I recently discovered the use of F11. Hittting F11 when in testmap mode brings up the so-called "Hardware Info Mode". In this mode, hitting:
1 toggles terrain rendering
2 toggles water rendering
3 ...
...
9 toggles entity rendering

Here is an interesting experiment: I created a map with a totally enclosed indoor environment. So the terrain is not visible anyway. However, when terrain rendering is on, I get on my machine 28-30 FPS. Hitting 1 and turning terrain off, I go to the range of 115-130 FPS. Quite substantial improvement in my opinion.

What I am getting at is this: suppose I want to create a totally indoors game / simulation. I do not need terrain rendering, so I would like to turn it off and get 120 FPS. I can do this in test map mode, but I do not know if it is possible in a standalone game. It would be nice to have Lua commands to achieve this! (I will write it also as a request in the Feature Creep section of the forum)

Thanasis

There is a lua command its called hideterrain, check the script commands thread in the scripts forum

That is exactly what I did for my competition level (The Asylum). The speed increase is phenomenal isn't it!

Cheers

Jay.

Yes I use it when teleporting Into wizards sewers and it goes to 200fps for me with full water reflections and all still on

Ye im thinking an indoor or outdoor mode selection would be good directly from the editor ..



What surprises me is ...If its so easy to do with an LUA script then why hasn't it been implemented already

It is Implemented in lua, its so while running around an outdoor map you can turn terrain off when u go indoors and then back when you go back out, if you check my video in the bug reports forum for teleport script, the second video post has the scripts in it and shows terrain off when you teleport to the sewer and then terrain back on when you teleport out, really easy to do just check those scripts

Well, let me ask a couple more questions.

1. Why is terrain so CPU intensive? Isn't it (more or less) another entity?
2. More importantly, if we work with a small terrain, will we get more FPS's? And, how can one set the map to a smaller size?

Thanasis

kehagiat:



1. terrain, while it is an entity, has a LOT of polygons on a map as large as we have, as well as a LOT of physics calculations going on for each and every one of those polys. (And if you look around the forums, you will see that those physics calculations NEVER stop!(yet)).



2. Never tried it, as I haven't even touched Lua for a couple betas (it is a pretty simple language, though!). If the command to turn terrain off has finally been implemented, then I would assume you would have to turn it off and use your own, smaller terrain. You should have an increase in fps. Hope that helps!





EDIT: kehagiat: You got me thinking about what I just wrote! I hope Lee reads this, but I was thinking that with the upcoming conkit and it's optimization of the meshes and textures created, why couldn't we have a terrain/water construction kit of sorts? It doesn't sound that far of a stretch to me, although I am certainly no expert in such things.

@Jerry Tremble

So:
1. use ConKit (when it arrives) or some other terrain building software which can export in x format to build a small(er) terrain entity
2. Load this "new terrain" in the editor
3. HideTerrain() the "real terrain"

This should

Sorry for any misunderstanding, but I don't believe the conkit will ever be able to create terrains. I was merely making a suggestion to the powers that be! I would use any terrain making software in it's stead. L3DT comes to mind. It is pretty user friendly! It may take a few tries, but it works pretty well. You would still need to eliminate the stock terrain and I think you've got that down!

Removing terrain from render doesn't remove it from the level, physics/ poly collision is still present.

You can use custom terrain but may find collision gets funky with enemies if it is too deep or high. The LUA command was requested for v1.0085 so it is fairly new and obviously needs more testing and work done on it.



Hide/Show terrain and water works, but when terrain is switched on the drop in FPS is really noticeable.



You can also use superflatterrain=2 to remove it from render but this has problems with it appearing at a different height when creating a level which causes collision issues with enemy AI when built standalone.

This goes to show how important it is for more indoor level editing support. With performance always being a brought up issue this might help dispel some of the myths that Reloaded isn't ready for indoor levels due to poor performance.



Earlier on, I begged and begged for a disable option for terrain and water and skybox. I'm glad we finally got those.

Yes, obviously dropping stuff out of the engine increases speed. Try turning off physics ;p not much use but you see a slight increase

The problem with removing the terrain for me is the entity graphics (floor tiles) are rendered differently. Perhaps a bug. But I can see a noticeable difference to graphics quality when I remove the terrain, it looks awful. Far better is to enable flat terrain mode and get almost the same boost, but keeping the lighting and shadow effects on the floor looking good.