TES Skyrim 121212 optimization

[CosmicBlue]

I don't know here to download the grass mod, so can't research what is slow in it's drawing.

Just a guess, but I think, it's because Skyrim doesn't support or use Instancing correctly, is it?

[klotim]

The dof takes some GPU power...Any optimization for that one?

[ENBSeries]

CosmicBlue
Skyrim have instancing, but first of all it's not very effective for grass which only have 2 triangles and not sure if modified grass rendered with instancing. There are many possible optimizations for that, but only if game engine itself isn't limiting performance.

klotim
Optimization of dof require internal dof calculations, so later (i not very interested in dof effect development, nothing creative).

[Uriel24]

I don't know here to download the grass mod, so can't research what is slow in it's drawing.

Та зеленющая и густющая травка это мод Unreal'а, и делиться им видимо не собираются. Ну или просто еще не закончен. Другие моды на нексусе:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/141
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3288

Вообще, за "густоту" видимо отвечает iMinGrassSize, чем меньше значение тем больше травы рисуется. Но ниже 20 эффекта нет, скорее всего какая-то проверка встроена в двигатель.
Может быть можно это победить с помощью плагина к SKSE, не знаю.

edit: если есть необходимость, я могу попробовать связаться с ShadeMe на нексусе. Он один из разработчиков OBSE/SKSE, может быть он поможет с таким плагином.

[Guest]

I think Unreal uses "lush grass" ( http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3288 ) for the size of the grass but to increase the amount I don´t know. There are some alternatives:

"Glorious Grasses", which seems to increase the grass density very much, heavy fps drop (good for testing maybe)
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9185

"SkyRealism" seems a bit more friendly to the computer, still a lot of grass though.
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/25370


This would really be my vote for optimization if its possible, as I said, I think it really makes a difference to how the game looks.

[mindflux]

Okay, good to know you're still working on Sky Lighting flickering bug. Not meaning to pester, though, as it's a minor issue and there's certainly more important stuff too and not only for Skyrim. Regarding the separate sampling range for SSAO and SSIL, I kind of feared the performance hit will be twice as slow in a worst case scenario, but thanks for the confirmation. Anyway, it was just an idea that we thought (no names, but there's this guy called Opethfeldt hehe) sounded interesting.

I'd guess Glorious Grasses is good for testing as it's pretty resource intensive. Lush Grass is probably more or less useless for testing purposes as it basically just enlarged meshes for grass.

[Oyama]

@Boris :
Well, something else.
Since you did go for deffered rendering, you've done optimization after optimization.
It's enough to go back to 0.113 from 12.12.12 to notice how much you improved.
Now we're using (I did before however) post-process methods for anti-aliasing, as SMAA, very best results (IMHO) in emulating AA are downsampling + SMAA to get rid of last remaining jaggies.

Frankly, I never had better quality than when running the game @1440p or 1620p and stacking SMAA upon it.

But, as soon as i'm using SSAO -AND - DOF, the performance hit is huge.
However, if I use ONLY 1 of these, the performance drop is minimal from 1080p to 1440p for example.
We already talked about it, and you told me that it would be possible for DOF to sample only one part of the surface.... Is it as simple as a ' (Sampler , 0.?) x ? ' trick in write or read focus ?

Would there be another way ? Could you find a specific method that would allow us to render the game at higher resolutions, while using same effects, and having ONLY the classic performance drop of downsampling ?

[Guest]

The author of Dark Soul's DSFix (entirely different engine, I know) has in the configuration files implemented some options to have both SSAO and DOF use custom resolutions, independent of the internal or external rendering methods.

For instance, in my current set-up the game does this:
* internal rendering at 3840x2160p (this gives a very sharp, detailed look and reduces aliasing enormously)
* I'm running the game at a driver based resolution of 1620p (my screenshots capture this resolution), and I downsample this to 1080p (monitor size or screenshot sharing size)
* The DOF effect calculates at 810p (which can be set to any size; 2160p with a GTX 560ti is not feasible)
* The SSAO has three size settings. High quality calculates SSAO at the same size as the game is rendered, whereas lower quality SSAO calculates the effect at lower resolutions. I've set mine to medium.

I don't know if those options are actually already sort of implemented in the SSAO size scaling options (I suspect they are), but the ability to do the same for DOF is maybe interesting.


I did like mindflux' suggestion to make it possible to set SSAO and IL values for interiors and exteriors. I understand that calculating IL and SSAO both is a big hit, but the separation of values would be great. In interiors I'm willing to take a greater hit, or have a heavier SSAO/IL effect than in exteriors, where it doesn't look as great in my set-up.

With regard to reflections, I say first develop your vision of them, so we can see how they would look when they look how you want them to look. Right now it's sometimes nice, and sometimes awful. If the look is great, then I could say if I wanted to use it, and then you could work on performance.

Getting a better performance for Sky Lighting and Advanced Shadows would be fantastic. Those still hit my FPS hard.


And then finally. Grass. I'd love it if you could get a performance increase when using lots of grass. Apart from mods that add grass, I think the greatest effect on game looks can be had when using the Skyrim.ini (and Fallout.ini!). Especially this settings:
iMinGrassSize=10
With that value, a LOT more grass is rendered, but in combination with SSAO (and I suspect advanced shadows and skylighting) I get huge performance hits.

Because grass is present both in Skyrim and Fallout, and it adds a lot to the look of those games, I'd love for you to focus on these. Because I don't have a fantastically great computer, I'm used to toggling DOF and SSAO on and off for the sake of screenshots (especially DOF), but grass is always there.

[Guest]

I've been using different EnBs for a long time now, but I'm not a tweaker. Therefore I won't pretend to really know what would be best to optimize. The only thing I can say is that I now have better performance with higher settings (SSAO/SSIL, Skylighting, detailed shadows etc.) than before. I use settings by Oyama and he really likes to push for quality (something I have to admit appeals to me as well). Now, I know I have a rig that's over average and that it's not for everybody to want to push things this much, but I like to second his wish to be able to up my resolution to 1440p and still use DoF and SSAO without the huge performance drop it gives you now. If at all possible...just a little selfish wish .

S

[Oyama]

....but the ability to do the same for DOF is maybe interesting.

Oh yes....