PSA: (Coming with Duviri) New Default on PC: Enhanced Graphics Engine

[[DE]CoreyOnline]

Greetings Tenno!

With the launch of The Duviri Paradox on April 26th, we’ll be shifting the Enhanced Graphics Engine option to be the default setting on PC. This is another step towards retiring the Classic Graphics Engine fully (as has been announced in previous posts). We will provide ample notice on when to expect the Classic Graphic Engine’s retirement, but the ultimate goal remains of providing the best experience of Warframe to our players via the Enhanced Graphics Engine.

Why use the Enhanced Graphics Engine?

There are many stunning in-game details that are only visible via the Enhanced Graphics Engine such as wall decals, tattoos, facial hair, more accurate reflections, and dynamic lighting and shadowing (a detailed breakdown can be found in our original announcement here). We ultimately want players' first steps into Warframe and Duviri to be seen the way our team intended!

New and last generation Playstation and Xbox consoles run the Enhanced Graphics Engine experience, and we want our PC players who have yet to enable it to share in the benefits of this system.

Enhanced Graphics Engine Settings:

Our goal while phasing out Classic has been and remains to keep performance and scalability a priority for players. That said, you will be able to adjust the following in-game settings to tweak performance with the Enhanced Graphics Engine:

• Sun Shadows Toggle - This can be disabled via the Graphics settings in the Video tab of your Options.
• Enhanced Decals Toggle - This can be disabled via the Graphics settings in the Video tab of your Options.
• Switching Graphics settings under Options > Video to “Medium” or “Low” will also offer performance adjustments if required.

For the time being (before Classic retires), if you wish to return to the Classic Engine you’ll be able to do so via the Warframe launcher by hitting the cog > selecting “Classic” from the dropdown menu. Or via your Graphics settings in-game by opening the pause menu > Options > Video Tab > Scrolling down to the Graphics Options. 

Why retire the Classic Graphics Engine?

Currently, the team has to maintain both engines which means twice the work for the graphics programmers, twice as much testing, and most importantly, it means our artists are limited by what the Classic engine can do.

Retirement plans for Classic were first announced in 2020 and since then the team has shifted to making content that uses more and more features of the Enhanced graphics engine. Once there is only one rendering engine to support we can make new content that we couldn’t make before!

Enhanced as Standard:

Ultimately, the Enhanced Graphics Engine is the gold standard for Warframe and all of its future content - the most immediate being Duviri! With Enhanced, you’ll be able to enjoy all of the hard work the team has put into making it a truly spectacular experience, of which you’ll jump into starting April 26th.

Thanks Tenno! 

[XHADgaming]

6 minutes ago, [DE]CoreyOnline said:

With the launch of The Duviri Paradox on April 26th

We got a date!

 

Also please activate Fomorian or at least tell someone to do it.

 

[Circle_of_Psi]

How will this affect older machines? 

[Genitive]

7 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

How will this affect older machines? 

Spoiler

 

But seriously, they did say that they are trying to implement this so low-end pcs can handle the game. If minimal requirements change, they will probably make a separate post about it.

[LSG501]

Note to self... set graphics back to classic on the 26th.

I haven't seen a reason to swap yet, every time I've tried my pc fans ramp up due to everything working harder but I'm not actually seeing enough difference to warrant the extra 'performance' my pc is using, I'd even go as far as to say that it felt laggy.  I'd be fine with everything ramping up if it made a noticeable difference but it didn't....

If you want us to swap you need to do some serious optimisations still... my pc should not be working harder for basically the same visual appearance....

[Circle_of_Psi]

21 minutes ago, Genitive said:

  Reveal hidden contents

But seriously, they did say that they are trying to implement this so low-end pcs can handle the game. If minimal requirements change, they will probably make a separate post about it.

MY PC IS ON FIRE!

Ah, thanks then, asking for a friend as they have a rather very low end PC

[Sannidor]

This should be done at least one update before Duviri just to minimalize the unavoidable errors and bugs related to new defaults.

Imagine downloading this awaited and probably chunky patch just to be held back by technical problems...

Fingers crossed my hardware will handle the ride but knowing this means many dedicated Tenno will be excluded is somewhat sad.

Hopefully they will catch up later after upgrading their battle stations 🥲

[WT240]

1 hour ago, Genitive said:

  Hide contents

That is what it does to my modern, fairly powerful, tuned to lean perfection PC. The frame rate is high-ish, but it feels laggy as heck, and really doesn't look any better, just different.

Edited April 13 by WT240

[MadMattPrime]

More importantly, what will be the new minimum graphics card requirements?

[Trancerberos]

12 minutes ago, MadMattPrime said:

More importantly, what will be the new minimum graphics card requirements?

I'd guess they'll announce that when they definitely retire the classic engine, which is not what they are doing, just changing the default for now .

[MadMattPrime]

9 minutes ago, Trancerberos said:

I'd guess they'll announce that when they definitely retire the classic engine, which is not what they are doing, just changing the default for now .

I wish they would tell us in advance.

I believe that the following cards won't have anything to worry about:
Radeon's R7 series
Radeon's R9 Series
AMD's RX series
Nvidia's RTX2000 series
Nvdia's RTX3000 series
Nvidia's RTX4000 series

I'm more worried about having to upgrade my old PCs just to get them to run Warframe

[Trancerberos]

2 minutes ago, MadMattPrime said:

 worried about having to upgrade my old PCs just to get them to run Warframe

No need to, as long as they can run DirectX 11 they will run it.

[Petroklos]

5 minutes ago, MadMattPrime said:

I wish they would tell us in advance.

I believe that the following cards won't have anything to worry about:
Radeon's R7 series
Radeon's R9 Series
AMD's RX series
Nvidia's RTX2000 series
Nvdia's RTX3000 series
Nvidia's RTX4000 series

I'm more worried about having to upgrade my old PCs just to get them to run Warframe

I'm not sure where you're pulling that list from. It runs on PS4, XBOne and is intended to also run on Switch and Mobile, much much older GPUs will be perfectly fine, even including some of the beefier iGPUs.

2 hours ago, [DE]CoreyOnline said:

New and last generation Playstation and Xbox consoles run the Enhanced Graphics Engine experience

Any news on when the Switch is switching (heh) over to the Enhanced Graphics Engine too?

[Petroklos]

1 hour ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

How will this affect older machines? 

It's very likely to see some performance decrese here and there. Make sure to turn off the new settings as listed in the OP, this should bring most of your frames back. Also if you're still on DX11 consider swapping over to DX12, it runs significantly better for me on my old ass i7 3770k.

[MadMattPrime]

5 minutes ago, Petroklos said:

I'm not sure where you're pulling that list from. It runs on PS4, XBOne and is intended to also run on Switch and Mobile, much much older GPUs will be perfectly fine, even including some of the beefier iGPUs.

Just a list of GPUs that are recommended for DX12.

[Petroklos]

24 minutes ago, MadMattPrime said:

Just a list of GPUs that are recommended for DX12.

Recommended by who? There's GTX 9XXs (I think from the 950 and upwards) that support DX12 (Feature Level 12_0), which is the highest that Warframe currently uses. Is that maybe a list of GPUs that support DX12U? And it's not like Warframe is about to drop DX11 any time soon, even if the game runs better on DX12, at least in my experience.

Edited April 13 by Petroklos

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

I do wonder if the freezing when shader caching was improved. Last time I tried it was awful and the game seemed to reset the cache every time it started, so the same missions would freeze all over again to rebuild the shader cache. Nowadays games avoid this by simply doing this on startup and won't do it again unless new assets are added, if WF doesn't do that then it really should with this being the default.

[Petroklos]

4 minutes ago, God_is_a_Cat_Girl said:

I do wonder if the freezing when shader caching was improved. Last time I tried it was awful and the game seemed to reset the cache every time it started, so the same missions would freeze all over again to rebuild the shader cache. Nowadays games avoid this by simply doing this on startup and won't do it again unless new assets are added, if WF doesn't do that then it really should with this being the default.

It still compiles them at runtime, so the first time you enter any new area you're very likely to have stutters. But after that it will retain the compiled shaders and will stop stuttering. I was on and off Warframe's DX12 ever since its original release but I've been using only DX12 for some months now. When a driver failure made Warframe auto swap me back to DX11 I was surprised by how much better DX12 runs nowadays, both in comparison to its release state and to current DX11.

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

On 2023-04-13 at 5:54 PM, Petroklos said:

It still compiles them at runtime, so the first time you enter any new area you're very likely to have stutters. But after that it will retain the compiled shaders and will stop stuttering. I was on and off Warframe's DX12 ever since its original release but I've been using only DX12 for some months now. When a driver failure made Warframe auto swap me back to DX11 I was surprised by how much better DX12 runs nowadays, both in comparison to its release state and to current DX11.

Yeah, that's what it did when I tried a few months ago, except restarting the game meant rebuilding the cache even for the previously run missions which felt dreadful (and shouldn't happen). Though they really should modernize it like other games did (MH Rise for example does great at that, no freezing because it pre compiles on startup). Well, no choice but give it a go anyway. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: Welp, Enhanced still feels awful and seems to reset the shader cache if you close the game. Being met with freezing every time we start the game shouldn't be the standard.

Edited April 14 by God_is_a_Cat_Girl

[MadMattPrime]

1 hour ago, Petroklos said:

Recommended by who? There's GTX 9XXs (I think from the 950 and upwards) that support DX12 (Feature Level 12_0), which is the highest that Warframe currently uses. Is that maybe a list of GPUs that support DX12U? And it's not like Warframe is about to drop DX11 any time soon, even if the game runs better on DX12, at least in my experience.

Probably, I just googled them up for recommendations.

I would have no problems running warframe on my main work/gaming PC which runs on a 3090.

I'm more worried about my older PCs not being to run warframe while my work computer renders videos and other stuff.

My oldest GPU is a GTX 760 which runs okayish on classic but horribly on enchanced, this mainly for my kid who plays warframe. I was wondering if i need to upgrade it.

My GTX 1060 6GB currently on medium settings on enchanced still works but with stutters from time to time. This is what I use while the othe PC is rendering videos or working on a project.
 

Edited April 13 by MadMattPrime

[Lincelotas]

as much as i am exited for duviri,   i cant stand the stutters and fps freeze or drops  at random moments   on enhanced graphics

[PsychicKitty]

Ugh....

we have to use the new memory leak direct X settings i see. 

What ever happened to the internal rendering system for warframe?

[Skoomaseller]

alhamdulillah good

[PsychicKitty]

2 hours ago, Lincelotas said:

as much as i am exited for duviri,   i cant stand the stutters and fps freeze or drops  at random moments   on enhanced graphics

yeah that happens on most stuff because game companies add fog, a fish tank view and use blurring and a few other things because they think the real world look like that.

Heck they cant even do the sky or water or many things justice they think people do not have two eyes and forget how depth perception works.

Lens flares are not normal.

[emmyemi]

26 minutes ago, PsychicKitty said:

[…] game companies add fog, a fish tank view and use blurring and a few other things because they think the real world look like that.

(Most) games aren't meant to be a 1:1 representation of real world visuals. Warframe itself is very highly stylized, and while there are elements of realism, I find it reductive to say that effects like DoF, lens flare, etc. are done for the sake of some nebulous sense of "realism" and not as an expression of artistic design.

All of these effects contribute moreso to the "vibe" the developers want to convey. High bloom and lens flares aren't realistic, nor are they really meant to be—they're stylistic choices.

Human eyes can't perceive color in the peripheral vision, should we desaturate the edges of the screen to make it more realistic? Objects that aren't in focus DO blur, because our eyes focus similarly to camera lenses. If you close one eye and focus on your finger up close, then something far away, you'll notice it.

In any case, these elements aren't meant to simulate realism (although in some cases they also do that). They're meant to give an overall vibe to the world and setting, and sometimes can be useful for masking technical limitations that would otherwise be very noticeable such as limited draw distance and detail on faraway objects.