What is Excessive?

Jonacrab

<div class="IPBDescription">as far as lighting</div>How many lights are too many? Specifically for tech point locations. I tend to use some lights just to amplify bloom effect on certain lights, and the room Im working on is starting to get alot of lights (53 is what it tells me, assuming I havent accidentally added different objects to the light layer). My game runs fine with the current amount of lights, but at the moment all I have is marine start and then a bunch of single planes representing the rest of the map, as well as a finished ready room, so Im assuming I cant necessarily trust it, just because it works at the moment.

So I guess my question is, from peoples experience, in a working map, where should I draw the line on number of lights? Or what other factors should I consider?(room size? map size?) I looked at Summit, and I believe there are about 40 lights in its MS. On my map MS is actually a bit larger, vertically and horizontally, than Summits.

Any input is appreciated.

MaGicBush

Watching some time-lapse videos of Spark, and playing the game/messing around in the editor I think that's fine. However I am new(obviously) to mapping in NS2, and am just now learning the ropes so maybe someone more experienced can answer better. But as you said Summit has 40 just in the MS, a lapse I saw had around at least 30 in the start. Obviously you wouldn't want some insane amount as I would imagine at a point it would start dropping FPS. I'd say no more than around 80 in a room, unless it's a large room but I could be off. 80 is the guide I use, though it's a arbitrary number I came up with based on what I have seen.

SN.Wolf

I don't think it's the number of lights as the question is more of how many of the lights are shadow casting as they tend to be a performance impact and even those seem to have different effects dependent on shadow fade rate and radius.

I'll use my level as an example. In ventilation I have over 130 lights with only 20 of them casting shadows. In Generators I have only ~80 with around 10 casting shadows and i really can't see much if any performance changes. The atmospheric lights just flat out kill my performance and in my case adding only one nails me with a ~8 FPS decrease.

It's really hard to pinpoint as the last few patches brought back the "hitching" for me and made it unplayable but seems to have improved for most. I seen sound work being done in the progress tracker and my console shows errors of 2d sound when meant for 3d sound errors so as long as you stay away from the atmospheric flag and keep the shodow casting as minimal as possible Accent lighting shouldn't be that expensive on your level.

MaGicBush

<!--quoteo(post=1863776:date=Jul 26 2011, 11:39 PM:name=SN.Wolf)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SN.Wolf @ Jul 26 2011, 11:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1863776"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't think it's the number of lights as the question is more of how many of the lights are shadow casting as they tend to be a performance impact and even those seem to have different effects dependent on shadow fade rate and radius.

I'll use my level as an example. In ventilation I have over 130 lights with only 20 of them casting shadows. In Generators I have only ~80 with around 10 casting shadows and i really can't see much if any performance changes. The atmospheric lights just flat out kill my performance and in my case adding only one nails me with a ~8 FPS decrease.

It's really hard to pinpoint as the last few patches brought back the "hitching" for me and made it unplayable but seems to have improved for most. I seen sound work being done in the progress tracker and my console shows errors of 2d sound when meant for 3d sound errors so as long as you stay away from the atmospheric flag and keep the shodow casting as minimal as possible Accent lighting shouldn't be that expensive on your level.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


Makes sense, topic helped to thanks!