Foliage question: HOS vs. RS

[Catalavos]

I don't know if I'm the first to think this but it seems to me that the foliage (trees and bushes) performs much better in RS maps than HOS. By performance I mean that there doesn't seem to be as big a hit to FPS when compared to HOS maps.

Can anyone else offer any opinions or observations on this? Psycho Pigeon maybe...?

 

[PsychoPigeon]

How are you contributing it to just the foliage

 

[Catalavos]

Well, it seems like the amount and density of foliage is the single biggest difference (appearance-wise) between HOS and RS map so I pegged the foliage as the culprit. I've tried adding "dense" foliage to my map projects and the frame rate goes right in the toilet. It may not be the foliage per se but something about the way the foliage is implemented I haven't studied the RS maps all that closely yet to see if cull distance volumes, etc... are helping.

This problem only gets worse when you have a terrain that is rather flat. It seems the engine hates drawing scenes where you have objects at near, middle and far distances all visible at the same time. I'm working on a map now that uses a bunch of the treeline meshes from Wolverine's Arad 2 map as filler (only 20 or 12 triangles each depending on which you use) and even meshes with such a low poly count kill the frame rate.

 

[Catalavos]

...and the tree and bush meshes for RS are also much smaller in terms of triangle count than any of the stock HOS trees/bushes. Many of the HOS trees/bushes have a higher poly count in LOD 2 than some of the RS trees/bushes have in the base LOD.

 

[PsychoPigeon]

RS guys probably had to work harder since vegitation played more of a role in Hanto