Magpie1412 wrote this on MMORPG.com i felt it was a very interesting read so decided to pass it along to all of you.
Limited Support for Next Generation Hardware, Old Engine, Yet Requires "Moores Law"
Hello Folks
A little background, i work in a senior technical designation in the industry and have also been a computer gaming enthusiast for years, so double the time spent engaging in activities of tinkering and upgrading and the like ;-). I am based in the UK where we have seen very little impact or marketing from Vanguard. My local Major High street games retailers only stocked four copies of the title each and i ordered one of my copies from Digital Download.
Something that has kept me thinking for a while about vanguard, since i quit back at the middle of February time during my 30 day trial period was at an end, and is puzzling me even more now in light of further postings by Sigil Developer, Brad McQuaid and the current direction of Vanguard Saga of heroes is why is it quoted that this game in particular is so hardware dependent on current enthusiast hardware to reduce in price and increase in availability and of course the "Moores Law" affect.
You see my understanding from not only playing the application but also from extensively trying to highlight its wide memory leaks on the technical forums and the like back in the early days of Beta 5 and Release is that this application does not support natively as an application varying degrees of advanced technologies currently available to computer users and gamers now.
Interesting dont you think....
1. No Anti Aliasing Support - Possibly due to the applications low frame rate performance that this is flagged off in the engine at a code level or simply not present. However Manual Driver level overrides do not function in any way at all either and i think that for a six year technology to not be supported in a an application that claims to be at the leading edge of gaming technology requiring above average hardware to run comfortably speaks volumes. Fact of the matter also is that Anti-Aliasing is actually quite a large deal in visual quality levels for gamers also today.
2. Single Threaded Application - After doing numerous performance monitoring excersises and measurement underneath the application whilst looking for its memory leaks some months ago back in early february it became very obvious to us that Vanguard at a code level was a single threaded application and i think this alone is extremely interesting given that it is a far cry for the games developers to suggest higher levels of hardware platforms and a moores law to run their application smoothly at high detail levels. The application whilst marginally benefiting from any PC based on Multithreaded architecture (Two or more Physical CPU Cores, or the previous and less efficient generation of Hyper Threading Technology capable CPU's) is not written natively to actually perform across multiple cores. Simply it resides on a single core in operation. So it isnt in fact taking an advantage of hardware here already available to it. This throws up some very big questions to ask the developer Sigil...Why the push for "Moores Law", weaknesses at a code level or an overstretched engine cannot be assisted by simply throwing clocks and cycles at something surely they do understand this. If this Application was coded to operate over Multiple Threads "Multi Threaded" then the performance issues at the high end would have likely been substantially less.
The Gap in performance with image quality for example between Lord of the Rings online and Vanguard: Sage of heroes strictly at the higher end of the Hardware market (Dual Core Systems) with High levels of game detail enabled is substantial. Lord Of the Rings Online is a Multi-Threaded Application. Although not directly comparable due to different engines, code bases and supported technology to the potential buyer looking to purchase a game from feel and looks and smoothness of play it is very much a reality and a distinct difference.
3. Environment Drop Shadows - Are not used in Vanguard nor supported currently and these are again technologies that have existed on a Direct X 9 hardware level for a while now. I think the lack of this, affects vanguard from a visual standpoint compared to other modern titles to a substantial extent, however this is purely a personal opinion. However again a technology that has been supported in other titles and the industry for years places certain questions on what in the engine is requiring such massive hardware demands touted by the developers, A vast open world is definately an ambitious and noble goal to bring to the player base to be sure and many loved the scope and potential thius would offer. But when that pushes an aging unreal engine so hard beyond what it was originally designed to do that that requires levels of hardware that simply are not mainstrream, then that is a bad design decision and something that likely will never come to fruition also is the payoff of that "open" world actually worth it.
4. No SLI / CrossFire Supported Technologies - Not officially supported again in vanguard and whilst the application is not entirely GPU dependent as others (it seems more Bus, Cache and Memory Dependent) on the high end those with the luxury of a Dual GPU setups are unable to to utilize this extra power to gain much more needed performance from the application. It seems here to paticularly shoot itself somewhat in the foot with this lack of technology support and again poses a question back to Sigil in regards to it "really" being a bleeding edge game in terms of technology, Or a game with an extremely hard worked engine and code with which they are hopeing to paper over its shortcomings technically by throwing it faster bus speeds, CPU speeds and memory caches.
5. No Shader Model 3 Implementation or Support - Again a set of Shader Technologies introduced in the later batch of graphics cards over the last two to three generations from both ATI and Nvidia that have substantially made well used graphical operations and sub routines more efficient at a shader engine level. Vanguard uses Shader Model 2 by default and even this version is now old in the industry although its use is still wide. However again this is another example of a technology already present and functioning in current titles in and around the MMORPG genre and therefore competitors of Vanguard have been able to implement that Vanguard still does not make use of. Yet seems comfortable in its claims that the Application itself is so advanced that it requires a "Moores Law" affect with hardware bigger and more capable to imerge.
I for one question this theory, in light of existing technologies that vanguard does not support nor take advantage of. And the fact that its performance is below that expected, particularly on higher end hardware it certainly makes me ask a very valid question that are Sigil simply hoping that "Moores Law" and Enthusiast Technologies are going to paper over code that is in some places unoptimized / Unafficient and an Engine that is pushed to screaming point to fulfil the developers ambitions and promises.
Those that enjoy vanguard, power to you and i hope you continue to do so. I also hope that whatever negotiations are in the pipe between Sigil and SOE that it is for the future betterment of the game for you and your guilds and friends.
Believe me this isnt a post to simply bash or stab at vanguard, merely a counter argument for the impression of the developer that their application requires so much more of the hardware base out there and a "Moores Law" type of scenario in the next 12 months....as opposed to looking back at their code and engine and examine fully what technology is already on the market and in place to greatly improve our game playing experiences that they sadly do not support.
Ive been wanting to hear other views on this technical matter for a while...
Good Luck to Vanguard Fans and best regards
Mag
Magpie1412 wrote this on MMORPG.com i felt it was a very interesting read so decided to pass it along to all of you.
Limited Support for Next Generation Hardware, Old Engine, Yet Requires "Moores Law"
Hello Folks
A little background, i work in a senior technical designation in the industry and have also been a computer gaming enthusiast for years, so double the time spent engaging in activities of tinkering and upgrading and the like ;-). I am based in the UK where we have seen very little impact or marketing from Vanguard. My local Major High street games retailers only stocked four copies of the title each and i ordered one of my copies from Digital Download.
Something that has kept me thinking for a while about vanguard, since i quit back at the middle of February time during my 30 day trial period was at an end, and is puzzling me even more now in light of further postings by Sigil Developer, Brad McQuaid and the current direction of Vanguard Saga of heroes is why is it quoted that this game in particular is so hardware dependent on current enthusiast hardware to reduce in price and increase in availability and of course the "Moores Law" affect.
You see my understanding from not only playing the application but also from extensively trying to highlight its wide memory leaks on the technical forums and the like back in the early days of Beta 5 and Release is that this application does not support natively as an application varying degrees of advanced technologies currently available to computer users and gamers now.
Interesting dont you think....
1. No Anti Aliasing Support - Possibly due to the applications low frame rate performance that this is flagged off in the engine at a code level or simply not present. However Manual Driver level overrides do not function in any way at all either and i think that for a six year technology to not be supported in a an application that claims to be at the leading edge of gaming technology requiring above average hardware to run comfortably speaks volumes. Fact of the matter also is that Anti-Aliasing is actually quite a large deal in visual quality levels for gamers also today.
2. Single Threaded Application - After doing numerous performance monitoring excersises and measurement underneath the application whilst looking for its memory leaks some months ago back in early february it became very obvious to us that Vanguard at a code level was a single threaded application and i think this alone is extremely interesting given that it is a far cry for the games developers to suggest higher levels of hardware platforms and a moores law to run their application smoothly at high detail levels. The application whilst marginally benefiting from any PC based on Multithreaded architecture (Two or more Physical CPU Cores, or the previous and less efficient generation of Hyper Threading Technology capable CPU's) is not written natively to actually perform across multiple cores. Simply it resides on a single core in operation. So it isnt in fact taking an advantage of hardware here already available to it. This throws up some very big questions to ask the developer Sigil...Why the push for "Moores Law", weaknesses at a code level or an overstretched engine cannot be assisted by simply throwing clocks and cycles at something surely they do understand this. If this Application was coded to operate over Multiple Threads "Multi Threaded" then the performance issues at the high end would have likely been substantially less.
The Gap in performance with image quality for example between Lord of the Rings online and Vanguard: Sage of heroes strictly at the higher end of the Hardware market (Dual Core Systems) with High levels of game detail enabled is substantial. Lord Of the Rings Online is a Multi-Threaded Application. Although not directly comparable due to different engines, code bases and supported technology to the potential buyer looking to purchase a game from feel and looks and smoothness of play it is very much a reality and a distinct difference.
3. Environment Drop Shadows - Are not used in Vanguard nor supported currently and these are again technologies that have existed on a Direct X 9 hardware level for a while now. I think the lack of this, affects vanguard from a visual standpoint compared to other modern titles to a substantial extent, however this is purely a personal opinion. However again a technology that has been supported in other titles and the industry for years places certain questions on what in the engine is requiring such massive hardware demands touted by the developers, A vast open world is definately an ambitious and noble goal to bring to the player base to be sure and many loved the scope and potential thius would offer. But when that pushes an aging unreal engine so hard beyond what it was originally designed to do that that requires levels of hardware that simply are not mainstrream, then that is a bad design decision and something that likely will never come to fruition also is the payoff of that "open" world actually worth it.
4. No SLI / CrossFire Supported Technologies - Not officially supported again in vanguard and whilst the application is not entirely GPU dependent as others (it seems more Bus, Cache and Memory Dependent) on the high end those with the luxury of a Dual GPU setups are unable to to utilize this extra power to gain much more needed performance from the application. It seems here to paticularly shoot itself somewhat in the foot with this lack of technology support and again poses a question back to Sigil in regards to it "really" being a bleeding edge game in terms of technology, Or a game with an extremely hard worked engine and code with which they are hopeing to paper over its shortcomings technically by throwing it faster bus speeds, CPU speeds and memory caches.
5. No Shader Model 3 Implementation or Support - Again a set of Shader Technologies introduced in the later batch of graphics cards over the last two to three generations from both ATI and Nvidia that have substantially made well used graphical operations and sub routines more efficient at a shader engine level. Vanguard uses Shader Model 2 by default and even this version is now old in the industry although its use is still wide. However again this is another example of a technology already present and functioning in current titles in and around the MMORPG genre and therefore competitors of Vanguard have been able to implement that Vanguard still does not make use of. Yet seems comfortable in its claims that the Application itself is so advanced that it requires a "Moores Law" affect with hardware bigger and more capable to imerge.
I for one question this theory, in light of existing technologies that vanguard does not support nor take advantage of. And the fact that its performance is below that expected, particularly on higher end hardware it certainly makes me ask a very valid question that are Sigil simply hoping that "Moores Law" and Enthusiast Technologies are going to paper over code that is in some places unoptimized / Unafficient and an Engine that is pushed to screaming point to fulfil the developers ambitions and promises.
Those that enjoy vanguard, power to you and i hope you continue to do so. I also hope that whatever negotiations are in the pipe between Sigil and SOE that it is for the future betterment of the game for you and your guilds and friends.
Believe me this isnt a post to simply bash or stab at vanguard, merely a counter argument for the impression of the developer that their application requires so much more of the hardware base out there and a "Moores Law" type of scenario in the next 12 months....as opposed to looking back at their code and engine and examine fully what technology is already on the market and in place to greatly improve our game playing experiences that they sadly do not support.
Ive been wanting to hear other views on this technical matter for a while...
Good Luck to Vanguard Fans and best regards
Mag