FPS decrease culprit: size of model? number of placed objects?

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1

I am new to scenery development. I am working on enhancing the scenery in my local area. I have cleaned out incorrect vegetation and added hundreds of a new tree type. It is definitely causing a hit on FPS.

Is it more likely the size (in MB) of the tree model or the number of trees I am placing that is the biggest problem? Or is it a math problem? # of trees X size of model and just coming up with a workable size.

I see payware scenery that advertises “6000 hand-placed objects” and they don’t seem to have much of a FPS hit. How is that possible when I have such a big hit on just hundreds of objects?

Thanks for any advice!

2

They use LOD method. In other words, when you look at the object from afar, it’s actually using a simple lower-poly count object, so the GPU doesn’t render as much detail when viewing from a distance.

Only when the camera gets closer, the angle of view narrows, so the sim will take the higher detailed object to render at higher quality.

So even on 6000 hand-placed objects… Each of these 6000 has different LOD quality. When you look at all 6000 objects in one frame, chances are all 6000 of them are low-quality objects so the GPU doesn’t work as hard. But when you zoom in or get closer and you end up looking at 100 objects in front of you, then the GPU would only render these 100 objects at higher quality, while the remaining 5900 objects are not being rendered at all since they’re off-screen.

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3

Perfect answer, thank you. Exactly what I needed. Now I can research LOD. If I had read the docs, I probably would have found this out, but I just like to get in and start working, trial and error, haha.

4

well, if you dont have some serious background knowledge you will keep running into problems. eventually giving up…seen already many of those.

5

Thanks for the encouragement.

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6

the good thing is that a) you are trying b) you are learning.

decreased fps is going to be down to lots of factors from texture size to polygon count to animation frames etc etc etc.

LoD is important and worth looking into via YouTube for a general overview.

don’t forget although 1 low poly thing (example “tree”) is easy on the game, once you start to add lots, it soon adds up.

keep at it and let us know how you get on.