We’re just a few months out from releasing a very large open world RPG (third person). When I say large, it is literally the size of downtown LA, using open GPS and map data.
What optimizations should be made outside of the obvious done during development?
Merging:
Should I get object count down to an absolute minimum by merging?
Should I merge, lets say – all sidewalks in a city block into a single mesh?
How would merging large amounts of actors affect LOD as they are all set to individual LOD’s?
Streaming Levels:
Right now, the city has about 17 “sections” which are streaming levels, when the character gets near a section, it loads the sections around it, so the player always has a view of the city and never notices anything. Should this be reduced even more? To more like 50 sections?
Decals
They’re everywhere, roads, walls, etc. How expensive are they? Is there a way to get them to bake instead of just projecting constantly?
Any other information is welcome. This is a commercial game, I just want to make sure I am using the new engine’s optimizations to the fullest.