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KaptainCnucklz

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KaptainCnucklz

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About this mod

Adds new occlusion planes for culling in many exteriors. Can help FPS. Merged and modular options to be compatibility friendly.

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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.

On paper could help many PCs, but especially weaker GPUs. I have a PC almost as old as New Vegas, and it gains 10 FPS around Novac's motel.


Details?
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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?
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TL;DR: Compatible with almost anything that doesn't remove or reposition things I put the planes in (i.e. buildings, large rocks, and/or terrain).

Tested as fully compatible:

Known incompatibilities:
  • Desert Landscapes is only compatible with my Strip and Freeside edits. It also very well optimized so my non-Strip and non-FS edits aren't needed.
  • No Sleep Till Goodsprings has it's own module, so use it instead of my merges.
  • FNV Occlusion Overhaul is unsupported by it's author and buggy. Pair PFTP with ExRB instead.

As you can see, mods that only tweak/add to areas are often fine. i.e. Willow unbarricades the far left bungalow as a player home, and it works fine.
I also avoided placing any planes in decor in case another mod moves them. So anything not moving terrain or buildings usually works out of the box. Anything that only alters interiors is also gonna be fully compatible since I didn't alter any interior cells - only the exterior wasteland's world space.

Individual modules are provided in case you run into compatibility issues with any areas. You can optionally make your own custom merge with this.

You can additionally mix this with DXVK, NVHR, and NVTF to really watch some FPS magic.


Downsides?
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Very little outside of the compatibility section. It's a fairly light weight mod, and every plane is entirely inside things that you can't see through anyway.

In theory you could lose a few FPS processing the extra occlusion in certain CPU-bound rendering situations, but given the tester still had 100+ FPS, we're talking 1% performance loss. It's pretty negligible, and any GPU bottle-necked (or bottle-neckless) scenarios can potentially still get performance gains.


Load order?
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Okay so you know YUP's deal? And how YUP has to be placed above any other ESMs? Place PFTP right under it.

Example:
  • <official game and DLC ESMs>
  • YUP ESM
  • PFTP Merge (if you don't use the modules)
  • <all other ESMs>
  • YUP NPC Edits
  • PFTP Modules (if you don't use a merge)
  • <all other ESPs>