Regarding DirectX 11—Minor Graphics Options Differences

[Aussiemon.7418]

4 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Hi everyone, I have a message from our Senior Graphics Programmer James Fulop. Read on!

 

Hey all,

James Fulop here, Senior Graphics Programmer for Guild Wars 2.

I'm here to give an update on how a couple of the graphics options behave differently between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11. The main difference is the DirectX 11 graphics backend doesn't implement exclusive full-screen options in the same way as DirectX 9. This then creates knock-on effects with the Refresh Rate and Full-Screen Gamma slider options.

Will the missing foliage physics in DX11 (e.g. grass moving as you walk through it) be addressed? This is one subtle advantage that DX9 still has over DX11.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Aussiemon.7418

[urieldhynne.2743]

Please, fix (or make it work) freesync. Is very hard to keep a fluid experience even in a strong hardware. Freesync would be a life saver there. 

[Handtuch.6503]

3 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

Seems weird than Directx9 provided best support for Full windows screen than Directx11, maybe change after to Directx12? 😄

I think you missunderstood this part. exclusive Full Screen is bad and it is good that windows is getting rid of that.

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

2 hours ago, Romen.4560 said:

I have noticed that dragging the window to another monitor then clicking the Maximize button causes the game to change to fullscreen borderless on that monitor. It's a lot of actions to get there but that already seems to be fully working.
I would love to see this setting too but you're not completely out of luck right now.

Yeah it's the current way I do it. My only real gripe is that I always have to do it since the game will always default to Display 1. If the option was available within the game itself it would default to the chosen display on Fullscreen which is what I do with all the other games I play. Not a big problem but would be a nice QoL for when I just wanna launch the game 

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

3 hours ago, Romen.4560 said:

From testing this right now in the DX11 beta, selecting a "Full Screen" resolution that is lower than your monitor's native resolution will actually render the game at that lower resolution and reduce the number of pixels the GPU has to render. The framebuffer is being sized to what you pick in the resolution dropdown. But it is being stretched to fill your desktop afterwards.

The blurriness comes from that stretching. It is kind of disappointing.
Before when you did have real exclusive fullscreen it was your monitor's built in scaler hardware that was doing a better job at upscaling the lower resolution to your monitor's native pixels. There probably is a noticeable difference that will vary depending on the monitor model.

There is also the "Render Sampling" option. That will allow the game window to be rendered as desktop resolution and keeps the UI sharp. But the in-world graphics will be rendered to a smaller intermediate framebuffer that is some percentage smaller than the selected resolution. It looks like it might be around ~80%?

From James: "Thanks for pointing this out. I will try to address it. I think its supposed to work such that the game renders at the selected scale, and the UI is always at the monitors' native resolution."

3 hours ago, Romen.4560 said:

Very happy to see that some lower level details are being explained for these settings!
Thanks for this!

 

I have some questions about the new gamma and fullscreen though.

Now that you are taking away the exclusive fullscreen for DirectX 11, how does the game interact with the Windows gamma correction? I believe the Color Management profile affects all windowed applications, so Guild Wars 2 will receive two passes of gamma correction now that the slider is available in windowed fullscreen.

What is the "correct" setting for this slider so that the game is not being double gamma-corrected by both the post-processing shader and the Windows Color Management profile?

Is there any way to restore the ability for a windowed fullscreen application to be ignored by Windows color management? This is a capability that we are now losing by no longer having exclusive fullscreen. I have noticed that exclusive fullscreen applications will bypass the Windows Color Management and that made the in-game gamma slider completely authoritative over the gamma correction.

Also from James! 😄 "If you leave the in-game slider at 1.00 it makes the post processing "gamma correction" pass essentially a pass-through that has no visual impact. It's really just doing finalColor = color * sliderNumber  on every pixel."

3 hours ago, Zafira.7560 said:

There are still some of us using triple monitor surround. Currently, with DirectX 11, the mini-map , the chat window, the top left menu, and the top-right game status messages are moved from the edges of  center monitor to the extreme edges of the left and right monitors. It would be nice if these items were made dockable to different areas of the total display or some how kept on the middle monitor.

Also, the character select screen covers all 3 monitors horizontally which means the top and bottom of the displayed character are chopped off and all we see is his/her belt.

Minor issues to be sure, but one can always hope. 

Triple 32" 2K monitors in 7680 x 1440 with G-Sync at 100+ fps is AWESOME by the way. This game is beautiful!

This is something we're tracking. 

[nezroy.8492]

15 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

From James: "Thanks for pointing this out. I will try to address it. I think its supposed to work such that the game renders at the selected scale, and the UI is always at the monitors' native resolution.

It would be really cool to get the render sampling changed to a more modern render scale that lets us pick a custom scale factor. Typically modern games let you fine tune from a range, usually in ballpark of 0.5x to 1.5x.

Edited May 9, 2022 by nezroy.8492

[rune.9572]

6 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We don't plan on implementing exclusive full-screen

Then maybe stop capturing mouse to primary monitor when the window isn't focused??? Because mother of dog, it's annoying as HECK

Also maybe stop playing sound when the window isn't focused??? (yes, I'm aware of "mute gw2 when in background", it doesn't work.)

Or how about let me minimize the game with windows + m and have it stay minimized??? instead of the game popping up every time I switch windows in front of it?

Is respecting system UX patterns really so much to ask for?

Edited May 9, 2022 by rune.9572

[Twin Haelix.8619]

7 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Since this setting does not work for DirectX 11, there are two options to manually change the frame rate of the game. One would be to use the Frame Limiter option, which tells the client to manually throttle the frame rate.

It would be great to get more frame limiter options above 60 FPS!  I have a 144hz display and I'd love to be able to set the limiter to 75hz or 120hz!  I imagine it's not difficult to add more options at standard steppings.

[kokocabana.8153]

14 minutes ago, Twin Haelix.8619 said:

It would be great to get more frame limiter options above 60 FPS!  I have a 144hz display and I'd love to be able to set the limiter to 75hz or 120hz!  I imagine it's not difficult to add more options at standard steppings.

There is a frame limiter setting in nvidia's control panel settings that you could enable for gw2 specifically. I don't know if AMD has something similar.

[MrDarkpurr.1678]

6 hours ago, DarkWasp.7291 said:

I noticed that I can now turn G-SYNC back on and run the game in DX11 without my cursor getting locked to the game's FPS. Thanks for that!

Wait... really? I THINK as recent as of last week I had this issue with G-Sync on.

[Lion.6590]

It is good to know that full screen has no difference between windowed full-screen mode with DX11, this means I can use it to limit my mouse operation to the game window only, though I think that would work better if it was implemented as an togglable option.
Also currently DX11 has some issues with the refractions, you can notice that in arborstone shelves and on the devourer nests in the first episode of LS1.

[Artair.1687]

I'm glad the rollout has been decent and it has helped fps as well. Though I do hope to see more random issues with differences dealt with. Unless it changed very recently for example, I play a lot of asura characters and my go to glider is Glide-R-Tron, except, right now, ever since DX11 launched, the energy effect of the glider is completely invisible, which entirely ruins the whole visual of the glider. So do hope to see that fixed soon.

[Chickenooble.5014]

Thank you for the update.  Is there a bug with the DX11 Windowed mode?  The reason I ask is the DX11 option won't let me actually play the game in a window.   Currently, I have DX11 selected, and my resolution is windowed.  The game takes up my entire 3440x1440 resolution monitor.  When I hit escape and click the little double-box "window" icon in the top-right corner, nothing happens.  I can minimize the game but I can't go into windowed mode.

 

Windows 10 Home, 10.0.19044

i9-11900KF, RX 6900 XT, plenty of ram, etc.
Two monitors in stacked orientation -- 3440x1400 on bottom (primary) and 1920x1080 on top (secondary)
 

Note: If I'm using DX9 I can go windowed mode.  I record GW2 footage for videos and I haven't been able to record 1920x1080 unless I go into DX9, but DX9 doesn't perform as well as DX11, nor is it as pretty...  This is a bit of a problem.  T_T

[Rose Solane.1027]

Stop capturing mouse to primary monitor when the window isn't focused would be nice as it is rather annoying. This and some colour issues on the border between water and air (try looking up from just under the water surface) are the only issues I still have with DX11. Oh, and loading a new map seems to take longer than it did before, but I am not sure this is a DX11 related issue.

[Alarm.7286]

13 hours ago, Zafira.7560 said:

There are still some of us using triple monitor surround. Currently, with DirectX 11, the mini-map , the chat window, the top left menu, and the top-right game status messages are moved from the edges of  center monitor to the extreme edges of the left and right monitors. It would be nice if these items were made dockable to different areas of the total display or some how kept on the middle monitor.

Also, the character select screen covers all 3 monitors horizontally which means the top and bottom of the displayed character are chopped off and all we see is his/her belt.

Minor issues to be sure, but one can always hope. 

Triple 32" 2K monitors in 7680 x 1440 with G-Sync at 100+ fps is AWESOME by the way. This game is beautiful!

Also mini map should not be limited in resizing... At max it is still too small for 2k super ultra wide

[Dreggon.6598]

I hope a future DX11 patch will fix the hitching I get whenever I close or switch away from the Equipment tag.

[Hawken.7932]

15 hours ago, Donari.5237 said:

Does this mean that DX11 is safe to use now?  It completely screwed up my game back on day one (as in blew the character select screen up to a black screen with some giant text and no ability to enter the game, had to do command line stuff to revert to DX9 on launch) and I haven't dared touch it since.  I've also seen a lot of comments about odd visual glitches being routine issues for those using it.

If these problems have been patched out as part of the programming effort explained in this thread, I'm willing to test switch to it again.  If not, I sure hope they're fixed before it's the only option.

This is pretty anecdotal, but I've been using it for a month now with no issues at all.  Seems very solid.

[Eowin Of Rohan.2619]

One thing that broke with dx11 windows : if the game is in windowed mode, it will snap to 0-0 coordinates when it starts, regardless of where the window was when the game was last closed.

Btw, 0-0 is out of screen for me (as I have a spare monitor on the right that is mounted on an arm, higher than others). Windows 10's shortcuts help (win+shirt+arrow).

 

Iirc, the window related bugs we had in dx9 are still there :

- random blinding white screen while the game is starting

- (dx9 only, or in dx11 the bug is hidden by the one described at the start of my post) rarer issue where the white screen is followed by the double black rectangle : one rectangle where the gw2 window should go, and another one of the same size at 0-0 coordinates. After a few seconds, gw2 window is opened in place of the 0-0 black rectangle and the other one disappears. I noticed that this bug will happen a lot more if there is a user input (like a click) during the white screen bug phase

edit : IIRC those bugs were introduced with the first comeback of 4-winds/pavillion as a festival, and worsened the next year. If that helps finding what line of code broke.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Eowin Of Rohan.2619
additional info

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Passing on some more replies from James!

16 hours ago, JasonLucas.4981 said:

It is good to know that full screen has no difference between windowed full-screen mode with DX11, this means I can use it to limit my mouse operation to the game window only, though I think that would work better if it was implemented as an togglable option.
Also currently DX11 has some issues with the refractions, you can notice that in arborstone shelves and on the devourer nests in the first episode of LS1.

"Thanks, yes I am aware of some refraction effects not looking right. Those should be fixed soon."

13 hours ago, Chickenooble.5014 said:

Thank you for the update.  Is there a bug with the DX11 Windowed mode?  The reason I ask is the DX11 option won't let me actually play the game in a window.   Currently, I have DX11 selected, and my resolution is windowed.  The game takes up my entire 3440x1440 resolution monitor.  When I hit escape and click the little double-box "window" icon in the top-right corner, nothing happens.  I can minimize the game but I can't go into windowed mode.

 

Windows 10 Home, 10.0.19044

i9-11900KF, RX 6900 XT, plenty of ram, etc.
Two monitors in stacked orientation -- 3440x1400 on bottom (primary) and 1920x1080 on top (secondary)
 

Note: If I'm using DX9 I can go windowed mode.  I record GW2 footage for videos and I haven't been able to record 1920x1080 unless I go into DX9, but DX9 doesn't perform as well as DX11, nor is it as pretty...  This is a bit of a problem.  T_T

"I think what's happening is that when you switch to windowed, the window's rendering size is still the same, so the title bar is essentially clipped off the top of the monitor. As a workaround you can use "windows key + arrow key" to move the window to somewhere you can grab it."

 

13 hours ago, Artair.1687 said:

I'm glad the rollout has been decent and it has helped fps as well. Though I do hope to see more random issues with differences dealt with. Unless it changed very recently for example, I play a lot of asura characters and my go to glider is Glide-R-Tron, except, right now, ever since DX11 launched, the energy effect of the glider is completely invisible, which entirely ruins the whole visual of the glider. So do hope to see that fixed soon.

"Please keep sending us differences you see. Thanks for the note regarding Glide-R-Tron, I was able to reproduce that, it should be fixed soon."

[Chickenooble.5014]

@Rubi Bayer.8493, if you could let James know he was pretty darn close to the answer.  I tried the Windows + Arrow key thing and that didn't change anything but I did see a window titlebar quickly flicker in the background of the game despite the game staying in full-screen.  I noticed the Windows Taskbar on my top monitor change shades, so I went with James' theory that the titlebar was hiding behind the taskbar.  I unlocked the taskbar and moved it to the right-side of my top monitor and that didn't change anything.  I then went into the full-screen game on my bottom monitor and pressed ALT + Enter, and that finally let the game go into a true Windowed mode with a titlebar that could be grabbed.  My issue is fixed although it is odd how the feature might be impacted by the locking/unlocking and taskbar positioning on a different monitor.

I can probably replicate the issue if James needs a video.  

 

Thanks!

[souleeter.5129]

I know it maybe a minor issue for some but a major one for me. The foliage does not move/interact when your character moves through them.

Is there any word on this at all? 

Edited May 10, 2022 by souleeter.5129

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 5/9/2022 at 9:46 PM, Izzy.2951 said:

Yeah, but for  example WoW, a game that dont suffer as much from fps as gw2, implemented dx11 and after dx12 and they have both atm so you choose.

WoW also forces you to pay a monthly fee AND has a store that is p2w. So they have more money to throw around.

 

I would have prefered vulkan instead of dx12. But hey. dx11 is better than nothing. So no complaining.

[Lunaria.1543]

On 5/9/2022 at 9:33 PM, DarkWasp.7291 said:

I noticed that I can now turn G-SYNC back on and run the game in DX11 without my cursor getting locked to the game's FPS. Thanks for that!

This is precisely how VRR works and is the intended behavior, everything must run at whatever fps the engine is running at and nothing must occlude your game window. Most of the community overlays (ArcDPS and GW2Radial excluded) that do not hook the rendering API will destroy your VRR.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Lunaria.1543
Reduce whitespace

[rootwyrm.6408]

Hooboy, they're finally paying attention, so now I'm gonna have to do the bug dump.

 

For the love of all that is holy, fix character creation and cutscenes!

Seriously. I can live with heads and legs being chopped off on character selection. I cannot live with literally being unable to even read the text during cut scenes or character creation. Which is exactly what you get at 5760x1440. White text on a near white background with no outline, no shadow, and no text background box at all is decidedly not readable.

"MY BANNERS ARE EPIC oh wait now they aren't."

I don't know any other way to describe it. Sometimes dropping my banners I get HUGE GLOWY SINE-WAVE HIGHLIGHTS! BLOOM! SHIMMER! SHINE! RAINBOWS! IT'S LIKE A GRATEFUL DEAD CONCERT! IT'S AN UNDULATING CIRCLE THAT SAYS 'GLORY AND VIOLENCE FOUND HERE!' YAAAAH, I WILL DESTROY YOU!

And now it's a flat, thin, blue circle that's only there if you hold your head at just the correct angle and completely invisible under the 65534 red circles and explosions going off. I guess there's banners there. It's kinda hard to see them with the textures flickering constantly even when they aren't stacked.

Which will it be? Roll 1d6 and your guess is as good as mine. I can't find any specific trigger or condition - it happens both ways literally anywhere and everywhere. (For the record, I would much prefer the Grateful Dead concert if we have to choose one.)

Inefficient/Insufficient VRAM Utilization Leads To Poor Performance!

We both know full well that DX11 doesn't tell you how much VRAM the card has, while DX9 did (up to 4GB.) Because you aren't using the full - or even half - of the 16GB on a Radeon 6000-series? Massive delays and severe texture pop-in on zoning and even moving around zones, especially New Kaineng and Echovald. Especially for those of us with really big monitors so we can pretty much see behind us. (No, GeForce cards aren't much better.) The smallest current gen card is 8GB, and even going back three generations we were already commonly at 8GB+. Just leveraging what's there would improve performance significantly. Promise.

I call this one "The Audience is Now Deaf"

Audio volume sliders were broken in the last DX11 update, though this one may be Sound Blaster AE-9 specific, in which case... uh... can you expense a $350 sound card? Anyway. If you set Master Volume down to zero but have Environment Volume below 100, take Master to ~10%, oh hey it just took the Environment Volume value instead and ow my ears. I'll just, uh, slide the master over here to make it... just a lot louder across the board. But restarting fixes it. Insert shrug emoji here?

 

Wishlist Item: FXAA/SMAA Applied to Shadows

Seriously. You have no idea how utterly aggravating it is when I've got all the smooth I can wring out of the engine, and all the shadows on Ultra look like they were rendered on an SNES. Especially charr tail shadows. Pretty please. (A simple "we'll add it to the roadmap" or "are you insane? Shadow performance is already a nightmare" would be cool. I am 100% onboard with it not getting fixed at any point between now and next expansion. I'd just like to know if it's something I can look forward to.)

Wishlist Item: can we please not occlude things that are not ambient like the UI?

I know what a pain that'll be. But seriously. I like to run ReShade for improved MXAO differentiation. It makes things truly breathtaking. And renders the UI completely unusable because it's occluding even the hero panel. Better still, can we just.. completely separate the UI render so that we can apply things like DPX, FXAA, and FidelityFX CAS without completely blowing out the UI and making text unreadable?

[Donari.5237]

Ok, I enabled it.  I'm looking around in the Cantha lounge.  Good:  Things look crisper.  I didn't have my usual one-time camera hang on first pan on load in.  Bad:  I'm seeing some ... hard to describe, I fear I'm not fluent in the terms.  A bit of a subtle distortion when I pan up and down, like a very subtle ripple.  On fast side to side pans, a long horizontal glitch, again very subtle.  Just a thin bit of static across the screen for a moment.  And some odd big red blobs flaring now and then but those could just be falling petals that happened to be close to my camera.

On that side to side:  I'm on a ledge below the mystic forge level.  Looking at a vertical dark slit in the grey stone.  If I jerk my camera back and forth I get pixelation on the slit's edge, a sort of flicker and sideways shimmy of tiny parts of the vertical edge along with a horizontal seam in my view extending from the pixelated part.

I do have a wide FoV and high/ultra settings.  I'm on a 4K monitor, set at windowed fullscreen. DPI scaling is enabled.  Depth blurring is off.  Motion blur power is about 50%.