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The End of Culling
Homitu
Member UncommonPosts: 2,030
"If you’ve ever played World vs. World in a large group, you’ve probably noticed that there were some enemy players that you couldn’t see. That was an unfortunate side effect of a process calledculling. I’m pleased to announce that in the upcoming patch on March 26, we’re going to turn culling off completely in WvW. This will make invisible enemies (except those using invisibility skills, of course) a thing of the past."
For more, read the article on the main site, "World vs. World: The End of Culling."
Apparently the infamous "culling" issue is something they can now just "turn off" after increasing the network resources available to report characters on the client side. Players will be given their own options to choose how many characters they want to render in higher or lower detail.
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Comments
Of course they can just turn it off. Was that ever in question?
It is an optimization process to allow:
1) Playable frame rates,
2) Allow stable connections.
What needs to be seen is if anything outside a small number of fallback models on a decently beefy system with a good internet connection will obtain playable frame rates with no disconnections/lag.
If systems with GPUs over $200 (so lets say 7870/7950/GTX670) and paired with something like an i5 2500K or an OC FX6300 have to resort to nameplates with a handful of fallback models, there is still loads of work to be done.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
What nonsense. They will still use culling very extensively, as any respectable game engine has to. Hopefully they will stop culling things that shouldn't be culled, however--while continuing to cull things that should be culled. If something wouldn't affect the final image on your screen, then the earlier in the rendering pipeline that they can figure that out and cull it, the better.
They'll probably just greatly ease up on the number-of-characters based culling, while leaving the rest of the culling throughout the rest of the game engine unchanged. Done properly, that would fix the worst of the culling bugs, but calling it end of culling entirely is ridiculous hyperbole.
Did you read the actual post?
He did specify that the only culling they're talking about is the 'amount of characters shown on your screen' culling.
... but that's what people were complaining about, by and large, and what people mean when they talk about 'culling is a problem in WvW', rather than the other sorts.
... so far as 'culling is a huge WvW problem', if this does what he said, then yes, it is the end of culling.
Context.
The culling they are talking about doesn't necessarily have to do with the GPU as it does with the connection, while yes the GPU is a very important aspect. It has to do with the amount of data being transfered over the network. Transfering a high res model data over the network takes significantly more data than the nameplates. In regards to the connection, culling is gone. In regards to graphics, it still exists.
Not to mention, the best graphics card on the market might not be able to handle the load of having 500 people on the screen, each casting spells. That's where graphics culling comes into play.
stop busting a nut at the title. he says what you just said almost word for fucking word in the article. easing up on the number of player culling, all other culling techniques remain.
The only time they transfer textures or vertex data over the Internet is when you download the game initially or patch it later. Rather, what they'll do is to send you a little bit of data to say that you need to load these textures and vertex arrays and what not off of your hard drive for some particular character. It takes a lot less bandwidth to send a 4 byte ID number for the texture that you need to load than it does to stream an entire texture that takes tens of KB.
Well, I don't know for certain that they never stream textures or vertex data. There could easily be a few odd textures here and there that need to constantly change and not just on patch days. But if they commonly did it for a large fraction of the textures that you need, it would create a whole host of problems that Guild Wars 2 doesn't suffer from.
And no, I don't believe that they're going to remove server-side culling entirely. It would be monumentally stupid to do that. If someone is on the opposite side of the map from you and you wouldn't even be able to see them anyway, then the server should cull that data and not send it to you until they're closer. You still need server-side culling of the "only send data on players within distance X of you"; what they're getting rid of is an additional "only send data on the X players nearest to you" culling step.
As for graphics culling, that's basically a matter of, if you can figure out that the data you're processing won't affect the frame you're drawing, you cull it immediately rather than continuing to process it. You do some things CPU-side and simply decline to pass data to the video card. If they were using a more modern graphics API, they'd cull things in a bunch of different places in shaders, too. As it is, they're probably limited to fixed-function back-face culling and discarding fragments.
I'm aware that he's just quoting the title of the article. I don't like the title of the article, either. I'm pedantic like that.
I have no idea how culling works or the reasons behind.....I always just dealt with it.
Due to the complaints about culling, is Anet making these changes so that performance issues are now the responsibilitly of the end user?
Now that culling is removed, is my laptop going to melt because it now has to handle this extra burden (it already gets hot enough as it is (90 C)), or is some type of wizardry at hand here?
can some one explain exactly what this will mean in the end?
EDIT: Currently, my laptop only suffers during large battles (I.E> Taking Stonemist or a keep/garrison). I only dealt with culling "issues" when an excessively large force comes within range quickly.....(like a portal bomb)
I always deat with it by backing up and applying whatever ranged ability I had until the commander gave further instructions.
It does have an indirect impact on the GPU.
That is why they introducing options to show name plate only, fallback models or full models.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I have the impresson that with the amount of graphic options and options to determin the number of models shown to you, they are indeed shifting the responsability to the end user.
Of course more options to tweak is better as long as they don't use it as an excuse to stop improving their engine performance.
And I'm sorry but gaming laptops is just something to use as last resort - expensive, heavy, no batery life, hot.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Culling should never have been there in the 1st place. They knew the WvW zerg type play would never update fast enough to handle everyone around you. Now, ofc your PC specs are going to be pushed or even need updated too. But still good that culling in gone.
Now, all they need to add is mounts & the Trinity and it may be a okay MMO!
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
I doubt nameplates take a lot of GPU juice ;P
but thats the price of having crappy computer
aside from time based progression MMOs like EvE/AoW what MMOs offers this?
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
I'll believe it when I see it.
But if they manage it, it will be amazing.
Most games don't need culling anyways ....besides the initial month that starts a game I haven't seen a game since WOW and now GW2 that had enough of a population to warrant anything but a cross server LFG .
The overbearing issue is the MTU limitation, they would have to go some way in a redesign the way their servers and client work together to get past the limitations, this maybe a case of multiple connections and multiple threads to ensure all the data that's required arrives simultaneously at the client and can be loaded with a set time. But then you have the limitations of user hardware requirements to play the game, it's a hard task.
Yeah this way they are shifting it to the users, so you may be able to render everything, but will it be in time for you to react ? or will it become a slide show to your characters death.
Yeah, most games do culling well as in they cull the players from the map, so the map can only have a few players and then they cull the physics.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
aside from time based progression MMOs like EvE/AoW what MMOs offers this?
I know from WoW players that it is like that for completing a difficult dungeon, because you can actually wipe and need do it all over again. World first means something in WoW, because you are the first team to complete difficult content. There is no such thing in GW2. The only difficulty in GW2 comes from mobs one-shotting you. You can watch tv while playing 99% of GW2's content and succeed. The only place where it doesn't work is sPvP. This however is completely boring and burning people out faster than eating everything with ketchup.
Edit: Whenever you tackle something in GW2 you are guaranteed to win. How boring is that.Sure. Hi, my name is Bloodninja.