In today’s video we profile and optimize “Far Far West”, a UE5 indie game that released into Early Access last week! (They already reached over 500.000 players, I am very happy for the team!)
Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgd4glfIR0
We profile using Unreal Insights and look at several GPU stats. We discuss why the cost is too high and how we can optimize the game. We specifically look at Nanite foliage, deferred decals, single layer water including distance field shadows.
The profiling is done using an RTX 3060 to get real-world profiling data. I called the GPU "lower end" in the video, I really should have said "not high-end" or something as it's still a decent GPU 6 years later and is literally #1 on Steam hardware survey!
The format of this video is somewhat loose to explore in real-time without having all the answers beforehand. What you see is me exploring the real data and reasoning about improvements. Let me know if you want to see more of this style of video!
0:00 - Intro
1:46 - Start Profiling
14:52 - Nanite Visbuffer
16:12 - Nanite WPO
17:32 - Nanite Pixel Programmable
31:45 - Foliage Density Scale
38:08 - Deferred Decals
51:22 - Distance Field Shadows & Single Layer Water
1:02:36 - Recap
A few things of note that is already discussed in the YT comments:
- The foliage should probably just turn off Nanite entirely. I wanted to try out Epic's suggestion of masked cut-outs etc. but the workflow isn't well supported.
- The scorched decals should likely just use vertex painting (or Nanite's new'ish texture painting tool.
A written recap is available on my blog, including the console variables used in the video: https://tomlooman.com/unreal-engine-optimization-farfarwest/