Terrain optimizations

Following Epics guide for suggested terrain resolutions and I’m still getting really bad frame rate with simple terrain.

Has anyone successfully made an area the size of a Battlefield map that doesn’t chug? I’m looking for any tips on what I can do to make this run fast.

This seems like something Epic wants to support, are there things on the roadmap that will allow us to make environments to compete with something along the lines of Cryengine?

I picked the biggest size in the Landscape Tab. 8161 and scaled it up by 20 . Had no Problems with it. i have about 120fps (there`s nothing more on the Map at the moment…) .

What is your hardware OP?
I use Cryengine, it has great tools for populating terrains, but UE4 has a huge potential since the large size/nr of terrains are a powerful combo with level streaming.

I´m surprised with the amount of detailed terrain UE4 handles if hardware for it, vegetation to match is more challenging though if need long view distance for bushes/trees, even ground clutter.
Getting transitions right with LOD´s is hard, most engines seem to suffer from it if mix 3d with billboards.

Normally you shouldn’t have any performance problems just with a terrain, but it always depends on the specs of your PC :wink:

When you have meshes in your map:

-use culling volumes
-use the culling function in the foliage tool ?v=l-05YYzxjjw (1:50)
-good LODs

Have you tried disabling real-time thumbnails in your CB?

Thanks Shoiko, disabled thumbnails.

  • I’ll look into culling volumes, they work with landscape?

I have an AMD 6800, 1 gb and 8gb of system ram.

They just work for meshes in your map. When you want to hide certain landscape parts, you should use level streaming.

So I made a new project, turned off Realtime Thumbnails, checked the output log and it appears my card is being used and this is the fps I’m getting:

Considering my system specs that doesn’t seem right? Is it something to do with ATI cards? Because I’ve noticed the threads were people have trouble is either ATI or integrated.

Hi ,

In my personal opinion this would seem about right. On my system at home I was recently using the GTX-470 ( the minimum recommended card for use with the engine from NVidia) and I was seeing roughly the same FPS if not lower in some circumstances, on basic maps and the starter maps. I’ve recently upgraded my GPU to the GTX-750-TI and noticed a significant increase in FPS.

The 6870 is the lowest recommended card for Radeon.

If you’re looking to do large open levels I would suggest a possible upgrade or more aggressively using Culling volumes and level streaming for your terrains as suggested.

You can also check the Feedback for Epic section of the forums where users are posting their Hardware and the results they are getting.

You also have the option of using the engine scalability settings (Mid-way down the page) in the viewport to achieve better FPS as well while you’re working.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask!

Thank you!