Finally New engine!

[Linken.6345]

16 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

One of the things I been hoping for to come with next xpan. I play 14,000 different games a day and often 2 at same time and this one runs the worst.

 

Other thing I crave is some UI improvement and customization options. Can't even increase my text size without making entire UI bigger.

considering a day got 1440 minutes, I would not say you are playing any of those 7000 games times 2 for any lenght of time bud

[Doggie.3184]

Just now, Linken.6345 said:

considering a day got 1440 minutes, I would not say you are playing any of those 7000 games times 2 for any lenght of time bud

My mistake, I meant 19,000.

[Yggranya.5201]

4 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Client Performance Optimization

We’ve heard you loud and clear—Guild Wars 2 needs better frame rates. We agree. We’re actively working on upgrading our engine to DirectX 11, and we expect to be able to roll it out in an opt-in beta later this year. An important note is that the upgrade to DX11 itself isn’t a magical fix for frame rates on its own. Some players may not notice a difference at all. However, upgrading to DX11 opens a lot of doors for improving performance—CPU multithreading for instance. It also paves the way for some potential graphics upgrades down the road.

We’re investing in our infrastructure, engine, and graphics because we’re looking to the future. This is a long-term effort.

 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-july-2021/?fbclid=IwAR0gEZdZ6EnlaL1heY6a94pUSy7RnrHmz_PyiyFBbs2I1JyvCgz35t-LYeA

 

Read as: "We've noticed player numbers dropping so we are going to start making promises to finally fulfill old, Old, REALLY FLIPPING OLD requests." Next, PvP/alliances/AFKers/whatever they can to keep people playing until EoD.

 

"We’ve heard you loud and clear...from the opposite end of the universe"

[vinterberg.2783]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Have you used d912pxy or dxvk? Some things "hitch" even when the graphics API is changed. I would temper your expectations.

 

Ahh come on.. You don't change an API by putting a DX12 or Vulkan layer on top of a DX9 engine, surely you must know the difference. If the original engine doesn't do things very well you cannot do much about it with plugins/addons and such.. Really.

You cannot compare different games in multicore performance, as they aren't using the same underlying engine. Just because one game doesn't scale well above four cores doesn't mean that every game out there cannot do it.

 

And I'm not saying that DX11 will solve all problems with performance in this game, at all. It will probably be a very small difference, if any at all. All depends on what they do with it, and with the engine in general. Have got no high hopes for much performance lift. Just trying to correct you on the "four-core" and "draw call" statements.

 

I have written several engines in C++ going back from DX9 to DX11, and I can tell you that it improved performance greatly by offloading animation systems to the GPU, going from simple forward/deferred lighting to tilebased deferred lighting also improved performance greatly (because you make the GPU do the light culling instead of the CPU). That is why I mentioned those things, as examples. GW2 does not, in any way, utilise the GPU properly as it is now, so offloading more stuff to the GPU will make things better. Wether they (can/want to) do it or not, is a different matter entirely.

Edited July 3, 2021 by vinterberg.2783

[AliamRationem.5172]

Did you hear that everyone?  FREE BEER!!!

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, vinterberg.2783 said:

You're linking articles from 2015/2017, with synthetic benchmarks that measures millions of drawcalls per second - that's not at all what GW2 is putting out, I'd be surprised if the drawcall amount is more than a few thousand max.

An engine is alot(!) more than merely drawcalls, especially in a MMO 🙂

ANet can do alot to utilise multithreading besides rendering, and if they do it properly, more than four cores might very well be an advantage! Like, if they just put asset loading into a seperate thread we wouldn't see that severe frame hitching in cities like Lions Arch (if you turn your camera around fast) when the current engine needs to load stuff from data files, which I suspect is done from the main thread now.

DX11 also allows for much bigger shaders in size and complexity, which can very well help ANet shift a great slice of the animation system onto the GPU instead of doing most of it on the CPU as you have to do with DX9 because of shader limitations. You suddenly also get compute shaders and such, which can greatly enhance the lighting and again, take alot of the burden off the CPU. With a lightning system such as tilebased deferred lighting you can use compute shaders to build a list of which lights to render where, and use the GPU to render them all - very little CPU work needed inbetween the steps.

 

::raises hand:: I didn't understand a word of that, but I was told there would be icecream?

[Jin.8501]

What i want from GW2 is not to experience constant micro freezes when running around. I can run in WoW and FFXIV without any kind of stuttering. Yes, the fps will drop but it drops the way there is no stuttering or freezes. Like a car brakes gently used unlike GW2 where the brake pedal is slammed to floor and then quickly lifted again

[Bast.7253]

4 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

theyre being modest on their statement, CPU multithreading is a huge improvment and surely players will notice a difference, i wish best luck. also both DX-11 and game client on 64 bits will make a difference, but less noticiable.

As a complete newb when it comes to the technical side of computers, would these changes improve WvW framerate spikes when three zergs are fighting in close quarters? 
 

[Recon.9461]

54 minutes ago, Jin.8501 said:

What i want from GW2 is not to experience constant micro freezes when running around. I can run in WoW and FFXIV without any kind of stuttering. Yes, the fps will drop but it drops the way there is no stuttering or freezes. Like a car brakes gently used unlike GW2 where the brake pedal is slammed to floor and then quickly lifted again

Sounds like you are suffering some CPU thermal throttling when playing GW2. I used to experience the same issue watching my FPS spike from 60fps to 10fps for about 1-5 seconds before jumping back up to 60fps for a few minutes. I was able to determine it was thermal throttling by using an application that monitored CPU usage and temps and noticed the CPU usage and temps spiking at the same time as the FPS dips.

 

I was able to temporarily resolve by re-applying some thermal paste to my CPU which worked for a few months. Then I upgraded the cooling system for my PC which worked for a year before I officially upgraded my PC.

[XenoSpyro.1780]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

@ XenoSpyro
Actually

I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make. Feature 11 cards can still run D3D12, and that's all you really need.
I have a 465 next to me if you'd like me to try it out. I also have an 850m that I already know runs the wrapper. As far as framerate benefits go, "features" don't matter, alleviating d3d9's chokes does, unless a given systems hardware is just so poor and old.

Not only are drivers not an issue, they don't need to be recent. Win10 support goes very far back. I've already ran it on once. Defo going to bench an 8800 series card to see how much a DX11 update matters, assuming it even sees the light of day.
 

Don't open a sentence with "actually" in the future. I've never once seen it work lul
 

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

new problems on the backend because instead of crashing when a memory limit was exceeded you ended up with a slow down

I can imagine all the people that shouted in unison "no, change it back!". Wait...

[ywhl.8592]

repo

Edited October 19, 2022 by ywhl.8592
Removed

[Eraden.8740]

Wow, I am really impressed. This shows that the company is serious about continuing this game. It might not do much for my situation as I already get mostly great performance (10th gen i9 and 3090 video card) but if this can relieve some of the slide show effects that I experience in very large groups of combatants, then I will be tickled pink. Honestly, I am just grateful that this company is still dedicated to their product.

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, XenoSpyro.1780 said:

I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make. Feature 11 cards can still run D3D12, and that's all you really need.
I have a 465 next to me if you'd like me to try it out. I also have an 850m that I already know runs the wrapper. As far as framerate benefits go, "features" don't matter, alleviating d3d9's chokes does, unless a given systems hardware is just so poor and old.

Not only are drivers not an issue, they don't need to be recent. Win10 support goes very far back. I've already ran it on once. Defo going to bench an 8800 series card to see how much a DX11 update matters, assuming it even sees the light of day.
 

Don't open a sentence with "actually" in the future. I've never once seen it work lul
 

I can imagine all the people that shouted in unison "no, change it back!". Wait...

Wanting DX12 is a tall order when even Unity , with all its backing and games developers has had trouble implementing it without a performance regression from DX11. However, most of the Arenanet developers' profiles list Unreal Engine assets. Unreal Engine 4 was actually also listed as used on one of the canceled projects and it supports DX12 and VK. UE4 has a game thread (logic/AI), render thread (graphics), and then some other threads for sound and loading. We also know that Havok physics and Umbra CPU culling are used on current engine.

For DX11 you don't need to do explicit memory management that's the point of why they probably went for DX11 as a stopgap to parallelize rendering. That's the point.

See also this article I linked in a prior thread about this topic:
---https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BradWardell/20191007/351772/Living_with_Vulkan_and_DirectX_12.php


---
@ vinterberg

It's a translation layer for the rendering portion and comes with substantial gains at least on Dxvk. Also the examples I mentioned are competing offerings that had to undergo the same sort of upgrades and overall limitations (backend server , playerbase system requirements, etc), which is why they are relevant.
 At least you agree that they need to actually implement the upgraded API features as opposed to just upgrading the graphics API.

 

4 hours ago, vinterberg.2783 said:

 

Ahh come on.. You don't change an API by putting a DX12 or Vulkan layer on top of a DX9 engine, surely you must know the difference. If the original engine doesn't do things very well you cannot do much about it with plugins/addons and such.. Really.

You cannot compare different games in multicore performance, as they aren't using the same underlying engine. Just because one game doesn't scale well above four cores doesn't mean that every game out there cannot do it.

 

And I'm not saying that DX11 will solve all problems with performance in this game, at all. It will probably be a very small difference, if any at all. All depends on what they do with it, and with the engine in general. Have got no high hopes for much performance lift. Just trying to correct you on the "four-core" and "draw call" statements.

 

I have written several engines in C++ going back from DX9 to DX11, and I can tell you that it improved performance greatly by offloading animation systems to the GPU, going from simple forward/deferred lighting to tilebased deferred lighting also improved performance greatly (because you make the GPU do the light culling instead of the CPU). That is why I mentioned those things, as examples. GW2 does not, in any way, utilise the GPU properly as it is now, so offloading more stuff to the GPU will make things better. Wether they (can/want to) do it or not, is a different matter entirely.

 

Edited July 3, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Teratus.2859]

4 hours ago, Bast.7253 said:

As a complete newb when it comes to the technical side of computers, would these changes improve WvW framerate spikes when three zergs are fighting in close quarters? 
 

Not a techy either but probably not.
If they can offload more to the GPU then maybe a minor improvement at best.. I dunno.

I've always thought that the issues with WvW are more to do with internet connections/distance and the amount of data the servers can handle at any time more than individual PC hardware but I could be totally wrong on that.

[Evil.1580]

10 hours ago, GalenWolffit.3842 said:

Umm, ANet...  Dx 11.2 came out in 2013, Dx 12 came out in 2015 and was most recently updated in 2019.  Why "upgrade" to a graphics API almost as old as GW2 itself?  Why not just go for the latest?

 

Dx12 is a completely different animal, compared to dx9/11

It is like completely different language while the other 2 have a lot of similarities.

[Follyfoot.2803]

Kitten me.  April the first already.

 

It's really hard to take in.  For months now I thought A-Net were ghosts and now they pop up with this.  I am so made up that this game is not going to die on us.

 

Big thanks and kisses go to A-Net for making my day, and many days after that day.  I'm going to celebrate and spend some gems.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Follyfoot.2803

[maddoctor.2738]

I've been asking for an engine update for a very long time and this is good news.

It's curious to note here that on the NVIDIA side there is no GPU that only supports DirectX11. GeForce 200/300 series only support DirectX 10 (not 11) but all cards above those, starting with GeForce 400, support DirectX12. This means, for NVIDIA users, going to either DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 demands the exact same hardware.

 

On the AMD side is a bit more complicated. Up to 4000 HD series they support up to DirectX 10 only, from 5000 HD to 6000 HD up to DirectX 11, and 7000 HD and above they support DirectX 12, so there are two series that support DirectX 11 and not DirectX 12.

 

That assumes of course that they won't offer both versions, like most games do anyway, so players with old hardware won't notice a difference. Although the minimum GPUs that support DirectX 12 from either vendor are older than the game itself

[Follyfoot.2803]

Oi, does this mean, does this mean that we will at last be able to turn OFF the light show?

[Jin.8501]

8 hours ago, Recon.9461 said:

Sounds like you are suffering some CPU thermal throttling when playing GW2. I used to experience the same issue watching my FPS spike from 60fps to 10fps for about 1-5 seconds before jumping back up to 60fps for a few minutes. I was able to determine it was thermal throttling by using an application that monitored CPU usage and temps and noticed the CPU usage and temps spiking at the same time as the FPS dips.

 

I was able to temporarily resolve by re-applying some thermal paste to my CPU which worked for a few months. Then I upgraded the cooling system for my PC which worked for a year before I officially upgraded my PC.

Thanks but I'm not 😊. I know i7 8086k can run hot but it's not going to throttle with 360 AIO. 

These stutters are less than a second long and in towns mind you. Maybe the brake analogy was a bit of a strong use of words 

Edited July 3, 2021 by Jin.8501

[Astralporing.1957]

BTW, there's one thing i haven't seen anyone bring up yet. I think that one of the most major points about the announced engine upgrade is really not how it can improve the graphic quality, etc. It's the mere fact that they are willing to invest in engine upgrades now. Which means they do plan for this game to stay around for a while (and not just at a limited investment level). That is quite big to me. It's far more telling than them announcing an expansion, actually.

[MarkoGold.7126]

Why direct x11 and not 12 ?

[phokus.8934]

2 minutes ago, MarkoGold.7126 said:

Why direct x11 and not 12 ?

Most likely due to dx12 having a Windows 10 requirement and dx11 having a Windows 7 requirement.

 

Couple that with the fact that dx12 is significantly different to dx11, they chose the path of least resistance for the time being.

[ugrakarma.9416]

10 hours ago, Bast.7253 said:

As a complete newb when it comes to the technical side of computers, would these changes improve WvW framerate spikes when three zergs are fighting in close quarters? 
 

at some point(dont remenber when) cpu developers had build a hardware "native" or "built in" multi-processing managing capabilities, before this, this was made artificially by operational system.

 

but since is hardware side implemented its needed a software side to "call" these managing functions, so theres a need of software "updated" that will call theses functions(lixe DX11), instead of doing by itself, its relief main CPU job. a very task loaded main CPU make entire thing slow. a "graphic SO interface" like DX11 relief the developers of the need to code multithread directly in the game(which will be a insane low level coding).

 

The algoritm inst complex, but is so fast that whe dont really notice that in really doenst exist a "true" multiprocess, the algoritm is a stack of process, but is so fast that seems, but is even extremy fast if that "invisible stack" of process is managed by hardware instead of a software own multitask code.

 

About WvW, the "freeze" is a typical symptom of CPU/hardware overloaded. with multithread the tasks sent to the main cpu will be sent to auxiliary hardware (multithread stuff), relieving the CPU work. notice that "freeze" in blob fights is something different from "lag"(caused by slow internet )

Edited July 3, 2021 by ugrakarma.9416

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

its not a new engine. its only DX11 compatible.

that are two different things.

 

and i think Windows 11 going to boost GW2 more than DX11

Edited July 3, 2021 by Stalkingwolf.6035

[eyelogix.1654]

24 minutes ago, Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

its not a new engine. its only DX11 compatible.

that are two different things.

 

and i think Windows 11 going to boost GW2 more than DX11

 

Don't get your hopes up!