force SGSSAA if we wish.

Give up guys, this will come in 1-2 years minimum.
It’s not remotely a priority, they said it already, posting it more won’t change this.

Red Falcon.8257:

Give up guys, this will come in 1-2 years minimum.
It’s not remotely a priority, they said it already, posting it more won’t change this.

Can’t give it up then they might start to think it is ok, when it is completely absurd in 2013 that we are stuck with Dx 9

juno.1840:

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

Actually having DX11 is not about having sufficient computing power. It’s about solving many of the now rather expensive graphical features in a much cheaper way. Almost every modern GPU is DX11 capable and is be able to produce better graphics than GW2 when used properly.

GW2 isn’t such a CPU hog because it would provide any state of the art graphics, but because it violates the CPU (actually even less the CPU itself, but communication between CPU and GPU) in order to achieve features in an outdated graphics framework which doesn’t support such features natively.

If GW2 was supposed to give state of the art graphics on average machines, the whole graphic engine would need to be redesigned, making use of the extended (and yet simpler) shader model of DX10/11, dynamic tesselation and vertex displacement maps for proper level of detail and last but not least an modern rendering pipeline like deferred shaders.

Right now the engine scales badly with almost everything. Dropshadows crash your FPS, LoD is poorly implemented, many of the semi transparent effects on skills will cause your FPS to drop, total lack of model instancing which would save you ridiculous amounts of computing power etc.

This type of engine was fine, back when GW1 came out first and when “state of the art graphics” meant to AVOID scenarios which would overburden the engine, like heaving too many objects, transparent effetcs or multiple lightsources, but it was a foolish move to take the old engine and to even hope to be able to outrun the technical limitations with more computing power. The technical limitations, which lead to the old engine in the first place, don’t exist any more.

As most of you may not realize, graphics have plateaued in the last 5 years for good reason. Graphics use up the biggest part of the development budget, leading to very poor quality gameplay.
It is no longer cost effective to spend loads of money on marginal improvements to graphics which are already very good. Much better to improve on gameplay aspects which are actually important.

DirectX 11 is not important. Not for GW2, not for any other game

Dx11 will help performance.. ok it will slightly improve the graphics quality ..or if they so desired hugly imporve it. But realisticly they would move ot Dx11 and not use the extra eye candy and instead just use the more efficient Engine.
Dx11 actually has a slightly lower CPU usuage as it shifts more to the GPU. This means it would be very good for GW2 as GW2 is VERY CPU bound atm.

Will they do it ? ..possibly. Will they do it soon.. doubtfull.

I could care less about the eye candy stuff, DX11 has a much more modern API for threading and GPU scaling, hence a huge increase in performance. While half of you seem to think this isn’t important GW2 via DX9 is very taxing on lower end systems.

The majority of pc’s today have a DX11 capable video card and if not all you have to do is select DX9/10 in options.

Indeed.

I agree its important.

But i just also know that Anet wont be doing it anytime soon..if at all. Unless they are planing a surprise (doubt it).

SolarNova.1052:

Dx11 will help performance.. ok it will slightly improve the graphics quality ..or if they so desired hugly imporve it. But realisticly they would move ot Dx11 and not use the extra eye candy and instead just use the more efficient Engine.
Dx11 actually has a slightly lower CPU usuage as it shifts more to the GPU. This means it would be very good for GW2 as GW2 is VERY CPU bound atm.

Will they do it ? ..possibly. Will they do it soon.. doubtfull.

100% agree with this. GW2 uses and antiquated API and engine. I have a 0% hope for any performance updates until at least 2014.

Kromica.2831:

Can’t give it up then they might start to think it is ok, when it is completely absurd in 2013 that we are stuck with Dx 9

The benefits from dx11 would be very slight performance and graphics improvements, but would require a large amount of work.
Lots of work + barely noticiable benefit = inefficient use of exployee working hours.

Especially when you consider the game is still far from complete and there are way more important and urgent matters to solve that also require large amounts of work.

Priorities.

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

fluff….clearly you know kitten all about dx11 and why its better then dx9….we are not talking about “fluff” we are talking about perf boosts that would also allow for later quality upgrades.

juno.1840:

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

again you clearly know kitten all about dx11, i suggest you try running msi kombustor on your system in dx9/10/11 modes full screen at native res(the gpu burnin/bench section) on my system i can do 1920×1080 8xmsaa, in dx11 i get min of 71fps, in dx9 its a slide show…..same effects rendered, dx11 is just ALOT faster.

Red Falcon.8257:

Kromica.2831:

Can’t give it up then they might start to think it is ok, when it is completely absurd in 2013 that we are stuck with Dx 9

The benefits from dx11 would be very slight performance and graphics improvements, but would require a large amount of work.
Lots of work + barely noticiable benefit = inefficient use of exployee working hours.

Especially when you consider the game is still far from complete and there are way more important and urgent matters to solve that also require large amounts of work.

Priorities.

kombustor and many games with dx11 support would tend to show that you know kitten all about how dx11 can boost perf.

easy examples are msi kombustor (note what i said to try above)

or WoW, WoW runs FASTER in dx11 mode then dx9, yet they updated a VERY VERY old engine to add dx11 support…..kind like what anet could have done had somebody not gotten lazy/greedy/lazy+greedy and wanted that windows XP user money(users who for the most part can barely run this game…)

even a dx9 videocard can benefit from dx11 support, I have seen this in a number of games and beta’s where the game could run dx11 mode on dx9 or 10 hardware, just disabling what the gpu cant support.

dx11 was designed to make multi threading easier, dx9 was not designed for mutithreading at all(it came out in what 2004?)

the fact is, if Anet where smart, they would have a team working on a dx11 implementation, as well as having their current team working on the fixes for the dx9 client, this could lead to the game getting even better for everybody.

dx11 if done correctly can work on dx9/10 hardware, again, I have seen and even been asked to test this in a few beta’s, its amazing to see a game look the same or better, yet see it running faster(sometimes 2-3x as fast) on the same hardware……

and to fix the major AA issue, going dx11 would allow for MSAA on dx10/11 systems, another easy fix would be for them to replace FXAA with SMAA, the dev’s even admit smaa destroys fxaa…they are just to busy trying to fix other problems.

I love the game but, it would be one hell of alot better if they would have come out with a dx10/11 mode for those of us with dx10/11 hardware……..

anet admit they made some mistakes, now they just need to fix them……hopefully that ends up including a 64bit dx11 client option……..since according to steam, most systems now are dx10+ and running 64bit windows…..

I seriously wonder why are even having a debate about Direct X 11. In the end, Direct X9 vs 11 is just a graphic api. It is up for the designer and developer to make most of their tools. Arguing for Direct X 11 on the forum is absurd. It is up for the developers and managers of the company to make this large investment. We did not make the game. They did. They know their own engine better than we do.

They might know their engine better than we do but we also have to put up with lackluster performance.
GW2 has serious performance issues that cannot be ignored. They made a critical mistake using their modified GW1 engine and since they didn’t implement DX11/10 support, they are paying for it now.
What Jazhara Knightmage.4389 stated is 100% accurate.
Get the fanboy a coffee so he can wake up and see reality.

They didn’t make a critical mistake in reusing a modified GW1 engine. It was a budget decision then, cost & benefit.

They could re-work the code to make it DX11, but by the time they finished technology would have caught up and likely make the problem less of an issue.

So your saying there are 0 issues with performance because of the engine? Just wait till the 5ghz hexa cores become normal for the game to run smoothly? What an absurdity. I agree that they cheaped out on reusing the GW1 engine but it was a huge mistake.

“Lets make a game with 100 people all fighting a big big battle, like a dragon !!!”
“But our engine can’t handle it”
“Don’t worry by the time technology catches up in 2015 it will be fine! Moar zergs!”

Stormcrow.7513:

So your saying there are 0 issues with performance because of the engine? Just wait till the 5ghz hexa cores become normal for the game to run smoothly? What an absurdity. I agree that they cheaped out on reusing the GW1 engine but it was a huge mistake.

“Lets make a game with 100 people all fighting a big big battle, like a dragon !!!”
“But our engine can’t handle it”
“Don’t worry by the time technology catches up in 2015 it will be fine! Moar zergs!”

guild wars 2 have been in production for over 5 years. Direct X 11 standard haven’t been finalize and the development team choose to continue to use Direct X9. Its not they cheap out, but there probably wasn’t any other option.

I rather have them put Direct X 11 on the lowest priority and work on fixing bugs and culling issues. These issues should have a larger priority. Direct X 11 is not as simply adding features. Any development team needs experience to properly use any new tools

loseridoit.2756:

Stormcrow.7513:

So your saying there are 0 issues with performance because of the engine? Just wait till the 5ghz hexa cores become normal for the game to run smoothly? What an absurdity. I agree that they cheaped out on reusing the GW1 engine but it was a huge mistake.

“Lets make a game with 100 people all fighting a big big battle, like a dragon !!!”
“But our engine can’t handle it”
“Don’t worry by the time technology catches up in 2015 it will be fine! Moar zergs!”

guild wars 2 have been in production for over 5 years. Direct X 11 standard haven’t been finalize and the development team choose to continue to use Direct X9. Its not they cheap out, but there probably wasn’t any other option.

I rather have them put Direct X 11 on the lowest priority and work on fixing bugs and culling issues. These issues should have a larger priority. Direct X 11 is not as simply adding features. Any development team needs experience to properly use any new tools

so your saying none of the problems with the game are due to them using dx9 or the fact they didnt work harder on making their revamped gw1 engine work better with modern processors?

come on now……even the dev’s own posts on reddit and her admit the game runs like crap, alot of the problems could be fixed by using dx11…..

the only excuse for using 9 would be

1. to make porting to a current gen console easierr

2. to get money from people running windows XP who, enlarge cant run the game properly….i mean after all, you can have a 39*0x cpu from, intel at 4.6ghz and top end videocard and still have this game run like crap….

put down the fanboiade and learn to accept that alot of the problems are due to the poor choice of using an antiquated API and trying to build a modern game around it…

I do think its pretty funny that WoW has had dx11 support for years, infact since 2010, thats what, 2 years before gw2 came out?

your telling me that anet didnt have time to make gw2 a modern game?

sorry but I do not buy that, I really think it was somebody from ncsoft or anet management who decided they had to stick to dx9 to milk the market of xp users and to allow for a possible console port….to bad current gen consoles couldnt provide the cpu grunt needed to run this game properly…..

I do love watching people who clearly know kitten all about this stuff tell us that its just fluff and that they want other things fixed first…..all I can assume is that the fanboi here is also an XP user…..

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

loseridoit.2756:

Stormcrow.7513:

So your saying there are 0 issues with performance because of the engine? Just wait till the 5ghz hexa cores become normal for the game to run smoothly? What an absurdity. I agree that they cheaped out on reusing the GW1 engine but it was a huge mistake.

“Lets make a game with 100 people all fighting a big big battle, like a dragon !!!”
“But our engine can’t handle it”
“Don’t worry by the time technology catches up in 2015 it will be fine! Moar zergs!”

guild wars 2 have been in production for over 5 years. Direct X 11 standard haven’t been finalize and the development team choose to continue to use Direct X9. Its not they cheap out, but there probably wasn’t any other option.

I rather have them put Direct X 11 on the lowest priority and work on fixing bugs and culling issues. These issues should have a larger priority. Direct X 11 is not as simply adding features. Any development team needs experience to properly use any new tools

so your saying none of the problems with the game are due to them using dx9 or the fact they didnt work harder on making their revamped gw1 engine work better with modern processors?

come on now……even the dev’s own posts on reddit and her admit the game runs like crap, alot of the problems could be fixed by using dx11…..

the only excuse for using 9 would be

1. to make porting to a current gen console easierr

2. to get money from people running windows XP who, enlarge cant run the game properly….i mean after all, you can have a 39*0x cpu from, intel at 4.6ghz and top end videocard and still have this game run like crap….

put down the fanboiade and learn to accept that alot of the problems are due to the poor choice of using an antiquated API and trying to build a modern game around it…

I do think its pretty funny that WoW has had dx11 support for years, infact since 2010, thats what, 2 years before gw2 came out?

your telling me that anet didnt have time to make gw2 a modern game?

sorry but I do not buy that, I really think it was somebody from ncsoft or anet management who decided they had to stick to dx9 to milk the market of xp users and to allow for a possible console port….to bad current gen consoles couldnt provide the cpu grunt needed to run this game properly…..

I do love watching people who clearly know kitten all about this stuff tell us that its just fluff and that they want other things fixed first…..all I can assume is that the fanboi here is also an XP user…..

I am not an XP user. I am just saying that DX 11 option did not exist when they started to make a game. You are trivializing the time it takes to learn new tools and standards. DX11 is not an small investment

Note: you said 2010

I said they started before Dx 11 was standardized.

Note: Dx11 was standardize in 2008

wow got decent DX 11 support in 2010.

Anet does not have 2 years to throw away to incorporate dx11 support when they barely laid the ground work for the game. It should not be a priority and anet made the correct decision if it was on the table. Of course, they should work toward Dx 11 after they fixed the bugs in game.

Please notice that anet did not have the option back then.

• to make porting to a current gen console easierr

wtf, its a mmo and anet will never be so stupid

your right idiot, they really should have stuck with dx8 since dx9 took to much time and effort to learn, and the engine was dx8 orignally, its stupid to use current standards when you could use 8year old(dx9) or 11 year old(dx8) standards and never have to move forward to anything new.

sorry but your excuses for them using dx9 are total kitten poo, they did it because somebody was afraid of loosing the xp user market sales, it was about greed not about dx9 being better in any way vs dx10 or 11.

what you dont realise is that alot of the games current problems could be solved by features in dx11, BUT those fixes wouldnt help people running XP, they would help people running vista or 7 even if those people used dx9 cards.

read this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/897925-DirectX-9-vs-DirectX-11

dx11 mode in wow can even be set on dx9 and 10 and 10.1 hardware, it just uses the features the card has, and most people still gain perf from it.

this specific post should help explain it…..he simplifies it pretty well for those who need things dumbed down.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/897925-DirectX-9-vs-DirectX-11?p=11579898&viewfull=1#post11579898

if thats to complex for you to understand…

First, Direct X 9 is a benefit over Direct 8. Development has been simplified alot by making the api easier to use

Second, I said Direct X 11 option did not exist when they “started” development.

Third, Direct X 9 is better than Direct X 10. Performance test shown that Direct X 9 can have the same graphical result but faster. Direct X 10 is not so backward compatible. The investment was not worth it.

Fourth, when you dumb things down, please do not leave out the reason why people want direct X 11. Direct X 11 introduces multi-thread rendering This feature will alleviate performance problems by spreading the Direct X overhead across multiple cores.
Please try to link official website
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476891%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Not easy to implement since multi core programming is hard

actually thats not true, dx10 can be faster, and can simplify alot on true dx10 hardware, the problem is that games like crysis didnt really use it for perf but to try and get as much eye candy as they could, crysis is not really a game, its a demo of the game engine and what it could do at the time.

“multi core” programming is no harder then proper single threaded programming, it just takes thinking differently, btw, its SMT/SMP not “core” if you want to get technical, theres a good explination of why dx11 and 10 are better then 9 I gotta go find the link for you, i dont know that it will be down to your level though….

I say this having a good number of friends who are software developers, the biggest problem is, most developers where trained/schooled before SMT/SMP really took off OR by people who where trained/schooled before SMT/SMP really took off on the desktop platform, this leads to alot of problems, One of my friends whos favorite collage instructor was very very very much into multi threading even on single core systems use to stress that eventually they would hit a wall with single core/thread performance and that it was very important to learn to think in parallel rather then serial, I have seen a few of the guys lectures, and despite some of it being over my head, I get the concepts.

Im not saying this to badmouth anet or the dev’s, the problems they are running into are real problems, but, many of them come from using tools that where far from the best for the job, and from their lack of para thinking when it comes to programming.

an interesting thing i have seen with a few beta’s I am in is that the teams are working on making the game use more cores more effectivly from early beta rather then waiting till the end of the development cycle to do it, having talked to them, they really want their new games(1-3 years out) to be able to take advantage of the systems of the day, they do want them to run decently on lower end systems, but, they dont want to make people who have high end systems that can handle more feel like they arent important, they know we are an important part of the pc gaming market, because we are the ones who tell people to buy XX game or not to buy it….(i have told alot of people to wait for skyrim GOTY so they get a patched up version with all the dlc….hopefully without most of the bugs the game had in release and even now…)

I will say this again

I do not think it was a mistake to use the gw1 engine as a starting point, many modern engines are built on the bones of much older engines, the mistake came when they didnt see the writing on the wall that SMP/SMT support would be key, and that dx9 was a dead end…(sorry but, if the game came out 4-6 years ago, 9 would have been fine but 2012……)

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/897925-DirectX-9-vs-DirectX-11?p=11579898&viewfull=1#post11579898

read that link, it will help you understand other features of DX10 and 11 that can and do allow for better performance.

one example is that you can do AA and differed lighting under dx9, you can under 10 and 11, thats why the game has the HORRIBLE blurry mess that is fxaa(the dev’s hadnt heard of smaa, one admitted this and said they are looking into adding it as time permits)

OH yeah, I am not sure if the anet guys have tried them but Intel has some tools that can help with SMT/SMP optimization that are not bias against non-intel systems(intels compiler is evil, blocks non-intel chips from getting proper code paths), some of the results I have seen from using these tools has been amazing even when the software was later compiled with a non-intel compiler like MSVS or Open64 or GCC, its like some old scripting tools I had for private MMO servers we use to run that would look over item and even battle scripts(for scripted “raids” as they became known thanks to wow), sometimes the tools would give you a suggestion to change how you scripted the item or sequence of events/effects to make it more more efficient at the server/client level, sometimes it was off base, but alot of the time I found it worked well testing the scripts Myself and others created vs the ones that used at least some of the suggestions the tools provided.

its not easy to rebuild a game from the ground up to try and fix a problem like gw2 has at the moment, 3 critical threads that no current cpu can keep happy all the time……

and we are not going to be seeing much more boost in single thread performance

from this point on, compare the first core i5 and i7 chips with sandybridge and ivybridge, you will find that the per thread per clock perf boost is pretty weak, things like FMA and AVX can help some but, we wont be seeing perf jumps like p4 to core2 or core2 to i7 again, even intels admitting this, hence they are adding more cores and HT, they know the future is SMT/SMP, Intel are even working on a design thats very much like bulldozer/piledriver from what i hear(shared resorces to cut down on die space needed for more cores/threads)

again, i dont give a crap if dx10/11 where not around when dev started, they had years of dev time to implement them and they could have fixed alot of the games performance issues by doing so, they choose not to….I would bet it was a management/publisher decision, because after all, im sure they sold hundreds of thousands of XP users copies of a game their systems can barely run…..

I love Anet, gw1 was a blast, gw2 has alot of potential, If they can just get the major core bugs out……..

I have a few things to say. Do you realize that the best way to get the most performance out of graphic cards is to have no API? Well, APIs are tools to make development easier. APIs are optimized against a certain case which sometimes does not mesh well with someone code. Consoles have a minium api that allows it to wire every last piece of performance. It turns out that adding every new feature ever will actually make the game slower. This fact is where your logic fails. Software has to be tested and put into practice to be useable. The problem is that experimental features have bugs and I do not think Anet can invest in constant talks with AMD and Nvidia about bugs in their drivers.

Direct X overhead is real.
Here is a simplified version of the problem. I kidda wished that I could find a quote form a spoken person from AMD
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/2

I would agree that features in Direct X 11 will make the game look better. One day, they should look into Direct X 11 features and abondon the Mac beta. I wonder if the parent company is putting pressure on Anet

Priotertory scripting code is not a good example because it is well tested by blizzard and they had years of experience in making it run so well that anyone can use it

loseridiot: this was true years ago, consoles use to be api-less and run a minimal os, this is nolonger true of the ps3 or xbx360, or for that matter the xbx1, they all run an OS, the xbox1 runs a modified stripped down version of windows 2000, the 360 and ps3 have their own operating systems, the biggest benefit of consoles today isnt that they offer direct hardware access, its that they are a fixed platform.

consoles have a limited number of configurations, based on what ms/sony sell people they also have a fixed set of hardware and software in them, so game developers dont have to account for the thousands/tens of thousands of different hardware and software configurations, this means they can get alot more out of the consoles without worrying about breakage.

its why in the past people thought mac’s where more stable/reliable then windows machiens(they really where not, im talking from the perspective of a person whos done support for them since the mac classic days….mac os sucked, osx is better but not perfect by any means) apple back in the day had effective total control of their platform, it made support alot easier since you couldnt just open a mac and upgrade a videocard/exct, they didnt take standard parts, even today you cant just toss any old parts in a mac, if osx dosnt support it, its probably not gonna work.
this makes it easier for apple to support their systems and makes it easier to change a preimum for foxconn hardware.
it also means they can get a little extra perf out of the system since they have very tight control over the system configuration limits(mac’s are in effect the consoles of the pc world)

I was not talking about WoW client mods or the like man, lets leave it at that, i wasnt even talking about WoW…..there are alot of other mmo’s out there…..

dx overhead is real, but its not all dx overhead, infact, thats a pretty small part of the issue really, they didnt optimize for multi cores when building the game, they also didnt move forward as tech moved forward, they had years to work on dx11 and use it to make the game run better, they choose to take the dx9 path, and again ,im sure this was to get sales to XP users whos systems enlarge really arent up to running the game in its current state.

anet or ncsoft or both decided it was important to support XP because they saw $.$ , sadly its costing them money, because, most people i know love the game but wont put any money into it till they “Fix their poop” its sad, but, its a fact that by making the choices they did, they got great initial sales, but also got alot of requests for refunds and alot of people who just wont put money into the game till they fix the perf issues.

you cant blame MS or DX or AMD or nVidia or Intel for the problems gw2 has with perf, since its pretty fornicating clear that it effects them all, even some people with top end systems that cost 4x what mine cost have very poor perf…..

again, alot of dx11 features could have been used to boost perf, without leaving out dx9 and 10 hardware users who where running vista or 7…..sorry but XP is DEAD, its EOL, MS has abandoned it(for good reason)….its time to move on…..

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

again, alot of dx11 features could have been used to boost perf

Could you elaborate on this? Specifically, which DX11 features would be useful for GW2 performance?

You mentioned multithreaded rendering earlier. First of all, multithreaded rendering is an oxymoron because the rendering is – by definition – single threaded. The rendering commands must be synchronised into a single command queue before being sent to the GPU. I don’t have much experience with DX11, I briefly looked through the docs right now and it seems that it allow you to sync command buffers from multiple threads + load resources in other threads (I am confused that this feature is seemingly new – OpenGL has had it for at least 10 years now). Anyway, all the ‘multithreaded’ calls are then combined in a single thread and sent to the GPU. Now, you will only see a benefit with this technique if your main thread is already CPU limited. This happens for instance if you have to use lots and lots of API calls per frame (e.g. it takes lots of commands to set up rendering of a particular part of the scene). I doubt that GW2 – being an MMO – requires any fancy stuff like that. The game is not particularly low-polygon (like WoW), but its not exactly high-polygon either. And it does not use any complex scene structures like destructive environment, meaning that the geometry can be precomputed into batches and rendered in a cheap way. Basically, there is nothing I can recognise in the GW2 graphics which would warrant usage of expensive API calls. If the rendering of the game is indeed CPU-limited (which I don’t know), then its more likely because of inefficient coding/geometry batching – and they should concentrate on fixing that, as no multithreading will solve it. And besides, until we know the particular details how the engine handles rendering, we have no idea how easy or difficult it is to make it multi-threaded.

P.S. I have seen claims that GW2 uses deferred rendering. Is there an official source on this? I find it rather unlikely. Or are people saying it simply because it uses FXAA instead of multi-sampling?

the dev’s have stated that the game dosnt have MSAA because they use deffered lighting
deferred-shading

some things in dx11 that could be used to boost perf.

dx11 has multi threaded rendering, infact its a key core feature
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476891(v=vs.85).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476342(v=vs.85).aspx

“Multithreading

Many graphics applications are CPU-bound because of costly activities such as scene graph traversal, object sorting, and physics simulations. Because multicore systems are becoming increasingly available, Direct3D 11 has improved its multithreading support to enable efficient interaction between multiple CPU threads and the D3D11 graphics APIs.

Direct3D 11 enables the following functionality to support multithreading:
Concurrent objects are now created in separate threads — Making entry-point functions that create objects free-threaded makes it possible for many threads to create objects simultaneously. For example, an application can now compile a shader or load a texture on one thread while rendering on another.

Command lists can be created on multiple threads — A command list is a recorded sequence of graphics commands. With Direct3D 11, you can create command lists on multiple CPU threads, which enables parallel traversal of the scene database or physics processing on multiple threads. This frees the main rendering thread to dispatch command buffers to the hardware."

also look at the full feature list here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476342(v=vs.85).aspx

Multithread resource/shader/object creation

Multithreaded Display list creation

Addressable resources – textures, constant buffers, and samplers

Additional resource types, such as read/write buffers and textures

Compute shader (see Compute Shader Overview) – A shader that speeds up computations by dividing the problem space between several software threads or groups of threads, and sharing data among shader registers to significantly reduce the amount of data required to input into a shader. Algorithms that the compute shader can significantly improve include post processing, animation, physics, and artificial intelligence.

Instancing – Allows the geometry shader to output a maximum of 1024 vertices, or any combination of instances and vertices up to 1024 (maximum of 32 instances of 32 vertices each).

Direct3D 11 supports conservative oDepth – This algorithm allows a pixel shader to compare the per-pixel depth value of the pixel shader with that in the rasterizer. The result enables early depth culling operations while maintaining the ability to output oDepth from a pixel shader.

Allow for resources > 4GB
Keep indices of resources 32bit, but resource larger

Disables writes to the part that is read-only, allows for using texture as input and for depth-culling
Direct3D 11 supports draw indirect – Direct3D 10 implements DrawAuto, which takes content (generated by the GPU) and renders it (on the GPU). Direct3D 11 generalizes DrawAuto so that it can be called by a Compute Shader using DrawInstanced and DrawIndexedInstanced

there are other features those are just the ones I could easily see being used in gw2 to boost perf on dx11 capable systems.

note dx11 has built in functionality for depth culling, so they could have used that instead of umbra, or in conjunction with it, instead they are either trying to fix umbra or build their own solution since clearly umbra isnt working as expected/intended.

As to the deffered lighting/shading thing, its been confirmed on reddit and a few other sites, as well as in game, the dev’s are looking into smaa but havent had time to add it to the game, they used fxaa because they knew about fxaa(they only heard about smaa due to forums like this one where alot of people are loving it, also note that one of the dev’s has used it and LOVED IT, thats why he said they wanted to add it but havent yet because they are working to fix other problems first. )

DX11 as the above links mention can be built to support lower feature sets, I have seen it properly used to support dx9,10 and 11 hardware without need of seperate user selectable paths, its quite impressive what dx11 can be used to to.

another fun thing they could do if they went dx11 is tesselation, not haven style thats over done, but, use it to make models like characters and rocks/ground/buildings/exct look a bit higher poly(use it as intended not over blown like haven bench does)

theres alot that just cant be done well/efficiently in dx9 that can in 10 and even more in 11.

again please understand, I dont mean any of this as an attack on anet or gw2, I and many others just feel they made a very bad decision to only support dx9 rather then a modern api….sure they would have lost some initial sales, but they would have avoided alot of refunds and likely would have avoided alot of upset people whos systems meet the min specs or massively exceed them but who cant really run the game due to its issues.

i personally would have taken the initial hit, gone dx11(with proper support for dx9 and 10 hardware under vista/7) and made up the dif in word of mouth sales.

I really do like this game it can be a blast, it just runs so poorly even on many very hig end systems……

again, this is a big part of why alot of us are playing other games and not investing money in gw2, we are waiting for the game to be fixed on a client level…the server side bugs are annoying, but tolerable the TP being down sucks, BUT those things can be ignored if you can at least play with reasonable performance…..

there is ZERO reason a modern game should run this poorly on modern hardware…………..

need to do a DIRECT response to this one line

" If the rendering of the game is indeed CPU-limited (which I don’t know)"

read the stickies, one links to a faq thread, they clearly state the game has 3 threads critical to fps/perf of the game, if any 1 of those bogs down, the whole game starts to chug or grind to a halt….

its kinda a pain in the kitten #8230;…and its probably a large part of why the game acts the wya it does…..they are trying to fix it but……dx9 really isnt well suited to multi threading from what everybody has told me and what i have read….that makes sense since it was created before people had alot of cores in home systems…..

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

(they only heard about smaa due to forums like this one where alot of people are loving it, also note that one of the dev’s has used it and LOVED IT, thats why he said they wanted to add it but havent yet because they are working to fix other problems first. )

this quote sums up everything i said. Developers are human and they need time. They will add Direct X 11 support one day, but there are other game breaking issues that needs to be resolved. Any developer will try to get things to work then try to improve the game.

like what other game breaking issues?

the sucky performance? that could be helped at least in part with dx11.

the bugged events/quests? thats server side and likely has a seperate team working on it.

the major game breaking issue for most of us is that the game runs like crap even on high end systems.

i can run the game, I get acceptable fps, but, my friends at times do not…..I dont play mmo’s to play alone….

good thing this games b2p, because by now, they would have lost alot of subscribers, considering the games client is in worse shape then tera or rifts clients( to name 2 other major mmo’s…and tera is going f2p…..)

Graphic glitches

Latency issues

Windows 8 input lag (maybe caused by farewall and anti virus)

Strange bugs which cause me to be unable to use my skills (I wish I can replicate it but I cant. It happened to me twice in fractuals)

culling problems.

There are still others.

again, the culling could be at least partially addressed by dx11’s build in culling, the skill issues are likely network/connection related(happens in most mmo’s from time to time in my exp…..with the few hundred mmo’s i have played)

windows 8 issues some have some dont, much like the general perf issues the game has…doubt they will be able to fix them without fixing the core problems with the engine/client, that are at least in part due to the use of dx9.

gfx glitches can also be related to drivers and driver settings…

I still say, they should just hire a team to work on dx11 rendering support and keep the current teams doing what they are doing, I hear thats that kinda what cryptic did with STO, and I gotta say, the dx11 path in sto is working wonderfully now…..despite it still being a beta feature.

Jazhara, let me guess, you are not a programmer? I read the links you quoted before. Its not multithreaded rendering (no such thing exists), its a way to build command queues and synchronise rendering calls from different threads. Which of course is a very cool feature, just not the one GW2 will likely to benefit from – simply because a game like GW2 with its relatively simple geometry shouldn’t suffer from too much API overhead in the first place. And, if – as you say – the game already has three actively used threads, then offloading some rendering call is even less likely to produce performance benefits. The question is how they utilise the API in their rendering thread. If there are performance problems due to how their engine works, they are better off improving the rendering system instead of trying to band-aid the problem by leveraging command buffer creating to different threads.

If for whatever reason you need/rather DX9 then they should add an option for Dx9 mode and DX11 mode. Blizzard has achieved this, it gives the best of both worlds for players with higher end computers and players with lower end computers.

I want to point out I have a petition going for getting dx10/11 support https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/petition-for-dx10-11-support/first remember it is to post your support of it or not not a conversation spot I made one specifically for having conversation on subject also https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/About-dx10-11-support/first

I really don’t think there is anything that needs to be discussed.
dx11 or ATLEAST dx10, is something EVERY game released after 2012 should have.
And some of you are saying you would only feel the changes slightly, that’s because you’re never had the performance problems to start with, like some of us have.

Anet should really know that this is something that can stop people from playing. People knowing they got a high-end system, and still get alot of fps drops, while the GPU still runs at 30%..

And like I’ve said before. If this is a cost issue, bring it in an expansion..
..but make sure to bring it fast!!