Additional Performance Improvements

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Marxone wrote:

It seems odd that Shadows are forced in DX11. I liked the "light" experience in PoE. Everything seems more clear and it is easier to spot certain things that are otherwise dimmed down by the shadows.

It might not be as atmospheric as intended, but well, we grind for gears, not for visual fidelity.

They are forced because GGG deemed so. For example D3 released their 64bit(dx11) whatever client. You can freely disable shadows there, so it is not tied. I have no clue why GGG decided this is a good idea. For those whose video cards are mediocre level shadows still cause lower performance and we have to deal with it which seems kinda dumb... Even top level systems with their new fogs, living cloths, MTX's and a lot of mobs especially if they are in parties can choke on these shadows, Imagine how much harder is to process this stuff when every single thing on screen or almost every has shadows... This is a no brainer it might cause stutters, lags, fps drops. Here read a little bit about shadows if you've got some time. And those who say they don't drain the performance, FACEPALM.
(PS. If GGG has top class systems and they got stable 60fps it doesn't mean we've got them and we've got stable performance they don't even reveal their systems (or at least I've never seen them do so) and I suspect that it is because we will LOL at their specs)

----How It Affects Performance: Shadows are really difficult to compute, since the game needs to take into account where light is coming from at all angles, how far away you are from that light, and so on—not to mention how your character is moving. As such, it can have a significant affect on your game's performance.----

----Our Recommendation: Shadows are cool, but probably aren't as important to you as the benefits you get from other draining graphics settings like anti-aliasing. If you need to sacrifice somewhere, this is a good place to start, by setting shadow quality to low or disabling them altogether.----


On the other note someone mentioned that further fixes to ground effects would be nice, yes pls. It seems to me that although there were already some improvements to those ground effects, they cause even more lag than a long time before, I can instantly feel fps decrease when I enter such map/area, everything feels as though it "swims" a little bit which is some sort of lag I guess.

i still play dx9, i never play with shadows in any game,. just hate the look.

realy hope they let us choose in dx11

or im stuck with dx9 forever :(

best news so far.

Will I still have my client close in uber lab for no reason or studded step on lagtraps? Because that's the real issue not being addressed.

Games getting worse and worse every patch. I went from never lagging to getting shit lag spikes all the time now. I may actually have to play scrubcore, which is depressing.

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y3lw0rC wrote:

----How It Affects Performance: Shadows are really difficult to compute, since the game needs to take into account where light is coming from at all angles, how far away you are from that light, and so on—not to mention how your character is moving. As such, it can have a significant affect on your game's performance.----

shadows are easier than light reflections, and comlpex computing of shadows released as a single pattern with 2D projection of light and dark amplifications is pretty much easier, than to compute how and with what angle will the light reflect from a 3D shape.
There are a lot of ways to create shadows, the worse of them is what you suggest - compute light sources, traccer lights and apply on these maths optic formulas. Then computing of just a single ray will be really heavy issue. Another "bad" way is to make a single "shadow" object which is calculated for each 3D model separatedly. The "optimised" way of computing shadows is making a 2D projection of map heights and calculating 2D light propagation on this thing. There you can easily add splash signatures with angles that are needed for "integration". For even more optimisation you can have preset shadows for such heavy things like grass, leafs, etc. Same technology is used for "shaders", there is a GS texture which modifies intenstion of reflection on object based on texture's "relief", and that allows to make a "shape" on pretty much flat object.

The Singapore Server always crashed, I lost some of my loots. :-/
-- Operation Timeout.

Iv'e heard this before, so i'll take it with some sceptisism. Faster with shadows on sounds too good to be true (then it usually is)

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the DirectX 11 renderer with shadows on "Low" settings is now faster than the DirectX 9 renderer with shadows off

I call this progress! GGWP!

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Daiena wrote:

Great....so another week of rows and rows of crashing before they get it right....

DirectX 11 64bit version of POE is a beta. You had to go out of your way to play this version of the game. Don't want to test a beta? Switch back to the default 32bit version of the game.