Qrsr Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 Is a SCOL technically the same as a PreCombined Cell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJMail Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 Similar to a precombine mesh in a precombined cell - in that they are a number of static objects put in the one mesh - but different in construction. Precombined meshes can have their collision in a seperate mesh (the physics_...nif in the cell), and they can have common static objects parts kept in a seperate geometry file in the cell (to reduce their size). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJMail Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 Also it "appears" SCOLs are actually rendered from their individual components still - not the scol mesh - but this is still being debated by the precombine experts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qrsr Posted August 23, 2023 Author Share Posted August 23, 2023 Also it "appears" SCOLs are actually rendered from their individual components still - not the scol mesh - but this is still being debated by the precombine experts.Alright my english is not superb and i hope i dont ran into a language barrier, but if we compare a SCOL with a PreCombined mesh wihch both consist of the same number of static objects which of these 2 variants is more "resource hungry", more efficient in load/rendering Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qrsr Posted August 23, 2023 Author Share Posted August 23, 2023 I have a feeling that a SCOL wouldnt lack much if at all compared to a PreCombined mesh composition in terms of performance/load/rendering. Thus if one would add compelx structures to location X all you need to do is to combine it into a SCOL. Its extremly powerful from my personal testing ... so im seriously asking myself why would you want to PreCombine a cell if you could technically SCOL the entire cell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJMail Posted August 24, 2023 Share Posted August 24, 2023 It's a good question. Bethesda SCOL'd some very large areas (the stands in Diamond City for instance) that they could just precombine. Precombines take up less space (because of the shared geometry file) so are better suited to consoles - so perhaps that is the real reason... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qrsr Posted August 24, 2023 Author Share Posted August 24, 2023 PJMail that is the real reason! ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qrsr Posted August 24, 2023 Author Share Posted August 24, 2023 It's a good question. Bethesda SCOL'd some very large areas (the stands in Diamond City for instance) that they could just precombine. Precombines take up less space (because of the shared geometry file) so are better suited to consoles - so perhaps that is the real reason...It makes me wonder if the High Texture mod DLC addon expansion or total destruction in terms of authenticity is available for console ? lol,to my last question is do you know some numbers on how much a PreCombined cell can outclass a SCOLed cell? is 100% better than SCOl or 10% or 1% ? Better in terms of space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJMail Posted August 24, 2023 Share Posted August 24, 2023 I don't think anyone has tested this, but I do know that precombined cells done without shared geometry (so effectively SCOL) are 2 to 5 times bigger than the same done with shared geometry... So at least half the size... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qrsr Posted August 25, 2023 Author Share Posted August 25, 2023 (edited) Alright thats interesting, so it seems it really is just about size here. In reverse, if one compares lets say 1000 misc items to 1 scol of 1000 misc items. How much less load or else would that mean? Would it affect performance, noticable? I assume the more complex the NIF/mesh itself the more benefit SCOL or PreCombining has?!Or is it about shadow/light, calculation based on either 1 (scol) or many loose (misc, or else) files?! From what i can see its just about rendering itself, light, navigation, ai, pre-calculation ... Also interesting in that regard is how much L3 cache the hardware is offering and if its Intel or AMD. From what i can see in the benchmarks even L3 is not L3 and in terms of creation engine or fallout 4 L3 is the bottleneck today. Everything comes down to L3 cache. So with a powerful machine or ~20+ MB of L3 cache even loose files like a myriad of injected objects of any kind would not affect performance noticably anymore but with older machines its still of interest. Graphics card is less of a problem at least if you dont use 9000k textures. Edited August 25, 2023 by Qrsr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts