Update #21 (Optimization, Performance Mode, and Improved Options Screen) (Patreon)

Hey Everyone! Tons more VHS and video realism-related work this week! Along with some big optimization news on improvements for all levels and news on a nearly completed and long-awaited Performace Mode!

Let's get into it!

Highlights:

⋅ Huge Optimization Improvements! (Details in "The Details")

⋅ Options Screen Rework Improvements (From this week's comments!) (Update in "The Details")

⋅ VHS Filter Rework Progress (80% Done)

⋅ Seamless Level Transitions Progress (30% Done)

Coming Soon:

⋅ Improved Options Screen Rework Leak! (Set for Tuesday! 9/19)

⋅ Level Contest Winner Announcement! (Set for Wednesday! 9/20)

⋅ Performance Mode Unvail! (Set for Thursday! 9/21)

⋅ Childhood Memories Item Submission Announcement! (Set for Friday! 9/20)

⋅ VHS Filter Rework Finish & Leak! (Set for Saturday! 9/23)

⋅ Seamless Level Transitions Work! (More updates coming next week!)

The Details (For Nerds):

Before we get into our optimization let's get a quick update on the progress of our Options Screen! I'd first like to thank everyone who has commented and given their opinion on the options screen leak. The amount and quality of everyone's feedback has been absolutely amazing! After going through and gathering the best of the best we have a new leak that is coming out tomorrow! 

We've got some big optimization success to talk about! Nearly 20 fps improvements across all levels!

Optimization has been a huge beast we've had waiting in the corner for a while now. And it's finally come time to start some serious work on it. This week we focused mainly on light attenuation optimization along with light and nanite culling.

Let's start off by getting a big picture.

Culling, for those who don't know, is the process of removing objects or lights from your render pass when they aren't needed. For example, in a city environment if the player decides to walk into a building, after they shut the door we won't need to render any of the outside environment anymore. We can then cut all objects and lights outside of our building out of our render and give our FPS a healthy boost while they are inside. A little note: UE5 does do quite a good job at this already, but does still (most of the time) leave quite a bit on the table, especially with unculled lights. With this in mind, we started by sectioning off bigger rooms and places where we could cull large amounts of objects and lights that weren't needed. After quite a long time tinkering around with what to cull and what was the most valuable to cull, we moved on to smaller areas and worked the same idea on a smaller scale.

Next up is some quite simple Light Attenuation Optimization. The attenuation of a light is the area in which the light affects the scene around it. (Lumen extends this, but only in a GI sense). The bigger the area of attenuation, the more expensive the light gets to render, and with big, complex scenes, the amount of lights affecting a single space at the same time can get to be a lot, and as a result VERY expensive. To optimize this and get some of our precious performance back, we can adjust these areas and move our non-important lights to better, less overlapped places.

After a lot of messing about with these two methods we've compared results and have gotten an on-average jump in fps of about 18 fps and some massive optimizations in certain scenes of almost 30 fps! WOO

Next week we'll have our VHS filter leak and some exciting updates on Seamless Level Transitions, so stay tuned!