Hello Götz,
I lied, RC mesh isn’t 500,000 tris, it’s 1 M, but that wouldn’t explain the lack of much difference in the outcome. Of course, I’ve not pushed this downward to a really light asset, like 50,000, which in a big set is where things really have to perform. I’m attaching a couple screen shots of wireframes, here’s the 700,000 faces mesh from ZB:
ZB_wire.JPG
And here’s the 1 M tris mesh from RC:
RC_wire.JPG
Clearly, way more can be done to reduce polys on the cushions, not to mention elsewhere in the carved parts.