Lack of Communication is Staggering : Othor Games

» Mon May 14, 2012 4:32 am

Good day my fellow forum-ers.

First and foremost I want to say thank you to all who have been on this forum trying to help their fellow gamers muddle through the plethora of issues which are plaguing this game. Unfortunately, these fixes have not helped on my end, but they are appreciate none-the-less.

What I really want to say in this post is not trolling, it's not rage filled (pardon the pun) it is a genuine question and I am unsure if a response will ever be given. But. . .

Where is Bethesda/Id in all of this?

Here we are, thousands of people who have spent our hard earned money on a product which they have created for us. We bought it under the pretense that it would be to some degree something which we expect. e.g. A couple of hours of entertainment in the form of a video game. Unfortunately, this is not what we were delivered. . .we were given a product which for all intents and purposes is broken. Any other company would be held accountable for this . . . if you buy a brand spankin' new laptop and you get it home and take it out of the box only to turn it on and find out the HDD is 100% dead. . .you take it back, they say "sorry about that. . .here's another one" and you smile, thank them for helping you and making this inconvenience as minor as possible and you take your new new laptop home and start playing.

Well, here we are. . .our broken product. Where is Bethesda/Id with their key messaging, customer service, and all around voice to the masses? Here we are, a community in peril and at the hands of their product. And they leave us here in silence.

I am impressed at how well the community has come together to try and help each other. But really, it's kind of like when you're little and your big brother helps you get the cookie jar down from the top shelf. Sure, he's helped you get it down. .but you still need to ask Mom or Dad for that cookie.

So, to my brothers and sisters of the angry computer era I say to you, thank you for your help in this matter. You've definitely gotten the cookie jar down for us.

To Bethesda/Id I ask sincerely that you bring us out of the dark, tell us what is going on . . .is there a patch in the works? Is this something which can/will be fixed? Will you be doing ANYTHING to assist all of those who are upset over the product which you created and collected our money for? Or is this the end? I now have a $60 massive file eating up my hard drive which I can do nothing with except remove and wait.

Bethesda/Id. . .all I ask is for that cookie.

Thank you.

» Mon May 14, 2012 11:52 am

I think the mods said that a patch is in the works that would fix various problems and add graphics settings.

» Mon May 14, 2012 2:46 am

I think the mods said that a patch is in the works that would fix various problems and add graphics settings.

Indeed I have a heard a lot of these statements. And I am in no way saying they are untrue by any means. I just feel that seeing how so many people are having the same issues that perhaps an official statement on the Rage/Id/Bethesda homepage would be a more effective way of letting people know what the overall plan is.

There are a lot of placating comments on twitter but I strongly feel that 120 characters is no way to communicate with a massive audience who is just searching for answers.

It's all just my two cents, I don't normally post on forums. . .but I really just wanted to speak up this time around.

I work in Marketing/Communications so I suppose that is why this is all hitting close to home.

» Mon May 14, 2012 11:22 am

For the latest communication from the dev team, check here:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236533-rage-tech-support-updates/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236250-rage-support/
http://www.bethblog.com

For the latest communication from AMD, check here:
http://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator

I have been posting updates as they come in:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236533-rage-tech-support-updates/

New AMD Driver coming Oct 6, according to this tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/Thollenshead/status/121729879417958400

Also, information from Gstaff and Nick Breckon regarding additional fixes:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236250-rage-support/page__view__findpost__p__18743528

Also, information from Gstaff and Nick Breckon regarding additional fixes:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236250-rage-support/page__view__findpost__p__18743528

Below are solutions that may resolve issues you're experiencing with screen tearing, as well as blurry textures + texture popping. If you're experiencing these issues, we recommend you try these one at a time. If for any reason your performance suffers, revert back to the prior settings.

Issues w/ screen tearing
RAGE currently does not have a menu option to turn V-sync on or off.

If the graphics driver supports a so called "swap-tear" extension then RAGE will use it and RAGE will V-sync when running >= 60 FPS and RAGE will tear when < 60 FPS. Unfortunately at the release of RAGE, none of the graphics drivers have the "swap-tear" extension enabled.

The user can force V-sync on or off in the graphics vendor control panel. Right-click on the desktop to access the graphics vendor control panel.

If V-sync is forced on then RAGE will always V-sync.
If V-sync is forced off then RAGE will auto-detect that V-sync is not working and RAGE will instead synchronize to real-time and screen tearing may occur.

Alternatively you can force V-sync on by adding the following to the RAGE launch options in Steam:

+r_swapInterval 1

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in the dialog that pops up.

Blurry Textures and Texture Popping
The texture streaming is limited by the performance and number of cores of the main processor (CPU).

The higher the resolution at which the game renders and the higher the anti-aliasing setting, the more texture data is needed to texture the environment. If you do not have a high end CPU you may momentarily see blurrier textures and texture popping when the view changes quickly.

If you have a processor with few cores and you have a high end NVIDIA graphics card then you can try turning on the "GPU Transcode" menu option in the video settings menu in RAGE. By enabling this option a large percentage of the texture calculations are moved to the graphics\ processor (GPU). However, this option is not available on all graphics hardware and may not appear in the menu if your hardware does not support the necessary features.

On processors with few cores without the ability to turn on "GPU Transcode" you can significantly improve the texture streaming performance by adding the following to the RAGE launch options in Steam:

+vt_maxPPF 16

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in the dialog that pops up.

If you have very few cores like a dual core processor then you can set a lower value like:

+vt_maxPPF 8

If setting these values does not improve the texture streaming performance for you then consider lowering the anti-aliasing setting in the video settings menu in RAGE.

You may, for instance, observe slow texture streaming at high resolutions like 2500 x 1600 with anti-aliasing set to 16X. In some cases lowering the anti-aliasing to 8X fixes the problem but lower settings may further improve the texture streaming. Alternatively, or in addition, you can lower the resolution.

We hope these help. The teams at id and Bethesda continue to work solutions to help you guys. More to come!

On a high end graphics card you can also change the size of the texture cache in video memory. However, on video cards with 512 MB of memory you may see a significant drop in performance. The size of the texture cache can be changed by adding the following to the RAGE launch options in Steam:

+vt_pageImageSizeUnique 8192
+vt_pageImageSizeUniqueDiffuseOnly 8192
+vt_pageImageSizeUniqueDiffuseOnly2 8192

By adding these settings to the RAGE launch options more texture data will stay in video memory which may not only reduce blurry textures and texture popping but will also allow complex scenes to be rendered with more texture detail.

According to Pete Hines,

Working on update to get out soon that adds more video settings for you to work with. AMD & NVIDIA also working on new drivers

http://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/122056368021708800

Update from DerrickG at VALVE, posted today at 12:32pm:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2159339

Almost all the issues with RAGE are hardware/driver related and not an issue with the game itself.

Please note the following from Bethesda:

ATI and NVIDIA are working on updated drivers that should be released today/tomorrow that will fix multiple issues.
Bethesda is working on an update to allow for users to customize their video options which will solve many of the issues users are having.
For the latest information please visit http://www.bethblog.com

Thank you for your patience with this matter. All parties are working as fast as they can to correct the problems with RAGE.

According to Todd Hollenshead AMD drivers coming today Oct 7:

@Thollenshead
Todd Hollenshead
Working to get the new ATI drivers up but won't happen tonight. Tomorrow for sure they tell me.
16 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

http://twitter.com/#!/Thollenshead/status/122123140720623617