Streaming and Island LODs

  • This is today, with patch 1.0.4 installed. (Loading starts at 14 seconds)

    Still got the problem of ugly islands and, especially with larger islands, the game freezes for a second to load. Already reported this this to Rare and now sended them this video.

  • @Denimcoo Yep, that's the main island LOD swapping from an imposter (a low poly silhouette) to the actual, navigable island. The reason why it stutters is because it's loading an entire new set of assets at the swap point (instead of gradually streaming in more and more detail), so the stuttering will be more or less noticeable according to your hardware. On my SSD is less than half a second, but it's still there.

    This is unfortunately how they decided to manage it since 1.0.1, and imho the actual reason why we had to download the entire game all over again.

    As far as i can tell, before 1.0.1 the 'actual island' assets were already present in the map and the game would just stream in more detailed versions of them the closer we got.

    I'm afraid that what you're currently seeing is meant to stay, which is more or less implied in the dev's PR answer, but we can still try to ask them to further extend the distance after which the island is loaded so that we could see nicer stuff from further away.

    Unfortunately, even if we got that, it wouldn't solve the players/animals/items rendering distance, which is an entire separate problem on its own, that has never been officially acknowledged by the devs, but which is obviously very real :(

  • @denimcoo said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    This is today, with patch 1.0.4 installed. (Loading starts at 14 seconds)

    Still got the problem of ugly islands and, especially with larger islands, the game freezes for a second to load. Already reported this this to Rare and now sended them this video.

    Good job capturing the issue and reporting it.

  • @super-poopsy said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @Denimcoo Yep, that's the main island LOD swapping from an imposter (a low poly silhouette) to the actual, navigable island. The reason why it stutters is because it's loading an entire new set of assets at the swap point (instead of gradually streaming in more and more detail), so the stuttering will be more or less noticeable according to your hardware. On my SSD is less than half a second, but it's still there.

    This is unfortunately how they decided to manage it since 1.0.1, and imho the actual reason why we had to download the entire game all over again.

    As far as i can tell, before 1.0.1 the 'actual island' assets were already present in the map and the game would just stream in more detailed versions of them the closer we got.

    I'm afraid what you're currently seeing is meant to stay, which is more or less implied in the dev's PR answer, but we can still try to ask them to further extend the distance after which the island is loaded so that we could see nicer stuff from further away.

    Unfortunately, even if we got that, it wouldn't solve the players/animals/items rendering distance, which is an entire different problem on its own, that has never been officially acknowledged by the devs, but which is obviously very real :(

    They can change their minds on how to manage this. Players should not settle for these changes. Some diehard fans may never care, but the true gamers in all of us should, especially the ones that bought this game when it looked and played better in the beginning.

  • @crowlikedream I wonder if i sounded a little too enthusiastic on my report, i read everything back again (i had adjusted the text a couple of times to make it as clear as possible) and while i still stand by what i wrote, i'm also pretty sure it didn't really address any of the issues we keep on discussing here.

    Player rendering distance is still complete garbage and so is everything that is not already at walking distance. The spyglass is arguably still useless most of the time and one still needs to be way too close on an island before being able to see anything.

    I also deeply dislike how the change was worded in the patch notes, it is slightly deceiving in giving the impression that they actually listened to our feedback about the issues.

    The only actual improvement is that big islands now look a little more detailed when one is walking on them, but that's pretty much it.

    I would really love them to revert the entire thing to how 1.0 was, but i don't think that's ever gonna happen. :(

  • @super-poopsy said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @Denimcoo Yep, that's the main island LOD swapping from an imposter (a low poly silhouette) to the actual, navigable island. The reason why it stutters is because it's loading an entire new set of assets at the swap point (instead of gradually streaming in more and more detail), so the stuttering will be more or less noticeable according to your hardware. On my SSD is less than half a second, but it's still there.

    This is unfortunately how they decided to manage it since 1.0.1, and imho the actual reason why we had to download the entire game all over again.

    As far as i can tell, before 1.0.1 the 'actual island' assets were already present in the map and the game would just stream in more detailed versions of them the closer we got.

    I'm afraid what you're currently seeing is meant to stay, which is more or less implied in the dev's PR answer, but we can still try to ask them to further extend the distance after which the island is loaded so that we could see nicer stuff from further away.

    Unfortunately, even if we got that, it wouldn't solve the players/animals/items rendering distance, which is an entire separate problem on its own, that has never been officially acknowledged by the devs, but which is obviously very real :(

    Thank you for explaining. Now i finally now what this is causing, because the statements of Rare are not very clear. With all do respect to the devs.

    But why have they changed this progress since 1.0.1? Do you know if they already gave an explanation for this and why they don't want to change it back?

  • @Denimcoo That is the question most of us have been asking ourselves the entire time.

    They never gave us any explanation of why these 'optimizations' were necessary in the first place, especially after more than 1 year of alphas in which things were just fine as they were. Notice how the dev's answer on the top page merely explains that they indeed changed stuff since 1.0, but it doesn't even get close to explaining why.

    There's lots of speculating going on about the actual reasons, but it's really just that: speculation.

    The sad truth is that if we hadn't been 'whining' about these issues since 1.0.1, we probably wouldn't even have gotten this tiny improvement...

  • Yeah, and still the in the patch notes they haven't acknowledge that the shadows were bugged, and lastly fixed.

    But anyway there's another bug im gonna send to them

    it's the fact that when you aim on the ground or every other angle , your own shadow will cast like you are aiming up.

  • @super-poopsy agreed they didn’t fix anything. Coming up to mermaids hideaway during the day it took almost until we were anchored at the island for it all to render in. Even small islands like lonely isle and sea dogs rest were total junk watching skeletal frames load in and barrels to finally become barrels. I’d be ok with band aid patches if there were actual visual improvements. But it just seems to be making things worse.

  • @super-poopsy said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @crowlikedream I wonder if i sounded a little too enthusiastic on my report, i read everything back again (i had adjusted the text a couple of times to make it as clear as possible) and while i still stand by what i wrote, i'm also pretty sure it didn't really address any of the issues we keep on discussing here.

    Player rendering distance is still complete garbage and so is everything that is not already at walking distance. The spyglass is arguably still useless most of the time and one still needs to be way too close on an island before being able to see anything.

    I also deeply dislike how the change was worded in the patch notes, it is slightly deceiving in giving the impression that they actually listened to our feedback about the issues.

    The only actual improvement is that big islands now look a little more detailed when one is walking on them, but that's pretty much it.

    I would really love them to revert the entire thing to how 1.0 was, but i don't think that's ever gonna happen. :(

    It is ok @super-poopsy. When I read your first post I was excited that things had really changed a lot with patch 1.0.4. As you stated here things are basically the same. After testing only a minor improvement in noticeable. Which is disheartening because the patch notes did make it sound like the devs listened to us and made a significant change.

    Like I said before we do not give up. We keep advocating for the changes Sea of Thieves needs to be truly Mythical again. The game has so much potential, but the lower graphics changes since the first patch really takes away the enjoyment you get when playing.

    My family and I only play once and a while now because the loading and unloading of graphics is so distracting. You also have to waste so much time getting up closer to things and sailing around at the right angles to make sure you do not miss anything on islands. Immersion in games is huge to having fun. Watching graphics load so poorly as they do now is just sad. No game made today that costs the price Sea of Thieves did should play like this. There are many early access games that are far from being completed on Steam that out performs the current state of Sea of Thieves.

    My family and I do not want to give up on the game yet. We also do not want to waste the $60 a piece we spent. I asked how we could get a refund just in case, but received no response. Par for the course as they never responded to any of my tickets. I ended up resolving three issues on my own because their site here does not work correctly. It is how I was able to post here in this forum. I even responded back that they could close the tickets and what I did so maybe they could help others. Nothing. Wish we could fix these issues on our own as well as you could be right they may never be fixed by anyone else.

  • @iceman-0007 said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @super-poopsy agreed they didn’t fix anything. Coming up to mermaids hideaway during the day it took almost until we were anchored at the island for it all to render in. Even small islands like lonely isle and sea dogs rest were total junk watching skeletal frames load in and barrels to finally become barrels. I’d be ok with band aid patches if there were actual visual improvements. But it just seems to be making things worse.

    This is exactly what I was talking about in my reply to @super-poopsy. This is what diminishes the game and the fun playing it. We cannot give up the fight. If we do, Sea of Thieves may sink to a deep watery grave full of ghost ships with no crews aboard as players abandon it.

  • i feel like visually i've noticed some improvements. However I play on legendary settings on a midrange pc i would say. Now that this has changed though I am being plagued with PASTIEBEARD which stopped after the first update for me and now im also getting some rubber banding when im moving around and sailing. Is this the price for making visual improvements?

  • pastiebeard is disconnected Ethernet cord or something when Im on WIFI and dont even have an Ethernet connected

  • @UnhandyThreax The stuttering when getting close to an island is definitely the price to pay for these improvements, and that's mostly because of how they decided to manage islands since 1.0.1, rather than the improvement itself.

    The network problems are something else and i'm afraid they may be related to quality of your connection or their servers, although i'm having those beard errors aswell since the new patch, but usually only when starting the game (i have to retry 3 or 4 times before actually getting at my character screen and 3 or 4 times more before actually getting in the game). Never had them before.

    Once in game i may end up on a server with 70 ping (doesn't get lower than that) or one with 250 ping and ridiculous rubberbanding... chances are more or less the same. It's like there's no regional matchmaking at all in the game, or maybe the first populated server i can be assigned to is on a different region... dunno.

    The irony is of course reading in the patch notes how they reduced 'The number of instances of rubber banding and teleporting players'...

  • @super-poopsy yeah, i read that part about fixing rubber-banding and teleporting and was like "well it was fine before today"

  • @unhandythreax said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    i feel like visually i've noticed some improvements. However I play on legendary settings on a midrange pc i would say. Now that this has changed though I am being plagued with PASTIEBEARD which stopped after the first update for me and now im also getting some rubber banding when im moving around and sailing. Is this the price for making visual improvements?

    I think we all can acknowledge that we have noticed some improvements since the big downgrade of patch 1.0.1. They are appreciated, but sadly minor in comparison to when we all first set sail at launch. The state of the game's graphics capability at launch was a major wow factor for the game.

    It was huge contributor to giving Sea of Thieves its sea legs that it seriously needed to build up a sustained player base until they could significantly improve upon the lack of content, repetitive questing system, sparse and costly rewards, etc. that stick out much more with these issues. Setting sail now in the open seas we currently have makes one wonder if it is going to have longevity if they do not man their helm better and change their current course.

  • It's one thing for Rare to acknowledge/unacknowledged bugs that have been reported OVER AND OVER. It's an entirely different thing for them to say they fixed a bug, when they haven't. it's seems Rare is doing the latter way to much. Which just lowers my confidence in Rare even more. When oh when will the tables turn. So much potential being wasted, just like the game Naval Action.

  • Yeaaaaa, no.

    This issue occurs in both platforms.
    Even on PC, it effects me and my friends (theres a large variation in hardware) equally.
    This issue wasn't at all present before patch 1.0.1
    It's been progressively worse every patch.

    I literally think I'm in Minecraft when I use my spyglass.

  • @daposeidonguy I agree I play on pc and this happens to me also, I don't have a high end computer I play on low graphics and it still does it.

  • just had a 5-6 hours play session yesterday with no problems. no D/C, no pastiebeards and only some intermittent lag spikes. and it still looked better than it had been. but i didnt play at launch i played a week or so after, so maybe i didnt get to see the original awesomeness

  • @UnhandyThreax 1.0.1 was released indeed a week after launch, March the 27th.

  • ah, so i cannot compare to the original graphical fidelity.

  • @UnhandyThreax Honestly, at this point i'm way more concerned about players/items rendering distance than anything else.

    There's people who could never afford playing at Mythical setting in the first place and maybe for them the difference would be less noticeable, but the players/items distance really touches every single player on both platforms and -at least for me- it has deeply affected gameplay and immersion.

    I clearly remember the first time i played the alpha, thinking how incredibly far i could see players compared to any other multiplayer game out there and now instead we're at a point in which it's even inferior to games released some years ago.

  • @super-poopsy exactly. Rare seems to be backwards developing this title.

    things are supposed to get better, not worse.

  • (from reddit)

  • @unhandythreax said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    just had a 5-6 hours play session yesterday with no problems. no D/C, no pastiebeards and only some intermittent lag spikes. and it still looked better than it had been. but i didnt play at launch i played a week or so after, so maybe i didnt get to see the original awesomeness

    We noticed the same last night when we tested and played for awhile that there were less lag spike and rubber banding, however we will need to see if this holds true as we all keep sailing.

  • @super-poopsy said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @UnhandyThreax Honestly, at this point i'm way more concerned about players/items rendering distance than anything else.

    There's people who could never afford playing at Mythical setting in the first place and maybe for them the difference would be less noticeable, but the players/items distance really touches every single player on both platforms and -at least for me- it has deeply affected gameplay and immersion.

    I clearly remember the first time i played the alpha, thinking how incredibly far i could see players compared to any other multiplayer game out there and now instead we're at a point in which it's even inferior to games released some years ago.

    I totally agree with you @super-poopsy. The player and item rendering distance is the most important issue to get resolved right now. My spouse and I have high end PCs that can play anything without issues, including true Mythical settings. My brother has the newest Xbox running 4K. We played for a little last night and this was exactly the biggest problem and annoyance that diminished the fun the three of us had while we were sailing.

    The player/items distance really did negatively impact us last night and without a doubt impacts every single player on both platforms. We have the gaming rig combination in our family trying to sail and play that can 100% verify that fact. You hit the nail on the head when you said it has deeply affected gameplay and immersion. That is what it does every time we log in.

    If Rare would focus on this particular issue from the ones everyone brought up here and reported, every single player would tremendously benefit. The game overall would benefit and there will be lots of happy captains and crews out there.

    If in the end the other graphics issues cannot be restored to where they were at launch, which we hope not, I think with the rendering issues fixed alongside other improvements in gameplay tweaks, more content, less lag spikes, no rubber banding, etc., we all might be able to reconcile the changes and be happier sailing forward.

  • @orsosilvano said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    even in close ups to see my character at mythical settings the LOD is active, and you decrease the polygons like they were immensely complex.

    Explain me this.

    I've noticed this too, the high quality LOD don't seem to load in until you zoom your camera max all the way on to your character while emoting, and as soon as you zoom out just a tad bit the lower LOD pops back in. Really bizarre issue to be having at Mythical detail.

    https://streamable.com/qm1cd

  • So they just released patch 1.05; I think the servers are still down. I'm hoping that they resolved or at least somewhat improved the LOD issue. Going to run the update while at work and then when I get home later after walking my dog I'm hoping to test it out and see if there's any improvement.

    Does anyone have detail issues when looking at Gold holder mask I'm places that are very congested with geography features like Canon Cove? Every single other Quest I can find the chest on the very first dig a attempt; utilizing that ships map strategically, the placement of the chef's on the islands and major features, and the smaller features like trees, bushes, and visible trails, to find the correct location. For some reason it seems nearly impossible at cannon cove any time I go there to read the map clearly even with 50" 3ft from the screen on xbox one x with hdr 4k.

  • From the patch notes it's not likely.
    I hadn't noticed the issue at all until this week - birds popping in and out of my view as I try to sail, or in one case point out circling birds above a shipwreck!

    Makes you wonder how often a ship has been right there in front of you, but it just hasn't shown!

  • Out of all the things in this game that are driving me crazy.

    Not rendering animal and people at a distance is number one.

    All you do in this game is try to spot ships - people - animals - barrels - sunken ships - birds - and that is the one feature that is broken and making the game irritating to play.

    Please fix this...

    This is not a land based game where you can stick trees in front of the objective and it's okay not to see what's down the road.

    I can't even see if a ship is about to fire on me because the crew is invisible. I can't see if the ship has crew on it so I can sneak up on it. I can't see chickens or pigs or snakes until my ship is humping the island.

    Please fix this.

  • Needless to say, there was no change in the latest 1.0.5 patch.

    There are two more maintenances planned for the 1st and 9th of May, i don't know if those are for the first big update or just still bug fixing, but i'll make sure to check everything back again then.

  • @crowlikedream said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    @unhandythreax said in Streaming and Island LODs:

    just had a 5-6 hours play session yesterday with no problems. no D/C, no pastiebeards and only some intermittent lag spikes. and it still looked better than it had been. but i didnt play at launch i played a week or so after, so maybe i didnt get to see the original awesomeness

    We noticed the same last night when we tested and played for awhile that there were less lag spike and rubber banding, however we will need to see if this holds true as we all keep sailing.

    I got quite a bit more lag/rubberbanding after the update myself. I was fine until they updated. The occasional lag spike but nothing bad. Now it's horrendous.

193
Posts
157.5k
Views
123 out of 193