Landscape Streaming level LOD doesn't stream in

[Sitrec]

So I’ve read everything I can find on in the forum and the answer hub on this but still can’t figure it out.

I have generated LODS fow one of my levels using the Level Details section of World Composition but I can’t figure out how to make the editor stream them in.
I’ve seen others with the same problem but they didn’t get an answer in the answer hub so I’m trying again.

I have both tried leaving the new generated LOD level in the folder that is created when I generated it and moved it to the same location as the level I generated it from (which is described multiple times as being the right way) and the name is what the Level Details tool named it: The level is called PRF_Name_A1 and the LOD version is called PRF_Name_A1_LOD1. I’m testing while PIE as it shouldn’t stream while just in the editor and I’ve changed the distances of the layer and the LOD to very short distances which makes the original level disappear when very close but the LOD doesn’t stream in. Am I missing something?

Generating the LOD works great, I just can’t get World Composition to use it.

[Maximum-Dev]

There is a “Distance” parameter where you click “Generate” to generate the lod. That distance is where the landscape will vanish and lod will appear. I’m not sure what is not functioning on your end, but that’s exactly what I do.

Edit: The distance does not work if you change it after the LOD is generated. So set the distance first. Also there’s this option to generate multiple LODs but only the first one works (I assume the rest work as a Simplygon specific feature).

[Sitrec]

@Maximum-Dev;578242

There is a “Distance” parameter where you click “Generate” to generate the lod. That distance is where the landscape will vanish and lod will appear. I’m not sure what is not functioning on your end, but that’s exactly what I do.

Edit: The distance does not work if you change it after the LOD is generated. So set the distance first. Also there’s this option to generate multiple LODs but only the first one works (I assume the rest work as a Simplygon specific feature).

I tried it again and it worked now! I’m almost completely sure I did it exactly the same way as I did earlier today but somehow it worked now so perhaps I didn’t set the distance correctly before generating previously as that’s the only setting I changed now when I tried again. Anyways, thank you!

[Maximum-Dev]

@Sitrec;578373

I tried it again and it worked now! I’m almost completely sure I did it exactly the same way as I did earlier today but somehow it worked now so perhaps I didn’t set the distance correctly before generating previously as that’s the only setting I changed now when I tried again. Anyways, thank you!

Glad to see it’s working.
One big problem with this is that you have to make one material and then make one instance per tile lod which is very time consuming task (well depends on how many tiles you have). By default it creates 1 material per lod which is quite inefficient if you have a lot of lods. Still if you don’t want to be efficient, you are forced to do it anyway because the other problem is that the material that is generated for each lod is as simple as a texture hooked to basecolor meaning roughness is 0.5 which makes the terrain tiles look glossy and shine so again you have to plug a 1 to either all lod materials or make a master and make instance for each lod which is vry tedious task. Also, if you make changes to your landscape material then you have to regenerate the lod in order for the lod texture to look similar to the landscape.

I recently made a terrain for The Isle with 256 tiles that was quite an adventure when it came down to creating and applying 1 material instance to each lod. :eek:

[Sitrec]

@Maximum-Dev;578638

Glad to see it’s working.
One big problem with this is that you have to make one material and then make one instance per tile lod which is very time consuming task (well depends on how many tiles you have). By default it creates 1 material per lod which is quite inefficient if you have a lot of lods. Still if you don’t want to be efficient, you are forced to do it anyway because the other problem is that the material that is generated for each lod is as simple as a texture hooked to basecolor meaning roughness is 0.5 which makes the terrain tiles look glossy and shine so again you have to plug a 1 to either all lod materials or make a master and make instance for each lod which is vry tedious task. Also, if you make changes to your landscape material then you have to regenerate the lod in order for the lod texture to look similar to the landscape.

I recently made a terrain for The Isle with 256 tiles that was quite an adventure when it came down to creating and applying 1 material instance to each lod. :eek:

Yeah I just realized that his is not going to be fun haha. I’ve prepared a master material, guess it’s time to watch a movie and mindlessly generate lods.

Do you know if there is any documentation on best practices for how many tiles depending on landscape size? Our landscape is 8k and absolutely packed with foliage but I’m pretty sure I should have gone for more streaming levels. I might split it up more.

[Maximum-Dev]

@Sitrec;578721

Yeah I just realized that his is not going to be fun haha. I’ve prepared a master material, guess it’s time to watch a movie and mindlessly generate lods.

Do you know if there is any documentation on best practices for how many tiles depending on landscape size? Our landscape is 8k and absolutely packed with foliage but I’m pretty sure I should have gone for more streaming levels. I might split it up more.

I did tons of searching and trial and error when creating the landscape for Our Ghosts of War. I came up with splitting it into 1x1 km tiles (1009x1009) for two main reasons. A) 1x1 km size is very good for loading/unloading tiles since 1km chunks do not cover a huge area the transitions between lods aren’t that obvious at all and so performance is also better because you dont have huge tiles that cover areas you are far from. B) As you may know landscape tessellation cost (the initial cost) is dependent on the landscape size (I think you know of the thread I made about it), 1km tiles don’t have that huge initial cost when activating tessellation because they are simply small in size. I still run around with 120 fps in Our Ghosts of War using distance based tessellation. I even unlocked tessellation multiplier and up to 50 subdivisions and still stand at 120 FPS, though would be set to 15 due to AMD cards but for nvidia users we might have the cap higher. Point being I found that 1009x1009 is the best point for us. The only issue with it is that I have 400 tiles to generate lod for and apply material instances to.

[Sitrec]

@Maximum-Dev;578776

I did tons of searching and trial and error when creating the landscape for Our Ghosts of War. I came up with splitting it into 1x1 km tiles (1009x1009) for two main reasons. A) 1x1 km size is very good for loading/unloading tiles since 1km chunks do not cover a huge area the transitions between lods aren’t that obvious at all and so performance is also better because you dont have huge tiles that cover areas you are far from. B) As you may know landscape tessellation cost (the initial cost) is dependent on the landscape size (I think you know of the thread I made about it), 1km tiles don’t have that huge initial cost when activating tessellation because they are simply small in size. I still run around with 120 fps in Our Ghosts of War using distance based tessellation. I even unlocked tessellation multiplier and up to 50 subdivisions and still stand at 120 FPS, though would be set to 15 due to AMD cards but for nvidia users we might have the cap higher. Point being I found that 1009x1009 is the best point for us. The only issue with it is that I have 400 tiles to generate lod for and apply material instances to.

Thank you! That’s great to hear. I did some testing quite a while ago before splitting up our landscape and went with something very similar. I think our tiles are 1.25x1.25 km so not that far off. Our map is not at all as large as Our Ghosts of War but it’s fairly big at about 50km2 or so playable area (not counting unused areas that are under water). I have been following the thread but was unaware of Tessellation on landscape being even viable at all (until it’s fixed) but I haven’t tried turning it back on since I split up the level though. I’ll try it again tonight! Hopefully that and the upcoming fix will make it viable for us to use. Foliage density is extremely high in many areas of our map so we don’t have an abundance of performance to spend.