Render only what the screen sees

[MorpheusDruidic]

I was wondering if its possible to make a mod that forces Oblivion only to render graphics that actually appear onscreen (a companion/object/etc behind a wall will still be loaded and take up system time/resources). I think that this effect exists in WoW and i think COD4MW which is why those games are so PC friendly. Tons of people in the community are always complaining about outdoor fps which i think that Oblivion rendering what you cant see to be the #1 culprit. This is my most wanted mod and could open up a whole new realm of possibilities for players and modders alike.

 

In otherwords take 15 Companions/Duplicates/whatever, when they are "behind" you your fps will go up, but if they are behind a wall your looking at Oblivion interprets this as if they are standing right in front of you and eats fps. Id like something that prevents this without sacrificing aesthetic quality. A huge project im sure but well worth it.

[Deleted1217574User]

I imagine it would actually make your FPS worse, because when you turn, say, 90 degrees, it has to render all new items. So, say you look to your left and there's a forest. You'd have to wait for it to render all those trees as you go along, rather than the initial render which takes a bit longer when you change cells. That's a poor explanation, I realize... Essentially I'm saying it would be faster to render everything all at once, once, than to render small parts of it every couple seconds.

[Sorgren]

I agree with Raithfyre, plus it is nearly impossible to mod it for Oblivion

[majikmonkee]

I liked the concept of this idea, but I already run into issues, my character runs so fast, it stutters ever so slightly everytime I get a "loading area" message. That's what I get though for running the game on an Emachine I got for $150 that still has all of the out of the box hardware. I'm surprised it runs the game at all frankly.

[MorpheusDruidic]

I imagine it would actually make your FPS worse, because when you turn, say, 90 degrees, it has to render all new items. So, say you look to your left and there's a forest. You'd have to wait for it to render all those trees as you go along, rather than the initial render which takes a bit longer when you change cells. That's a poor explanation, I realize... Essentially I'm saying it would be faster to render everything all at once, once, than to render small parts of it every couple seconds.

 

Yes but Oblivion already as stock doesn't render whats actually behind your character which is good. I want that effect for Objects/Chars that are already in front of you. Ill explain again, if u have 15 companions tagging along with as long as your not looking at them you get a massive fps boost, but if u put those 15 companions behind a wall and look right at the wall, Oblivion interprets this as looking at the wall AND the 15 companions (plus any objects that may be behind it while you are looking at it). If they were only rendered when you actually are "seeing" them this could improve fps globally. When you spin your character around the GPU already has to render new items but a lot of items that you cant even see that are behind objects are rendered as well.

 

Try this, place 10 animated fountains in front of your character, your fps will decrease, now look 180* away from those fountains, the fps will increase, now stick a wall in front of those 10 fountains (you cant see the fountains) your fps will still go down as if the wall wasn't even there. This is what i mean by rendering what the screen sees, if you cant see it it shouldn't be rendered. The fps couldn't possibly suffer from this as Oblivion renders new items as soon as you turn you screen as is (u can find this out with the console and tdt commands), but it renders objects you cant see just because you are looking in that direction.This is exactly why indoor fps is so much higher then outdoor, as indoors there is nothing behind that wall, but outdoors there is. Hope that clears it up.

 

Would be a very hard project im sure and nearly impossible but the same can probably be said for mods.

 

As for "Loading area screens" those can be removed with OSR i believe and decent hardware. I can run with a speed of 250 clear across tamriel without a single "loading screen"

Edited November 30, 2010 by MorpheusDruidic

[Sinael]

You will not be able to use Detect Life spell then. Technology of such kind was used in games up to year 2001 or so, but then that methods were discarded for numerous reasons.