High/Low Res versions of large objects
Cloudcraft
Join Date: 2016-12-29 Member: 225691Members
Join Date: 2016-12-29 Member: 225691Members
I'm not entirely sure whether to post this here or in bugs as it's a somewhat technical suggestion regarding graphics which are obviously going to be buggy and vary quite a bit while still in development and it is possible my experience has been caused by a bug of some kind.
All of this was observed running on Recommended graphics with high quality water on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960.
Currently I've had significant issues with pop in of large objects and restricted draw range on objects which have affected both my enjoyment of the atmosphere and, to a lesser extent, the gameplay. Upon closer examination it seems as if there is a lack of low polygon count models and low res textures to be used for displaying objects at a distance. In addition to the issues listed below I also got up close to the hull of the Aurora and found that there didn't seem to be any additional models or higher resolution textures to add detail to it.
The pop in generally occurs when using the Seaglide to move around and seems to involve large numbers of objects loading in all at once. This is most noticeable with large ship chunks which can sometimes fail to pop in until I've passed them or am about to run into them. This is especially problematic from a gameplay perspective as these pieces of ship often have valuable items to scan or loot and being able to see them as soon as they should be in view is very valuable. They seem to consistently pop in along with all the little bits of twisted girders, metal, scanable objects, etc which come with them which probably also add to the issue.
Something which started to bother me even more once I started spending more time exploring and popping up to the surface is the fact that objects which look like they should easily be visible when standing atop a piece of land or the escape pod are not, they seem to be using the same draw distance used underwater but with non of the fog to obscure their lack of rendering and it significantly impacts both immersion and the ability to orient myself when exploring new areas where I have no beacons and finding floating objects. This occurs with other escape pods, air pumps and by far most noticeably with the island which I believe was added in the latest update which is clearly so large that I should be able to see it from anywhere I've been on the surface. I assume the island is a piece of terrain but having a low res model of the island visible when the terrain is not being rendered would go a long way.
All of this was observed running on Recommended graphics with high quality water on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960.
Currently I've had significant issues with pop in of large objects and restricted draw range on objects which have affected both my enjoyment of the atmosphere and, to a lesser extent, the gameplay. Upon closer examination it seems as if there is a lack of low polygon count models and low res textures to be used for displaying objects at a distance. In addition to the issues listed below I also got up close to the hull of the Aurora and found that there didn't seem to be any additional models or higher resolution textures to add detail to it.
The pop in generally occurs when using the Seaglide to move around and seems to involve large numbers of objects loading in all at once. This is most noticeable with large ship chunks which can sometimes fail to pop in until I've passed them or am about to run into them. This is especially problematic from a gameplay perspective as these pieces of ship often have valuable items to scan or loot and being able to see them as soon as they should be in view is very valuable. They seem to consistently pop in along with all the little bits of twisted girders, metal, scanable objects, etc which come with them which probably also add to the issue.
Something which started to bother me even more once I started spending more time exploring and popping up to the surface is the fact that objects which look like they should easily be visible when standing atop a piece of land or the escape pod are not, they seem to be using the same draw distance used underwater but with non of the fog to obscure their lack of rendering and it significantly impacts both immersion and the ability to orient myself when exploring new areas where I have no beacons and finding floating objects. This occurs with other escape pods, air pumps and by far most noticeably with the island which I believe was added in the latest update which is clearly so large that I should be able to see it from anywhere I've been on the surface. I assume the island is a piece of terrain but having a low res model of the island visible when the terrain is not being rendered would go a long way.
Comments
Several LODs exist for certain fauna, flora, and terrain.
Entities like wrecks, giant trees, etc etc, do not have lods.
Bases also currently do not unload from memory.