While the Level of Detail system that is in place for meshes is great for optimisation we don’t have control over the LODs themselves this brings issues across with how the mesh is decimated and quite often this can make the game look bad, introducing custom LODs would fix this and i’m aware that this has been brought up in the past however I think it should definitely be considered.
In addition this could help in improving performance for our games as we could define how many tris each mesh is as opposed to letting the engine handle it.
Here is an example of what i’m talking about with some game ready trees that were created for a game.
As you can see the tree gets absolutely butchered at LOD1 and that is just at the first stage so imagine going further back. We can also save texture draw calls with custom LODs since LOD1 is a billboard plane of the tree (1 mesh) whereas the original tree would have 2 meshes the leaves and the trunk.
Proposed concept of the custom LOD options that I had in mind
If this feature is addressed, it would improve development as we would be able to create large spanning environments that would be optimised for use in games or even showcases and would still look stunning.
I fully support this! Currently it’s difficult to implement the LOD system as you have to make sure different meshes aren’t absolutely butchered, and those which do get butchered have to be left out. If this was implemented we’d have better looks with better performance, so it’d be a win-win situation!
This is actually built into the Roblox mesh format already. I am not sure if it’s possible to upload a modified mesh file directly to Roblox, however. It would be great to expose this in an easier to access method, such as the one suggested above.
While there are ongoing improvements to the LOD algorithms, and it’s great that these LOD algorithms are an option, there is only so much these algorithms can do. It is not possible to make an LOD algorithm that gives results as visually appealing or as performant as a human would be able to create. Giving us the option to create custom mesh LODs would be a win both in aesthetics and in performance.
This would also be great for StreamingEnabled. My game takes place in a city and having what would normally be breathtaking views be replaced with weirdly textured blotches is far from ideal and driving around can be a bit jarring with the current automatic LODs.
This is very much needed, developers and players alike want games where you can look out into the distance and be able to see good-looking models with good optimizations (in this case an implemented tri amount) to combat lag.
