Increase Subnautica view (draw) distance (WIP needs optimization)

0x6A7232 · February 2018

EDIT: https://steamcommunity.com/app/264710/discussions/0/1693785669845485600/

Not sure why I had a link here ▼, but it no longer works, but this link ▲ does.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1279642367

EDIT2: Ugh, my head. Apparently that's a different, but similar thread, and the previous link was to a (no longer existing?) mod to do basically the same thing? Not sure any more, it's been a long time, maybe someone can help me out here? What was in the OP, a mod?

IntotheVoid · February 2018

I tried it. It reduces pop in to almost nothing. But the impact on performance is too severe.

Rainstorm · February 2018

I can see the difference in the pop-ins but in my humble opinion, unless you got a very good computer the gain isnt worth the performance loss. If you got a beast computer it might be worth trying, personally my computer and gpu arent high-end so i'll pass.

That being said its cool to see people exploring avenues to eliminate some problems (in this case pop-in). Sometimes a player-found fix can be a good solution until Devs get to look into it. In this case however its a trade-in that is most likely not worth it for most people imo

0x6A7232 · February 2018

@Rainstorm @IntotheVoid it's not finished yet.

Lucifer69 · February 2018

Love the concept here. In my experience pushing render distance to nearly double the in games default max tends to result is extreme instability. However I have yet to get a crash here which is impressive to say the least.

Edit: Anyone with an average or below average PC should probably avoid this config. It's likely to wreck havoc.

Ultra settings and 1440p with this config gives me around 45 fps minimums depending on the area. Without the config it rarely dips under 144 fps. Even so very impressive and with a few tweaks to settings and the config I can get it to a fairly stable 60 fps. Kudos.

SickSix · February 2018

I was just wondering about this. When I read that the game was designed to run on an Ipad I was worried that it wasn't optimized to use all the possible RAM a PC can have. Eagerly awaiting the finished product.

Caiobrz · February 2018

Whoever posted that on steam doesn't realize a few things:

1. chunksPerSide are not supposed to increase, they are basically the same (different entities?) except the last one which seems focuses on vertical biomes.
2. just increasing loaded chunks and not tweaking the engine to act accordingly is what drives the game unstable. One of the best way to counter it without adding instability is to increase maxThreads from 2 to at least 4 (I don't suggest more as Unity is not optimized to handle more than 4 cores)
3. Increases in one dimension on a two dimension plane is quadratic, so doubling it actually means quadrupling it.
4. You don't need too many more chunks to prevent pop-in because of the fog. 2 or 3 is more than enough.
5. Don't touch vertical chunks, they are the biggest resource hog.
6. Don't increase these if you don't have at least 8Gb RAM
7. DO NOT change "numSlices", "maxWorkspaces" and "maxMeshQueue". They are not related to distance but threads and WILL destroy your FPS to absolutely no improvement on visuals.

This is my optimal setting which had ZERO FPS impact:

maxThreads:4

"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":9,
"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":10,

If you still have 45+ FPS, increase to 10, 10, 10, 11.

More than that is pointless, it would load/render chunks that are too far from the fog. It also introduces some undesired effects like some pipes in wrecks and smoke rendering at a distance while the wreck/terrain themselves are not visible yet.

Oh, and once ingame, reduce Texture Quality to "3" on F3 to reduce sttutering.

0x6A7232 · February 2018

Caiobrz wrote: »

Whoever posted that on steam doesn't realize a few things:

1. chunksPerSide are not supposed to increase, they are basically the same (different entities?) except the last one which seems focuses on vertical biomes.
2. just increasing loaded chunks and not tweaking the engine to act accordingly is what drives the game unstable. One of the best way to counter it without adding instability is to increase maxThreads from 2 to at least 4 (I don't suggest more as Unity is not optimized to handle more than 4 cores)
3. Increases in one dimension on a two dimension plane is quadratic, so doubling it actually means quadrupling it.
4. You don't need too many more chunks to prevent pop-in because of the fog. 2 or 3 is more than enough.
5. Don't touch vertical chunks, they are the biggest resource hog.
6. Don't increase these if you don't have at least 8Gb RAM
7. DO NOT change "numSlices", "maxWorkspaces" and "maxMeshQueue". They are not related to distance but threads and WILL destroy your FPS to absolutely no improvement on visuals.

This is my optimal setting which had ZERO FPS impact:

maxThreads:4

"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":9,
"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":10,

If you still have 45+ FPS, increase to 10, 10, 10, 11.

More than that is pointless, it would load/render chunks that are too far from the fog. It also introduces some undesired effects like some pipes in wrecks and smoke rendering at a distance while the wreck/terrain themselves are not visible yet.

Oh, and once ingame, reduce Texture Quality to "3" on F3 to reduce sttutering.

I made a post in the Steam thread about it.

project_demon · February 2018

Caiobrz wrote: »

Whoever posted that on steam doesn't realize a few things:

1. chunksPerSide are not supposed to increase, they are basically the same (different entities?) except the last one which seems focuses on vertical biomes.
2. just increasing loaded chunks and not tweaking the engine to act accordingly is what drives the game unstable. One of the best way to counter it without adding instability is to increase maxThreads from 2 to at least 4 (I don't suggest more as Unity is not optimized to handle more than 4 cores)
3. Increases in one dimension on a two dimension plane is quadratic, so doubling it actually means quadrupling it.
4. You don't need too many more chunks to prevent pop-in because of the fog. 2 or 3 is more than enough.
5. Don't touch vertical chunks, they are the biggest resource hog.
6. Don't increase these if you don't have at least 8Gb RAM
7. DO NOT change "numSlices", "maxWorkspaces" and "maxMeshQueue". They are not related to distance but threads and WILL destroy your FPS to absolutely no improvement on visuals.

This is my optimal setting which had ZERO FPS impact:

maxThreads:4

"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":9,
"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":10,

If you still have 45+ FPS, increase to 10, 10, 10, 11.

More than that is pointless, it would load/render chunks that are too far from the fog. It also introduces some undesired effects like some pipes in wrecks and smoke rendering at a distance while the wreck/terrain themselves are not visible yet.

Oh, and once ingame, reduce Texture Quality to "3" on F3 to reduce sttutering.

Are these the only things that we should change? cause the steam link has a lot of lines changes under the ALPHA section.

Luna_Rosalina · February 2018

Caiobrz wrote: »

Whoever posted that on steam doesn't realize a few things:

1. chunksPerSide are not supposed to increase, they are basically the same (different entities?) except the last one which seems focuses on vertical biomes.
2. just increasing loaded chunks and not tweaking the engine to act accordingly is what drives the game unstable. One of the best way to counter it without adding instability is to increase maxThreads from 2 to at least 4 (I don't suggest more as Unity is not optimized to handle more than 4 cores)
3. Increases in one dimension on a two dimension plane is quadratic, so doubling it actually means quadrupling it.
4. You don't need too many more chunks to prevent pop-in because of the fog. 2 or 3 is more than enough.
5. Don't touch vertical chunks, they are the biggest resource hog.
6. Don't increase these if you don't have at least 8Gb RAM
7. DO NOT change "numSlices", "maxWorkspaces" and "maxMeshQueue". They are not related to distance but threads and WILL destroy your FPS to absolutely no improvement on visuals.

This is my optimal setting which had ZERO FPS impact:

maxThreads:4

"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":9,
"chunksVertically":9,

"chunksVertically":10,

If you still have 45+ FPS, increase to 10, 10, 10, 11.

More than that is pointless, it would load/render chunks that are too far from the fog. It also introduces some undesired effects like some pipes in wrecks and smoke rendering at a distance while the wreck/terrain themselves are not visible yet.

Oh, and once ingame, reduce Texture Quality to "3" on F3 to reduce sttutering.

This guy has no idea what he is talking about.
ChunksVertically is chunks vertically, genius!

Not changing chunks per side still results in huge pop ins....

Following the steam guide to change chunksperside eliminates all LOD Pop Ins. Forget what this Caiobrz dummy said.
Follow the steam guide instead.

BUT The performance impact is insane.

I am running:
Ryzen 5 1600x (6 core, 12 thread @ 4GHz)
MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 6GB
32GB 3200MHz DDr4 RAM
And running Subnautica from my Samsung 1000MB/s mSATA SSD.

Without the LOD tweaks and hence disgusting pop-ins, I get 70+ FPS and a dogshit 35-40 in the Mushroom Forest.
(Funnily enough, an old subnautica installation from early 2017 I had lying around on an old cloned image 240GB SSD runs way better across the board. I guess the curse of the filthy console peasants strikes again.)

With the LOD tweaks and hence pop-ins AND detail pop-ins eliminated, I get across the board dogshit FPS of 45 with regular dips to 20 or even 15 FPS.
IDK what kind of a beast rig the steam guide maker is running to claim 45-75 fps with these tweaks... GeForce TITAN 3-way SLI with dual i7-7700K at 5GHz???

0x6A7232 · February 2018

Got the author to respond:

ActionOfLost [author] wrote:

9 hours ago
I've just read it's post, some of is argument are partialy true (like tweaking the value but not the engine cannot have the better result), but not changing those value don't allow the user to remove the pop-in... Anyway, I'm almost done with my different set of config option and will post them both here and on the official forum... After that only an injector will allow to get better result (and since I've started from zero is a long way to go).

Silbrulf · February 2019

Just ran across this while looking up what a few of the f-key menu options actually do and saw ppl making a big deal about something I need to remark on...
The human brain can only process information from the eye at around ~60 fps. That said, I can understand pushing to about 75 fps (I can process somewhat faster than others and see slight "stutter" at 60, some ppl can)... But complaining you can't hit 120-140? At that point you're seeing half of the frames anyway, so what's the point besides a "mine's bigger" contest?

Jacke · February 2019

Silbrulf wrote: »

The human brain can only process information from the eye at around ~60 fps. That said, I can understand pushing to about 75 fps (I can process somewhat faster than others and see slight "stutter" at 60, some ppl can)... But complaining you can't hit 120-140? At that point you're seeing half of the frames anyway, so what's the point besides a "mine's bigger" contest?

Because it's not just giving information at a little faster than the maximum difference perception but well well over it. The visual system is complex and does a lot of image smoothing and extrapolation, especially outside of the centre-of-view and for colour. Delivering more potential information means that the information that the visual system does get is smoother and thus the post-processing in the brain is smoother. I expect that much more than somewhere in 100-120fps will not be an improvement, but going over 75fps is likely to help.

0x6A7232 · February 2019

Updated link in the OP, not sure what happened there. O.o
New link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/264710/discussions/0/1693785669845485600/

Old one went to a .. file??? IDK what happened there but apparently it used to work, but no longer does. The direct link to the conversation definitely does, however.

EDIT: Ugh, my head. Apparently that's a different, but similar thread, and the previous link was to a (no longer existing?) mod to do basically the same thing? Not sure any more, it's been a long time, maybe someone can help me out here? What was in the OP, a mod?

Ubenstein · February 2019

Show me videos of your horrendous pop in?

Even at default, moving very very very very fast it doesnt do that... hmmm i mean yea at 100 meters per second shit doesnt load. hmmm.

I wonder if its SSD related?

Lightspeed How to go rickybobbyfast <----

CaptainFearless · February 2019

I really want the devs to add an option for view/draw distance that's separate from say texture quality, etc for those of us who can handle it, because pop-ins can be greatly improved sometimes.

WaterBatman · February 2019

Guys what about the 'farplane' console command, does it help at all or is that different?

0x6A7232 · February 2019

CaptainFearless wrote: »

I really want the devs to add an option for view/draw distance that's separate from say texture quality, etc for those of us who can handle it, because pop-ins can be greatly improved sometimes.

That or a mod would come in handy.

Increase Subnautica view (draw) distance (WIP needs optimization)

Comments