Confused About Optimizing Landscapes in Unreal Engine 5 – Need Help!

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hi all,

I’m currently working on a moderately sized open world project using Unreal Engine 5, and I’ve been struggling with properly optimizing landscapes. I’ve watched some videos on landscape optimization, but I’m having difficulty understanding the balance between performance and visual quality, especially with Nanite and World Partition combined.

What I am confused about is whether or not to utilize landscape LODs with Nanite on. I don’t know if I should be relying more on Runtime Virtual Textures, or if there are better methods when actively managing texture streaming and foliage rendering.

I’d love to hear anyones personal workflows they use when optimizing landscapes, especially when targeting mid-level gaming PCs. I want to maintain the quality , but the frame rates are starting to dip when I start filling the world with trees and assets.

I came across this website: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/large-landscape-optimizations/cissp-course-online and i’m still confused ,can somebody help me out!

I appreciate any input! Any advice, tips and even links to recent material would be greatly appreciated! I’m just trying to learn and don’t want to run into a performance ceiling too early in my project.

I look forward to your responses!
martinanderson

2

First of all you need to understand that optimization is divided into two types which are CPU and GPU optimization. Both GPU and CPU needs to communicate well to each other to maintain the performance. In short, there is no strict or fixed solution to optimize your game. That’s why we have game profiler, to analyze the elements that cost the frame rate.

Since you have mentioned about nanite and the noticeable performance drop when you start placing the foliage, my best guess is that you are using the nanite function in a wrong way. Up until now, nanite hates masked or transparency materials. This is a common mistake for artists to make. Can you confirm this for start?