EXTREME asset pop in on planet

[alexa]

as the title says, started another fresh run of the game as i saw teh echoes update, but the issue is there is EXTREME pop in in this game, way more than launch even, flying on planet is jarring af esp closer to terrain, random objects and even the entire terrain changes shape and i often slam into stuff

the draw distance is extremely poor, the entire terrain seems smooth and suddenly stuff and detail pops in way too late, there should be options for people with capable hardware to be able to have way better draw distance than a ps2 era game tbh, im playing on ultra too and this is making the game completely unplayable and immersion breaking

[umop-apisdn]

Are you constantly boosting while flying just a few meters higher than the terrain you're flying over?

Stop throwing yourself as hard as you can at the ground, and being surprised when you don't miss. Either fly more slowly, or get higher. Failing to do one or the other of those results in eating trees, wildlife, and/or terrain through the windshield... which should be obvious if you give it a moment's thought. It's not the pop-in that's killing you, it's pilot error.

[Froot Loop Lux]

I'm actually having the same issue since the update today. I used to could load into my settlement and everything would be loaded in maybe two seconds after the game starts but now it's taking everything a good 15-20 seconds. This includes NPCs, buildings, sentinels, and wildlife.

Dunno if thats EXACTLY the issue OP is having but figured I'd mention.

[Guyver8]

wot umop-apisdn said plus...
true the draw distance for NMS isn't great by some other games standard, but then the amount of assets that are constantly being rendered as you move is much higher than a lot of those same games (especially if you're flying at speed)
there is a mod 'FineLOD' that improves this for HD+ ...but at a cost to performance

there is also the obvious 'elephant in the room' where a player's pride won't allow for the possibility that
a) their rig can't handle the game at the level of the settings
or
b) their rig isn't using the 'correct' in-game or graphics card settings to handle the game at the level of the settings

regardless of wot the 'cause' actual is you need to have realistic expectations of wot the game can look like, watch a few 'jason plays' videos for reference ...he has just upgraded his card (last week) to a top tier amd card, previous to that i believe he had an nvidia 3070?

[McGranger Danger]

It WOULD be nice if structures and points of interest would draw in from further away, or have low LOD assets visible from high altitude well before you are already sitting right on top of them. Being 3k away from a massive planetary archive and not being able to see it is really annoying and takes heavily away from immersion and the exploration experience.

[Kitet]

This is CPU's problem, or rather its usefulness for this game. I saw this happen on some computers where FPS is good but stuff loads too late. We have an old, 6th gen i3 with 32gigs of super-duper RAM, we ran this game on lowest settings, just for memes, and we would have sometimes to wait a MINUTE standing near e.g. a Planetary Archive POI, for it to slowly start showing up on screen, while FPS was normal and we could run, fly, whatever. Just saying, coz you say 'extreme', I say you didn't see 'extreme' yet ;) Oh, and it stuttered, afair, it was long ago.

This is probably one of those games that need many and fast cores so that the render thread can actually be fed with stuff from other, lower priority threads. This is my speculation, which can only be confirmed when some insider comments on how Havok works or how NMS uses it. Maybe they did somewhere, don't know, don't care. I just assumed so because missing stuff happens even when FPS is acceptable. If it was just one thread doing all the work, FPS would be in the pits, but it should show complete scene given enough ram and vram.

As to the option you want - draw distance. There's one in game. Now you can try adjusting it, but I suspect it will have no effect, or maybe even an opposite of what you expect. I'm thinking like this: if you have medium draw distance and your CPU can't calculate all the stuff on scene on time, increasing draw distance will load it even more, resulting in even poorer performance. I'd first try to lower it a notch just to see if when dealing with less stuff at once is your CPU able to calculate it on time or does it still lose objects. Again, I'm not familiar with Havok's pipeline so it's a shot in the dark. What I'm trying to say is on your current hardware, with current driver / bios options, with software running in the background (if any), you can't expect this game to perform any better without lowering some options. Consider what's important to you - flyby experience or crisp, detailed graphics when walking around, assuming this aspect is actually good currently.

I'm purposefully not mentioning GPU anywhere coz if it was GPU problem you'd have low FPS not missing stuff. GPU doesn't decide that, let it be clear.

[Guyver8]

@Kitet: 'As to the option you want - draw distance. There's one in game' - not aware of any such in-game setting there is FOV but not draw distance (but i get my eyes checked if you prove to be correct)

don't think i can agree that this is only CPU...
NMS actually tries to minimise pop-in by attempting to fade in/out assets at the edge of the draw distance when rendering (rather than a simple render or not render otherwise known as pop-in), there is even a mod 'NO FADE' that disables this feature which results in a slight bump in FPS but obviously makes pop-in more noticeable

[Mandrake]

You should be able to see buildings, monuments, etc. about halfway between you and the horizon, assuming you're just coasting slow at medium-low altitude. Larger / heavier load time objects like Archives might just suddenly 'appear' a bit closer than that as they take more time to render.
I agree that most object rendering in this game is CPU bound. As it is all procedurally generated - the scene is being updated in real time as you move. The faster you go, the larger the Delta will be on the system skipping load items per process available to it.
Basically, your system has a finite number of processes to go around, the game can use up only so many of them, the faster you go over a planet surface, the more data it is compacting into the same space so it gets 'dropped' as it were.
Hopefully that made sense. Tried to English what's happening.

[pseudo]

Originally posted by Guyver8:

@Kitet: 'As to the option you want - draw distance. There's one in game' - not aware of any such in-game setting there is FOV but not draw distance (but i get my eyes checked if you prove to be correct)

It's not an option you would notice at a glance. It's the Planet Quality setting, hovering over it describes that it's for draw distance. Your eyes are fine lol. Animation Quality and Base Complexity are also related.

[BruceNitro]

I've also had pop-in issues and frame issues after today's update.

[Guyver8]

Originally posted by pseudo:

Originally posted by Guyver8:

@Kitet: 'As to the option you want - draw distance. There's one in game' - not aware of any such in-game setting there is FOV but not draw distance (but i get my eyes checked if you prove to be correct)

It's not an option you would notice at a glance. It's the Planet Quality setting, hovering over it describes that it's for draw distance. Your eyes are fine lol. Animation Quality and Base Complexity are also related.

oh ...cheers, i'd skipped over it cos my potato pretty much needs lowest settings for everything Lol

[alexa]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Are you constantly boosting while flying just a few meters higher than the terrain you're flying over?

Stop throwing yourself as hard as you can at the ground, and being surprised when you don't miss. Either fly more slowly, or get higher. Failing to do one or the other of those results in eating trees, wildlife, and/or terrain through the windshield... which should be obvious if you give it a moment's thought. It's not the pop-in that's killing you, it's pilot error.

buddy im way above that height, even cliffs and floating terrain pops in, its a clear game issue , the pop in is extreme

[alexa]

Originally posted by Kitet:

This is CPU's problem, or rather its usefulness for this game. I saw this happen on some computers where FPS is good but stuff loads too late. We have an old, 6th gen i3 with 32gigs of super-duper RAM, we ran this game on lowest settings, just for memes, and we would have sometimes to wait a MINUTE standing near e.g. a Planetary Archive POI, for it to slowly start showing up on screen, while FPS was normal and we could run, fly, whatever. Just saying, coz you say 'extreme', I say you didn't see 'extreme' yet ;) Oh, and it stuttered, afair, it was long ago.

This is probably one of those games that need many and fast cores so that the render thread can actually be fed with stuff from other, lower priority threads. This is my speculation, which can only be confirmed when some insider comments on how Havok works or how NMS uses it. Maybe they did somewhere, don't know, don't care. I just assumed so because missing stuff happens even when FPS is acceptable. If it was just one thread doing all the work, FPS would be in the pits, but it should show complete scene given enough ram and vram.

As to the option you want - draw distance. There's one in game. Now you can try adjusting it, but I suspect it will have no effect, or maybe even an opposite of what you expect. I'm thinking like this: if you have medium draw distance and your CPU can't calculate all the stuff on scene on time, increasing draw distance will load it even more, resulting in even poorer performance. I'd first try to lower it a notch just to see if when dealing with less stuff at once is your CPU able to calculate it on time or does it still lose objects. Again, I'm not familiar with Havok's pipeline so it's a shot in the dark. What I'm trying to say is on your current hardware, with current driver / bios options, with software running in the background (if any), you can't expect this game to perform any better without lowering some options. Consider what's important to you - flyby experience or crisp, detailed graphics when walking around, assuming this aspect is actually good currently.

I'm purposefully not mentioning GPU anywhere coz if it was GPU problem you'd have low FPS not missing stuff. GPU doesn't decide that, let it be clear.

for everyone wondering i got a rtx 3080 ti and a 3800x , its not a hardware issue. ill try the mods you and someone else listed, everything is at maximum settings i get no frame drops and the gpu is hardly even close to 80% , cpu is not that utilised either

even while running and jet packing the textures change before my eyes lmao, a few feet away..