Performance for the People - Exterior Occlusion Additions (PFTP)

OwO What's this?

PFTP adds occlusion planes to "cull" unnecessary rendering of terrain that you can't see while in exteriors.

• []Simply adds occlusion planes to various exteriors. Typically inside buildings and terrain.

  []No wild edits or otherwise forcefully subjecting you to my "creative vision."

  []Cleaned in xEdit and also checked by hand. Zero UDRs or ITMs.

  In practice it mostly only helps on tato PCs with older low end GPUs. I had a PC almost as old as New Vegas, and it gained 10 FPS around Novac's motel.

  Details?

  Occlusion planes are 2D flat rectangular planes used for occlusion culling. In FNV they stop certain things (mostly landscape textures & NPCs) from being rendered, relative to camera perspective. They're handy to reduce draw calls for your GPU, and are typically hidden inside solid structures so things you can't see don't need to be rendered. While Gamebryo engine games use room bounds to cover occlusion for interiors, planes are typically supposed to be used for larger exterior areas to lessen GPU strain. Vanilla New Vegas lacks planes in a lot of areas, likely due to limited time, so GPU bound performance suffers.

  For the weaker GPUs that struggle with rendering a line in MS Paint, PFTP might help.

  Here are the areas with newly added occlusion planes as of typing:

  • []Goodsprings

    []Primm

    []NCRCF

    []Novac

    []188 Trading Post

    []Followers' Outpost

    []A Few NCR Ranger Camps

    []Camp Golf

    []Mojave Outpost

    []Camp McCarren

    []Bittersprings

    []Red Rock Canyon

    []Cottonwood Cove

    []The Fort

    []Hidden Valley

    []The Strip

    []Freeside

    []Vault 3 & Surrounding Ruins

    []Sloan

    []Quarry Junction

    []Black Mountain

    * There are 2 merged ESM options, with and without Vegas + Freeside, as well as the option to use individualized modules. Pick your preference.

    Most mid-range to lower end systems that are low on graphical horse power can expect a few extra FPS in these exteriors. Novac had a ~10% FPS gain on my LG Smart Fridge. Another tester gained only ~2% more FPS on a high end gaming rig. Heavily depends on specs, number of in the area NPCs, and your mod list. As a rule of thumb, expect GPU-bottlenecked systems to get the best gains, but you can test either way to see if it's a mod that helps you.

    Compatibility?

    TL;DR: Compatible with almost anything that doesn't remove or reposition things I put the planes in (i.e. building