Point Lookout Optimization Advice

[Drarack]

Hi,

Pilgrim's Landing is a disaster performance-wise. I'm thinking of trying to improve this. I have only ever made script mods and have no experience editing the game worlds. I have came across the concepts of MultiBounds and occlusion planes. I can't find much info on occlusion planes.

Could someone with the experience and/or knowledge, as briefly as you like just explain what I would need to do and whether I am in the right ballpark in regards to improving performance here? Maybe some dos and don'ts or a link to a good tutorial video or article.

Thanks

 

 

[laclongquan]

There are aspects to Pilgrim's Landing

1. It's the start of PLO main campaign, so there's activators to open up quests and NPCs and creatures for it.

2. It's a 3D map, aka aside from surface's structures, it's also including a bunch of items underwater. So it's pretty demanding in term of processing power and no way to lightening the load without affecting quality of graphic.

You mess with this one and your mod could very well be incompatible to A BOATLOAD of mods.

You can try Anchorage maps if you want less to mess with. Or Mothership Zeta, if you want more. 

[Drarack]

Thanks for the answer. I do have some concern about other mods. Though for fallout 3 anyways, I don't think there are any that edit the structures I'm thinking of. It's the shopping area I was thinking of editing. 

What I was thinking of doing:
In parts where I find it hits fps hard like when in the area where the carnival wheel is or directly outside looking in from the boat, was to put occlusion planes on this walls so that nothing that is behind them will render. 

 

 I didn't see occlusion planes in these areas in the GECK. 

Would Occlusion planes affect activators etc? I thought it would only affect rendering.

[laclongquan]

Your funeral~

[JimboUK]

As far as I know occlusion planes only affect rendering, it wouldn't take long to do and it's worth trying. Something else you might want to check are light sources, they're more resource intensive than people think and are made even worse by the presence of NPC's. 

[Drarack]

Thanks Jimbo. Not sure what the other guy was getting at there.  Probably meant well. 

I know what you mean about the light sources. Especially the flickering types. 

I'll look into this more.

If you or anyone else has any tips or resource links on doing this kind of thing, please share.  Can't find much on occlusion planes

[Pixelhate]

Image courtesy of MacIntroll

[Pixelhate]

Pl is indeed very heavy on perf. I believe RoyBatty has done some scolling work on Pilgrim's landing in TTw, at the engine level it has been discovered that water has a major impact even if invisible, I remember someone doing some optimization work on the tree nif, probably some attempt has been made with occlusion planes as well.
Despite all this PL still is very heavy and it's not totally clear why to this day (blame Bethseda).
I don't want to discourage you but seasoned Modders have tried to tackle this with only a little fps gain.

[Drarack]

That's one of those pictures that are worth a thousand words. Going by that, Mutibounds will be a good idea for this project since the performance issues in Pilgrim's Landing is not caused by the grass, terrain, and the 10 or so NPCs active in that area.

Thanks a lot

edit:

Didn't see your message. It had occurred to me that someone must have thought to do this before and there was some issue or there was little effect. Even Bethesda just to get it to run on consoles. I will experiment a bit and see if there is any advantage. But expectations have been managed.

Thanks again for the info

Edited March 19 by Drarack