Nanite Performance is Not Better than Overdraw Focused LODs [TEST RESULTS]. Epic's Documentation is Dangering Optimization.

I’m upset because Epic has provided something extremely destructive to games and studios.

And I’ve applauded the performance of games not using Nanite: Released UE5 games-The 60fps performance monitoring of games using UE5..

Nanites causes to many problems and hurts regular consumers. Nobody is going to care unless somebody states the “obvious”.
I don’t care about being obvious, not enough people are. Lots of games have used Nanite and this thread might help a studio decideding.

Personally, I want to make the argument between the too, I made this thread to convince LODs and optimizations are worth the investment vs slapping Nanite.

Using Nanite Pros:

  1. No draw calls,
  2. No LODs investments for static meshes,
  3. No pop ONLY on nanite meshes(I have stated why this is pointless here)
  4. Fast kitbashing,
  5. Faster than rendering billions of triangles, (but not millions)
  6. VSMs don’t break on Nanite meshes,

Not using Nanite (Cons, many can be turned into pros):

  1. You need to time and money on optimized meshes with starting polycount and LOD count, merge meshes and materials, optimize meshes per scene, this might be more memory usage.

  2. After you optimize you should get 20% or more free GPU power for computing for more features like #2 below.

  3. You can use Lumen GI and reflections and maintain 60fps on appropriate consumer hardware(30 series and competitor brands) at crisp native resolution. If you use Nanite, it will look blurry because you need to use blurry upscalers to fix the games performance.

  4. By using LODs and optimized meshes, this also makes the game look better without insanely aggressive frame smearing methods like TAA and upscalers. LODs prevent moires pattern and geo density aliasing.

  5. By investing in LODs and optimized scenes, you can make more sales because games that are not blurry are praised by word of mouth, the most powerful advertising you can get. Your studio will be more respected by the majority of consumers which makes your next titles more anticipated.

2 Likes