Update 18.5: Download size heads up + graphical improvements explained!

[AdunSaveMe]

21 minutes ago, CaterHowlett16 said:

 If I wanted a game for it's graphics, I would have played destiny.

If you're not one of the people who likes to hear about improvements to graphics or performance, you're free to move along.

I like content too, but bringing up the subject whenever anything happens that isn't related to new content is stupid. They work on multiple things, but whenever new content is mentioned, people complain about bugs and performance. Whenever bugs or performance are mentioned, people complain about new content. You can't win.

And in case I didn't make it clear, this isn't solely about how the game looks. It's also not the only thing coming in this update. Like, why bring up something unrelated if they talk about one part of it? That'd be like complaining they aren't talking about bugs or performance in a dev workshop about a new frame.

Edited March 2, 2016 by AdunSaveMe

[CaterHowlett16]

2 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

If you're not one of the people who likes to hear about improvements to graphics or performance, you're free to move along.

I like content too, but bringing up the subject whenever anything happens that isn't related to new content is stupid. They work on multiple things, but whenever new content is mentioned, people complain about bugs and performance. Whenever bugs or performance are mentioned, people complain about new content. You can't win.

And in case I didn't make it clear, this isn't solely about how the game looks. It's also not the only thing coming in this update. Like, why bring up something unrelated if they talk about one part of it? That'd be like complaining they aren't talking about bugs or performance in a dev workshop about a new frame.

I know I know Look Im sorry, I'm just worried my computer wont be able to handle it. The words BIG UPDATE scare me. 

[AdunSaveMe]

Just now, CaterHowlett16 said:

I know I know Look Im sorry, I'm just worried my computer wont be able to handle it. The words BIG UPDATE scare me. 

You should read carefully then. I feel I'm using the word performance a bit much, but that's part of their focus.

[AEP8FlyBoy]

7 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

If you're not one of the people who likes to hear about improvements to graphics or performance, you're free to move along.

I like content too, but bringing up the subject whenever anything happens that isn't related to new content is stupid. They work on multiple things, but whenever new content is mentioned, people complain about bugs and performance. Whenever bugs or performance are mentioned, people complain about new content. You can't win.

And in case I didn't make it clear, this isn't solely about how the game looks. It's also not the only thing coming in this update. Like, why bring up something unrelated if they talk about one part of it? That'd be like complaining they aren't talking about bugs or performance in a dev workshop about a new frame.

This post... it's so to the point.

I agree though, any improvement is a good improvement in my book, and DE is free to spend their time as they choose to. I do understand his point of view though, because like myself I would like to see general game changes and additions. (Additive Focus abilites/passives, Focus Modding... User-generated quests... or anything new like that. Something that would give some more life to the game in between updates. Something that would make it feel more... i dunno, enveloping? Or Immersive... sort of like the Second Dream was. We definitely need more content like that... I do understand that it takes quite a while to make something on that scale; but we have all the time in the world. :D)

*sigh* Just another rant from me... I do like how you addressed that guy however, a very good observation.

Edited March 2, 2016 by AEP8FlyBoy

[AEP8FlyBoy]

6 minutes ago, CaterHowlett16 said:

I know I know Look Im sorry, I'm just worried my computer wont be able to handle it. The words BIG UPDATE scare me. 

It's only BIG, because they're replacing and updating a bunch of old features and assets. This whole lighting rework was GAME-wide to say the least.

I assume that the updated graphics portion of the update is more than half of the 4 GB estimated download size. It'd be cool to know just how much of the update is content related. :D

Not that graphical improvements are bad, as any improvements are good... on another note, I've already got the pair of pants I will wear this weekend ready for 18.5! (They're folded up in my closet right now.)
(I'm gonna poop them, that's what I'm planning to do though.)

Edited March 2, 2016 by AEP8FlyBoy

[RagingGrizzly]

2 minutes ago, AEP8FlyBoy said:

It's only BIG, because they're replacing and updating a bunch of old features and assets. This whole lighting rework was GAME-wide to say the least.

I assume that the updated graphics portion of the update is more than half of the 4 GB estimated download size. It'd be cool to know just how much of the update is content related. :D

Not that graphical improvements are bad, as any improvements are good... on another note, I've already got the pair of pants I will wear this weekend ready for 18.5! (They're folded up in my closet right now.)
(I'm gonna poop them, that's what I'm planning to do though.)

You gonna flip em around so you can continue to wear the stained goodness through the end of the weekend? >:D

[AEP8FlyBoy]

Just now, PUR3K1LL3R said:

You gonna flip em around so you can continue to wear the stained goodness through the end of the weekend? >:D

I will not leave my seat... until my pants are as brown as the sand coming in this new update!

[RagingGrizzly]

Just now, AEP8FlyBoy said:

I will not leave my seat... until my pants are as brown as the sand coming in this new update!

Good for you. I will do the same.

[Incursum]

 

EDIT: Nevermind.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Incursum

[Messor36]

what about the new starchart sustem? is it in U18.5 or no?

[ntyd1s]

Would be cool to keep old screenshots for later comparison :D

[vegtro]

13 minutes ago, Messor36 said:

what about the new starchart sustem? is it in U18.5 or no?

Suppose to be 19 or later a possibility. They keep on postponing it so who knows if it will come with the Queens or with the Quest System update. 

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, AdunSaveMe said:

But that's... not true?

well, to be fair, faster refresh (monitor's capability is important too) lets you see things a tiny bit faster... which is certainly important as information being relayed to you already takes long enough as it is, with the Networking Limitations of the planet Earth currently.

[AdunSaveMe]

11 minutes ago, taiiat said:

well, to be fair, faster refresh (monitor's capability is important too) lets you see things a tiny bit faster... which is certainly important as information being relayed to you already takes long enough as it is, with the Networking Limitations of the planet Earth currently.

If it does give you an advantage it's the same advantage that picking a character that has a hitbox half a pixel smaller than everyone else gives you an advantage, which is to say it gives you such a small, utterly minuscule unreadable advantage that it might as well not exist.

if you're good at the game, it won't matter if you have 90 fps or 140 fps. It is not a substitute for skill, nor does it give you enough of an advantage to work with unless you already have superhuman reactions and brain processing speed.

It's like saying having a 5000 DPI mouse makes you better at CSGO than someone with a 4000 DPI mouse.

Edited March 2, 2016 by AdunSaveMe

[__Kanade__]

I have to ask though.

 

I've been playing Warframe ever since U.5 on this laptop:

i3-2350 @ 2.3 GHz

4GB Ram

Intel Integrated video card.

 

I do have a powerful PC though:

i7-6700 @ 3.4 GHz ( it has turbo boost so it goes up to 3.7 )

EVGA GTX Classified 980

16GB RAM.

 

Not to say I don't play Warframe on that PC, but graphical improvements doesn't seem like it'll be friendly to my laptop and I usually play Warframe on my downtime at school on the laptop.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by __Kanade__

[Xe_Network]

So... DirectX 12? Please? these improvements kinda sounded like it but no confirmation yet, so ill assume not, its looking pretty nice though, keep up the awesome work

[taiiat]

4 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

if you're good at the game, it won't matter if you have 90 fps or 140 fps.

It's like saying having a 5000 DPI mouse makes you better at CSGO than someone with a 4000 DPI mouse.

PvP, as it stands on this planet, is not very skill based. because Latency exists, it's always a crapshoot. what you see on your screen isn't what's happening, and only gets worse the slower you're shown those outdated frames to represent what's going on.
PvP games with super low TTK are Anti-Skill. in a future where the entire world is lined with fiber, then ultra fast PvP games might be able to actually be skill based. until then, the only skill based PvP games are ones leaning more towards Mech Warrior side TTK. where fights normally last upwards of minutes at a time (with raw TTK being somewhere around 30 seconds) - then skill really matters.

but shooters love having TTK being <500ms, or just breaking 1000ms. the lower it is, the less skill is relevant to the game. because you'll have Killed your opponent before they even SEE you shooting them.
50ms+50ms from client, to server(few nano seconds to process), to other client; a few nano seconds to process packets and send to GPU; 16.67ms before frame sent from GPU buffer to Monitor; several ms for Monitor to draw Frame assuming it's ready to draw the frame when it's sent.... there's a lot of delays already.
is the topic a big deal? it does matter somewhat - 60Hz means there's at absolute minimum in a theoretical vacuum 16.67^R ms between each frame, and when TTK is super low, that's a huge amount of time, other delays stacked on top means not only are you seeing everything late, but could possibly miss something if a frame is forced to be dropped and replaced with a new one or Et Cetera.
 

 

and your sarcastic analogy doesn't make sense because a higher sensitivity multiplier does absolutely nothing, or if it does anything, actually makes you play worse because at weird numbers that aren't a multiple of two - your sensor creates artifacting and, well, moves inaccurately. same deal with going to very high sensitivity settings, setting a sensor to super high sensitivity causing artifacting and basically ruins your mouse.
suffice to say, the Overclocked sensors that the 'gaming' peripheral companies use are complete garbage, but they know that 'DPI' is a buzzword to the general consumer so they'll take advantage of selling a '13,000 DPI' Mouse to you, when the Sensor isn't actually capable of that, and both the Overclocking and high sensitivity setting ruin the mouse anyways.
which makes me sad because they'll start with Avago Sensors - best in the industry - and then desecrate them like that. :(

[Sanremyrvl]

[ChaoticVice777]

Definitely look forward to the update! Unfortunately, that 4+ GB download... *chokes*

"I knew this day would come. I prepared, changed myself. I made sacrifices! Tenno... are you ready for a SACRIFICE!?" - Councillor Vay Hek

[ReduxSun]

DE it's already almost time for U18.5 ... could we pretty please get an option that disables the screen shaking? Thank you. We've put up with the motion sickness for so many updates now.

[Stratego89]

10 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

Sweet.

Does this mean stuff like the artifact lines on Nova's Immortal skin will be fixed?

Too lazy to go find it, but some DE posted in a thread somewhere showing her immortal skin lines fixed (also mentioned mynki was reworking the design or something). Not sure if this means all the immortal skins got fixes though.

 

@OP/DE Can't wait for these changes, really hoping it improves my performance a bit but at the very least the stuff you've shown on devstreams/twitter looks amazing.

[Myscho]

Hopefully this graphical improvements fix weird/ low resolution shadows (could be more dynamic than pre-rendered) and wrong light reflections

[-Rhavna-]

That's Awesome, i can't wait for it!

[Rixalabur]

Sounds great. Can't wait :)

[Dante130666]

11 hours ago, DE_Steve said:

Tenno,

If you haven't heard, Sands of Inaros is coming soon! Check out the Hub here: https://warframe.com/18-5-hub

In order to best prepare you for the Update, we wanted to give a quick heads up on it's approximate download size: 4+ GB.

Why so big?

The short answer: Warframe has received months of technical graphics improvements, putting an extra layer of detail on every single graphical element of the game. When released, players on all platforms should notice a substantial increase in detail across all of Warframe’s game modes, weapons, characters and tilesets.

The long answer (that also makes up the past 2 months of my life):

With Inaros, the sands of old have been swept away from U18 Warframe leaving behind a newer, more vibrant U18.5 Warframe. In many respects, 18.5 is a remastered, more HD version of Warframe with months of technical graphical improvements and artistic relighting of many parts of the game (and more to come in subsequent updates). These changes sweep across lighting, materials, collision, so the 18.5 update is expected to be a larger-than-usual download – again, we're talking 4+ GB. On top of these changes are across the board rendering performance improvements we hope you'll enjoy, keep in mind that your particular hardware may benefit more and benefit less depending on your GPU, resolution and preferred graphics settings. All of these upgrades in 18.5 are cross-platform - yes! PC, PS4, and Xbox One Tenno will see these improvements as they are released.  Here's some results you may notice as a result of these sweeping graphical changes:

 

• Lighting textures have been reengineered to reduce square compression artifacts and ugly color banding. You may have seen me point this out on past Devstreams.
• All PBR materials have been recompressed with a more accurate format, new and subtle details are visible on your PBR'd Warframes, gear and in the environment.
• Reflection Probes have been built through many areas of the game, grounding PBR materials with more accurate lighting.
• Character and weapon lighting includes more accurate 'dual specular' lighting which means metallic surfaces are more realistic and fancy looking.
• HDR rendering has been switched to a compact 32bit format which has improved HDR rendering performance for a wide range of GPUs.
• Tonemapping has been adjusted to use more of the range of lighting content in the game, images have more detail, particularly richer in the darks.
• Motion Blur and Depth of Field have been re-engineered to run faster and look better, fast moving and defocused objects no longer appear 'cut out' on their silhouettes.
• Draw order optimizations have been applied to every object in the game, which improves overall performance, particularly in worst-case scenarios.
• Atmospheric fog effects are now rendering in a separate lighting pass, allowing richer particle effects at distance without being 'erased' by atmosphere.
• Particle lighting has been improved to more accurately represent the local lighting environment.
• Wind force modelling on many particle systems increase realism as various environmental particles now respond to explosive forces and Warframe powers – you've also probably seen us showcase this in our most recent Devstream.
• Bloom system has been softened and made more seated in the scene. The burnt-out look is replaced with a more subtle and gentle sci-fi glow.
• Physics collision, performance and stability have all been improved, as a long-awaited upgrade of Warframe PhysX libraries has been completed.

PC Minimum spec remains unchanged. Combined with the optimizations mentioned, our tests are showing 18.5 as a better looking Warframe with 18.0 or better performance on an array of toasters and beastly GPUs!

So there you have it, Tenno. 4+ GB of content explained, and now it's time for me to go back to the team and bring this Update across the finish line to come out on PC soon.

 

 

 

All hail our lord savior Steve !!!!