Software Occlusion Culling beta - how's your experience so far?

colossalvoids · March 2023

Software Occlusion Culling (Beta)
Software Occlusion Culling is now available as an optional graphical optimization. Enabling this feature will prevent the game client from performing rendering calculations for objects that are completely hidden from view by other objects. Doing so can provide a performance boost at the cost of additional memory usage. You can test this feature by adding the following line to your UserSetting.txt file: SET SoftwareOcclusionCullingEnabled "1"

A heads up for some, but if someone already have an experience to share with this feature feel free to list your specs and how it affected your gameplay so far!
Probably might not be advisable to try on super low RAM specs.

KilianDermoth · March 2023

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aaisoaho · March 2023

KilianDermoth wrote: »

What I am wondering is if it takes more CPU power (because of software, I guess its done on the CPU side) or less (maybe the CPU has to prepare less for the GPU this way and improveing performance of both).

Because on my computer I think the bottleneck which causes lags and stutter is the CPU, not the GPU. Especially if many players are visible who activate many AOEs, buffs, effects and such which interact with each other (trial setting for example).

On a strong CPU and low GPU this option might for sure work and improve the games performance but I am not sure if it works also the other way (not saying my CPU is weak but the game seems to be CPU heavy, especially in some situations, while GPU performance can be easily fixed by lowering quality).

Maybe I just have to try it out.

Doesn't memory usage suggest it would take more RAM to use it? In any case, I am interested in seeing how others experience it and if it makes the game smoother on mid tier computers.

KilianDermoth · March 2023

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Snamyap · March 2023

Find it kindda hard to gauge. Got my fps capped at 60, gonna try and keep an eye on whether it dips below less often in cities.

karthrag_inak · March 2023

Great addition! Now they should be able to up the limits in housing.

zaria · March 2023

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

CameraBeardThePirate · March 2023

I run the game on max settings in 4k. Didn't play tons, but hopped on to test the setting. I usually hang out in Vivec City, and generally get around 70-90 frames before the new setting. After enabling the new setting, I get about 100-120 frames in Vivec City.

danno8 · March 2023

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

For objects not in the frame or "screen-space" yes its been around forever. I don't think its the same for objects that are occluded by other objects though.

I could be wrong though.

colossalvoids · March 2023

danno8 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

For objects not in the frame or "screen-space" yes its been around forever. I don't think its the same for objects that are occluded by other objects though.

I could be wrong though.

That was my understanding also.

zaria · March 2023

danno8 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

For objects not in the frame or "screen-space" yes its been around forever. I don't think its the same for objects that are occluded by other objects though.

I could be wrong though.

I thought it included hidden by objects, now this is probably careful and if you have an Khajiit and only the tail tip is visible the entire character is rendered but I thought this was something done as first step of rendering there you create an view of the 3d environment. Its no way an entire dungeon is rendered all the time stuff like that should change framerate depending on the direction you was looking.

danno8 · March 2023

colossalvoids wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

For objects not in the frame or "screen-space" yes its been around forever. I don't think its the same for objects that are occluded by other objects though.

I could be wrong though.

That was my understanding also.

Yes, and the reason it uses more memory (according to ZoS patch notes) is because it needs to keep more objects in RAM in order to make the rendering of the objects near-instant once you peak around the corner of a building or mountain that has been blocking an entire landscape worth of "culled" objects that didn't need to be shown a moment ago.

My guess is that it will take CPU cycles to calculate what to cull, but the savings in not having to actually render the objects will maybe make the CPU toll a wash. But it will definitely save you some GPU but also use more RAM.

So in all, if you have plenty of RAM this will likely help. The game only uses around 3-4g of RAM. Most rigs these days have at least 8 to play with, with 16 being more common at around 70% having that or more (according to Steam Hardware Survey).

danno8 · March 2023

zaria wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

For objects not in the frame or "screen-space" yes its been around forever. I don't think its the same for objects that are occluded by other objects though.

I could be wrong though.

I thought it included hidden by objects, now this is probably careful and if you have an Khajiit and only the tail tip is visible the entire character is rendered but I thought this was something done as first step of rendering there you create an view of the 3d environment. Its no way an entire dungeon is rendered all the time stuff like that should change framerate depending on the direction you was looking.

I can't say for sure.

I mean in any game if you stand in front of a wall blocking the scenery your FPS will generally go up, indicating that the game is not "secretly" rendering the whole scene out of view. And of course it will not render anything outside your FoV, like behind you, for example.

I guess this Occlusion Culling is just an extension of this principle. Perhaps applying to objects that are further out than usual or something?

Also, in regards to changing frame-rate while looking in certain directions, I have actually had that happen in several games, even when staring at a wall, lol. Perhaps a problem with the object culling not working somehow.

Edit: also it occurs to me that "Software" Occlusion Culling may mean it is being shunted from the GPU to the CPU, in order to free up GPU cycles if you are GPU bound. If that's the case then this may have negative effects on those who are CPU bound.

colossalvoids · March 2023

Actually thought it might solve some issues on degrading performance part of doing dungeons etc. as they've claimed it's not a memory leak but other issues years back, seems it's not the case in any regard.

mbeetley_ESO · March 2023

I tried it for a couple of days, and it did show some improvement in situations where I get FPS drops. However, I think I encountered a bug when I was doing Volcanic Vents on Galen.

Typically my FPS plummets during those events when there are a lot of other players presernt. But with this feature enabled, I had a different problem: invisible bosses. There were two situations where, when the final boss 'appeared,' it was invisible throughout the entire encounter. I could see the health bar, and I could see that the attacks I was setting off were doing damage, but I never actually saw the target. I just set off attacks in the same direction as everyone else. It also happened once with a Magma Golem at one of the side vents. I'd never seen this before, so I wonder if the system wasn't treating the boss as "behind other objects" due to the amount of particle effects going off from all the players who were there.

mbeetley_ESO · March 2023

I should add in re: some of the other comments, probably the strongest point in my rig is my GPU; it's by far the newest component, and while it's no longer top-flight, it was pretty high end when I got it. My CPU is at least 3-4 generations old, and RAM is DDR3 accordingly. I do have 32GB RAM so that might be part of why this feature helps me (despite the apparent bug). I sometimes use the multi-threading CPU feature, but while it makes the FPS higher on the meter in the corner, I find at times it introduces a brief hitch about once a second, which can be more maddening than occasional drops in FPS. Gotta get a new CPU/MB/RAM one of these days, but since they all have to be upgraded I'm not sure I'm ready for the cash outlay.

Trejgon · March 2023

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

I remember bethesda advertising it for Oblivion as new revolutionary tech they be deploying specifically with this game, so I would say, there was definitelly period of 3d games existing when it was not industry standard.

But then considering ESO started development after oblivion released, and a number of games older than ESO that had it from the get go, it is surprising to learn it was not a thing in ESO up until now.

mbeetley_ESO · March 2023

Trejgon wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

I remember bethesda advertising it for Oblivion as new revolutionary tech they be deploying specifically with this game, so I would say, there was definitelly period of 3d games existing when it was not industry standard.

But then considering ESO started development after oblivion released, and a number of games older than ESO that had it from the get go, it is surprising to learn it was not a thing in ESO up until now.

I believe those earlier references, e.g., the one about Oblivion, were to Ambient Occlusion, which is a technique for rendering shadows (and maybe other things too). ESO has had that in one way or another for a long time. This Occlusion Culling thing is something different. Not saying other games haven't used something similar to it, mind.

I_killed_Vivec · March 2023

I set it last night after quitting the game, and forgot about it today when I played...

To be honest I didn't notice much of a difference, maybe a little more clarity when all of the explosions landed on the WB's head, but I can't really be sure. I'll try to put it through some serious tests tomorrow.

But it certainly didn't hurt to enable it, though my PC isn't constrained by CPU or RAM. Or GPU for that matter:)

Trejgon · March 2023

mbeetley_ESO wrote: »

Trejgon wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

I thought occlusion culling had been standard for as long as we had 3d games?

I remember bethesda advertising it for Oblivion as new revolutionary tech they be deploying specifically with this game, so I would say, there was definitelly period of 3d games existing when it was not industry standard.

But then considering ESO started development after oblivion released, and a number of games older than ESO that had it from the get go, it is surprising to learn it was not a thing in ESO up until now.

I believe those earlier references, e.g., the one about Oblivion, were to Ambient Occlusion, which is a technique for rendering shadows (and maybe other things too). ESO has had that in one way or another for a long time. This Occlusion Culling thing is something different. Not saying other games haven't used something similar to it, mind.

I specifically remember an animation showcasing how it was supposed to do, using example of a wall and a gate, and only parts of terrain behind the wall being actually renered where the one visible from player camera perspective through that gate. they would then move the player camera sideways showing how rendered area of visible terrain adjusted for different parts of the terrain being seen when looking at same gate from different angles. Which sounds exactly like "not rendering objects obscured by other objects" to me.....

CoolBlast3 · March 2023

Still trying to get it to work, personally.
Disabled all addons, disabled overlays, changed fullscreen/windowed options, lowered graphics, no matter what I do it keeps CTDing (crashing to desktop) on login when the option is enabled.

colossalvoids · June 2023

Seems like it might help with degrading performance, had a first dungeon night since patch and don't recall dropping as many frames as usual so it gets noticed, might be indeed related to the new option.