Terrain LOD is slow and choppy looking

Bug Reports Engine Bugs
#24

Wow I can’t believe atmosphere came out in May.

I just realized I could pinpoint this by looking at Discord chat history with badcc. We’ve talked about it a bunch and never posted because we thought it’d be fixed when the new Terrain LOD came out. I really wish I said something sooner!

Grass and Terrain LOD quality was first noted for us on April 30th. The grass part is I believe related. It’s where grass cuts off is very sudden, just like the LOD.
Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 6.07.58 PM

About a month ago, we noticed terrain LOD being slower to load. This is on top of the problems we saw in April. Players being teleported around in the game, or driving a fast vehicle, are running into Terrain before it can load.

Edit: Found my first message to badcc about Grass. Blowing my mind this was so long ago.
Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 6.11.28 PM

14 Likes
#26

I’ve turned off flag that could have been causing the issues mentioned in first post. @asimo3089, please let me know if it works better for you

Other issues reported here may not be related (holes, slow initial load). I will follow up.

14 Likes
#27

This did it! Grass looks much better as a result, maybe they were connected. Thank you sooo much. Seriously. :heart: This also fixed the issues with placing/removing terrain showing the void.

I’m personally finding this has improved loading times but I have other players saying it’s still what they used to be. I am hearing this improved performance.

13 Likes
#28

I’d like to confirm this, the difference has been amazing! The games now load correctly.

@ConvexRumbler, I see you have said the flag is off for now, will if be turned back on when fixed? Thanks!

#30

I’ve been seeing this bug in Jailbreak for about 4-7 months on my Microsoft Surface.

2 Likes
#31

Can confirm this is still an issue. This still happens to me in Jailbreak, and in my own game as well. Pretty much any game with a large map that is terrain-reliant.

If you drive around or move at a fast speed, the terrain loading is horrible. This also includes things like instant camera changes caused by either cutscenes (ex. Jailbreak start screen, when you switch from the Police to Prisoner cutscenes, there are patches of terrain visible for a few seconds or less) or spawning.

It looks exactly like the second gif asimo posted; there are random patches of terrain that float around and are not loading in/out fast enough to a point where it looks seamless.

1 Like
#32

Definitely not still an issue. Night and day difference when this flag was ticked off a few days ago.

7 Likes
#33

Could this possibly be related to terrain having broken LOD when adding terrain in studio? It only happened very recently, and I suspect it had something to do with this change.

I’d love confirmation that this issue isn’t just happening to me. Please let me know! :heart:

#34

I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m still having terrible problems with this. It’s quite literally cost me hours of work. I can DM screenshots if it would help you.

I got a video of the issue in my go to terrain testing game when I am on mobile, Broken Bones.

Video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18OX9oO0R1YiF5dyttepB9ZgfA3HrLyM4/view?usp=drivesdk

1 Like
#35

This is definitely not just you. I’ve had issues with this as well. I’m having a strange combination of these issues. It’s cost me hours of work.

1 Like
#36

Uh… not for me. This has been happening to me for a couple of months now.

https://streamable.com/1jaiie

As you can see, there’s a lot of terrain flickering around through the roads and is showing up where it’s not supposed to.

image
image

The terrain LOD also causes the terrain’s geometry to appear way different than what it actually is

When you’re away from it:
image

When you get closer to it:
image

This is also happening in my game too, but it’s a lot worse.

https://streamable.com/k6cf58

Floating patches of terrain and inaccurate geometry

Before:

image
image1067×287 217 KB

What it’s supposed to be like (this is when you get close)

image
image944×271 137 KB

In the second video, you can see as I drive around the dynamic LOD looks pretty bad, and there’s a lot of floating patches of terrain/inaccurate geometry appearance

Idk why this happens, but it’s really annoying and it happens to me with pretty much any big terrain map with StreamingEnabled (including mine).

Not sure if it’s my StreamingEnabled settings either, I have 192 target and 1064 max

I’m also playing on max graphics and with Vulkan.

This might be just for me, but if it isn’t, I really hopes this gets fixed, because this has been a problem for me for a while :confused:

5 Likes
#37

It’s a problem in game and in studio. The changes did not fix the issue, at least for me.

2 Likes
#38

what if they made it so if a part is over terrain it won’t load that part of terrain

1 Like
#39

If LOD was removed it would significantly make performance much lower. Also Roblox focuses on mobile more than pc/console performance.

1 Like
#40

The problem has ALWAYS existed, but it used to be very noticeably worse. Watch the clip I posted in the first post. The flag fixed the problem described in the post. Marking this as solved.

3 Likes
I Keep Getting Notified For A Post I Already Read
#41

There’s nothing wrong with this video. LOD has always been visible. Check out the video in the first post.

4 Likes
#42

It’s very noticeable in my game I have to be almost exactly right beside the terrain for it to smooth out.

#43

Incorrect. The quality is still terrible. There was a time where LOD did not effect the game in that big of a difference. Like I said, if you want more info send me a DM, I’ve got a few cases of it documented, that one was just the easiest to tell.

Edit: Let me rephrase that as it came off a bit aggressive. The biggest issue I have noticed with the LOD is when using different materials such as rocks, asphalt, etc., it loads in too slow and doesn’t give details until later. Another huge problem has been with grass decoration. I have screenshots of the grass quite literally being extremely tall or extremely wide. I can provide pictures in DMs (I do not want to leak the map to the public).

#44

I have seen this bug for a few years. It started in around late 2018 and early 2019 for me. I was on a low end laptop and old desktop and when i drove in parts of jailbreak the terrain wouldn’t be fully loaded. It still happens on my newer machine a bit when i first join jailbreak and escape quickly but on lower end hardware it happens A LOT (Last time i used that old desktop was early this year and it still happened and last time I used that low end laptop was a year or two ago since the display broke. I currently have a newer 2020 laptop)

#45

Sadly this issue is still present. Here is a video of it in action in my terrain commission:

Video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UxbBoSHqn3x7B2AzbpQxfQ7xSQuj8-9b/view?usp=sharing

The choppiness and slowness of the terrain is unacceptable. Players are going to leave because they see strange looking terrain. I’ve sent the game link so you can check it out if needed.

@ConvexRumbler and any other staff: I’ve enabled freecam for everyone so you can see the issue first hand.