Stream Out Behavior: New Property for Streaming Enabled

[Jas_nRuski (Jason)]

I’m more worried about culling operation than simply just unloading.

You see, games powered by UE and some Unity games as well as bigger sandbox games such as GTA have some form of backface or frustum culling, and they do it well. Those games really focus on not rendering in what doesn’t need to be rendered even within the client’s stream radius, and I’m wondering if ROBLOX would do the same.

ROBLOX’s stream enabled, as far as my research goes (including when this beta feature was enabled, but I didn’t get a chance to set up an experiment) was that the full/semi-full/all six sides geometry of the asset is loaded even when outside of the streaming radius, regardless setting LOD to streaming mesh and whatnot, which is extremely inconvenient considering the triangles are still loaded into the client’s memory. Sure, I’ll get a lower amount of triangles, but all sides of triangles are still loaded in and physics data is still there, doesn’t really hit a dent optimization speaking.

I’m more or less aware that it is sort of like chunk-loading, though I really want to see if any forms of advanced culling will be implemented for assets outside of the chunk.

By the way,

CloneTrooper had put together a visualizer of frustum culling in his studio, you can see how some assets are still loaded even when you can’t really see it. That’s the part I’m worried about with the new behavior. I hope it is stabilized and work like a charm, but I’ll have to see.

[Im_Andr3i (Andr3i)]

I like this feature, I wonder how to use it and turn it on? hopefully, the feature comes back because I believe that this is a useful feature for optimizing your game (I’m new on the Roblox Dev Forum btw)

[vrs2210 (Gearwork)]

If you see the title, then it says [Disabled], that’s why it’s not enabled in games.

[Maxwell_Edison]

Has there been any information given to us by the Devs recently? I’ve got some fairly complex games that require a high part count on display and I’ve been waiting for this feature for a while - No similar solution I can code in seems to really be doing the job for me. Keep us updated!

[LeDragonGamer115577 (LeDragonGamer)]

Are there any news regarding this feature? I really need it for future updates!

[AerialsAbove]

I would like to hear an update on this too. Seems like a pretty essential feature for Roblox in the future.

[CorvusCoraxx]

There are still some dependencies being worked on that are preventing us from reenabling this currently. We will update when possible.

[wravager]

Any discussions on making this feature locked to Studio Beta for testing purposes or do the dependencies cause unexpected issues currently?

[Jaco2811]

Any update regarding the ETA of this feature returning, @CorvusCoraxx ?

[CorvusCoraxx]

We still have some dependencies that must be fixed before we can reenable this feature. I don’t have an ETA we can share unfortunately.

[Jaco2811]

Figured I’d ask again, a month after. Any new info for us? @CorvusCoraxx

We’re very desperate for this feature to return, as our map will be unplayable for some devices, without it.

This is the general graphical fidelity of our map, spanning around 4km^2. (7200x7200 studs.)

[CorvusCoraxx]

We are planning to reenable the stream out behavior change after we roll out this improvement to streaming PartInstance handling:

Changes to PartInstance Streaming with Streaming Enabled

We will be soon rolling out a change to Streaming Enabled that improves how we stream parts that are grouped together into mechanisms and assemblies, such as vehicles and character models. With traditional streaming, a part connected to other parts via constraints could be sent independently of the connected parts, resulting in incomplete physics assemblies on the client. For example, the tire of a car that is closer to the player could be sent before the chassis and the rest of the car. Or lim…

[BullfrogBait]

Glad to see it’s returning. I have a game with heavy fog where the player can’t see anything past a certain distance and this will be extremely helpful!

[Y_OM]

This feature sounds amazing, and I am looking forward to its return. I will keep this post bookmarked for future reference.

[Wingboy0]

Are there any more prequisites other than that to enable this opportunitistic stream out behavior? according to the timeline it should have released yesterday, when can i expect to use this new behavior in my live game?

[CorvusCoraxx]

Opportunistic stream out is dependent on the change discussed here:

Changes to PartInstance Streaming with Streaming Enabled

We will be soon rolling out a change to Streaming Enabled that improves how we stream parts that are grouped together into mechanisms and assemblies, such as vehicles and character models. With traditional streaming, a part connected to other parts via constraints could be sent independently of the connected parts, resulting in incomplete physics assemblies on the client. For example, the tire of a car that is closer to the player could be sent before the chassis and the rest of the car. Or lim…

which unfortunately had to be delayed. I will update this thread when we have an ETA.

[TheCrypticRunner (Cryptic)]

Thank god. My game really suffers from low framerates just because it keeps everything loaded in.

[Jaco2811]

What’s the status for this feature rolling out?

[CorvusCoraxx]

This change should follow soon after the Changes to PartInstance Streaming with Streaming Enabled mentioned previously.

[itsDenDenn (Den)]

Hello,
Can we expect to see this feature enabled soon? The game me and my team are working on really needs it due to the game having a lot of instances in it at the same time which are using the client memory quickly but also causing frame drops, so this would be very useful.

Changes to PartInstance Streaming with Streaming Enabled

This change is now enabled globally.