!!!UPDATED MEGA THREAD!!!
This post has been updated to include every major performance test against LODs posted through the current 142 post included here. There is no need for mindless scrolling over opinions and arguments for the facts. Note, these tests get progressively more complex and compelling regarding the faster performance without Nanite.
To Epic Games: FIX this LIE contained in the UE 5.0-5.4+ documentations.
Nanite should generally be enabled wherever possible. Any Static Mesh that has it enabled will typically render faster.
The part where it renders faster is true if quad overdraw has been abused with lots of visible green. Other features you decide to use with a Nanite can make your scene MUCH slower than a scene using automatic and/or maybe 1 minute of manually optimized game focused LODs.
Test links (in chronological order):
1. Test below where done on a 1080p screen on mobile 3060
A high-quality mesh with 5000 triangle’s, NO LODS, 5,000,000 triangles.
Same mesh 5000 triangle’s, with 10 mins handcrafted LODS , 480,000 triangles.
A mesh with 5000 triangle’s, using Nanite. 4000 traingles, but look at the FPS! Worse without LOD FPS LMAO! and no other features like VSM’s where used.
2. Another basic test with large scale rendering
3. Performance loss with Nanite tessellation with landscape
4. Outdated Lyra test(Nanite was slower)
BONUS: Visual issues with Nanite promoted density.
5. Overdraw abused scene
6. Nanite with last gen lighting vs LODs with next gen lighting
A stupid waste of your ms budget: Imgsli
7. Updated Lyra test
8. Six million poly mesh/scene is slower with nanite.
9. Improperly enabled nanite running faster
10. Documented negative experience with nanite
11. Threat Interactive example of subpixel issues promoted by Nanite vs texture quality
12. Overdraw explained and stopping the 'poly count limit' for nanite lie
13: Developer use-case for VR with Nanite
Post 1 & 2, despite a pro-temporal upscaling dev-case, it’s detailed enough to include in test.
14: Threat Interactive report on Nanite performance vs traditional rasterization performance research.
Non-chronological off thread proof:
Optimization? Performance worse WITH Nanite and DX12… : unrealengine (reddit.com)–
Worse performance after enabling Nanite? –
How to optimize Nanite enabled mesh? —(post showcases worse perf after nanite is enabled)
Need more proof?
Test Epic’s 6 billion dollar baby Fortnite performance as an example too.
Stop relying on Nanite people. And YOU/Epic Games need to either fix Nanite or stop revolving other important features around it like VSMs and Lumen. Lumen is amazing but we need lots of micro-optimization there too.
9th generation Fortnite (Nanite, Lumen, etc) would run better than how it runs now with Nanite just by adding LODs.
Optimize your scene with LODs and mainly quad overdraw for now. Because all these new features are pointless if you have to use blurry/artifact upscalers like DLSS or TSR to reach 60fps which should be a standard by now but devs can barely keep up with it. You’re not going to get that “Nanite detail” anyway with blurry upscalers.
TAA and Upscalers ruin motion clarity. What’s in video games? Motion. Lots of it.
Kevin Jimenez
Founder of Threat Interactive.