Static Collections and PreCombines

[PJMail]

It is definitely all about supporting lower performance systems - remember when these games were released and the power of consoles.

I dare say Starfield will be relying on GPU grunt rather than heaps of pre-optimization. Things change.

 

And SCOLs seem to be more a convenience for game design (a whole bunch of items rigidly moving together). They actually take up more space as the SCOL mesh exists as well as everything that makes it up. I can't comment on whether rendering it is faster or not...

[Qrsr]

On 8/26/2023 at 2:34 AM, PJMail said:

I can't comment on whether rendering it is faster or not...

I can now confirm rendering is "faster" i get more FPS when using a suppressed system. So its definitely something going on when SCOLing the environment.

Also noticed that when adding a "Layer" to almost all the objects in the game world my game runs more stable (which i have no explanation as of now). Is it because the objects are now part of one single plugin? Its totally weird. The plugin is now holding more  than 600.000 objects (still not finished) and the game renders much more stable. What is going on ???

[PJMail]

One thing that has been mentioned by others recently is that an SCOL can only be culled for occlusion as a single object, whereas parts of precombines can be culled.  This would mean that Precombining objects are better for occlusion culling than SCOLing them -  so give a performance advantage in very congested areas like Boston. I have not verified this, but it is worth testing...

[Qrsr]

Afaik occlusion planes and boxes only work without precombines applied ?!

[Glitchfinder]

I believe PJM's point is that precombines can occlude parts of an object rather than just the whole object, while SCOLs + occlusion planes or boxes can only occlude entire objects.

As an example of this, the unofficial patch places several new wall objects and one new floor object in Vault 75, because with precombines enabled there are multiple sections of Vault 75 where you can see into the void. Most notably, there is a floor in the restroom next to the atrium that is part of the broken wall object, but will not be visible because it gets occluded by other nearby objects. Most of the other instances are the two-layered walls that have metal plates in front of concrete. Those walls occlude themselves at certain angles, allowing you to see the void through the now-invisible concrete.

On the other hand, if you SCOL an entire building, the game treats that building as a single object. When combined with occlusion planes, that can mean that pieces that would normally have been hidden will instead continue to be rendered. In the worst case, the entire skyscraper could wind up being occluded even when it should be visible.

[Qrsr]

That was not the point to my question.

If you SCOL an entire building, draw calls are less.

If you Occlude kit pieces, draw calls are less.

Correct?

So what this means, if you SCOL Skyskraper draw calls are far less, especially if the Skyskraper consits of many pieces, like the Trinity Tower consists of 3000 kit pieces, 3000 draw calls at minimum afaik... just for one building. What if its SCOLed. There are less draw calls for the renderer.

So if the same building is not SCOLed, that building has as many draw calls for the renderer as there are objects not occluded.

The question about if the building will pop-in out, flicker due to occlusion planes is irrelevant. If occlusion planes force this kind of thing, then the creator simply has to replace the occlusion planes. That is nothing new.

[Glitchfinder]

Not necessarily, because SCOLs and occlusion planes conflict with each other. Allow me to demonstrate. This is v013 of Unbound World, without the SCOLs:

Behind Boston Library you can see Darthmouth Professional Building, which is mostly being occluded by the library. This is the same location with your v013 SCOL plugin added in:

Now the entire tower is rendered whenever it is visible. It cannot be partially occluded. It is either rendered 100% or 0%, no in between. In this example, using the SCOL produced a net increase in draw calls.

Edit: Just for the sake of comparison, here is the exact same position without Unbound World, just relying on Bethesda's original precombines:

Edited Sunday at 02:58 AM by Glitchfinder
Added a third comparison shot.

[Qrsr]

Hmm this is interesting.

I have to do more tests because it doesnt "feel" as if there is more load on my end, more the opposite but im doing so much that i have to reorder some things later and start from scratch to sort all the data.

So if this is true, then all i need to do is to create unique NIFs correct from the SCOLs to solve the issue?

There is probably no other solution to this, like adding a flag "Non Occluder" or the opposite or something?

[Glitchfinder]

Unfortunately, there isn't going to be any one-size-fits-all solution. That said, if you're going to rely on SCOLs for opimization like this, you need to have smaller pieces. An entire tower just creates more problems, but a floor at a time could allow portions of the tower to be occluded while still reducing draw calls and object count.

[Qrsr]

Alright i will keep that in mind. For now im going all in and just do this with all the cities. And see how much of the theoretical world applies to the real world. So the images for comparison based on the draw call map show less to super chaos in terms of draw calls. Im still curious if this is really true. Because i simply dont trust those images for now. If it turns out to be true well than i have at least a plan b and some other stuff in the back.