Newly placed objects disapear after precombination

[Giggilyomeromicon]

I'm trying to add some additional walls around downtown Boston, with the intention of improving the area's occlusion culling. However, when I precombine a cell the assets I've placed in the world disappear in game. They work fine prior to running the precombination, and they also reappear after I delete their precombined references with FO4Edit. It also only seems to affect objects which I have placed in the world, as vanilla objects appear perfectly fine after precombination. Regenerating visibility and precombined visibility doesn't seem to make any difference.

 

Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

[chucksteel]

You've probably done something wrong while trying to generate Pre-Combined and Pre-Vis. You need to load the cell with Preferences with Grids To load set to 5 (Default Settings) if you've reduced that number to speed up the render window load times then generating Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis won't work.

 

Next you have to generate new Pre-combined for every cell you've edited then go to Visibility and "Generate Pre-Combined Visibility for loaded cells".

 

May I ask what it is you hope to accomplish by walling off sections of Downtown? If your intent is to improve performance I'm sorry to say that it just doesn't work he way you think. Maybe if you disable a bunch of other Ref's but, adding walls won't change the cell's draw count.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

You've probably done something wrong while trying to generate Pre-Combined and Pre-Vis. You need to load the cell with Preferences with Grids To load set to 5 (Default Settings) if you've reduced that number to speed up the render window load times then generating Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis won't work.

 

Next you have to generate new Pre-combined for every cell you've edited then go to Visibility and "Generate Pre-Combined Visibility for loaded cells".

 

May I ask what it is you hope to accomplish by walling off sections of Downtown? If your intent is to improve performance I'm sorry to say that it just doesn't work he way you think. Maybe if you disable a bunch of other Ref's but, adding walls won't change the cell's draw count.

 

Thanks for you reply, I was indeed using a smaller grids to load. Turning it up to five, interestingly enough, has not made any difference in the presence of the walls I have placed, but the occlusion culling for the location where they should be is working now.

 

I gave disabling previs in the cell I've edited a shot, but the precombined objects still do not render.

 

As for what I'm hoping to accomplish, load up a cell in downtown Boston and hit ~twf. If you're too lazy, here's an example:

 

http://i.imgur.com/41wEIpR.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/64cCgQd.jpg

 

The occlusion culling prevents a large amount of the scene from being rendered. If you do use ~twf and have a walk you will probably notice that the FPS drops in Boston usually correspond to instances where the occlusion culling either isn't working right, or the environment is designed in such a way that large amounts of the area are not being culled. This is a problem in areas with long streets, as the game has to render the fronts of almost every building along it. By adding walls sticking out and overlapping with one another, or adding larger skybridges, buildings built over the road, etc. it should be possible to improve performance in large sections of Boston by obstructing these larger, more complicated scenes, breaking them up into smaller pieces that the game can handle better.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Giggilyomeromicon

[chucksteel]

1st Setting the "No Pre-Vis" flag while Pre-Combined meshes are still enabled will break your ability to sprint while in a large group of cells.

 

2nd you can't generate new Pre-Combined and Pre-Vis with the "No Pre-Vis" flag for any relevant cell toggled. It just breaks the entire system!

 

3rd what exactly do you think the walls will do when you get on top of a building such as Trinity Tower?

 

Edit: Not trying to come off as rude if I sound like it I'm sorry.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

1st Setting the "No Pre-Vis" flag while Pre-Combined meshes are still enabled will break your ability to sprint while in a large group of cells.

 

2nd you can't generate new Pre-Combined and Pre-Vis with the "No Pre-Vis" flag for any relevant cell toggled. It just breaks the entire system!

 

3rd what exactly do you think the walls will do when you get on top of a building such as Trinity Tower?

 

Edit: Not trying to come off as rude if I sound like it I'm sorry.

 

I set the no previs flag after I ran the precombination geometry, the previs, and checking in game to see whether it was working. I was wanting to see if the issue was related to previs or precombined geometry, and it seems to me that it is indeed an issue with the precombined geometry.

 

Also, you're right, adding walls will not do anything to help performance when the player is elevated. There isn't really a way around that, besides walling off those areas too, but I'm only really thinking about street level right now.

 

By the way, I'm testing this by loading a save in an interior cell linked to the exterior that I've edited, could that be causing a problem?

[chucksteel]

it shouldn't because doors are Persistent and Persistent refs don't get included in Pre-Combined.

 

I have had to generate Pre-Vis for a cell several times before it took but, again the "No Pre-Vis" flag will defeat generating it in the first place, even if you set it after generation. Also you still won't be able to sprint with Pre-Combined enabled and the flag set.

 

Edit: If you don't know Pre-Combined meshes work on a cell by cell basis where Pre-Vis works on a 3x3 grid.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

it shouldn't because doors are Persistent and Persistent refs don't get included in Pre-Combined.

 

I have had to generate Pre-Vis for a cell several times before it took but, again the "No Pre-Vis" flag will defeat generating it in the first place, even if you set it after generation. Also you still won't be able to sprint with Pre-Combined enabled and the flag set.

 

Edit: If you don't know Pre-Combined meshes work on a cell by cell basis where Pre-Vis works on a 3x3 grid.

 

Right, I only set the flag for testing, I'm not planning on using the flag permanently. At the moment I've got the walls enabled by removing their Precombined references with FO4Edit, but somehow allowing a hand placed occlusion box to continue working.

 

That's unfortunate about that bug, though. Does Precombined disabled and Previs enabled produce the same results? I had thought about making a catch-all patch for flora mods that would just disable Precombination in all cells with trees that are outside of Lexington, Cambridge, Boston, etc.

[chucksteel]

No its just when Pre-Combined is enabled and the "No Pre-Vis" flag is toggled that you have the sprint issue. You may however see some odd Occlusion issues if the Pre-Combined is disabled.

 

I run into this in my mod The Beantown Interiors Project from time to time because it open up buildings that would normally be inside of the occlusions themselves.

[Giggilyomeromicon]

No its just when Pre-Combined is enabled and the "No Pre-Vis" flag is toggled that you have the sprint issue. You may however see some odd Occlusion issues if the Pre-Combined is disabled.

 

I run into this in my mod The Beantown Interiors Project from time to time because it open up buildings that would normally be inside of the occlusions themselves.

 

Do you use Precombination/Previs or Occlusion Boxes/Planes? Since precombination/previs seem to refuse to work for me I think that I could just make do with Occlusion Boxes, but I'm having a difficult time getting them working alongside Previs.

[chucksteel]

I use both a trick, The "No Pre-Vis" Flag set and Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis because I also maintain XB1 mod support and generating all the Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis would make the mod to large for XB1 and incompatible with many other mods on all platforms.

 

I use the trick of toggling the "No Pre-Vis" Flag and disabling Pre-Combined (to fix the sprint issue) as much as possible but, if the cell has water setting the "No Pre-Vis" Flag creates a water glitch so those cells get the full treatment.