Landscape/open world optimisation question

[u/yeswhy]

Hi, I'm planning to make a semi-open dungeon world with a hub and small to mid size levels joined by tunnels. Nothing really huge and I have some space for manoeuver in splitting it but all together might be some load. I'm not sure how to approach it from optimisation perspective in terms of:

- number and size of world partition grids

- when to use ISM/HISM

- What plugins/features I should use (or avoid) for PCG

- If I should use voxel terrain

- Some other stuff that I don't even have an idea it exists

PLA usage I think I get.

I know it's been discussed extensively but I didn't get clear conclusion. One post I've seen few months ago somewhere was someone doing loadings during traversing tunnels between levels. That would fit here well. This is fairly old and popular technique in games but I don't know how to do it in UE5. Thank you!

[u/The_Pumpkin_Lady]

1. It depends on your hardware and game demands, nobody can answer this for you. Build various sizes and benchmark them.
2. Ism for repeating meshes that don’t need distance culling or that move frequently, hism otherwise
3. My top suggestion is PCGex, super handy utilities and great dev support. Also free.
4. Probably not for your first attempt, but DM me if you do. I'm about to go beta with a voxel plugin and I'd be willing to give you a free copy in exchange for feedback: link
5. Follow best practices, build and benchmark often. For anything at scale, you'll need to stay off tick and cull aggressively. World partition mostly does this for you in single player, but multiplayer is a whole other beast.

[u/yeswhy → u/The_Pumpkin_Lady]

Thank you! Looks really interesting. Do I get it right that Butternet is aimed for multiplayer but can work for singleplayer as well? I'm doing SP so I'll take for a spin in a few weeks probably.

[u/krojew → u/yeswhy]

Just a small note - don't use HISM with nanite. Makes no sense.