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256 comments
Anyway, every one of these objects cause a draw call, which is basically the CPU telling the GPU what to draw, and that's probably one of the largest bottlenecks in terms of performance. Once the GPU takes over, however, it doesn't really matter how many polygons a single object has, and one objects with many polygons is much more performance-friendly than many simple objects. Which is probably the main reason why mods that add LOD objects to the distant landscape in Oblivion are guaranteed to kill the frame rate. Fortunately, MGE XE distant land seems to be much more efficient.
Many objects in vanilla Morrowind are badly optimized in terms of the amount of objects they consist of. Not only do many objects use quite a number of different textures, but often they are split into many NiTriShapes which use the same texture, trees for example. flora_bc_tree_01.nif consists of no less than 63 different objects and thus causes just as many draw calls, at least in OpenMW. It might be useful to conduct some testing of how the vanilla engine performs with "optimized" meshes in comparison to the vanilla ones. Anyway, I believe there is much potential for reducing draw calls in Morrowind, but many meshes and even more textures would have to be remade from scratch. As it is now, things like clothes, armors, weapons and so on often consist of several different NiTriShapes and use multiple textures. In modern games, including every Bethesda-Game since Oblivion, meshes use as few different textures as possible, and usually only one per armor, weapon, etc. It is much better for a mesh to use one large texture than several small ones, even if this texture is considerably bigger than the smaller ones combined. For some objects it may be possible to create a texture atlas out of the different textures it uses, but in many cases this would probably not be the case because of their uv maps. Also, texture replacers would no longer work. So the most logical thing to do would be to create completely new meshes and textures. Good examples are PeterBitt's Creatures or many of your own mods (of course, I am aware that you know about all of this, but maybe someone else is interested into these explanations). On the other hand, many older mods are doing just the opposite by mashing vanilla meshes together for a new object, thus further increasing the amount of Draw Calls. Unfortunately, a truly modern Morrowind in terms of graphics, from an artistic point of view as well as a technical one, will most likely remain a dream. But this mod is a good first step in the right direction. ;)
Edit : Also, thank you to Flash for the continued updates :).
10/10
EDIT: Had to delete the models that use NiLODNode as explained in the post below.
I'm hoping to use OpenMW to avoid crashes, not cause them, so any help will be appreciated - cheers!
By the way, do you have any knowledge of the below two mods? Both are recommended for use under OpenMW per https://modding-openmw.com/, but the first is quite old, and the author of the second has made some recent comments in his mod's Nexus forum on mesh optimization and compatibility with Morrowind Optimization Patch that don't inspire confidence.
--Mesh Fix (http://mw.modhistory.com/download-15-6088)
--Correct Meshes (https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/39348)
Thank you for your work!
EDIT: I'll take that as a "no", lol - looks like everyone's doing their own thing rather than planning a single comprehensive mesh fix/optimization mod (to include e.g. the four different mods I listed in my post above from 2019), which of course is understandable since none of you are getting paid! Thanks anyway if you've been reading.