So, found this.
Again, FIX THE DOCUMENTATION EPIC.
Straight from the creator of Nanite.
The primary reason to use lower resolution Nanite meshes is to save on disk space. The performance of lower poly meshes may not be intuitive or like you are used to. Commonly that won’t improve perf. Sometimes it can even be slower. YMMV.
From Brian Karis himself, from this comment.
In MGSV, a HIGHLY performant and GREAT looking game, most assets in the environment are under 1000k tris because the focused on baking tons, in fact millions of polys into normal maps and used good lighting. That is PS4 generation game from 8 years ago, we should only be doubling and keeping under 2k tris. What we lack and big studios like Modern Konami and Bandi Namco lack are workflows that bake detail intelligently. The LOD system is terrible in UE and even Brian Karis said the biggest difference between polies and normal maps is self shadowing.
We should have textures and systems within the engine that fake that.
Nanite should only be used in virtual production NOT GAMES.
We should also be offered stand alone Visibility buffers since that clearly enhances opaque performance, which in turn allows for better budgeting for more important thing like semi-dynamic GI and AO.
Personally, I don’t Epic is going to fix this. Their is goal is make money by making an engine just barely acceptable so enough large studios with praised IP’s don’t have to spend money on up-keeping their own engines.
And the fact that most ppl don’t know about how horrible TAA and upscalers make games looks only accelerates Epic/Studios who use UE success.
Disk space…like that matters when the game performs like trash on good hardware.