Constructible Occlusion Planes

[KnorKater]

The more stuff you put into a settlement, the more your computer has to render, which means your framerate goes down if your computer isn't that good. If you're like me, and spend most of the time building detailed settlements, it can become unbearable. Even though most of the stuff is inside buildings, behind thick walls, it gets rendered and processed anyway. Completely unnecessary. This is where occlusion planes come into play. Everything that is completely behind them is prevented from being rendered. If it was possible to just place them via the workshop, it would help a great deal on older machines and big settlements. Just put one between two walls, and everything is awesome. An example:

 

 

An unfinished settlement on Spectacle Island. Most of the Stuff I built is inside. The framerate is at about 47fps (down from 60).

 

 

 

The next screenshot was taken from the same position, just behind an occlusion plane. Framerate is back at 60.

 

 

 

Occlusion planes can easily be placed using the creation kit.

 

 

 

You can change their size by pulling on the arrows, or even create an occlusion box (standing inside that box disables its functionality).

 

 

 

The occlusion plane itself is just a static object, a marker, found in the same list as the other static objects.

 

 

Theoretically, that should enable me to just put it into some workshop menu and place it in my settlement. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. As soon as I open the subcategory where I put it in, the game just crashes. No error message, no log entry (I enabled logs), nothing. I swapped the object in the list for some tree stump, and it worked fine, so I didn't make a mistake in setting up the list, it is the object itself that causes the crash. I tried fiddling around with it, changing stats, giving it a model, but nothing worked.

 

I think the cause is this little detail here. It has an extra page in the editor, when created, setting its dimensions and its status as occlusion plane.

 

 

 

Or maybe the stats are already set, and the very nature of it conflicts with the workshop functionality? I assume the next step would be to try and place an occlusion plane via script and set the necessary variables through that. I've seen other mods, where you place an X-Marker somewhere, and it gets replaced with something else via scripts (the castle's walls, for example). Unfortunately, my modding skills are very basic and I have no clue about scripting. Is anybody skilled enough and interested in getting this to work? I think it would help a lot of people a great deal (including me, ofc :tongue:).

 

Thank you in advance for any constructive replies. :smile:

 

 

Edit: I now have tried placing one via console with "placethere 00000017" (game crashed), selecting the one I added with a plugin via "prid" (worked), move it via "moveto player" (didn't work), and then "spawndupe" (game crashed). It looks like the game doesn't allow for occlusion planes to be added while running, only in the GECK. :( *sad panda*

[KnorKater]

Alright, I just got the confirmation that they can't be added during runtime. :(