There are some things that people in the gaming space won’t fully understand until they actually “get into the weeds” and do it themselves. The game development process is very robust, and it takes a lot of work to get even the simplest things to happen properly. As such, the better the development tools, the better creators can adapt and make things happen quickly. You might not understand why “Occlusion Settings” are important for developers, but when it comes to the placement of objects, buildings, etc., they need to know how things look in comparison to one another, especially regarding distance, scale, and so on. Even the Roblox team knows how important this is.
Previously, the dev team had only put in certain types of occlusion in their software so that creators could “phase out” certain kinds of things, so that the teams could “see what they need to see.” However, they left out some key stuff in that process, like terrain. Thankfully, in a new dev post, the occlusion factor has been improved, and as such, creators have even greater visibility when going through their levels:
“Great news: Occlusion Culling now fully supports terrain! This means that if you have terrain occluding other objects, those objects will no longer be rendered, and conversely, if terrain is occluded, it will no longer be rendered.”
In the blog post, the Roblox team even shows what it’s like to have both occlusion and culling happen, including not rendering a building in the background because it’s fully obscured by a rock. With that rendering not taking place, the game will actually run a little faster in that perspective, as the game’s engine has less to do, and that kind of optimization is important. Naturally, the team also noted that they want to hear from creators about any issues they have with the updated system and what they might want to see “culled” next:
“Please dive in and let us know if you run into any issues. Your feedback is vital as we continue to refine the OC system. We’re also actively working on expanding OC support to include Avatars and more in the near future. Stay tuned for more updates!”
Again, to those who are just playing the games themselves, this update might not seem the most relevant to you, and that’s fine. To those making these titles, though, it will be very important to them, and many were already celebrating in the blog’s comment section.
